Emily Giffin - Heart of the Matter

Heart of the Matter

Also by Emily Giffin

Something Borrowed

Something Blue

Baby Proof

Love the One Youre With

Emily Giffin

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

HEART OF THE MATTER. Copyright 2010 by Emily Giffin. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

ISBN 978-0-312-55416-3

First Edition: May 2010

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Sarah, my sister and lifelong friend

Acknowledgments

Deepest gratitude to Mary Ann Elgin, Sarah Giffin, Nancy LeCroy Mohler, and Lisa Elgin for their unwavering generosity from page one. I couldnt do it without you and could never thank you enough.

I owe so much to my editor, Jennifer Enderlin, and my publicist, Stephen Lee, along with everyone at St. Martins Press, especially Sally Richardson, Matthew Shear, John Murphy, Matt Baldacci, Jeanne-Marie Hudson, Nancy Trypuc, Mike Storrings, Sara Goodman, and the whole Broadway and Fifth Avenue sales forces. Because of you, I feel lucky every day.

I am indebted to my superb agent, Theresa Park, and her team: Emily Sweet, Abigail Koons, and Amanda Cardinale. You are the consummate professionals, yet you make the journey fun, too.

Thanks also to Carrie Minton, Martha Arias, Stacie Hanna, Mara Lubell, Mollie Smith, and Grace McQuade for their support; to Allyson Wenig Jacoutot, Jennifer New, Julie Portera, Laryn Gardner, and Brian Spainhour for their input; and to Dr. Christopher A. Park and Joshua Osswald for their insight on matters of medicine and tennis, respectively.

I am grateful to my readers for their warmth and enthusiasm, and my friends for their good humor and love.

Finally, a huge, heartfelt thank-you to Buddy Blaha and my entire family, for more reasons than I could ever name.

And to Edward, George, and Harrietyou can come up to my office and interrupt my writing anytime.

Heart of the Matter

Tessa

Whenever I hear of someone elses tragedy, I do not dwell on the accident or diagnosis, or even the initial shock waves or aftermath of grief. Instead, I find myself reconstructing those final ordinary moments. Moments that make up our lives. Moments that were blissfully taken for grantedand that likely would have been forgotten altogether but for what followed. The before snapshots.I can so clearly envision the thirty-four-year-old woman in the shower one Saturday evening, reaching for her favorite apricot body scrub, contemplating what to wear to the party, hopeful that the cute guy from the coffee shop will make an appearance, when she suddenly happens upon the unmistakable lump in her left breast.

Or the devoted young father, driving his daughter to buy her first-day-of-school Mary Janes, cranking up Here Comes the Sun on the radio, informing her for the umpteenth time that the Beatles are without a doubt the greatest band of all time, as the teenaged boy, bleary-eyed from too many late-night Budweisers, runs the red light.

Or the brash high school receiver, full of promise and pride, out on the sweltering practice field the day before the big football game, winking at his girlfriend at her usual post by the chain-link fence, just before leaping into the air to make the catch nobody else could have madeand then twisting, falling headfirst on that sickening, fluke angle.

I think about the thin, fragile line separating all of us from misfortune, almost as a way of putting a few coins in my own gratitude meter, of safeguarding against an after happening to me. To us. Ruby and Frank, Nick and me. Our foursomethe source of both my greatest joys and most consuming worries.

And so, when my husbands pager goes off while we are at dinner, I do not allow myself to feel resentment or even disappointment. I tell myself that this is only one meal, one night, even though it is our anniversary and the first proper date Nick and I have had in nearly a month, maybe two. I have nothing to be upset about, not compared to what someone else is enduring at this very instant. This will not be the hour I will have to rewind forever. I am still among the lucky ones.

Shit. Im sorry, Tess, Nick says, silencing his pager with his thumb, then running his hand through his dark hair. Ill be right back.

I nod my understanding and watch my husband stride with sexy, confident purpose toward the front of the restaurant where he will make the necessary call. I can tell, just by the sight of his straight back and broad shoulders navigating deftly around the tables, that he is steeling himself for the bad news, preparing to fix someone, save someone. It is when he is at his best. It is why I fell in love with him in the first place, seven years and two children ago.

Nick disappears around the corner as I draw a deep breath and take in my surroundings, noticing details of the room for the first time. The celadon abstract painting above the fireplace. The soft flicker of candlelight. The enthusiastic laughter at the table next to ours as a silver-haired man holds court with what appears to be his wife and four grown children. The richness of the cabernet I am drinking alone.

Minutes later, Nick returns with a grimace and says hes sorry for the second, but certainly not the last, time.

Its okay, I say, glancing around for our waiter.

I found him, Nick says. Hes bringing our dinner to go.

I reach across the table for his hand and gently squeeze it. He squeezes mine back, and as we wait for our fillets to arrive in Styrofoam, I consider asking what happened as I almost always do. Instead, I simply say a quick prayer for the people I dont know, and then one for my own children, tucked safely into their beds.

I picture Ruby, softly snoring, all twisted in her sheets, wild even in her sleep. Ruby, our precocious, fearless firstborn, four going on fourteen, with her bewitching smile, dark curls that she makes even tighter in her self-portraits, too young to know that as a girl she is supposed to want the hair she does not have, and those pale aquamarine eyes, a genetic feat for her brown-eyed parents. She has ruled our home and hearts since virtually the day she was bornin a way that both exhausts me and fills me with awe. She is exactly like her fatherstubborn, passionate, breathtakingly beautiful. A daddys girl to the core.

And then theres Frank, our satisfying baby boy with a cuteness and sweetness that exceeds the mere garden-variety-baby cute and sweet, so much so that strangers in the grocery store stop and remark. He is nearly two, but still loves to cuddle, nestling his smooth round cheek against my neck, fiercely devoted to his mama. Hes not my favorite, I swear to Nick in private when he smiles and accuses me of this parental transgression. I do not have a favorite, unless perhaps it is Nick himself. It is a different kind of love, of course. The love for my children is without condition or end, and I would most certainly save them over Nick, if, say, all three were bitten by rattlesnakes on a camping trip and I only had two antivenin shots in my backpack. And yet, there is nobody Id rather talk to, be near, look at, than my husband, an unprecedented feeling that overcame me the moment we met.

Our dinner and check arrive moments later, and Nick and I stand and walk out of the restaurant into the star-filled, purple night. It is early October, but feels more like winter than fallcold even by Boston standardsand I shiver beneath my long cashmere coat as Nick hands the valet our ticket and we get into our car. We leave the city and drive back to Wellesley with little conversation, listening to one of Nicks many jazz CDs.

Thirty minutes later, we are pulling up our tree-lined driveway. How late do you think youll be?