Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas (9 page)

The diary continued to put her in a place of unexpected surprises. Now it was making her jealous, something she didn’t think
she was capable of. She
was
jealous of Suzanne. She kind of felt like a jerk, a small and petty person. Not herself. Maybe it was hormones. Or maybe
it was just a normal reaction to everything abnormal that had happened to her recently.

She shut her eyes tight, and felt incredibly alone. She hugged herself with both arms. She needed to talk to someone besides
Guinevere and Merlin. Ironically, the person she wanted to reach out to was on Martha’s Vineyard. As much as she wanted to,
she wouldn’t call him. She would call her friends Laurie or Gilda or Susan, but not Matt.

Her eyes moved over to the bookshelves she had built into her walls. Her apartment was like a small bookstore. Very independent.
Orlando, The Age of Innocence, Bella Tuscany, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The God of Small Things.
She’d been reading voraciously ever since she was seven or eight. She read everything, anything.

She was feeling a little queasy again. Cold, too. She wrapped herself in a blanket and watched
Ally McBeal
on TV. Ally turned thirty in the episode, and Katie cried. She wasn’t nearly as crazy as Ally and her friends, but the show
still hit a nerve.

She lay on her living-room couch and couldn’t stop thinking about the baby growing inside her. “It’s all right, little baby,”
she whispered.
I hope so, anyway.

Katie remembered the night when she had gotten pregnant. She’d had a fantasy in bed that night, but she dismissed it, thinking,
I’ve never gotten pregnant before.
She hadn’t ever missed a period—except one time in college, when she’d been playing varsity basketball at North Carolina
and learned that her body fat was too low.

That last night with Matt, Katie had felt that it had never been like this before. Something had changed between them.

She could feel it in the way he held her and looked at her with his luminous brown eyes. She felt some of his walls come down,
felt
This is it.
He was ready to tell her things that he hadn’t been able to talk about.

Had that scared Matt? Had he felt it, too, that last night we were together? Was that what had happened?

She had never felt as close to Matt as she had that night. She always loved being with him, but that night it was urgent;
they were both so needy.

Katie recalled that it had started so simply: all he had done was wrap his fingers around hers. He slid his free arm beneath
her and stared into her eyes. Next their legs touched, then their entire bodies reached toward each other. She and Matt never
lost eye contact, and it seemed as if they were really one in a way that they hadn’t been before that night.

His eyes said,
I love you, Katie.
She couldn’t have been wrong about that.

She had always wanted it to be like that,
just like that.
She’d had that thought, that dream, a thousand times before it actually happened. His strong arms were around her back, and
her long legs were wrapped around his. She knew she could never forget any of those images or sensations.

He was so light when he was on top of her, supporting himself on his elbows, his knees. He was athletic, graceful, giving,
dominating. He whispered her name over and over:
Katie, sweet Katie, my Katie, Katie, Katie.

This was it,
she knew—he was completely aware and attuned to her, and she had never experienced such love with anyone before. She loved
it, loved Matt, and she pulled him deep inside, where they made a baby.

Three

K
ATIE KNEW
what she had to do the next morning.
Seven
A.M.
—but it wasn’t too early for this. This was it.

She called home—Asheboro, nestled between the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina—where life had always
been simpler. Kinder, too. Much, much kinder.

So why had she left Asheboro? she wondered as the phone began to ring. To follow her love of books? It was her passion, something
she truly loved. Or had she just needed to see a world larger than the one she knew in the heart of North Carolina?

“Hey, Katie,” her mother answered on the third ring. “You’re up with the city birds this morning. How are you doing, sweetie?”

They had Caller ID in Asheboro now. Everything was changing, wasn’t it? For better or for worse, or maybe somewhere in between.

“Hey, Mom. What’s the latest?”

“You doing a little better today?” her mother asked. She knew that Katie had found someone in New York. She knew all about
Matt and had loved it when Katie called to talk about him, especially when she said they would probably be getting married.
Now he had left her, and Katie was suffering. She didn’t deserve that. Her mother had tried to get her to come home, but Katie
wouldn’t do it. She was too tough—right. A big-city girl. Well, her mother knew better.

“Some. Yeah, sure. Well, actually, no. I’m still a
mess.
I’m
pitiful.
I’m
hopeless.
I swore I’d never let a man get me into a state like this —and here I am.”

Katie began to tell her mother about the diary and what she had read so far. The lesson of the five balls. Suzanne’s daily
routine on Martha’s Vineyard. How she met Matt again.

“You know what’s so strange, Mom? I actually like Suzanne. Damn it. I’m such a sap. I ought to hate her, but I can’t do it.”

“Of course you can’t. Well, at least this dumb bunny Matt has good taste in women,” her mother said, and cackled as she always
did. She could be wicked-funny when she wanted to be. Katie was always grateful that she’d inherited her mom’s sense of humor.
But she didn’t feel like joking.

Tell her,
Katie was thinking to herself.
Tell her everything.

But she couldn’t. She had told her two best friends in New York—Laurie Raleigh and Susan Kingsolver— but couldn’t tell her
mother she was pregnant. The words just wouldn’t come out of her mouth.

Why not?
Katie wondered. But she knew the answer.She didn’t want to hurt her mother and father. They meant too much to her.

Her mom was quiet for a moment. Holly Wilkinson was still a first-grade teacher in Asheboro, Katie’s mentor for thirty years.
She was always,
always
there for her, supportive, even when Katie had gone to the dreaded, hated New York and her father didn’t talk to her for
a month.

Tell her, Katie. She’ll understand. She can help you.

But Katie just couldn’t get the words out. She choked on them and felt bile rising from her stomach.

Katie and her mother talked for almost an hour, and then she spoke to her father. She was almost as close to him as she was
to her mom. He was a minister, much beloved in the area because he taught “God-loving” instead of “God-fearing.” The only
time he’d ever been really mad at Katie was when she had packed up and moved to New York. But he got over it, and he never
threw it up in her face anymore.

Her mother and father were like that. Good people. And so was she, Katie thought, and knew it was true.
Good people.

So why had Matt left her? How could he just walk out of her life? And what was the diary supposed to tell her that would somehow
make her understand?

What was the deep, dark secret of the diary? That Matt had a smart, wonderful wife and a beautiful, darling child and that
he had slipped up with her? Had an affair with a New York woman? Strayed for the first time in his picture-perfect marriage?
Damn him! Damn him!

When she had finished talking to her dad, Katie sat in her study with her good buddies Guinevere and Merlin; they curled up
on the couch with her and looked out the bay window at the Hudson. She loved the river, the way it changed every day, or even
several times in the same day. The river was a lesson, just like the lesson of the five balls.

“What should I do?” she whispered to Guinevere and Merlin. Tears welled up in her eyes, then spilled down her cheeks.

Katie picked up the phone again. She sat there nervously tapping the receiver with her fingernail. It took all the courage
that she had, but she finally dialed the number.

Katie almost hung up—but she waited through ring after ring. Finally, she got the answering machine.

She choked up when she actually heard a voice. “This is Matt. Your message is important to me. Please leave it at the beep.
Thanks.”

Katie left a message. She hoped it was important to Matt. “I’m reading the diary,” she said. That was all.

T
HE DIARY

Come to our wedding, Nicky. This is your invitation. I want you to know exactly what it was like on the day your mother and
father pledged their love.

Snow was falling gently on the island. The bells were ringing in the clear, cold, crisp December air as dozens of frosty well-wishers
crossed the threshold into the Gay Head Community Church, which happens to be the oldest Indian Baptist church in the country.
It’s also one of the loveliest.

There is only one word that can describe our wedding day . . .
joy.
Matt and I were both giddy. I was just about flying among the angels carved in the four corners of the chapel ceiling.

I really did feel like an angel in an antique white dress strung with a hundred luminescent pearls. My grandfather came to
Martha’s Vineyard for the first time in fifteen years, just to walk me down the aisle. All my doctor friends from Boston made
the trip in the dead of winter. Some of my septuagenarian patients came, too. The church was full, standing room only for
the ecumenical service. As you might have guessed, just about everybody on the island is a friend of Matt’s.

He was incredibly handsome in a jazzy black tux, with his hair trimmed for the occasion, but not too short, his eyes bright
and shining, his beautiful smile more radiant than it had ever been.

Can you see it, Nicky
—with the snow lightly blowing in from the ocean? It was glorious.

“Are you as happy as I am?” Matt leaned toward me and whispered as we stood before the altar. “You look incredibly beautiful.”

I felt myself blush, which was unlike me. Dr. Control, Dr. Self-Confidence, Dr. Hold It Together. But a feeling of unguarded
vulnerability washed over me as I looked into Matt’s eyes. This was so right.

“I’ve never been happier, never surer of anything in my life,” I said.

We made our pledge on December 31, just before the New Year arrived. There was something almost magical about becoming husband
and wife on New Year’s Eve. It felt to me as if the whole world were celebrating with us.

Seconds after Matt and I pledged our vows, everyone in the church stood and yelled, “Happy New Year, Matt and Suzanne!”

Silvery white feathers were released from dozens of satin pouches that had been carefully strung from the ceiling. Matt and
I were in a bliz- zard of angels and clouds and doves. We kissed and held each other tightly.

“How do you like the first moment of marriage, Mrs. Harrison?” he asked me. I think he liked saying, “Mrs. Harrison,” and
I liked hearing it for the first time.

“If I had known how wonderful it was going to be, I’d have insisted we marry twenty years ago,” I said.

Matt grinned and went along with me.

“How could we? We didn’t know each other.” “Oh, Matt,” I said, “we’ve known each other all our lives. We must have.”

I couldn’t help remembering what Matt had said the night he proposed on the beach in front of my house. “Isn’t it lucky,”
he’d said, “Suzanne didn’t die in Boston and we have today to be together.” I was
incredibly
lucky, and it gave me a chill as I stood there with Matt on our wedding night.

That’s what it felt like—that was the exact feeling—and I’m so happy that now you were there.

Nicholas,

Matt and I went on a whirlwind, three-week honeymoon that started on New Year’s Day.

The first week we were on Lanai in Hawaii. It is a glorious spot, the best, with only two hotels on the entire island. No
wonder Bill Gates chose it for his honeymoon, too. I soon discovered that I loved Matt even more than I had before he proposed.
We never wanted to leave Lanai. He would paint houses and finish his first collection of poems. I would be an island doctor.

The second week we went to Hana on Maui, and it was almost as special as Lanai. We had our mantra:
Isn’t it lucky?
We must have said it a hundred times.

Matt and I spent the third week back home on the Vineyard, but we didn’t see much of anyone, not even Jean or Melanie Bone
and her kids. We were luxuriating in the newness and specialness of being together for the rest of our lives.

I suppose that not all honeymoons work out so well, but ours did. Nick, here’s something your father did, something so thoughtful
and special that I will always hold it close to my heart.

Every single day of our honeymoon, Matt woke me in bed—with a honeymoon present. Some of them were small, some were funny
jokes, and some were extravagant, but every present came straight from Matt’s heart.