Watching her expressive face, I marveled at the fact that at one time or another, I’d kissed every part of it. I’ve never loved anyone but you, I wanted to say, but common sense prevailed, reminding me that it would be better to save those words for another time, when I had her full attention and the words might be reciprocated.

As the evening wore on, I continued to watch her while pretending to read my book. I could do this all night, I thought, but weariness set in, and I was certain that Jane would stay awake for at least another hour. The creased pages would call to her if she didn’t look at them a second time, and she had yet to make her way through both magazines.

“Jane?” I said.

“Mmm?” she answered automatically.

“I have an idea.”

“About what?” She continued staring at the page.

“Where we should hold the wedding.”

My words finally registered and she looked up.

“It might not be perfect, but I’m sure it would be available,” I said. “It’s outside and there’s plenty of parking. And there’re flowers, too. Thousands of flowers.”

“Where?”

I hesitated.

“At Noah’s house,” I said. “Under the trellis by the roses.”

Jane’s mouth opened and closed; she blinked rapidly, as if clearing her sight. But then, ever so slowly, she began to smile.

Chapter Six

In the morning, I made arrangements for the tuxedos and began making calls to friends and neighbors on Anna’s guest list, receiving mostly the answers I expected.

Of course we’ll be there, one couple said. We wouldn’t miss it for the world, said another. Though the calls were friendly, I didn’t linger on the phone and was finished well before noon.

Jane and Anna had gone in search of flowers for the bouquets; later in the afternoon, they planned to swing by Noah’s house. With hours to go until we were supposed to meet, I decided to drive to Creekside. On the way, I picked up three loaves of Wonder Bread from the grocery store.

As I drove, my thoughts drifted to Noah’s house and my first visit there a long time ago.

Jane and I had been dating for six months before she brought me home to visit. She’d graduated from Meredith in June, and after the ceremony, she rode in my car as we followed her parents back to New Bern. Jane was the oldest of her siblings—only seven years separated the four of them—and I could tell from their faces when we arrived that they were still evaluating me. While I’d stood with Jane’s family at her graduation and Allie had even looped her hand through my arm at one point, I couldn’t help feeling self-conscious about the impression I’d made on them.

Sensing my anxiety, Jane immediately suggested that we take a walk when we reached the house. The seductive beauty of the low country had a soothing effect on my nerves; the sky was the color of robin’s eggs, and the air held neither the briskness of spring nor the heat and humidity of summer. Noah had planted thousands of bulbs over the years, and lilies bloomed along the fence line in clusters of riotous color. A thousand shades of green graced the trees, and the air was filled with the trills of songbirds. But it was the rose garden, even from a distance, that caught my gaze. The five concentric hearts—the highest bushes in the middle, the lowest on the outside—were bursting in reds, pinks, oranges, whites, and yellows. There was an orchestrated randomness to the blooms, one that suggested a stalemate between man and nature that seemed almost out of place amid the wild beauty of the landscape.

In time, we ended up under the trellis adjacent to the garden. Obviously, I’d become quite fond of Jane by then, yet I still wasn’t certain whether we would have a future together. As I’ve mentioned, I considered it a necessity to be gainfully employed before I became involved in a serious relationship. I was still a year away from my own graduation from law school, and it seemed unfair to ask her to wait for me. I didn’t know then, of course, that I would eventually work in New Bern. Indeed, in the coming year, interviews were already set up with firms in Atlanta and Washington, D.C., while she had made plans to move back home.

Jane, however, had been making my plans difficult to keep. She seemed to enjoy my company. She listened with interest, teased me playfully, and always reached for my hand whenever we were together. The first time she did this, I remember thinking how right it felt. Though it sounds ridiculous, when a couple holds hands, it either feels right or it doesn’t. I suppose this has to do with the intertwining of fingers and the proper placement of the thumb, though when I tried to explain my reasoning to her, Jane laughed and asked me why it was so important to analyze.

On that day, the day of her graduation, she took my hand again and for the first time told me the story of Allie and Noah. They’d met when they were teenagers and had fallen in love, but Allie had moved away and they didn’t speak for the next fourteen years. While they were separated, Noah worked in New Jersey, headed off to war, and finally returned to New Bern. Allie, meanwhile, became engaged to someone else. On the verge of her wedding, however, she returned to visit Noah and realized it was he whom she’d always loved. In the end, Allie broke off her engagement and stayed in New Bern.

Though we’d talked about many things, she’d never told me this. At the time, the story was not as touching to me as it is now, but I suppose this was a function of my age and gender. Yet I could tell the story meant a lot to her, and I was touched by how much she cared for her parents. Soon after she began, her dark eyes were brimming with tears that spilled onto her cheeks. At first she dabbed at them, but then she stopped, as if deciding it didn’t matter whether or not I saw her cry. This implied comfort affected me deeply, for I knew that she was entrusting me with something that she’d shared with few others. I myself have seldom cried at anything, and when she finished, she seemed to understand this about me.

“I’m sorry about getting so emotional,” she said quietly. “But I’ve been waiting to tell you that story for a long time. I wanted it to be just the right moment, in just the right place.”

Then she squeezed my hand as though she wanted to hold on to it forever.

I glanced away, feeling a tightness in my chest that I’d never before experienced. The scene around me was intensely vivid, every petal and blade of grass standing out in sharp relief. Behind her, I saw her family gathering on the porch. Prisms of sunlight cut patterns on the ground.