Chapter 2
Chapter Two
The following Friday, Ada took the day off from patients and set to work, teenage proofing the house.
Across the counter, she left notes for Hannah, Kade, and Olivia, instructing them on how to prepare certain meals, how to clean up after themselves, and how to call emergency services if needed.
Their essential point of contact was Peter’s mother and father, who lived across the island and had previously been the kids’ babysitters on the few occasions when Ada and Peter had managed to get away.
But with Hannah being eighteen, and Kade and Olivia being so responsible, Ada and Peter decided it was time to let them have the house to themselves.
Just in case, Ada called their next-door neighbors and informed them that the kids would be home alone that weekend. “Check on them, if you feel like it,” she said, a smile in her voice. “And let me know if they cause any ruckus!”
“They won’t.” That was the consensus. “They never do.”
Peter returned from his morning ten-mile run, showered, ate breakfast, and announced he was ready.
Ada had already packed their to-go bags.
After nearly twenty years of marriage, she was accustomed to Peter’s habits and could anticipate what he needed and when.
Sometimes she wondered what Peter would pack if he were left to his own devices.
Would he remember his toothbrush even though he was an orthodontist?
They got in the car and sped to the ferry, joking and laughing as they went.
There was a lightness to everything, an ease that excited Ada.
She knew that in a few years, after Olivia left for college, Ada and Peter would be empty nesters.
They’d have to learn how to uphold the love they’d always had, to keep nourishing it.
She’d seen plenty of her patients get divorced after their children left the island, like they’d forgotten how to be alone together.
On the ferry, Peter wrapped his arms around Ada’s stomach and kissed her neck. “How are you feeling about tonight?”
Ada’s throat tightened. “I’m excited,” she said, which was mostly true. “I can’t believe I’ll see everyone again. It’s been ages.”
The truth was that Ada still couldn’t believe that Quinn had reached out like that. She’d assumed everyone from the old crowd had forgotten about her.
At four thirty that afternoon, they reached Manhattan and parked in the garage connected to their swanky hotel.
The hotel itself was a half mile from the theater and less than a mile from where Ada had lived in her late teens and early twenties, a time of electricity, of drive, of otherness.
Peter, incidentally, had lived just down the street.
They walked there first, hand in hand, recounting old memories.
It was hard to believe they’d met so long ago.
“I still remember the first time I saw you,” Peter said, lacing his fingers through hers. “I’d never been to an opera before, and I didn’t know what to make of it. But when you came out on stage and started to sing, I’d never seen or heard anything more magical.”
Ada blushed and kept her eyes down. She’d been nineteen at the time, and a fresh face on the opera scene.
But there had been talk among the opera crowd about her future, a sense of excitement for her advancing career.
Most opera singers didn’t discover their true and most powerful voices until they were in their late thirties or forties (the age Ada was now).
Still, Ada had been incredibly advanced at nineteen, leaving many to speculate that her voice at forty would be sensational and one of a kind.
“You didn’t want anything to do with me,” Peter said now.
Ada turned her head to look at him, her handsome husband, and tried to remember what he’d seemed like to her back then.
She’d been a celebrity of sorts and sought after, with many men wanting to take her out.
Peter had brought flowers to her backstage, eager for a chance to talk to her.
She’d thanked him, taken the flowers, and sped off into the night with her girlfriends in the opera scene.
They’d laughed about Peter, who’d seemed so “normal” compared to their wonderful performance artist friends.
They’d joked that he was a business student or a lawyer.
But Peter hadn’t quit coming to shows.
“I must have spent all of my money on opera tickets that year,” Peter said, laughing at himself now. “And flowers. Bouquet after bouquet.”
Ada stopped walking at the corner, weak at the knees with the memory.
Before them was Peter’s old apartment, where he’d taken her after he’d finally convinced her to go out with him.
She’d been twenty by then, still the brightest light the opera world had for its future.
The fact that she’d gone out with a dental student had thrilled her opera girlfriends, including Quinn.
“You’re playing a game!” Quinn had said to Ada. “You’re going to break his heart!”
But there had been something about Peter.
Something confident but kind, funny but sure.
It hadn’t taken long for Ada to stop dating the other men in the opera world and focus on Peter.
It was a good thing she did. The timing was perfect.
Everything crumbled, and Peter was there to hold on to.
Peter was there to love her when nobody else would.
“You remember the first meal you cooked for me there?” Ada gestured toward the apartment window.
Peter chuckled. “Must have been that weird veggie lasagna?”
Ada furrowed her brow. “What? No. It was the roast chicken, wasn’t it?” She could still feel how stiff the chicken had been, how many times she’d had to chew before she could swallow. They’d laughed about it for over an hour and eventually gone out for pizza. Peter had hardly cooked since.
“No,” Peter said, so sure of himself that it almost frightened her. “It was the veggie lasagna. I remember because you insisted we put goat cheese in it, and it was bizarre.”
Ada blinked at him, listening to the hum of the cars as they passed and the rush of the April wind through the trees above them. They’d been married long enough for her to recognize when to dismiss an argument, especially when it didn’t matter.
But she knew for a fact that she’d never eaten veggie lasagna in Peter’s old apartment.
They walked to her old apartment, their hands still entwined. Peter talked about his old days at dental school, how the other students had found his “relationship with the opera star” incredibly exciting. “But you know how boring dental students can be,” Peter said.
Ada remembered Peter’s old classmates. She’d gone to their dental school parties, drinking water and barely talking to avoid hurting her voice for performances. Everything in her life back then had revolved around opera, save for Peter.
Before the opera that night, Ada and Peter returned to the hotel to rest and get ready. Ada had brought a sleek black dress with a high neckline, and she’d packed Peter’s suit. Dressed up, they took a selfie in the hotel bathroom mirror, then kissed lightly to avoid messing up Ada’s lipstick.
“Are you nervous?” Peter asked when they left.
“No,” Ada lied. But Peter could probably sense how jittery she was.
They reached the opera hall and were shown to their seats, which Quinn had secured for them in the third row.
As Peter typed something on his phone, Ada checked in with the kids, and each of them wrote back updates: Olivia was at a friend’s place, watching a movie; Kade was playing soccer with the neighbor kid; and Hannah was at home with her friend Melody, making homemade pizza and preparing to watch a movie.
Ada breathed easier, then opened the opera booklet to read about the singers for the night.
Quinn had top billing, of course.
Ada read about Quinn’s incredible career: the stints in Rome and London, the multiple honors, and the roles she’d performed that had garnered a new wave of opera fans.
As Ada read, she had the strangest feeling that she was reading about her own life, or the life that she was meant to have. Her eyes stung with tears.
Back when Ada was still an opera singer, she and Quinn had been both best friends and rivals. Ada had known that Quinn was jealous of her career and accolades. But Ada hadn’t been worried because she’d always known she was better than Quinn.
Yet here Quinn was, performing, while Ada was a therapist.
Had Quinn invited Ada to the performance tonight to rub it in her face?
Ada’s pulse quickened.
But all at once, the curtain came up, and she allowed herself to fall into the magic of the performance.
Quinn was stupendous and every bit the star people said she was, with a voice she’d grown into now that she was forty-four years old.
It had been many years since Ada had seen an opera, and she was emotionally overwhelmed, so much so that tears fell down her cheeks and her stomach thrashed.
When it was over, she jumped to her feet to applaud, demanding more and more bows from the performers, including Quinn.
Up on stage, Quinn made eye contact with Ada and smiled. Ada couldn’t wait to talk to her.
When Peter and Ada went into the lobby, Ada struggled to speak.
“What did you think?” Peter asked, spreading his hands out.
Ada took a breath and looked around the lobby at the opera fans, dressed immaculately, gushing about Quinn and the rest of the singers. For a moment, she thought she might have a panic attack.
“Listen,” Peter said, “I have to make a call. One of my patients is struggling with pain, and I have to, you know. Advise them.”
Ada respected that Peter was often available to his ailing patients. She usually did the same for hers, taking calls at odd times and interrupting dinners. “Don’t worry about it. I’m going to go backstage and say hi.”
“I’ll wait for you out here?” Peter suggested.
“Yeah.” Ada felt faint. “Sure.”
Ada walked slowly backstage, where she found Quinn in her own dressing room, the same dressing room that had once been Ada’s.
Flowers covered Quinn’s makeup table, and other singers filled the space, pouring glasses of champagne and congratulating Quinn and each other.
Quinn had changed into a black onesie and had removed some of her makeup, but still looked like a knock-out.
When she saw Ada, she threw herself forward to hug her.
“Ada Wagner, as I live and breathe!” she cried.
Ada laughed and let herself melt into her old friend’s hug.
Incredibly, Quinn still smelled the same as she always had.
It was true that Ada didn’t have many friends to speak of on Nantucket; she’d thrown herself completely into her career and motherhood, neglecting her social life.
It was strange to be so entirely loved by a friend.
“I’m sorry,” Quinn said, breaking the hug. “It isn’t Wagner anymore, is it?”
Ada laughed. “It’s Bushner. You were at my wedding!”
“Of course. The dentist,” Quinn said. “Is he here?”
“He is,” Ada said. “But he had to make a call. He’s coming to the party later.”
“Thank goodness! What would we do without the dentist?” Quinn’s eyes glinted poisonous green. “Oh, but I want to hear about everything. How are you?”
Several of the performers had noticed Ada and were gathering around her and Quinn.
“It’s Ada Wagner! Ada, how long has it been?
” It was a Frenchman named Jacques, who’d starred in an opera with Ada when she was twenty-one.
Jacques was now in his sixties, impossibly, with a soft white beard.
He hugged Ada close, and Ada felt as though she were seeing an old family member rather than an old friend.
“Jacques, you were incredible,” Ada said, pulling back.
“I was fine, darling.” Jacques waved her off. “I’ve lost a little something over the years.”
Ada insisted this wasn’t true, although she knew what he meant. His voice was slightly thinner. Maybe he would lose it soon.
Always, it seemed tragedy lurked on the other side of a successful opera career.
Soon enough, Quinn announced it was time to go to the opening party.
“Come along, everyone!” She gathered a few bouquets in her arms. “We can’t keep them waiting.
” Quinn laced her arm through Ada’s and pressed her cheek against hers.
“I can’t believe I have you here! You’ve been sorely missed over the years.
I still can’t believe we let the dentist steal you away from us. ”
“That reminds me! I have to find him,” Ada said. “I’ll meet you there.”
Ada returned to the lobby to pick Peter up where she’d last seen him.
To her surprise, the lobby was empty and echoing, with Peter nowhere to be found.
Donning her jacket, she stepped into the night and swept her eyes from one end of the road to the other, before discovering Peter leaning against a pillar, still talking on the phone.
She took a moment to study him, the width of his strong back, the way he tilted his head when he spoke.
He cared so desperately. She loved this about him.
It was hilarious to hear Quinn call him “the dentist” after all she and Peter had been through.
It was hard to imagine life without him, whereas she’d lived almost the entirety of her adulthood without Quinn.
It was funny how life worked out. It was just like what she told her patients all the time.
You had to be open to change. It was so often a godsend.