At first, he didn’t even know why he did it. It’s one thing to live with the mystery of one’s past; far more terrifying to come face to face with it. And yet here was Dylan Antonin Rogers, hunting down his own ghosts. Circumstance did not force him into the predicament. Rather, he chased it like a dog trying to bite the tires off an eighteen-wheeler. It happened on one of those find-your-long-lost-friends-from-high-school web sites. Of all the people he could try to look up, there was no good reason to pick Aubrey. She was just a childhood crush, not a close friend, but his memory of her could destroy him.
Dylan, at the time a new teenager struggling with the wild passions of adolescence, had in those days dreamt of being together with Aubrey. This was no sexual fantasy—he had no experience on which to base one. This was the confused desire of a thirteen-year-old boy, a wanting to be near her, to smell her long blonde hair, touch its delicate curls, to caress her lightly freckled nose, to stare into those sharp blue eyes, feel the gentle curves of her back. He longed to say to her what was on his heart and hear her respond in kind, then to kiss her soft lips, to taste them. How his heart burned, and how it tore when circumstances brought them apart.
He had cracked, yes, embarrassed himself, but even worse, embarrassed Aubrey. Not that it would have mattered: he was moving away to Boston, half a country distant from Medina, Ohio, and they would probably never again meet. During months of Algebra and Science classes he had sat at his assigned desk just behind hers. Each time she stirred, a halcyon breeze carried her scent to his nostrils. Each time he looked up, he saw her there. If only he reached out his hand, he could touch her beautiful locks, could sweep them aside, tuck them for her behind her young ear, as she was wont to do, and whisper words that would make her smile and blush and shrink and float all at the same time. But she didn’t even know he existed, and now time was out. He had to let her know or forever lose the chance. But he was a kid, and kids do stupid things. For weeks afterward Dylan cried himself to sleep—though he would never admit it—embracing his pillow, imagining it was her, inventing as a balm for his delirium a day when they would be brought together once and for all.
That was decades ago, 25 years in fact. Now Dylan was happily married, Katharine his bride a beautiful gentlewoman with golden hair and deep brown eyes, as intelligent as she was graceful. He was a mildly successful accountant, heavily involved in his local church and Rotary club, and respected. The two lived in their own two-story, four-bedroom, New England suburban home with their three beautiful children. He had staunch friends and a satisfying life. He didn’t want to change it.
Yet he still remembered, and he still ached. The memories were fuzzy, events from an eternity ago, but he felt as if they had occurred only yesterday. Despite all the happiness Dylan had found, the simple truth is that he would never again feel a longing as deep as the childhood passion he had felt for Aubrey.
At first, he told himself it was mere idle curiosity. Read email. Pull up a web site. I wonder what ever happened to Aubrey? What Dylan hadn’t expected was that wondering was better than actually finding out. There it was on the computer screen: Aubrey Keaton, now Aubrey Halpern. His heart paused. She had gone to college and had two pet cats. Her current occupation: homemaker. His heart fell flat. He couldn’t explain why.
“Hi, dear,” Katharine approached. “What’s up?” She was leafing through a catalog of some sort. Now she bent down and gave him a peck on the cheek.
“Just reading my email,” he replied dryly.
That was no lie. Even now he wanted to move his mouse to the “email Aubrey Halpern” link sticking out of the page before him. But what could he write? Hi. You probably don’t remember me, and if you do it’s probably a memory you’d rather forget. But I’ve been thinking about you. And please don’t think I’m a psychopathic Internet stalker, ’cause I’m not. No, that wouldn’t do. This was just silliness, leftovers of a childhood fantasy. He closed the browser window.
Denial did little to ease Dylan’s heartburn. During idle moments he found himself thinking about Aubrey, dwelling on a few good-but-painful memories he had laid away in his mind. He was genuinely surprised each time he caught himself engaged in this daffy pastime and would sternly scold himself for obsessing over this girl—no, a woman he didn’t even know.
Here was such a moment, a wedding no less. Dylan hated social functions. He’d always hated them. And sometimes he even begrudged Katharine his company. With her outgoing personality and strong features, she spent the day exhibiting charm and finesse, buoyed on a cataclysm of socialites. Meanwhile, as usual, he would stand by and smile and drink and nod at the conversation and try to look as though he felt he belonged there.
Dylan temporarily tuned in to one of the guests chatting with Katharine: “… which reminds me, congratulations on your last column, the one on the free-speech implications of campaign finance law. It was quite thought-provoking.”
“Thank you, Earl.” She smiled. “That’s very kind. I understand you know a little something about free-speech law.” She winked.
Earl—How did she keep track of all these names?—was some sort of civil-rights lawyer or something. They all chuckled at the little joke. Inside, Dylan yawned. He dove in for another sip of his Coke and lime before he realized that he had already finished it off.
The woman continued, “Tell me, what impact do you think these laws could have on freedom of the press? In particular, I’ve wondered about…” The voices melted into the background as Dylan quietly lumbered off to freshen his drink.
Waiting at the bar was a slender woman with platinum hair that curled in slightly at the ends. Dylan approached, and she smiled in his direction. He returned the favor but said nothing, stepping up to wait his turn at the bar.
“Hello,” the woman said.
“Hello.” Dylan turned to her. She had a cute, tastefully made-up face that revealed the first signs of age. She looked familiar, like he ought to have known who she was, but the man had met so many people that day that their faces melded into a hideous collage in his recollection.
“You’re Katharine Rogers’s husband, right?” she asked.
“Yeah.” He still smiled.
“I’m Aubrey Halpern.” She reached out her hand.
Dylan froze. He did not believe in miracles, but even less in impossible coincidence. However, now he couldn’t deny the obvious. She had changed, of course, but this was the same girl he had sat behind in middle school. She still had the same oval-shaped face, the same soft features, a freckled nose, subtle eyebrows, and silver-blue eyes. For several seconds, but what seemed to his stilled heart only an instant, the man’s senses closed off to the world around him. He took her hand, felt it in his. He saw only her face. He heard her breathe, as the celebration around fell silent. Were it not that a woman stood before him, rather than the young girl on whom he had a schoolboy’s crush, he would have concluded he was daydreaming again.
She retrieved her hand in order to take her drink, which now waited for her. She eyed Dylan curiously. The bartender was asking if he wanted anything.
“Coke and lime, please,” he said softly. Then, turning back, “I went to school with a girl named Aubrey.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Aubrey Keaton, I think it was. That was a long time ago, in a place far away, in Medina, Ohio.”
She searched his now stoic face. “I went to school in Medina. And Keaton is my maiden name,” she admitted.
“My name’s always been Dylan Rogers.”
Slowly her bright eyes grew even brighter. She stood with her mouth agape. “Oh my! We went to school together!” she exclaimed.
Both were giddy.
The man behind the bar set Dylan’s full glass on a napkin on the counter.
“What are you doing all the way out here?” Aubrey asked.
“Well, my family moved to Boston when I was a teenager.”
She thought a moment. “Yeah, I remember that.” Then her smile dissipated.
A pause.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was a stupid kid.”
“Huh? You’re sorry? What for?”
“Well—” He thought a moment. “I embarrassed you. It’s fuzzy, but it’s one of the last memories I have of life in Medina. I sort of, um, made a pass at you. In front of everybody. I guess everyone thought it was a cruel joke, what with me moving away and everything, but— Well, I just didn’t know what I was doing. I was a stupid kid.”
She slowly shook her head. “I don’t remember being embarrassed. I do remember being disappointed that you were moving away.” She placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry things were what they were. But it’s not your fault.”
A knot formed in Dylan’s chest. “Thank you,” he whispered.
“So,” she continued, alighting upon a stool, “you’re married to Katharine Rogers.”
“Yep. I guess so.” He sounded a little less enthusiastic this time.
“She sounds like a very nice woman.” Aubrey brushed a few strands of hair behind her right ear.
“What about you?” he asked. “Is your husband here?”
“Nope.” She displayed a bare finger on her left hand. “Separated. For a few months now.”
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.” He truly felt sorry for her.
“Oh, don’t be.” She waved the thought away with her hand. “I’m not.”
They talked and talked. Hours disappeared. Aubrey had been married twice, divorced once, and pending the paperwork would have a second divorce. She was visiting Boston, being a friend of the bride’s family. She had studied journalism in college and now worked as a freelance tech-writer. She had a perky personality. She also made a habit of casually dismissing anything that didn’t fit in with her view of the world. Occasionally, though, when talking about her youth, Aubrey would give a thoughtful pause, as though she weren’t so sure of herself after all. Before they knew it, the evening had escaped them.
Katharine walked up, caressed the back of her husband’s neck. “Hi, Hon. I see you made a friend after all.”
“Oh, yeah. This is Aubrey.” He pointed to the woman sitting next to him. “Aubrey, this is my wife Katharine.”
“Glad to meet you, Aubrey,” Katharine said and shook the other woman’s hand.
“Likewise.”
Dylan continued, “Aubrey and I went to school together when we were kids back in Medina, Ohio.”
“No kidding?” Katharine thought for a moment. “We have to get back to relieve the baby-sitter or she’ll start charging us overtime,” she joked, “but I’d really love to chat some more. Can you come over for coffee?”
Katharine played the perfect hostess. She also didn’t believe in back-room politics or suspicion or spying. She was a direct person. Yet she always seemed to find a way to say things, no matter how bad they were, in a way that made you glad she’d said them. That’s why Dylan felt so guilty paying more attention to the strange woman in their livingroom than he did to his own wife. Of course, he reasoned, the wife probably didn’t notice, since she was herself paying more attention to Aubrey than to him. That, after all, was her job as perfect hostess.
The younger children had gone to bed. The eldest Rogers child, Andrea, sipped a glass of milk as she chatted with the adults for a few minutes. Then she retired as well.
Aubrey clearly felt at home with Katharine’s hospitality. And so, when the latter finally excused herself for a minute, Aubrey insisted to Dylan that she help carry the dirty coffee cups and dessert plates into the pantry. It was a small pantry. He turned and suddenly found his body trapped against hers. Time stopped once more.
“I can’t believe it. I never thought I’d see you again,” he admitted.
“Me neither.”
Then she kissed him. Memories that were burned into his mind, rehearsed a thousand times o’er and repressed far past the boiling point, welled up inside. A power stronger than any he had ever experienced overtook him. He lost control of his faculties. Dazed, he kissed her back, wrapped his arms around her and cuddled her just as in his dreams. He tasted her sweet breath, thick with carrot cake and coffee. Then he embraced her, basked in the fragrance of her hair, which he traced with a finger around her ear and down her neck. It was a miracle. They had actually met, fallen in love, and now could live happily ever after.
But happily-ever-afters never come, do they? Suddenly, he pushed her away.
He shook his head. “Do you think— I mean, I don’t think— I can’t have an affair.”
“It’s not an affair if we don’t have sex.” Her eyebrows raised slightly with a sly grin.
“That’s not the point, Aubrey.”
Her mouth flattening, she gazed up into his dark eyes. “I know. But—” She was strangely nonplussed, and the words came out hushed and choppy, as if a rendition of a secret ransom note cut and pasted from a hundred incompatible newspapers and magazines. “I never thought, ever again, I’d ever see you, and now I’m finding, again, I’m falling in love. And I don’t want it to end the same way.”
There was nothing he could do. Truthfully, he didn’t want it to end that way, either. There was a brick in his stomach. He didn’t want to hurt Katharine, but the girl before him had taken control of his senses. She was an undead, a ghost of his past come back to haunt him. His fingers retracted in fright. He shivered with cold. His lips trembled. There was no way to escape the torture he was at that moment living, causing his body to convulse in tormented agony, spasms of passion and regret and sadness and loneliness.
So he kissed her again, a deep passionate kiss.
And that’s when Katharine returned.
They were alone.
“Why? Dylan?”
Silence.
“What happened? I thought we were doing well. Are we in trouble, Dylan?”
He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so—”
“So then what’s this all about?” Her mien was earnest.
Dylan’s eyes pointed toward the empty corner. “I don’t know. I have to take a drive.”
He moved toward the door, but she stepped in front of him.
“Wait. Please. We can talk this out. Whatever has happened, whatever the problem is, we can work it out.”
“It’s nothing that you’ve done, Katharine. Nothing that you haven’t done. It’s just— I must be going cracky. I— I don’t know who I am anymore.”
He left.
Water covered the windshield. April raindrops fell steadily from above and spattered from the road below, a continuous rattle periodically interrupted by the thunk-thunk, thunk-thunk of the wipers. Man was alone, his thoughts in communion with the road and the radio as it channeled the spirit of Edwin McCain: the trappings of love. He winced at the metaphor.
It was true. She felt the same as he. She had come from the grave, bringing the feelings that he had buried with her so long ago. She had proposed a suicide pact. It was a drug, this passion. It was an addiction. It deranged him and conscripted him into its service. He was out of control. He was miserable.
And what about the kids? He recalled the night of Andrea’s birth. The pregnancy had proceeded smoothly enough. But Katharine’s cervix refused to dilate. Twelve laborious hours later, the doctor performed a Caesarian section. During the interim, Dylan sat by, sleeping not a wink.
He recalled the first time he saw Andrea, in the operating room. The air was thick with an indescribable feeling, a fulfillment and excitement that only new fathers experience. Katharine was exhausted from the ordeal, and he held her hand as their new daughter took her first breaths in this world. They were a family at last.
The oldest is always the hardest, because she’s always the first.
Dylan remembered Andrea’s first day of school. She cried on the way to the school bus, because she didn’t want to go alone. Somehow, Katharine turned this little girl’s terror into enthusiasm, and she got off the bus that afternoon anxious to go back the next day.
Then she ran up against reality: some kids are just nasty. One time, she even got into a fight. Her mother was livid. But Dylan and Katharine were a team. Whenever one needed a time-out, the other picked up the slack.
Dylan loved his daughter. He feared for her. He so much wanted her to grow up without pain. He wanted to protect her from life. He knew he couldn’t. How did he make it even this far?
A woman’s voice spoke. “Hi! Who’s this?”
“This is Michael. I want to dedicate a song to my wife Sarah. Today’s our 40’th wedding anniversary.”
“Forty years? Wow! She must be a really special lady.”
“She sure is. Also, our youngest daughter is getting married next month, and so Sarah’s been really busy helping with the wedding plans.”
“Ooh.”
“It isn’t as bad as it sounds.” A snicker. “She always knows just when to step in and when to let go, and she’s always been there for all of us, especially me. I can always be myself with her, because she loves me for who I am.”
“A soul-mate.”
“Absolutely. I don’t even know how I could have made it through this life without her.”
“Well, Michael, I’ll see if I can find something special for you and Sarah.”
Michael Bolton began to sing “Only A Woman Like You.”
Dylan headed back toward home.
Katharine was sitting on the edge of the couch, her elbow in her hands. She did not look up. “I thought you would find someplace else to sleep tonight.” She choked on the words, her eyebrows forming a low V-shape between her eyes. She continued to stare into space, as though no one of any significance was there.
Dylan knelt next to her, gently took her arm. He looked up into his wife’s tear-mottled eyes. “I love you,” he managed to whisper. He inhaled a deep unsteady breath and blew it out again. “Our relationship isn’t built on feelings. It’s built on love, and I love you.” His whole face tightened as he fought to contain himself. Then, caressing a gold lock around the edge of her ear, he kissed the end of her nose. And she fell, wrapped her arms around his body, right there on the floor, and nestled her body in his arms. And they wept.
Finally, Katharine gazed into his eyes and tried to speak, but it only came out a feeble squeak. “I love you, too.” She squeezed him tighter, and never had to let go.