Chapter Three Caroline

I have a million thoughts when I hug Rory—and I can’t tell her any of them.

“Oh my gosh, Ror. I missed you so insanely much,” is what I finally settle upon. That, at least, is the truth. I hug her harder, harder than she likes. I’m the touchy-feely one between us. The one who insisted on sleepovers together in her bed when we were ten, which she’d indulge until around midnight, when she’d deliver a series of “bad dream” kicks to my leg so that eventually I’d flop down onto her trundle.

She stays in my embrace longer than I expect. “I don’t get what you’re doing here, but aah! This is seriously crazy.”

“Crazy good?” I ask.

“Crazy good!” Then she whispers, “At least with you.” Rory sets me back at arm’s length. She looks different—less severe in a way, her bare arms not as chiseled after weeks of not going to Pilates every morning, her skin a degree of tan I haven’t seen since we were kids.

“Why are you guys all here, though? I seriously don’t get it.” She lowers her voice. “Why is Nate here?”

“Your author invited us.…”

“My author?” Rory’s strangely dazed. All that adventure, freedom, meditation has painted over her somehow, made slow, round corners where there were once hard edges.

“Ginevra,” I say. “How many Ginevras do you know? Ginevra Ex.”

“I don’t get it.” Rory absently rubs at her arms. “I—”

“She wanted us to surprise you. God, it was so hard to keep the surprise! Even though it’s not like you’ve been great at answering my calls.” I smile, but I know it underscores the raw accusation behind my nonchalance. That Rory has been MIA. That I’ve wanted to tell her so much, but it all spiraled so horribly, so now it’s past the point where I can say anything at all.

“Ginevra wanted to surprise me.…” Rory stares at me, then at Max, ignoring my passive-aggressiveness. Then Rory’s eyes dart toward Nate, before her gaze snaps back at me. She crosses her arms over her chest. “I just don’t… Ginevra wanted all of you to surprise me? And all of you wanted to?”

“All of us did,” I tell her. “A lot.” I nod, trying to reinforce the statement, trying to convey to her that, yes, Nate really wanted to be here.

“I…” Rory accepts her drink from the waitress, sinks listlessly to a seat. “I don’t get it. She, like, paid for you guys to come on the Orient Express?”

“Yep,” Nate says, finally piping in. He stands, inches toward Rory, and I move back to give him berth. “I tried to insist on covering my way, but she refused. And I thought about not coming, Ror, because this all felt too much, too deceptive, surprising you. In case you didn’t want… in case you—shit.” He puts a hand on Rory’s knee, and I inhale sharply, wondering if Rory will shove it off. She has every right to. But she doesn’t. Just stares up at him blankly. “I have so much I want to tell you, Ror. Stuff I really want to explain… make right. Make us right.”

Rory opens her mouth, but then closes it, eyes bewildered.

Nate frowns. He was clearly hoping for more of an exuberant reaction. Some indication that his gesture will ultimately be reciprocated. But Rory must be shocked at our arrival. At Nate’s declaration. For nearly the first time in our friendship, I can’t identify what she’s thinking. She and Nate were together forever. Practically our entire adulthood. He got scared. He went through a beyond shitty time. He knows what he wants now, what he had. He messed up, plain and simple.

We’ve all made mistakes. Some of ours worse than others.

He’s the love of her life, though. Rory will take Nate back now, won’t she?

Rory downs half her drink in one go. She swallows, twines her hands in her lap. “I don’t really get it. I don’t get why Ginevra… why she wanted…”

“We didn’t necessarily, either,” I admit.

Six weeks ago, I agreed to a few Zoom interviews with the quirky author—sitting there with her jarring purplish hair, her makeup Kardashian caked, asking me inane questions. She wanted me to catalog all the times I saw Rory cry (a grand total of once, when in our midtwenties a doctor diagnosed Ansel’s memory issues as Alzheimer’s, and a one-two punch ensued: first a brain scan revealing moderate to severe plaque deposits, followed by a genetic test showing Ansel to be positive for a variant associated with more rapid progression of the disease). Then Ginevra asked me if, marshaling my background as a fashion stylist, I could opine on whether Rory’s optimal color palette is a winter, spring, summer, or fall. (I don’t subscribe to that old-fashioned model, but if I did, Rory is clearly an autumn, although maybe borderline spring with her new blond streaks.)

Still, despite having spent a few relatively painless interview sessions with Ginevra, I was shocked when she called me a couple of weeks ago. Offered up this trip. When she said that Nate and Max would be included, as well.

“But the trip sounded fun, Ror.” I think how to put the other part delicately. “You just went through so much. And it meant the four of us together again. Even if things have changed in our dynamic, we still love each other. That’s a given, right?”

I look at Rory for confirmation, but she’s quiet.

“And how often does it happen that we’re all together? With us divided, Michigan and LA. Or… actually—now you’re in Italy. You’re not staying in Italy, are you?”

Rory gives a tiny shrug. “I have no idea. It’s not like… there’s not much tying me to LA anymore.” She doesn’t look at Nate, but the pointed way she says it is an obvious dig. “I know I want to spend a lot more time in Michigan, at least, with Papa.”

I nod, digest that. Michigan for Ansel, not for me or Max. I know Rory didn’t mean it to be an insult; but it stings, probably more so because of all the things I’m grappling with now. Decisions I still need to make that will have deep repercussions not only for me but for all of us.

I shove all that out of my mind. “Well, besides coming here to see you, it was a free luxury trip on a silver platter. So how could we turn it down?”

Rory finally smiles. “Even Maximillions got a free ride?”

“You know me.” I can feel Max’s smile boring into my back, sending an unexpected zing of fury through my bones. “I can’t resist a freebie.”

“We heard you got the Roma Suite, Ror,” Max continues. “I got the new Istanbul one. Your author must love the Aronov siblings. The other two are slumming it in regular-people cabins.”

Rory nods, her lips barely parted. Interesting. She’s angry at Max. Clearly. I’m angry at her brother for my own reasons. But I wonder why she is.

Rory shakes her head. “I really can’t believe you’re all here.”

I laugh. Hard. Devolve into giggles. The rest of them laugh, too, with far less fervor. It’s hard not to laugh when someone else is—that’s what I’ve discovered about this quirk of mine and what it rouses in others. I laugh when I’m uncomfortable, when I’m scared, when I’m angry. Basically, I laugh at all the inappropriate times, and usually not at the things people generally find hilarious.

“I can hardly believe we’re here, either,” I finally say, when I can form words again.

Other than a conference I attended in Dubai two months ago, I haven’t taken a trip in a year. That’s what I signed up for, though, as a member of the sales team for one of the fastest-growing biotech start-ups. It’s called Hippoheal: a play on healing and Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine. Our Alzheimer’s vaccine—the first to be fast-tracked by the FDA—is approaching phase IIb clinical trials. Our successful earlier trials garnered international attention, as has our patented device to detect signs of Alzheimer’s through the breath, which is undergoing clinical trials itself. Hippoheal is Max’s company. Max’s brainchild. Maximillions. My close friend since childhood. My boss. Like a brother—sort of.

Since I met Rory, and then in short order Max, I’ve known that Max harbored a not-so-secret crush on me. One drunken night in college, he confirmed it, and we tumbled into bed together like you see on coming-of-age TV. It was wonderful, to be honest. Our chemistry, the softness of his embrace. But it was Max. I couldn’t sleep after, my heart thumping at what it all meant. In the morning, I told him that I loved him too much to risk dating him. That I needed him too much. I wouldn’t be able to handle it if we broke up. And we were too young to make a go of it. After all, Max, Rory, and Ansel are the only family I really have.

Sometimes, though—often, truly—I’ve reconsidered my firm decline, after facing the ashes of yet another situationship, after getting set up on yet another tepid date. Let’s say it how it is—after being rejected by yet another man. Although I know I’m part of—really a catalyst for—the rejection. As my therapist once told me, when I attract emotionally unavailable men, I have to look at the parts of me that are unavailable. And when you analyze the way I grew up, it makes sense. What I witnessed of love wasn’t anything desirable. It was yelling and cheating and gambling. It was locking my door, slipping under my covers with earplugs, and eating tubs of frosting that I bought from the supermarket with money my mother occasionally gave me to get groceries. (She wasn’t making any birthday cakes, let’s make that clear.)

And I was never the girl dreaming of becoming a mother. My ovaries didn’t start screaming at thirty. I suppose my family of origin, dysfunctional as all get-out, has played a ready part in that. But I’ve always adored Max, thought of him as a romantic prospect, maybe in recent years more than ever. He’s soft, brilliant, endlessly supportive. And now, filled out with a confidence he didn’t have when we were kids, perhaps part the growth that comes with age, and of course his surging business success, too. His star is on the rise. Lately, Max has had a string of supermodel girlfriends—dumb, twentysomething PR girls, if you ask me. Not surprisingly, they haven’t held his interest. Until recently, I always felt like I could have Max if I wanted him, which was a thrill, a certain kind of power. A relief. My plan B I always kept tucked in my pocket.

I think I hoped one day I would feel safe enough to use it.

In fact, a little over a year ago Max made a plea for me again. That it’s me he wants. That the two of us are inevitable, and I need to face it. For the first time, I considered it seriously. Imagined, even, what it would be, to have a partner to really rely on. Max—wonderful Max. Someone I trusted, someone who would truly try to make me happy, even when the world dealt up its surprises and horrors. Then Max didn’t blink twice about bailing me out of a bit of financial trouble, and he even generously offered me a job with his burgeoning company. One day I absently doodled Caroline Aronov on my notepad, and then and there I resolved to speak to him. I remember how excited I was that day, imagining our future unfolding. Thinking that, perhaps, we were actually destined. That we might have a happily-ever-after awaiting us. Imagining what it would mean to Rory and Ansel. But then…

Then the most unexpected, terrible thing happened.

I feel the pressure bloom in my chest again, like an elephant has come to rest atop it.

Plan B is shot to hell. Never can be.

It’s painful having Max here with me on this vacation. I almost bailed on coming. But there are reasons I didn’t bail, beyond just fun and games and old friends and the Tyrrhenian Sea.

“Is it okay that I’m here?” Nate finally asks Rory. His voice catches, a blip on his typical assured.

“I don’t know why you’re here,” Rory says, taking a deep sip of her vodka and then smacking the glass back down on the table with such force that vodka sloshes over the brim. A ruddy-faced elderly man in a pressed navy blazer and a fairly absurd pom-pom beret shoots us a sour, disapproving look. A glamorous fortysomething Italian couple across the aisle—the wife bedecked in the serpent Bulgari necklace I positively covet—merely appear amused at the spectacle. But Rory doesn’t seem to notice any of them or care that they’re all watching. “Seriously, I really don’t get why any of you are here.”

Nate flinches. Rory looks away, squeezes my hand. “I’m so happy you’re here, Caro,” she whispers.

My body relaxes against her touch. “Oh my gosh, babe. You can’t imagine. Me, too. We have so much to—”

“Ror, I just have to tell you, to make this clear, because I feel like I’m dancing around it.…” Nate wrestles his hands in his lap, twists his big silver-face watch on a black leather strap. “I really regret breaking up with you. It was crazy, that time for me.” His eyes roll back a bit, remembering. “I felt like such a fuckup, such a… I don’t know. You know what it was like for me when—”

“You know what it was like for me, too,” Rory fires back, oblivious to another scowl from the man in the beret and his muttered epithet that I don’t catch. Meanwhile, our other compatriots on the train are flitting more restrained glances our way; Rory has become something of a spectacle. A group of Scandis murmur their surprise over fizzy coupes, and a spectacular Indian woman in a burnt-orange silk dress clucks her tongue, her back straight like a mannequin’s in the most impressive display of posture I’ve ever witnessed.

“Ror.” I flick my head sideways toward our onlookers, and Rory seems to come to and notice all eyes trained upon us.

“Oh.” Her face is still splotchy and fired up, but she eases into a low hiss. “You know what, Nate? It’s not like it was all sunshine and rainbows for me. I lost my job. Then I lost you. And that’s not all. I lost…” But she stares at her hands, doesn’t continue.

Lost what? It feels so foreign, not to hear the sentences echo in my head before they tumble out of my best friend’s mouth.

“Will you talk to me? Will you at least give me a chance to explain?” Nate asks.

“I… I don’t—”

“Ciao!” Suddenly a man is before us—around my and Rory’s age, I guess. Or maybe a bit older, like Max and Nate. Later thirties, perhaps. He’s tall and tanned, with warm brown eyes, dark sweeping hair, and a scruffy beard. He has a confident air with obvious charm, but there’s a noticeable softer element to him, too. He looks like a dad, in a way that I can’t exactly pinpoint, the protective kind. Not that I’d know about protective dads personally, but I grew up with Max and Rory, and so their dad was kind of like mine. Yes, that’s it. There’s something in this man that reminds me of Ansel Aronov. Compassionate, kind. The type to make you raspberry blintzes when you’re sad, then tell you grand bedtime stories with creative twists to cheer you up.

“Ciao,” I say slowly, but the man is staring at Rory, and I notice she is staring back. Staring like she knows him.

“Gabriele,” Rory says, and there is a raw element in her tone I can’t decipher. “What in the world are you doing here?”