18
Diana
They were married on the deck behind the Abbey, in the glow of a perfect September sunset with their friends and family all around them. Diana wore a white dress. Michael wore a blue suit. Willa wore a garland of white orchids and roses around her neck that she alternately sniffed at and attempted to eat. A Unitarian Universalist minister conducted the service, with Reese as an unofficial co-officiant, resplendent in a morning coat and a top hat.
Everyone was there: Diana’s parents and her sisters and their husbands and kids; Michael’s parents and his sister and her husband and their kids. Dr. Levy and Mr. Weinberg came. Maeve sent best wishes from Dublin, and Marie-Francoise from London, where she’d moved, and Kelly and Alicia were there, watching, as Diana walked down the aisle, a candlelit path in the sand.
Dora Fitzsimmons, silent as ever, wore a black pantsuit and black New Balance sneakers, and gave the couple a check for five hundred dollars and a pound of Cabot’s fudge. Ryan, freshly returned from Los Angeles, gave them a birdhouse that he’d had commissioned, a version of their cottage in miniature, with a perch for a pair of lovebirds out front. Heavy Flo donated her services as a singer and DJ. She sang “Someone to Watch Over Me,” and a rainbow appeared in the sky over the water as Michael waltzed Diana around the deck. Then she played “It’s Raining Men,” and everyone crammed onto the dance floor, laughing and singing along. It was, everyone agreed, the party of the summer.
At Michael’s urging, Diana told her parents the truth that they’d long ago guessed at: she’d been assaulted that summer, and, while it had knocked her off the path she’d planned, she’d found a different one. “And you’re happy?” her mother asked. “Because you look happy,” she said, before Diana could answer. “I just wish…” she said, her voice getting thick.
“What, Mom?”
“I just wish you’d told us back then! I wish you’d let us help.”
Diana wrapped her arms around her mother’s shoulders, pulling her close. “I know. I wish a lot of things were different. But I promise, it all worked out okay.” Her mother nodded, and wiped her eyes before pushing Diana toward the dance floor, where her father was waiting, looking healthy and strong, his shoulders straight and his skin less sallow. “Go dance with your dad, honey. He’s been waiting for this a long time.”
* * *
Diana had the money she’d saved up from years of living rent-free. Michael had a small inheritance from his grandfather. But even after they’d pooled their savings, it only amounted to ten percent of what they estimated the cottage would sell for on the open market.
“It can’t hurt to ask,” Michael told her, so a few weeks before their wedding, Diana approached Dr. Levy.
“I don’t even know if you ever wanted to sell the place,” she began.
“Actually, I’ve been giving it quite a bit of thought lately,” Dr. Levy replied. “I think—wait, hang on.” Diana waited. A few seconds later, Dr. Levy, sounding sheepish, said, “I had to close my office door before anyone hears me saying anything this woo-woo. But here’s the truth: I think that people and things, and, maybe, sometimes houses, come into our lives for a reason. That cottage mattered a lot to my parents, and it was important to me when I was a young woman. Now, though, I think that you’re the one who’s meant to be its caretaker. Well, you and Michael.”
Dr. Levy accepted their offer. Michael gave up the lease on his apartment in Wellfleet and moved in with his clothes, his collection of spy novels, and his television set. Diana worried that the cottage would feel cramped and claustrophobic, as the novelty of cohabitation wore off, but as soon as the weather was warm Michael started work on an addition, a living room with a second loft bedroom above it. In the warm months, they would use the deck, with its firepit and picnic table and the outdoor shower; in the winter, when it got dark early, they were happy to build a fire and huddle indoors, on the couch or in bed, tucked up underneath the eaves with Willa snoozing at their feet.
Michael replaced the creaky, drafty windows with double-hung, weatherproof ones that glided up and down at the touch of a finger and fit snugly in their frames. The next year, Michael dug up a patch of sandy earth and had a friend at a landscaping company haul in a truckload of soil, to make Diana a garden. That summer, they had a garden, and grew tomatoes and peppers and eggplants and corn.
Diana learned to bake, and Michael took up birding. They both became expert kayakers and proficient surf casters, standing on the beach in their waders, watching the horizon for signs. When they spotted clouds of birds massing, and the water roiling beneath them, they’d cast their lines and, more often than not, pull in a fish or two.