“But yes. Two weeks in Costa Rica with the team.”

“Oh, right… Is there cell service down there?” She was thinking that if Roux tried to contact him, he wouldn’t be able to answer his phone.

Gideon assured her that he had international coverage; plus the resort had fiber optic Wi-Fi, so all her calls would come through. Ivy’s teeth began chattering. The torpor of procrastination had given way to adrenaline-pumping panic. Gideon would be gone for two weeks. Past Roux’s deadline. She would have to confess now if she wanted to tell him about Roux in person. She felt like that cartoon roadrunner who’d suddenly come to the edge of the cliff.

“Hey—what’s wrong?” said Gideon, noticing her agitation. “This isn’t just because you’re sick. What is it?” Her chin quivered. “Tell me, sweetheart.” It was the first time he’d used this endearment. There was a pain in Ivy’s heart, she recognized it as despair. She was out of time, she would have to tell him. She tried to speak, but she only took shallow inhales.

“Is it the wedding? Has Mom been inserting her oar too much?”

“No,” said Ivy, “it’s not that.” Inserting her oar. How she would miss his old-fashioned phrases. “It’s me,” she said. “I’ve…” Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She reached for her water and chugged the entire glass down, praying for courage. “Do you remember last summer? Since we got back from Cattahasset, I’ve been feeling kind of confused and lonely. So I…”

“I’m listening.”

“I…”

“Did you cheat on me or something?”

Ivy jerked away with the same instinct as a child too near a fire. “What? Why would you say that?”

“Never mind,” he said hastily, patting her knee. “Poor joke. What were you saying about Cattahasset?”

But the unexpected directness of Gideon’s question had completely rattled her.

“I was saying how—” Her mind seized onto the first thing to confess, a truth of a different kind. “I’m not going to retake the LSAT. I don’t want to be lawyer.”

There was an almost comical pause as both of them took in her words in equal surprise. Could he hear her heart pounding its traitorous beat from her rib cage?

Gideon crossed his arms in the way he did whenever he was about to have a serious discussion. “Really? What made you change your mind?”

Now that that particular Band-Aid had been pulled off, Ivy found sweet relief in pouring out her honest feelings. She said she’d been lying to herself, she didn’t think she was cut out for law, she didn’t like the long hours, the tedious reading, the cutthroat environment.

“So you want to go back to teaching?”

She hesitated, trying to read in his attentive expression whether this would be acceptable. “… No.”

“Then what do you want to do?”

“I want to…” But she was tired, goddamn it, she didn’t want to do anything. She rubbed her aching eyes. “Honestly, no one’s really asked me that before. I took on teaching to avoid having to go to medical school. My parents always wanted me to be a doctor. They were worried I wouldn’t be able to find a job. That I wouldn’t marry well.”

“What does marriage have to do with it?”

Oh, Gideon! How could she expect him to understand? And how fiercely she loved him for not understanding. “You’re not mad at me?” she said.

“About not wanting to go be a lawyer?” He frowned. “Why on earth would I be mad at you? You can do whatever makes you happy… This is what’s been bothering you this entire time? What do you think I am, an ogre? Listen, you don’t want to be a lawyer or teacher—fine with me. You’re smart and resourceful”—Ivy flinched—“so why don’t you take as long as you need to figure out what you really want to do?”

“But timing-wise…” She trailed off in embarrassment, because she couldn’t say that the money her parents had given her for rent, for the wedding, was running out and she couldn’t possibly ask them for more. Unless she accepted Roux’s offer, in which case she would lose Gideon and what would be the point of having money then?… Money, money, accursed money, that rabid, tenacious hound that’d been nipping at her heels all her life, so that she could never, never get ahead.

“After we’re married, we’ll move in together so you won’t have to worry about rent, at least,” Gideon said, neatly reading her mind in his tactful way.

After we’re married…! If there had been a knife on her table, she would have picked it up right then and plunged it into her heart. The pain would have to be in proportion to her remorse.

Gideon was rubbing her back in smooth circular motions, as if he was soothing a skittish horse. “In the future,” he said, “just talk to me. There’s nothing we can’t get through together.” She nodded feebly. “That’s settled then.” He picked up her empty glass. “Orange juice, tea, or more water?”

“Tea, please.”

After he left, Ivy decided she had no choice left but to kill herself. When a young person dies, their love remains pure and everlasting. People go to their funerals and say poignant things about them. Call them angels. She could be Gideon’s angel. Perhaps Roux might even kill himself in repentance. The only thing Ivy knew with absolute certainty was that she would rather face death than betray Gideon’s trust, and what the hell was that sound—

Her phone was buzzing. Both hoping and fearing it was Roux, she lunged to see the caller ID. It was only Nan. Ivy ignored it. Nan called three more times in succession. Ivy was about to silence the call for the fourth time when the idea popped into her mind that somehow Roux had gotten in contact with Nan. Perhaps they were in on it together. She picked up.

“Now’s not a good time, Mama. I’m in bed with a cold… Hello?”

There was a clamor of voices followed by beeping sounds. “Hello? Hello? It’s Mama. Can you hear me? Grandma’s in the hospital. You should come home.”

19

MEIFENG HAD SLIPPED IN THE shower and fractured her hip. She’s fine, said Nan, but she needs hip replacement surgery. Gideon insisted that he drive Ivy to Clarksville. “You’ve been sick all week,” he said firmly, “and besides, your car’s always acting up. We’re supposed to be getting a lot of snow.”

“But your trip…”

“There’s time.”

The supposed storm brewing from the Atlantic hadn’t yet hit Boston, but Ivy could smell the sharp cold of something big coming when she rolled down the passenger window, somewhere in upstate New York. “I’m getting nauseous,” she said to Gideon, who sensed the emergency right away and pulled over. She opened the car door and threw up the soup, the oyster crackers. She rinsed her mouth with a bottle of spring water and Gideon kept driving.

They arrived at Presbyterian Hospital just past midnight. Nothing about the Jersey landscape had changed: the same potholes on Route 1, the smell of cow manure, the flat strip malls, the smog blowing over from the factories in Elizabeth. Nan met them at the elevator on the fourth floor. Her face seemed to have aged a decade, two ashy streaks of hair pulled back on either side of her head like bleached straw, the broken green veins pulsing under her pallid skin. She seemed flustered by Gideon’s presence, touching her neck often as she spoke in Chinese, glancing over her shoulder as if expecting Shen to translate her awkward explanations to fluent English. “Grandma just came out of surgery,” she informed Ivy. “She’s still under sedation, but you can go in. They said only one person can be in the room at a time.” Gideon tactfully left to fetch them some coffee. Ivy went in. Meifeng was asleep with an oxygen tube in her nose. Her lips were slightly opened and cracked. Occasionally the devices attached to her arms made strange beeping sounds, but no nurses came hurrying in. The heart, that wondrous heart, continued to beat on.