All You Could Ask For A Novel

I HATE PHILLIP’S ASSISTANT. Her name is Danielle LaPierre, which, as I am fond of saying, is French for “the Peter.” And, as I am also fond of saying, the name suits her, because if any woman can be referred to as a dick, it would be Danielle. Any time I am waiting to meet with Phillip, she inevitably buddies up to me and chats my ear off, always on the same topic.

Men.

Danielle is a forty-ish divorcée, attractive enough, no kids, and she is obsessed with finding a husband before, as she charmingly puts it, “it’s too late.” And the way she speaks with me always leaves the distinct impression that she views us as in the same boat. That is annoying, but it is not what really bothers me about her.

What really bothers me is I do not know if Danielle knows of my past with Phillip. I suspect she does, if only because Danielle is the sort of woman who knows everything you might hope she did not. And if she does know, then there is no doubt she subtly rubs it in my face all the time. She loves to tell me stories of the extravagant vacations Phillip takes with his family, or the sweet little gifts he surprises his wife with “just because.” If she does know of our past, I hope you’d agree that Danielle is a cold-blooded bitch, but because I am not certain that she knows and probably never will be, I am always left to wonder, and that makes the time I have to spend with her almost too much to bear.

In recent months, I have taken to amusing myself when I talk to Danielle by inventing boyfriends, and then bringing each of them to a sudden and stunning demise. “Alex” was transferred to Juneau, Alaska. “Henry” was decapitated when his car was broadsided by a freight train. “Stanley” accidentally stumbled upon a mafia killing and was placed in the federal witness protection program.

On this day after my birthday, I was telling Danielle the stunning news about “Milton,” who was found dead in his bathroom after accidentally allowing a shortwave radio to slip into the tub while he was taking a bath.

“He hated showers,” I sniffled.

That was when Phillip arrived.

“Come on in, Kat,” he said.

He never calls me Katherine anymore, and I never call him Phillip. I suppose those are our respective nods to our past together, we’ll always have those names in the way Bogey and Bergman will always have Paris. Now we are “Kat and Phil,” which sounds more like a pair of Army buddies than it does old sweethearts.

“What’s shakin’?” he asked, sliding out of his suit jacket and hanging it over the back of his chair.

“Not much, I’m well,” I said.

He stopped, looked at me, and turned his head sideways, the way a dog might if it hears a sound it doesn’t trust.

“Somethin’ up?” he asked. “You don’t seem right.”

“No, I’m good,” I said. Phil looked at me for a minute without saying anything, and to fill the silence I said, “It was my birthday yesterday,” and then wished I hadn’t.

“That’s right, of course. I’m sorry I didn’t send anything, been so damn crazy with everything here.” He came around the desk and gave me a quick hug. “Happy and healthy and many more.”

“Thanks,” I said. I knew damn well he didn’t know it was my birthday. “I’m forty.”

“How about that,” he said, back on his side of the desk, his hands clasped behind his head. “We’re getting up there, aren’t we? I’ll be forty-seven soon enough.”

“Next Thursday.”

“That’s right. Listen, happy birthday. You do anything special for it?”

“I’m going to, that’s what I’m here to tell you. I’m going to take a month off.”

“Really,” he said. The look on his face was priceless. “When are you thinking of going?”

“This afternoon. I’m taking my assistant for the whole time, at full pay. And I’d like to take the Gulfstream. You’re not using it until Friday.”

If there is any benefit to working for a man who once broke your heart and knows it, it is this. When it comes to anything personal, I tell him what I want and he never equivocates. I’m not exactly sure why; it is not as though if he told me I couldn’t take the company jet I would cry and say: “It’s bad enough you married that bitch you cheated on me with, now you’re going to make me fly Delta?” But there is still a little bit of that in there, somewhere, and whenever I can use it to my advantage, I do.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Aspen,” I said. “I haven’t been there since I was a girl. I’m going to climb a few mountains, ride a few horses.”

“I can’t remember the last time you took any time off.”

“It’s been a while,” I said, and stood up. “I’m going to get a few things in order and I’ll be out of here around noon. Please have them ready for wheels-up at three. I’ll be at Teterboro a little before that.”

He gave me a nice smile, one I almost never see anymore. “Have a good time,” he said. “Be safe.”

Then I was back in the anteroom, nodding to Danielle.

“I’m taking some time off,” I said to her as I passed. “Milton would have wanted me to.”



WHEN I TOLD PHIL I needed a few hours before I could take off for Colorado, I was telling the truth, but not the whole truth. The implication was that I needed to tidy up a few affairs and pack, while the truth was I had been up most of the night doing both of those. But there was one important meeting I needed to attend before I could go to the airport, one I would never tell Phil about, even though he is my boss. In fact, I wouldn’t tell anyone about it, not even Maurice.

Dr. Gray is my own little secret.

You don’t have to say it, I already know: there is no reason to be ashamed of therapy. And, really, I am not ashamed. Maybe it’s more “embarrassed.” Or “protective.” However you choose to characterize it, I do not acknowledge to anyone that I have been in intense psychoanalysis pretty much my entire adult life. You see, I exist in such a competitive world that to admit to needing help would be tantamount to admitting weakness. I know all the men I work with, and who work for me, are looking for my flaws, looking to find a soft spot, and so f*ck them, I refuse to show one. And while I know there are no similarities between the two, the reason I keep my therapy secret is the same reason I don’t walk into a board meeting and complain about menstrual cramps, because anything that puts me on even less of a level playing field than I already am seems like it is best left out of the discussion.

Dr. Gray is comparatively new, and I love her. I have seen a long list of New York’s finest and most discreet shrinks. I’ve been at it so long one of them retired and another recently died. I have also read just about every significant book on self-help and mental health published in the last twenty years and some older than that, everything from The Road Less Traveled to Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, and I’ve learned bits and pieces from all of them. I have delved deeply into my past, time and again, always reaching the same obvious conclusion: I don’t trust men because the two that really mattered to me both let me down, and so I battle them in my past and all the others in my present and the trouble with that is it doesn’t bode well for my future. It’s obviously a challenge to find a man to love and to trust when I greet each new day with the words “F*ck him and all the others like him.”

The truth is, I haven’t really needed a shrink to explain any of this to me. I don’t think it takes a psychology major to figure out that a girl whose daddy disappointed her so terribly will have issues with men. And of the many ways a father can disappoint a daughter, mine, I think, was the worst, because he never got the chance to make it up to me, and worse yet he always said he did it for me, which seemed to make it better in his mind even though it was so obviously not, so I don’t need a therapist or a book to understand that is part of my problem. And then there was my relationship with Phillip and the way that ended. I suppose I was pretty much doomed right then.

So, the question is: If I know my problems so well, why do I continue to go to therapy?

There are two reasons. The first is rather sad, I guess, but it is true, and that is that I don’t really have any other woman I can talk to. The only women in my life either (a) work for me, (b) compete with me, or (c) are my mother, and there is just too much that you cannot say to women who fall into any of those categories. So there is that, and then there is the other reason, which is my deeply ingrained belief that eventually I am going to get better. It will just take the right doctor, or the right relationship, or an epiphany of some sort, any of those three might do it, and the way I see it, the doctor is the one most under my control, so I’m not going to give up on that. And if there was ever any chance I was going to give it up, that went away when I met Dr. Gray.

Dr. Gray’s practice centers on the Buddhist principle of mindfulness, which is to say whatever you are doing, your mind must be fully committed to it. To always look to the future is as dangerous as always looking to the past, because we live only in the present. And, even though this sounds like a cliché, my relationship with her is probably the best in my life; it is that valuable, that wonderful. And so, on this day after I turned forty and was fixed up on a blind date with a man old enough to be my father, I wasn’t going to take off on my first real vacation in a decade without conferring with her.

“I think this is absolutely perfect for you,” she told me. “They don’t put monasteries at the tops of mountains by accident. The tranquility will be wonderful. Go easy on the shopping and the restaurants, they have those here too. Climb mountains, ride horses, breathe deeply, and when you return I want you to answer one question, and if you need to spend hours each day thinking about the question, that’s fine with me.”

“I’m ready,” I said.

“When you come home from this vacation, I want you to tell me what it is that makes life worth living.”

“Oh good,” I said, “I was afraid it was going to be something deep.”

She shook her head at me. She isn’t much for my sarcasm. So I tried again.

“You know,” I said, “a lot of people would be happy with one of those T-shirts that says your friend went to Aspen and this is all you got.”

She shook her head again.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll make a note to spend some time thinking about it.”

“Good,” she said. “But, Katherine, try to do it without making a note.”

And with that, I was on my way.

SAMANTHA

FEELINGS ARE A FUNNY thing, because there isn’t always an easy way to explain them.

I can’t always account for why I react in a given situation as I do, and I have grown comfortable with that uncertainty. I guess that’s why it didn’t come as a total surprise when I opened the door, found my ex-husband standing before me, and burst into a hysterical fit of laughter.

I know what you are thinking: nervous laughter is very common. I’m aware of that, but this was not that. This was a belly laugh, as though finding Robert outside my door was a scene from a funny movie.

I could tell Robert was completely taken aback by my reaction, and I really can’t blame him. He stood in the doorway waiting for me to calm down so he could say something, even “hello,” but I just couldn’t stop. It was a howling laugh, the sort that would drown out anything short of a scream on his part, and he didn’t look like he wanted to scream. He looked earnest, as though whatever it was he’d come to say was very meaningful and serious, the kind of look you’d have when approaching the family at a funeral, which I guess was appropriate under the circumstances.

We stayed that way for a little while, me laughing and him looking sheepish and awkward in the hallway, and then I suppose I could have invited him in but I wasn’t sure I wanted to. So he just waited patiently until I quieted down and then finally he spoke.

“Hello, Samantha,” he said, “I’m glad to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”

That was a pretty good line. He delivered it well, too. He always was very comfortable with himself, I have to hand it to him.

I hesitated. “Hello, Robert. It’s been a long time.”

“Too long, and that’s my fault,” he said. “May I come in?”

I really didn’t have an answer to that so fast.

“Believe me,” he continued, without any hint of awkwardness, “I am under no misapprehension here. I have no expectation of forgiveness or anything like it. I certainly am not asking to come inside because I expect anything to happen between us. I just have some things I want to say to you and I think it would be best to say them in private.”

That sounded about right. “Okay,” I said, and stepped backward into the room. I pulled a chair out from behind the writing table and placed it in the center of the sitting area. Then I took a seat on the couch and motioned for him to take the chair. It was like a little courtroom: he was on trial and I was the jury.

“Make your case,” I said. “You’ve got as much time as you need.”

“If it please the court,” he said, with a smile, “I’ll begin at the beginning.”

Always comfortable, always glib. I could see how a girl could fall for him.

“I make no excuses for what you found in my computer,” he said. “That was the product of a relationship that began long before I met you and did not end, as it should have, the day after our first night in Sacramento. I’ve been thinking about how to say ‘I’m sorry’ to you for that. The words themselves don’t seem to be nearly enough, and yet I can’t think of anything better to say or to do. If there was some action I could take to better deliver my apology I would do it, but I can’t come up with anything better than just the words themselves. So, I’m very, very sorry, Samantha, for my inexcusable behavior. You are a good person and you deserved far better than that.”

I nodded. He was right.

“Also, I want to say something else, for the record, and that is that I do not love Stephanie and I never did, and I absolutely do love you. What we had was real for me in every way, even though my behavior would seem to contradict that, and I don’t blame you a bit if you do not believe me but it is the truth. I have no idea if that makes any difference to you or not, but in case it did I wanted you to know it.”

I nodded again. “It does, a little.”

“Okay, well, I’m glad.”

Then he cleared his throat, and his expression changed. I recognized that expression, remembered it from the campaign. It was his “time to get down to business” expression. I knew he was now ready to tell me what he had really come to say.

“There’s one more thing, Samantha, and this is probably the most important part of all. I want to tell you why I didn’t go after you that day, why I didn’t try to find you, and why I haven’t made any effort to talk with you since.”

“I didn’t know you knew where I was,” I said.

“Initially I didn’t, of course, but it wouldn’t have been hard for me to find out. You’re registered under your own name and the credit card on file is your father’s.”

“You’re right,” I said. “So why didn’t you come after me?”

He sighed and leaned forward, closer to me than he had been before. “Well, I can either tell you the truth or I can tell you the lie I have been telling myself for the past month.”

“This is getting interesting now,” I said. “Let’s hear them both, I’m not in any hurry.”

“The day you left, the first thing I did after I collected myself was call your father. I knew you weren’t coming back and I found your wallet and all your credit cards in the room so I knew you had no way of getting anywhere without him. So I called him and told him exactly what had happened. I apologized to him and told him I would do whatever he thought was in your best interest. He told me his first and only concern was for your safety, and he didn’t like you being alone without a wallet or a phone. I told him I shared that concern, but also that I was fairly certain you were in very little danger and that my guess was that he would hear from you before I would. As it turned out, I was right about that. He called me after he spoke to you, to tell me that you were safe. He was very cordial through the whole thing. He told me very matter-of-factly that you wanted to annul the marriage. I asked if he thought I had any chance of changing your mind, and he said he was certain that I had none. As I recall, he said something about you never changing your mind, and how lucky he was he never had to try to negotiate against you in a boardroom.”

I smiled. I couldn’t help myself.

“I think I said I felt lucky never to have had to face you in a courtroom, and he said I didn’t have to worry about that. He told me his lawyers would be in touch within a day, which they were, and so long as I didn’t want anything from you or from him there would be no trouble, which there was not. The next day I called him one more time and said I just wanted a chance to talk to you, to tell you I was sorry. He laughed and said that he was sure you knew I was sorry, and that the best thing I could do for you was just leave you alone. And so I did. He arranged to have your things picked up from our room, and I flew back to L.A. and told myself that I was doing what was best for you, leaving you alone and letting you get on with your life. That’s the lie I’ve been telling myself since this happened.”

That room was the quietest place I’ve ever been. For some reason I couldn’t hear the ocean anymore, I couldn’t hear the whir of the ceiling fan or the music from the buffet by the pool. All the sounds I had grown accustomed to faded away. There were just Robert and me.

“The truth, however,” he said, “is a lot simpler than that. The truth is I did it for me. When your father told me it would be best for you if I stayed away, that gave me a very convenient escape. It made it very easy for me to justify never having to face you, never having to own up to what I had done. And I told it to myself enough times that I actually started to believe it. But then, just the other night, it hit me that I wasn’t staying away because it was easier for you, I was staying away because it was easier for me. And the real truth is if there is anything I should really do for you it would be to have the courage to sit here and let you say whatever it is you want to say to me. So that’s what I’m here to do. You deserve to tell me what you think of me, and I deserve to hear it, and if you need some time to think first I will gladly wait downstairs for an hour or until morning if you’d prefer. You take your time and figure out what it is you want to say, and I will listen. I owe you that much. And I hope, in some real way, that will make it easier for you.”

He sat back in his chair, and I leaned back, too.

“Another thing,” he said, in a softer tone. “If I’m wrong, and the truth is you really don’t have anything to say, and my being here really is making it worse and not better, just tell me so and I’ll leave right now and you’ll never have to deal with me again.”

My father and my husband, they both always know what to say.

“Also,” he said, “there is one other thing.”

He looked a tad uncomfortable now. I leaned forward just the slightest bit.

“I don’t know exactly the right way to say this, but if by some miracle you want to give us another try, if you feel in your heart that what we had was meaningful enough to overcome what I know was unforgivable behavior on my part, please know there is nothing on earth I would want more. We wouldn’t have to make any promises, we could just try again. I would do it right this time. Not in the whirlwind of an election. A proper relationship, a courtship, with dinner dates and flowers that actually come from me, not a staffer. If you had any inclination to give that a chance, I would consider it a miracle and I would do anything to make you happy. If that means resigning my office, I will do it tomorrow. If you want to move back to New York, we could do that and I’ll go into private practice. What I’m trying to say is that I realize now what I should have realized from the second I saw you outside that elevator, which is that you are the most important thing in my life and if there is any chance that I haven’t destroyed this completely, please tell me. If there is any shred of hope, any at all, I will take that as a blessing and I will do everything I can for the rest of my life to prove to you I am worthy of it.”

He pushed himself forward out of the chair so that he was on his knees before me.

“I love you with all my heart, Samantha. I know you have no reason to believe that, and I know there is almost no chance you would ever consider being with me again. I’d just ask you to think about it, even for a minute, and if it’s out of the question I will understand. But please know that whatever you decide, I love you and I will spend the rest of my life regretting what I did.”

Then he was on his feet.

“I’ll be waiting downstairs,” he said. “Take as much time as you need.”

I looked down at the spot where he’d been on his knees. I’d never really noticed the carpeting before. It was orange with black zig-zagging lines and would have looked ridiculous anywhere else but somehow seemed perfectly in place here. And while my head was down, I heard the door shut softly and I looked up and he was gone. I closed my eyes and pictured him as he’d looked just before he walked out the door, with his hand on the knob. Was he wearing his wedding ring? I think he was. I had taken mine off down by the pool the day I arrived here, the day I met Eduardo, the day I ran away from my marriage. But Robert was wearing his today. Had he worn it all this time? Or had he just put it on to come see me? It would be interesting to know.

Then I sprang off the couch and ran to the door, raced down the hall. I caught up to Robert as he stood waiting for the elevator.

“Wait,” I said, “come back. I don’t need any time. I know what I want right now.”

BROOKE

I LOVE DAYS WHEN everything feels different.

I guess I shouldn’t say it that way. I don’t love all the days when it feels different, like when someone dies and everything feels different. I don’t love that. I recall the day Grammy died, my mom’s mom, Brooke, for whom I was named and whom my mother and I look just like. Sometimes I’ll see an old photo and it always takes a moment to say whether it’s her or me, I usually have to look at the clothes. She had wonderful style, furs for every occasion, sensational hats, but that’s how alike we look—I have to see what she is wearing before I know it’s not me.

The day she died was unlike any other. She had cancer and no one told me. When she lost weight, they told me she was dieting. When she lost her hair and needed a wig, they told me she was just experimenting with a new look. I wanted to wear a wig, too, because she did. My mother bought me one, a long blonde one. I was thirteen. When she died, it was a complete shock. I hadn’t seen her in over a month, she’d been in the hospital but I was told she was in Europe visiting friends. Then one night Mother pulled me away from the television.

“I have something important we need to discuss,” she said.

And she told me, quite matter-of-factly, that Grammy was gone. And it was like I was standing between a wrecking ball and a decrepit building: first the ball hit me, which hurt, then it scooped me off the ground and crashed me into the building at full force. I was crushed. All the air went out of me.

“When?” I asked. “How?”

“She’d been ill for some time,” Mother said stoically. “She died the day before yesterday. There is a new dress upstairs for you to wear to the funeral.”

“What do you mean she’d been ill? I didn’t know she’d been ill.”

“Darling,” my mother said, her voice going to that place it always does when she explains something she thinks I’m not capable of understanding, “I just couldn’t bear to tell you.”

The next day at the funeral, what I remember most was wondering how anyone else could be having a regular day. I remember seeing construction workers at a job site, lunchboxes at their sides, eating sandwiches and drinking from thermoses, and all I could think was: How in the world are they just going about their business as though everything is normal? Don’t they know Grammy is dead? Don’t they know I’ll never feel those long nails scratching my back again? Don’t they know how chewy her oatmeal cookies were? Don’t they remember when she took me to see Annie on Broadway and then bought me the soundtrack and how we would sing the song “Maybe” together at the top of our lungs? How can they just be going about their business as though this is just any regular day? Don’t they know everything is different?

That’s the kind of different day I hate.

But today is the kind I love. Because tonight is the night. Today is Scott’s birthday. Tonight he gets his gift. I felt the tingle in my stomach the moment I woke up. Driving the kids to school, stopping at Whole Foods, stopping at Soleil Toile for something special to wear under my robe, arranging the bedroom, readying the fireplace, placing the candles, choosing the music. Then placing the book of photos Pamela made into a velvet box, tying the ribbon, attaching the birthday card the kids designed. (“I signed it for you,” Megan told her brother. Twins are so funny.) Then dropping off the two of them at Mother’s for the night. When Scott comes home, it will be just the two of us. And it will be different from any other night. In the good way. I’m not even going to make him lock the door.

SAMANTHA

BACK IN THE HOTEL room, I reversed the seating arrangements.

This time I took the chair in the center of the room and put him on the couch. He looked a good deal less comfortable on the couch. Men like Robert know how to sit erect in hard-backed chairs, they know how to maintain the crease in their pants, how to keep their suit coat from rising up in the back. I guess that comes from years of experience in classrooms and boardrooms, or, in Robert’s case, courtrooms. They’re a lot less comfortable on couches. No matter how distinguished the man, no matter how well-dressed, if you look at him seated on a couch he still looks like he’s asking your father for permission to take you to the prom.

Now Robert was on the couch in my hotel room, fidgeting with his clothes, trying to get his pants and shirt and sport jacket straight. His legs were crossed and he had a look of cautious optimism on his face. I remember that look. He would use it in debates when his opponent was attacking him. It was a look that indicated that no matter what was said, Robert was ready to respond. I could see it in his face; he knew I was going to take him back.

“Robert, I just want you to know that it did help a lot that you came here. More than I would have guessed. If you’d asked me yesterday if it would make any difference for you to come, I’d have said ‘no,’ but I’d have been wrong, for a couple of reasons. The first is that it makes me feel less stupid. All this time I’ve wondered how I could have fallen in love with such a complete a*shole. And now I see that, at the very least, you aren’t a complete a*shole. There is something redeemable in your character, and that’s good news for me. It means I can trust myself again. So that helps.”

I don’t know why, but I stood up and started pacing as I spoke. I wasn’t looking at Robert. I was staring down at the floor, carefully considering every word.

“In fact, in some strange way I have more respect for you now than I did before everything happened. I don’t know how many men would have done this the way you did. I think a lot of men would have stayed away because it was easier.”

“Let’s not make me out to be a hero,” Robert said.

“Don’t talk,” I said. “You said everything just right. I want to remember it that way.”

He smiled and did that thing where you twist your finger in front of your lips, like locking your mouth and throwing away the key.

“You are most certainly not a hero,” I continued, “but you may actually be a decent human being, or at least one with a shred of decency. If you hadn’t come here I would never have known that. So I’m happy for that as well.”

A sense of calm was washing over me as I spoke, an unclenching. And I realized that, as focused as I have been this month on relaxing, in actual fact I haven’t relaxed at all. But I was relaxing now.

“I’ll also tell you that it really seems to me you came here with no ulterior motive, no self-serving motivation, for your career or otherwise. I didn’t believe that when you started talking but I do now, and I am impressed by that as well. You really did do this for me, and that matters to me. And the things you said and the way you said them were perfect. You apologized for exactly the right things in exactly the right way, which leads me to believe you really understand what you did and you really are sorry. And that’s the best part of it all. So, thank you, as strange as that seems. Because you made the effort and it helped, and it is going to keep helping. This makes everything that happened a whole lot less awful, and under the circumstances I really couldn’t ask for more than that.”

And with that I was finished. Those were all my thoughts. I was suddenly tired, maybe for the first time since the day I arrived at this hotel and started training.

Robert was off the couch and walking toward me. I recognized his expression again: he was in serious seduction mode now. He walked right up to me and looked soulfully into my eyes. He raised his hand and brushed it softly against my cheek as though he was wiping away tears. But I wasn’t crying.

“So,” he said, “I guess the question is, where does that leave us?”

I stared right into his eyes. “It leaves us in a much better place than we otherwise would have been,” I said. “And that’s all.”

He flinched a little. Our eyes were locked, and I could tell he was trying to see if there was any crack, any room at all for negotiation. I stared at him for all I was worth. There was no room for anything.

“Can we at least be friends?” he asked.

“There really isn’t any point in that,” I said. “This is not a time in my life I’m going to want to remain in touch with. I will learn from it, I will always remember it, but I will not treasure it. And while I don’t hate you or wish ill upon you, I don’t have any real interest in talking to you ever again.”

We were still staring, but now that was a formality. It was him who was obliged to look away first, and after a moment or two he did. He lowered his eyes and nodded, and then he turned slowly and started walking toward the door.

“What are your plans?” he asked over his shoulder.

“My triathlon is next week, then I’m going back to New York.”

His hand was on the knob now. “Be well,” he said.

“I wish you good luck,” I said. “And, if you ever do run for president, I’ll say nice things about you.”

He turned to face me, his hand still on the door. His eyes looked cloudy, like maybe he would cry. Not here, in front of me, but later.

“Will you mean them?” he asked.

I just smiled. I didn’t need to say it. We both knew the answer.

KATHERINE

BEING ON A HORSE always reminds me of my father.

My mother is petrified of horses, always has been. She doesn’t care for animals at all. As I recall, she once told me if a cat looked at her in a particular way she would need to be hospitalized.

But my father loved horses especially, loved everything about them. There were stables less than a mile from our house when I was a girl, and I cannot count how many Saturday afternoons we spent there together, Dad and me. My mother would make us pancakes for breakfast and then—if it was a nice day—the two of us would walk, hand in hand, to see the horses. When I was little, we would ride together, me snuggled into place in front of him on the saddle. I can still smell the oil embedded in the leather and the ever-present poop from the stables and the aftershave my father used, all mingled together. If you asked me to describe my childhood, at least the best parts of it, I would describe the way those Saturday afternoons smelled.

I began to ride competitively when I was nine and continued until Dad went away. He encouraged me to continue but my heart wasn’t in it. Besides, even if I wanted to, Mother wouldn’t have allowed it. There was no way she was going to traipse from one stable to another, one horse show to another; she wouldn’t even allow my riding boots in the house. “They’ve been wading in the crap,” she would say. They remained in a plastic bag in the garage when I wasn’t wearing them.

When Marie and I got to Aspen, the first thing I wanted was to go riding. At Buttermilk Mountain, they offered horseback riding and private lessons. I suggested to Marie she try it.

“I don’t know, boss,” she said. “If it doesn’t have a motor, I’m not sure I can drive it.”

“Listen,” I told her, “first of all, as long as we are here let’s drop the title ‘boss.’ You’re here to enjoy yourself just as I am. Secondly, if you have never used a mode of transportation that doesn’t require a key to start, you are in for a day you will never forget.”

“Katherine,” Marie said, sounding frightened. “I barely know how to ride a bike. There’s no way I can ride a horse.”

I considered that for a minute. “All right, here’s the deal. On this trip, I am going to help you and you are going to help me. Before we go home, you are going to learn to ride a horse, which I will help you with, and in turn you will help me figure out what makes life worth living. When we have both succeeded—when you can ride a horse and I can answer that question—we’ll go back to New York.”

Marie was just staring at me. Then she blinked, and then blinked again, and then a few more times without changing expression. Finally, she said, “So you’re saying we might be here awhile.”

“That’s right.”

She looked concerned.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“What should I tell Adam?”

Her fiancé, who also worked under me at the bank. Sometimes you can take advantage of things like that. “Tell him I said I need you here,” I said.

She thought a moment. “I didn’t bring that much stuff,” she said.

“Have you seen the stores in this town?”

“Katherine,” she said, “I can’t afford to shop in Aspen.”

“Let me handle that part,” I told her. “Your job is to figure out what makes life worth living. If you do, whatever it costs will be money extremely well spent.”

“Are you serious?” she asked.

I took her hand. “Dead serious,” I said.

Finally, Marie smiled. “Holy shit, Katherine,” she said. “This is going to be fun.”