Chapter 36
Dean’s first condition was that he would not do the interview until after Mary had had the chance to anchor again. His demand surprised her because there was nothing in it for him. He’d requested it solely to help her get the promotion. He said it was the same reason he’d agreed to the interview, but she couldn’t help but wonder if even a little piece of him believed her story about their life together, and that’s why he was helping.
Mitchell was reluctant to let Mary behind the anchor desk, but an interview with Dean was too enticing to pass up. So two days later, Mary stood next to the stool behind the anchor desk, stealing quick glances at Alex, who fiddled with the microphone clipped to her blouse. In less than a minute, they were going on air, coanchoring the six o’clock news. If she did a good job tonight and with the interview tomorrow, she’d have a chance to get back to her old life. Mary heard her heart pounding and felt pressure in her temples. No, no, no. She would not let a panic attack derail her now. She remembered one of the many exercises to stop an attack that Dean had taught her long ago. Looking around the studio, she named three things: the camera, the mural of the Boston skyline, a small platform that Alex sometimes stood on. Her heart slowed, and her breathing returned to normal.
She pictured Dean in the pro shop at Addison Heights, staring up at the television with both fists clenched. He was definitely rooting for her tonight. He’d even texted her earlier in the day, telling her to break a leg tonight. There was a genuine kindness in him, regardless of whether he was her husband Dean or professional golfer Dean.
“We’re on in thirty seconds,” a voice in her ear said. She could do this. She had to do this. For Kendra. For her and Dean. She wiped her sweaty hands on her skirt and slid onto the stool.
Alex touched Mary’s shoulder. “You’re going to crush this.”
“Thank you,” Mary said, grateful Alex was sitting in the chair next to her tonight and not Will, whom she’d heard hadn’t stopped talking about her on-air meltdown since Friday.
“We’re on in five, four, three, two, one.”
“Good evening, I’m Alex Mason.”
Mary’s coworkers in the newsroom peered through the glass sliding door, watching her. Kimberly smiled and formed a heart with her fingers. Seeing her friend cheering her on strengthened her resolve. She took a deep breath in and pasted on her best smile. “And I’m Mary Mulligan, filling in for William Casey.” Her introduction was as good as any she’d ever heard Liz do. She could do this. “We start tonight in Marshfield, where another case of eastern equine encephalitis has been diagnosed. So far three deaths have been linked to the virus in the state’s worst outbreak of the mosquito-borne illness in decades. Kimberly Nash has the latest.” The red light went off. Mary could have sworn she heard the entire news station exhale.
Dean’s second condition for doing the interview was that it had to take place on the course at Addison Heights. Mary didn’t care where it happened. It just needed to happen. While he strapped a bag of clubs to the back of the golf cart, she slid into the passenger seat, the excitement building within her. If she did a good job with this, she could wake up as her fifty-four-year-old self in the next day or two. One of the first things she planned to do was convince Dean they needed to take a vacation. Time away together would do them good. They could visit romantic cities like Paris, Venice, and Amsterdam, and of course they’d start the vacation in London, visiting Kendra. Boy, Uncle Cillian better have been right about how to get back to her old life.
A loud bang interrupted her thoughts. Standing beside her, Carl loaded his camera gear into another cart. “Let him play a hole or two. Then stay parked by the green and start the interview. Don’t ask him questions while you’re moving. Got it?”
Mary nodded.
Dean climbed into the seat next to her, sighing as if he was resigned to getting the interview over with. “Let’s do this.” The cart beeped as he backed it out of its spot. Mary’s entire body tingled. This was the most important thing she’d ever do in either life. She had to get it right.
They drove to the first hole without speaking, the only sound the clanking of Dean’s clubs behind them. He parked next to the tee box and pulled his driver from his bag. While Carl positioned the camera, Dean took a few practice swings. His hips rotated effortlessly as the club whooshed through the air. When he finally struck the ball, it sailed more than three hundred yards over a brook and down the fairway, landing about forty yards from the green. He finished the hole with a chip and putt. Mary watched, silently, looking at the scenery, the flawless green grass, the gentle rise and fall of the slopes in the fairway, the pine and maple trees off to the side, the flowers by the tee box. It was all beautiful, peaceful. She understood why Dean enjoyed spending time here.
She waited for him to slip his putter back into his bag and climb behind the steering wheel before asking her question. “Why did you insist on being interviewed here?”
Carl stood next to the cart, pointing the camera at Dean.
Dean cleared his throat and slid his sunglasses off his baseball cap and over his eyes. “I feel most at home on a golf course.” He rotated his wrist. “The weight of the club in my hand, my spikes sinking into the fairway, the kerplunk of the ball rolling into the hole. They all put me at ease.”
His answer lined up with what she’d just been thinking, but she was surprised to hear that golfing put him at ease. The Dean she knew always appeared at ease, and she understood now that golfing was how he worked off his stress. Maybe if she’d had a hobby she’d loved as much, she wouldn’t have been so unhappy.
Carl cleared his throat. She turned toward him, and he widened his eyes as if to say Let’s go .
She addressed Dean again. “You haven’t talked to the press for over three years. Why is that?”
Dean squeezed his hands into tight fists and then released them. “I spent my entire career talking about finishing second. I had nothing more to say about it.”
“Why talk to the press now?”
“You’re persuasive.” He laughed. “No, I saw an opportunity to help someone who’s working hard to make their dream come true. I know what it’s like to come close and”—he paused, looking off in the distance—“to come close and then blow your opportunity. It’s a hard thing to live with.”
“How do you live with it?” She hadn’t planned to ask the question. As soon as the words had slipped out, she realized she was asking for his advice on how she’d ever live if she got stuck here.
He exhaled loudly. “Life isn’t about winning. It’s about being in the moment and enjoying it. Even playing my worst round, I was happy being on the course.” He gestured with his hand as if to say Look at all the beauty here .
Mary swallowed hard, thinking about how she never would have ended up in this alternate world if she’d had that attitude.
Dean stepped on the accelerator, and the cart rolled forward. He played the next two holes, scoring eagles on both. When he pulled up next to the tee box at the fourth hole, she asked another question. “In your own words, what happened at the US Open?”
Dean had been about to step out of the cart, but he settled back in his seat. He chewed on his lower lip. Mary thought he would say that the officials had made a bad call and cheated him out of a win. He swallowed hard and removed his sunglasses. “I didn’t realize it was a bunker. It was like no bunker I’d ever seen before, and I’ve been playing my entire life.”
“So you agree it was a bunker?”
“The officials said it was a bunker.”
He swung one leg out of the cart.
“But what do you say?” She wanted to see what kind of person this version of Dean was. Would he blame it on the officials, or would he take responsibility? Her husband would shoulder the blame.
Dean exhaled loudly. “From the moment I saw the official approaching me on the green, I realized I’d screwed up.” He spoke with his back to Mary, but Carl stood beside him, pointing the camera in his face. “I should have known, or I should have asked.”
“There are a lot of people who say it wasn’t a bunker, and the win was stolen from you.”
Dean shook his head. “No. It was my fault. I broke a rule, and I was rightly penalized. I was mad at myself for making such a stupid mistake.” He lowered his voice as if he was confiding in her. Carl leaned closer with the camera. “That’s why I didn’t want to talk to the press.”
Mary swallowed hard, proud of him for owning up to his mistake and admiring his integrity. He was a good man, in both versions of her life. Of course she’d known that about her Dean, but she’d never really thought about it after they’d been together for so many years. Somewhere along the way, she’d started to take all the reasons she’d fallen in love with him for granted.
Dean pulled a club from his bag. He took long, uneven strides to the tee box. Instead of being smooth like all his other swings, his practice swing was jerky. When he lined up next to the tee and took a real swing, he whacked at the ball as if he were trying to exorcise it of demons. It soared high to the left, heading toward the fairway of another hole.
“Fore!” Dean screamed.
The ball sailed toward a group of trees, bounced off a pine, and whizzed toward an oblivious man preparing for his shot.
“Fore!” Dean’s voice was frantic. The man on the other fairway covered his head and ducked. The ball landed mere inches from him.
Dean sighed in relief, his face pale. He gave an apologetic wave and climbed back into the cart. “Haven’t hit one that bad in a long time.”
Her line of questioning on the US Open had made him uncomfortable. She wouldn’t ask any more about it. “If golf hadn’t worked out, what do you think you would have done with your life?” Did he have a backup plan before he met her, or had he not entertained the possibility that he might fail?
The corners of his mouth ticked upward, and his eyes sparkled. “Probably would have been a chief revenue officer for an insurance company.” He winked.
Mary choked down a laugh, but she knew then that somehow she had reached him, that he believed her. Their connection was strong enough to extend into this alternate life.
She followed up with questions about his favorite moments on the tour, and about his relationship with his brother and parents. Their conversation was more like a back-and-forth between friends than a reporter interviewing a star. It reminded her of their first dates, when they were getting to know each other, and reliving the experience gave her the same heady feeling of falling in love with him all over again.
Dean’s smooth swing returned, and he scored birdies and eagles on the next few holes.
At the eighth hole, they had to wait for the foursome in front of them to move off the fairway. Mary turned to him, ready to ask a question she’d been curious about ever since learning he was a professional golfer and single. “Why is it you never married?”
Dean’s eyes widened. He picked up a ball from the console and rolled it between his palms. “I never met someone I loved more than the game.” He nodded as if pleased with his answer.
Mary’s stomach fluttered as she connected the dots on what he’d said. He’s never met someone he loves as much as he loved me. Her eyes stung with unshed tears. She didn’t know if she was happy or sad. Both. She hadn’t realized he had loved her so much that he’d willingly given up this game he obsessed over.
Needing a moment to compose herself, she reached for her water bottle and took a large sip before asking her next question. “Do you ever wish there was someone waiting for you at home?”
Dean appeared to be choosing his words carefully. He kept his eyes trained on the fairway in front of them so that Mary had a view of the side of his face. How often she had looked at that profile while sitting next to him on the sofa or in the car. The slope of his nose, the jut of his chin, and the freckle on his earlobe were etched on her heart.
“Do I ever wish there was someone waiting for me at home?” he repeated. He was buying time just as she had, she knew.
“Do you ever get lonely?”
Dean tossed the ball he’d been fidgeting with back into the console. “I’ve never thought someone was the one who got away, if that’s what you mean.” He picked up the ball again. “Of course, I wish I’d met someone that I wanted to share my life with. I just didn’t, though.”
Mary heard in the sadness of his voice and saw in the slump of his shoulders that this was something he did not like to think about. She imagined that if he did allow himself to think about what a life with a wife and children would be like, he did it while sipping from a heavy crystal rocks glass filled with scotch.
“Are you happy, Dean?”
She leaned closer to him. Of course she wanted him to be happy. At the same time, she wanted to know that she had made his life better, not worse.
He scrubbed his jaw and let out a loud sigh. “Happy enough.”