Claire attended the opening without him. Her mother called afterward and said all the correct things. Rebecca called and said less correct things, mostly about Jack’s intelligence. Elaine Porter stood beside Claire’s photographs and told her the strongest image was the train-platform hands because it understood absence without dramatizing it. Claire nearly laughed at the cruelty of timing.
Jack, meanwhile, sat through the city review, won approval for the library revisions, and felt no satisfaction whatsoever. Margaret Sloan found him alone at the office afterward staring at a drawing he had already checked twice. “You look like somebody died,” she said. “I said something stupid.”
“To whom?” “Claire.” “Then say something less stupid next.” “She’s not answering.”
Margaret shrugged. “People are allowed intervals.” Jack hated that too. On the third day he did not call again. He mailed the airport snow globe.
Claire opened it at her kitchen table. The little plastic terminal inside had none of the actual airport’s architecture and all of its emotional accuracy. She laughed first. Then cried. Then got angry that she was crying over a five-dollar object.
She called him. Their apology took nearly an hour.
Jack did not say he was sorry “if” she felt diminished. He said, “I used the thing I’m most afraid of becoming as a weapon against you. I’m sorry.” Claire did not say she should have been more understanding about the meeting. She said, “I turned your work obligation into a test of whether you love me because sometimes I still think love is measured by who gets there before something ends.”
That was the first conversation in which they saw the fault lines under the romance clearly.