"But it's not so easy to wander through the snowdrifts. You don't get very far without getting worn out." He laughed as the toe of my boot got stuck and I stumbled into him
"Yes. I see that," I laughed too, clutching onto him.
He wrapped his arms around my waist. "I would go for miles on those snowshoes. No one even noticed I was gone." He gave half a sardonic smile. "As long as I was back for dinner on time."
My chest pinched so tight. Like a fist wrapped around my heart.
He’d had so little nurturing in his life. Almost no one had modeled how to care for someone else. All the ways he’d cared for me, as misguided and inappropriate as they had been, they’d come from something truly organic. Something he'd devised completely on his own. No one had taught him how to love another person—and yet he’d still tried.
I had so little to give in return.
"If I had known you then,” I offered what I had, "I like to think I would've met you in those woods.”
“And if I had known you then, I would've schemed some way to make sure that you did."
I lifted my chin and pressed my mouth to his, hoping the heat of my body could do what the heat of his always did for me. Hoping it could erase the past and create images of a life with a vibrant house filled with warmth and love and never ever any clocks.
"You were president of your high school's campaign-finance board and the political action club?” I asked, reading the information from my phone.
"And the debate club," Donovan said smugly.
"And you were on the chess team. Figures."
After a walk around the property, we came inside to work. Raymond had gone into town to meet his wife for dinner, so it was just Donovan and I who'd sat at the long banquet table at six thirty precisely, eating a delicious meal of veal piccata and cranberry spinach salad.
When we finished, we poured ourselves some after-dinner drinks and headed upstairs. Earlier in the day, I'd received an email from Ferris containing the background report that Donovan had ordered on himself. I’d forgotten to cancel it in the craziness of the week. So now we were seated by the fire, Donovan in the armchair and me on the floor, while I read highlights from the report out loud.
"I didn't get this for you just so you could make fun of everything, you know," he said when I laughed about his letter in snowshoeing.
"I didn't know you could letter in snowshoe! I didn't know that was a school activity!" I was still laughing.
"It wasn't. I had to get special permission. It was taken to the school committee and there was a judicial hearing." He circled his hand in the air, signaling much to-do. "They voted in my favor."
"It was that important to you, huh?”
He shrugged. "I wanted to see if I could do it."
“Mm hm.” I took a swallow from my tumbler to hide my smile. Sounded like him.
I scanned further through the document. “’Businesses identified with ownership by subject.’ This is a longer list than I was aware of, Donovan." I'd known he was a wealthy man, wealthier than the investment at the advertising firm, but wow. “’Reach, Inc., Gaston’s, King-Kincaid Financial.’ You have ownership in your father's firm?"
He nodded. "Weston and I both have stock there."
I went back to the list. “‘Ex-Ore.’ That's a gas company, right?”
“Yes.”
“HtoO is that water foundation... ‘Lannister End?’” I looked up questioningly.
“A bed and breakfast in Connecticut. Not far from here. I'll take you some time.”
“I’d like that." I scrolled past the rest of the companies he held stock in and found the list of organizations he was associated with. “Did you found all these? ’A Better Day,” I read.
He seemed startled. “That’s on there?”
“Yeah. What is it?”
“Just a charitable foundation. It’s an umbrella for a bunch of other foundations.” His brows were furrowed. Then he shook his head. “It’s my father’s organization, but he must have me listed on some of the entity papers.”
“Ah.” I’d moved on. “‘MARCA?’ What’s that?”
He swirled his glass and watched the liquid dance around the bottom, as though it were more interesting than his answer. “It’s, uh, it’s an organization. Against rape. Men against rape culture and abuse.” He let that sit, let me absorb the enormity of it.
Then he explained more. "It's geared at education. Teaching youth, especially—about consent, about women's rights.”
“And you're the founder?"
"Yes."
"And you did that because of me?" I had a swell of pride and sentimentality. He was trying to be modest. I wasn't going to let him.
"Yes."
I set my phone down and stretched my feet out in front of me. The report hadn't been such a bad idea after all. I’d learned a few interesting things about him. But I’d learned just as many interesting things spending time with him this weekend.
And if I was going to learn more, I'd rather just ask.
"You graduated from Harvard with a Masters in business and stock in your father's financial firm. You already had an interest in finance and politics and ethics. You obviously felt compelled to start organizations that help people. Why did you choose to follow that by opening an advertising firm?"
He rested his elbow on the arm of the chair, his chin in his hand. "Why do you think I chose to open an advertising firm, Sabrina?"
"I don't want to sound narcissistic, but based on the pattern of things you’ve told me so far? I can't help but wonder if you chose it because I chose advertising as my emphasis."
"Go on."
Like I had tried to imagine him earlier in the day as a little boy, I tried now to imagine him as the young man he’d been in Cambridge. Intense and haunted. At the time, I thought he'd still been haunted by Amanda.
Now I reframed it, imagined him haunted by me—a woman he believed he shouldn't have, even when I was there in front of him. Even when I was in his arms.
"You chose advertising because that's what I chose," I said, my eyes fixed on my toes. "And you knew the irony of it because you never intended for me to work for you or with you. You just wanted to feel near me. Even when you were half a world away. Am I close?"
"It always felt like I was running away from you and running to you at the same time.” His voice was low, the same timbre as the crackle of the fire behind me. "I'd lose myself in women—so many faceless women. Women who would let me treat them in terrible, terrible ways, just so I could forget you. And I never could."
I felt like he must've felt then too—like I wanted to run into what he was saying and run from it at the same time. I didn't want to know about other women. It hurt to hear it. But I wanted to hear how they would never be me.
And I also needed to know, just for my own peace of mind…
"I hate to ask this, but when you say you treated them terribly…" I trailed off, hoping he would fill in the blanks.