The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave (ebook reader ink .txt) 📕

And smart. It all starts to blend, but those early years I remember some of them. Maybe because we try harder in the beginning. But I do remember. I remember he was a really good kid.”

I turn back toward him, grateful to hear something about Owen, something that feels like the Owen I know.

He smiles, offers a shrug. “It wasn’t all his fault. The crappy midterm. He was just too focused on one of the women in the class. He wasn’t the only one. In a class of mostly men, she stood out.”

This is when my heart stops. Bailey turns back in Cookman’s direction too. I can almost feel her, forgetting to breathe.

One of the few things Owen has told us about Olivia, repeatedly, one of the few things Bailey had to hold on to about her mother is that her father had fallen in love with her in college. He said they had been seniors—that she had lived in the apartment next door. Had that been a lie too? The smallest detail changed to avoid any trace of the actual past?

“Was she like… his girlfriend?” Bailey says.

“Can’t speak to that. I only even remember her, at all, because he made the case that she was why his work was suffering. That he was in love. He made the case in a long letter and I told him I was going to put it up, right next to his terrible exam, unless his work improved.”

“That’s humiliating,” Bailey says.

“Apparently it was also effective,” he says.

I look down at the list, scanning the names of the women. Thirteen in total. I search the list for an Olivia, but don’t see one. Though of course, it may not be an Olivia I need to find.

“I know this is asking a lot, but you don’t remember her name, do you? The name of the woman?” I say.

“I remember she was a better student than your husband,” he said.

“Wasn’t everyone?” I say.

Professor Cookman nods. “Yes. There’s that too,” he says.

Fourteen Months Ago

“So how does it feel? Being a married woman?” Owen asks.

“How does it feel being a married man?” I say.

We were sitting at Frances, an intimate restaurant in the Castro, at the farm table where our small wedding dinner had taken place. The day had started with the two of us getting married at city hall. I wore a short white dress, Owen put on a tie and new Converse sneakers. And it was ending with the two of us, time rolling toward midnight—as we finished the champagne, shoes off, now that our handful of guests had left.

Jules had been there, and a few friends of Owen’s—Carl, Patty. And Bailey. Of course, Bailey. In a rare display of generosity toward me, she arrived at city hall on time and stayed at the restaurant until after we cut the cake. She even gave me a smile before leaving to spend the night at her friend Rory’s. I hoped that meant she was at least a little happy about the day. I knew it probably meant she was a little happy that Owen let her have champagne.

Either way, I was taking the win.

“It feels pretty great being a married man,” Owen said. “Though I have no idea how we’re getting home tonight.”

I laughed. “It’s not a bad problem.”

“No,” he said. “Not as far as problems go.”

He reached for the champagne bottle, filled his glass, and refilled mine. Then he moved his chair away, sat down on the back of mine. I leaned back against him, breathing in.

“We’ve come a long way from our second date when you wouldn’t even let me drive you to dinner,” he said.

“I don’t know about that,” I said. “I was pretty crazy about you, even then.”

“You had a funny way of showing it. I wasn’t even sure I was going to get to see you again after that night.”

“Well, you did ask an awful lot of questions.”

“I had a lot to learn about you.”

“All in one night?”

He shrugged. “I felt like I needed to learn about the could-have-been boys…” he said. “Thought it was my best shot at not becoming one.”

I reached back and touched his cheek—first with the outside of my palm, then with the inside.

“You became the opposite,” I said.

“I think that might just be the single best thing anyone has ever said to me,” he said.

“It’s true,” I said.

And it was true. Owen was the opposite. He had felt like the opposite from day one, from that first meeting in my workshop, but it was more than just a feeling now. He had proven himself to be the opposite. It wasn’t just that it was easy to be with him (though it was) or that I felt deepened by him in a way I never had in a relationship before. It wasn’t even that we understood each other in that elusive way that you either had with someone or you could never quite find—that pervasive shorthand in which a look could tell us what the other person needed: Time to leave the party; Time to reach for me; Time to give me room to breathe.

It was a little bit of all of that and something far bigger than all of that. How do you explain it when you find in someone what you’ve been waiting for your whole life? Do you call it fate? It feels lazy to call it fate. It’s more like finding your way home—where home is a place you secretly hoped for, a place you imagined, but where you’d never before been.

Home. When you weren’t sure you’d ever get to have one.

That’s what he was to me. That’s who he was.

Owen pulled my palm to his lips, held me there. “So… are you going to answer my question about how it feels?” he said. “To be a married woman?”

I shrugged. “Not sure yet,” I said. “Too soon to tell.”

He laughed. “Okay, well, that’s all right,” he said.

I took a