Forty-Five Minutes

It was two days before she died.

Pippa stood before me, naked, palm raised in benediction. I was horribly hungover, sad, and baffled by Pippa’s posture.

“What is it? What’s going on?”

“I was absolving you of your behavior last night. All forgiven. We move on.” Pippa lowered her hand to her side. 

I sat up, more confused than ever. “I don’t get it,” I admitted.

“What I’m saying, my dear boy, is that we’re wiping the slate clean. Last night never happened. All is as before.”

“It sounds like you’re pardoning me for last night. Is that right?”

“Affirmative.”

This made no sense. And why was Pippa standing by the bed, like that? I wished she’d either get back in bed or put something on. She was too weird.

“But — and I can’t emphasize this enough — I didn’t do anything wrong last night. You did.” There was no question on this point. We’d been at a party given by our friend, Chad, where my greatest sin had been getting drunk. Pippa, on the other hand, had snuck off to a room with another man and not re-emerged for 45 minutes.

“Oh, is that the way you’re spinning last night. Ho ho. Ho ho.” The ho hos were — I don’t know why — offered in a bad British accent.

“Spinning it? All I did was sit on the sofa and get good and swacked on vodka tonics while talking to Chad and Leslie and a few other people. 

You’re the one who was, let’s say, indiscreet.”

“Moi?” Pippa replied with mock indignation.

Now I was angry. “For crying out loud, you went into a bedroom with that football player and didn’t come out for forty-five minutes.”

“Did you time me?” Pippa seemed taken aback.

“As a matter of fact, I did.”

“The nerve,” she said playfully then finally crawled back into bed. 

“It’s a fine thing for you to forgive me when you did the unforgivable.” 

“Do you mind telling me what that was all about? Are you going to tell me that you two just talked?”

“First of all, my pet,” Pippa said as she snuggled against me affectionately. “You should never have let me smoke pot and drink hard liquor. I’ve no control under the spell of that combination. Second, you weren’t exactly Mr. Innocent.”

“What the devil did I do?”

“I saw the way you were flirting with that Mexican girl, Yovanna. There was real intent behind that.”

“She’s a model from Venezuela, not Mexico, and there was absolutely zero flirting going on. I was friendly. I’d never flirt in front of you.”

“She was a model from Venezuela. It seems you got to know quite a lot about her.”

“That’s two things! My god, how does me simply talking to a girl at all compare with you spending 45 minutes locked in a room with a football player? By rights, I should never forgive you.”

“Lookee here my little sweetie, I’ve apologized —”

“No, you haven’t, you haven’t once said you were sorry.”

“Okay, fair point. Well, I’ll say it now. I’m sorry for my behavior last night. How’s that, Mr. Prosecutor? Satisfied?”

I laid flat on my back, staring at the ceiling. The totality of what Pippa had done, the cheating, the fact that she did it in front of my friends, the humiliation, was suddenly overwhelming, and her flippancy made it worse. I had the urge to get up, pack my things, and move out of our house. At that moment, I hated her almost as much as I loved her. But my feelings were further complicated by her naked body being draped around mine. 

“So whattaya say honeybunch, can we forget this whole thing?” Pippa asked, then began kissing me all over my face while her left hand reached down and softly held my recently awakened penis.

I was outraged and aroused all at once but stuck to my guns. I’d not let Yovanna seduce me. She wasn’t getting off that easily.

“How do I know that there won’t be a time in the future, maybe soon, when you smoke pot and drink liquor and do the same thing? Hell, maybe you won’t even need to get high. For all I know, you’re going to see that guy again.”

“Oh sweetie, no, no, no, one hundred times no. I give you my word I’ll be faithful. Even when high as a kite. As for Nick….”

Then she said nothing for a while. Pippa stopped kissing and released my penis and laid next to me in silence.

“Well?” I finally said impatiently.

“I’ll break our date and insist we never see each other again.”

“You had a date arranged with…him?” I couldn’t bring myself to say his name.

“In my defense, I was still pretty high when I made it, and it was after….”

“After what?” As if I didn’t know.

“Goodness Mark, do I have to say it?” Pippa’s tone had shifted. She was at last serious.

“No, I sure guess you don’t. Were you really going to see him again?”

“No.” then after a pause, “I am sorry, Mark, I know what I did was awful. I….”

“You what?”

Pippa sighed heavily. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m all screwed up or something. Maybe I’m working things out. I had a really stifling childhood and went wild during my first two years of college. Then I met you, and this past year has been the best in my life. But it could be I had one little bit of wildness to work out of me. I feel terrible now. When I woke up, I thought I could try to play it off by being cute, and well, it was the wrong thing to do. I’m sorry for that too. Plus, to be honest, I’m still a little high. I wish I knew how I could make it up to you.”

“I know one thing you could do,” I said, and with that, I rolled on top of Pippa, and we made love. I was screwing her out of anger; it felt morally wrong, but it also felt physically fantastic. For me, it was the best fuck the two of us had had in our eighteen months together.

After sleeping off our hangovers, we went out for breakfast then headed to the library to study. Pippa was a senior, and I was in my first year of grad school, and despite our heavy night of drinking the day before, we were studious people. 

That evening we prepared dinner together in silence; we chatted a little over dinner, mostly about our studies, then resumed silence as we studied. Thoughts about what Pippa had done the night before had poked at me all day, occasionally giving me pangs of jealousy or pain. I knew there was a further reckoning to come on the matter and sensed that Pippa realized this. The incident was still too close to look at objectively and talk about. I wasn’t going to leave her, but I was hurt. We went to bed, exchanging nothing more than a chaste good night kiss.

“I think it would be wise if we had a nice long chat about things tomorrow night,” I said.

“Yes, that’s a good idea. You still love me?”

“Of course I do. We need to straighten a few things out, that’s all.”

“I want to be sure you know that what happened last night, I mean what I did, was no reflection on you or our relationship.”

“I understand,” I said, not sure that I did. “We’ll talk more tomorrow. Good night.”

I got up early the next day for an eight o’clock class, I was going out the door when Pippa emerged from our bedroom, and we wished each other a nice day. There was no kiss good-bye as had been our custom. She smiled widely and said, “I’m looking forward to our talk tonight, Mark.” 

“I smiled back and said sincerely, “looking forward to it, Pip. Bye.” 

“Bye, honeybunch,” she said, and we again smiled at each other for the last time.

**********************************************************

It was a quarter to six and getting dark as I finished cleaning the kitchen and started thinking about dinner. Pippa should have been home an hour earlier but I assumed that she had either got caught up studying at the library or had stopped at the grocery store. I was sure that it was my night to cook, but I thought it better to wait until Pippa got home, especially if she had stopped at the store.

I watched the evening news while waiting. By six-fifteen, I was starting to get worried. It was unlike Pippa to be late.

When the news was over, I turned off the set, went into the kitchen, and tried to figure out whether I should go ahead and make dinner. My head was in the fridge, examining the possibilities when there was a knock at the front door. I rushed to open it, figuring that Pippa had forgotten her keys.

It was the campus police.

Their grim expressions and lowered heads were clues that they bore sad tidings. I was suddenly unsteady on my feet, and my insides started to swim.

One officer asked if I was Mark Radcliffe, and when I said I was, he told me he was afraid that there was bad news.

I was sure this meant Pippa was dead. I felt like my internal organs had collapsed. My body felt weak, and my right hand began to shake.

“Your girlfriend who lives here with you is Pippa Scott, is that right?”

I nodded glumly.

“I’m sorry, Mark, she’s gone.”

“You mean dead?

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Murdered. We’ve got a person in custody who admits to it. Nick Lamantia. Know him?”

“Kind of.”

The same asshole Pippa had spent forty-five minutes with at Chad’s party.

I followed the officers to the cruiser in a fugue. Life was in dreamlike fragments, a combination of a hazy dream state and a harshly lighted reality.

When, minutes later, I identified Pippa’s body, I experienced a total disassociation with reality. She’d been stabbed repeatedly. The sight of the woman I loved — my first love — laid out naked on a gurney over a white sheet, her beautiful body covered in wounds, made me feel faint and sick to my stomach and as though I was living in the worst nightmare imaginable.

I always said to Pippa that her body was luscious. Now it was cold, bluish, motionless, scarred, decaying. 

An officer told me the story. In the middle of the afternoon, Pippa had gone to Nick’s house. (An added shock; she had not broken their date.) In Nick’s confession, he said that they went to his bedroom as soon as she arrived and made love. Nick had gotten out of bed immediately after they finished, went to the kitchen, got a knife, returned to the bedroom, and began stabbing Pippa repeatedly. First, in the abdomen, then the chest, and then turning her over and stabbing her in the back-at which point she was already dead. 

There were approximately 30 stab wounds. The policeman said that evidence suggested that Pippa had put up a fight but was outweighed by nearly fifty pounds, a lot of which was muscle.

A neighbor had heard screams and called the police who, fifteen minutes after the call, found a docile Nick sitting in his living room sobbing, still holding the knife. He had no explanation for murdering her. 

“Something clicked after we had sex, and it was like a light in my brain had gone out, and a force took over, and I had no control over it. It told me what to do, and I did it.”

Nick had no history of mental illness.

First time for everything.

The police contacted Pippa’s parents— the Scotts — who had referred them to me.

I went home and called our mutual friends. Within half an hour, many of them were crowded into my small house, offering food, drinks, coffee, and lots of hugs. People cried, some softly, some in great, loud heaves. There were expressions of disbelief and shock and anger and bafflement. But not by me. I was numb. It was like my brain had been shot with novocaine. The sight of her naked, punctured dead body lingered in my mind’s eye. The fact of her permanent departure from this world coiled around my brain. 

I was surrounded by fellow mourners, and I was utterly alone.

There was too much to process. I hadn’t even gotten over Pippa’s behavior at the party and now had to sort out the fact that she had gone back to have sex with Nick and then been brutally murdered, and I’d never see her again. Not being able to touch and kiss and make love to and talk to and listen to her was incomprehensible. 

Even in the wake of her behavior, I assumed we’d spend the rest of our lives together. That should have been the focus of my grief, but it was mixed in with her infidelity and the realization that if Pippa had been faithful, she’d still be alive. I found it impossible to simply be sad or heartbroken. I was overwhelmed.

On top of all this, I felt guilty, but I didn’t know why. Maybe it was because my grief was complicated by anger with her betrayal. Perhaps it was because I was feeling sorrier for myself than I was for Pippa or her family.

I couldn’t cry. I could barely speak. I couldn’t do much beyond staring at the carpet, accepting the condolences, and trying to comfort the people who had come to comfort me.

It was well after midnight when everyone left — though I can’t recall exactly how late it was. I had rejected offers to stay with me through the night, and in fact, once I got into bed fell asleep instantly, still having failed to shed a tear.

**********************************************************

I woke up at sun-up, still numb. But as I showered, the feelings washed over me with the water, and I sobbed uncontrollably. I managed to shave and get dressed, unsure if I could sit through my early afternoon seminar when I was blindsided by another crying jag that left me crumpled on the floor next to my bed, wiping tears with, and blowing my nose into, a bedsheet.

The ringing phone snapped me out of it, and I composed myself enough to utter a weak hello.

Pippa’s parents and two siblings were in town and suggested we meet for breakfast. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but I saw no way out of it. I arranged to meet them at the same diner that Pippa and I had eaten breakfast two days before.

I’d met Pippa’s parents twice before when we’d visited them during long weekends. Her parents were of the Republican polyester-wearing set who loved TV game shows and bowling and going to yard sales and who decorated their house with schlock and souvenirs from their trips to tourist sites around the country. The Scotts had quietly disapproved of us living together, though it had nothing to do with me personally. I got along fine with them, partially because during our visits, Pippa did all the talking. She’d mostly felt disdain for her parents while growing up but had grown to appreciate them once out of the nest. They were easy enough for me to talk to despite our having little in common, aside from loving Pippa. They were adept at discussing the weather and the lengths of drives and the latest celebrity scandal. We had an unspoken agreement to avoid politics.

Pippa’s younger sister Maggie was a senior in high school, and the family rebel. She was streetwise and smart in a way that I couldn’t see would help her find fulfillment or success in the world. She was headed for community college where perhaps she’d “turn it around” and find a passion but also might just as likely might marry the wrong guy and have a kid too soon and struggle for the rest of her life to make ends meet. She was earnest and likable, but she lacked her sister’s intellect. The older brother, Buddy, had gone straight from high school into the family construction business, and his aspirations were to achieve a level of success a notch or two above his father’s. He probably would, and he’d likely marry a nice local girl and have his 2.5 kids to whom he’d be a decent father. He rarely spoke to me, and I assumed he resented my education. Pippa had been the odd duck in the family. Intellectually curious and academically gifted, she loved art, literature, poetry, and classical music and longed for a life in academia. As did I.

I was nervous about seeing Pippa’s family. For one thing, she wouldn’t be there as a buffer, and for another, I half suspected that they’d somehow blame me for Pippa’s murder.

We met outside the restaurant, all of us appropriately sullen. Everyone was red-eyed — especially me — and no one could manage to talk much above a whisper. Pippa’s dad, Rex, quickly shook my hand and then seemed to try to glide away from me. The siblings gave me perfunctory hugs, but Pippa’s mother, Lana, held me in a long embrace and thanked me for being so strong and for having been so good to her “sweet little girl.”

The conversation was awkward. There was the reality that we had little to say or, in fact, could say about what had happened. It was a tragedy, and besides Pippa, we were its main victims. But what was there to talk about? Rex asked me if I knew “the bastard” that killed his daughter. I answered that I knew of him, that he had been on the football team, was a pretty good player, well-liked, and as far as I knew, had never been in any sort of trouble before. Oh yes, he fucked your daughter a couple of times, once while in the same house as me. This, I didn’t say.

“Do you know why she was at his house?” Lana asked me.

I scratched my head and looked down, then lied, “I suppose it had to with a class they had together, maybe she was —”

“But Pippa was nude,” Rex said. “That’s what I don’t understand, she was completely nude.”

“Maybe,” Lana offered, “he stripped her clothes off after.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Buddy said.

“Mark,” Lana said, looking me in the eyes, “do you think Pippa was having a fling with this boy?”

“Mom!” Maggie exclaimed, clearly shocked at the suggestion.

Obviously, I had to lie. “I’ve no reason to suspect so.”

“You don’t suppose he raped her,” Rex said as a statement, not a question.

“Dad!” Maggie practically yelled.

“The police said nothing to me about rape or post-mortem intercourse,” I said truthfully.

“Post mortem sex? God, everybody, can we not say such things right now? She was my SISTER.” Maggie was verging on hysteria.

Lana held her daughter and cooed to her. I took a stab at my omelette and noted that Buddy was making short work of his meal. While Buddy inhaled his pancakes, the rest of us picked at our food with varying degrees of enthusiasm. I managed to finish half my omelette and most of the hash browns when I noticed someone enter the cafe wearing a shirt very much like one that Pippa had bought me a few weeks before. I remembered how enthusiastically Pippa came home that day and pulled the shirt out of the shopping bag. “I saw it in the store window and thought it would be perfect for you. Try it on!” I did, and when Pippa saw me in the shirt, she said, “Perfect! My handsome boyfriend! I’m so goddamned lucky!” She smiled widely and hugged me.

The memory was crushing. Pipp had been so sweet, so loving, so thoughtful. I began to sob, which made me terribly embarrassed. I’d never betrayed strong emotion in public before. I was raised in a cold, formal New England household where a broad grin or frown was considered the extent to which one was allowed to betray their feelings. But now I was unable to stop crying. Having just comforted Maggie, Lana slid her chair next to mine and held me as I wept. 

When I finally composed myself, I offered apologies. Everyone, even Rex, told me that it was okay. “Don’t feel bad, young man,” Rex said as he fought back the tears, “it’s only natural.”

Doubtless, customers and restaurant staff were glad to see us leave. We’d made everyone uncomfortable through our lamentations and obvious grief. 

The five of us walked toward campus, but after two blocks, stopped, and I said, “so where are we going?”

Lana said, “we were following you.”

“I have no idea where to go or what to do right now. I can’t possibly go to class.”

We decided to go back to what had been Pippa and my house and was now — I realized — only my place. Without her share of the rent, it wouldn’t be my place for long—yet another weight on my slim shoulders.

Pippa’s family fit neatly on our sofa as I sat in a rocker — another gift to me from Pippa. We sat in silence for a full minute before Lana said, “this is a nice, cozy house.”

“Yeah, it’s perfect for two people. The bedroom is big, my desk is in it, and Pippa’s was right there, of course,” I said, pointing to the corner of the living room. “There’s a small backyard where we used to sit on warm days.”

“The kitchen is nice and big,” Lana noted.

“Does anyone know why in the hell this awful beast killed my daughter?!” The question burst out of Rex, laced with equal measures of anger, frustration, and bewilderment.

According to the police, Nick had offered no motive. He had simply, as one officer put it, “suddenly gone nuts.”

“I’m sure a psychiatrist will thoroughly examine him,” Lana said.

“What good will that do any of us? They’ll try to establish a defense for an insanity plea. The bastard should be given the chair or gas chamber, or however they rid the state of bastards like him. Then he should burn in hell.” Rex seemed to be both on the verge of tears and ready for an even greater explosion.

“Try to relax, Dad,” Maggie said and took one of his hand and held it between both of hers.

Buddy, who had been mostly silent, suddenly said, “this is the most fucked up thing ever,” and he began to shake, then, for the first time, he wept. Lana moved next to her son and held him. 

It went on like that for most of the day. First, one person crying then another, as if we were taking turns. And Lana always held and soothed whoever was expressing their grief. By early evening Lana herself started to sob, and Maggie comforted her.

Pippa’s family stayed in town for two more days, then took Pippa’s body home for burial. Two days after that, I took the train to Pippa’s hometown for the memorial service. There Lana introduced me to relatives, neighbors, family friends, and Pippa’s ex- schoolmates. My status as the former boyfriend gave me a measure of importance, but it was only for the day. I’d soon leave and never return to this vapid suburban town and never see any of these people again. 

The funeral, the burial, and the reception were dull, depressing affairs that conveyed none of Pippa’s vivacity or charm. She was a dead person associated with communal and individual memories that would soon fade. Forever remembered, forever gone.

Meanwhile, Nick had been charged with first-degree murder. A couple of psychiatrists had examined him, and it was obvious that his lawyer would mount an insanity defense.

The lease on the house we’d rented would expire in a few months — at the end of the semester — but Rex offered to continue paying Pippa’s share. I gladly accepted his offer.

**********************************************************

After two weeks, I resumed classes and immersed myself in studies. I’d always been a conscientious student, but now I was obsessive about my school work. Initially, it was because I needed to catch up, but it soon became a way to distract myself from Pippa’s death and the attendant wonderment I felt about her cheating on me. 

I was awash with happy memories of Pippa and I picnicking, making love, shopping, enjoying films, concerts, and museum visits. I remembered snippets of conversations. Silly things that made us laugh. Discussions about our future together and whether we should have children, and if so, when and how many. We often talked of European vacations we’d someday take and listed the places we most wanted to see. I also thought of those forty-five minutes, and how it had sickened me to see her enter a room with another man in full view of my friends. And I constantly thought about her going to see Nick again after promising not to and how he would forever be the last person she ever had sex with. I was continually visited by the thought that she was a victim of her own lust, her own duplicity. I was tortured by thoughts of her last seconds when she fought for her life as that madman stabbed her. What a horrible ending. How terrified she must have been knowing that she was being murdered.

Of course, Pippa was still very much alive in my dreams. There she’d be, miraculously live again. In some, she’d survived her injuries, or there was no Nick. In others, we made love. Then I’d wake up to the ugly reality that the girl I’d loved was dead. I’d gamely get out of bed and into the shower where I would sometimes sob, as I’d done that first morning after her death.

In addition to revisiting Pippa’s death, I also thought of her strange behavior the morning after the party. What was behind her trying to play off her actions the night before? Was she really still a little high? Pip was not only smart but a real wit whose sense of humor occasionally veered into the downright goofy. I wondered what her end game was with the whole forgiving me act. 

Six weeks after the murder, Chad threw another of his soirées, and he talked me into coming. I’d not had a sip of alcohol nor socialized since Pippa’s death and was reluctant to do either. But good old Chad coaxed me into coming. He was sympathetic and understanding but insisted that I was doing myself no favors by perpetually mourning.

I arrived at the party determined to say a few hellos, have a drink or two, and then slip out unnoticed. Everyone went out of their way to ensure that I was comfortable, having a good time, and I wasn’t left alone or without a drink for so much as a second. After a few drinks, the grief that hovered over me dissipated, and after a few more, I felt good. For the first time since….

Late in the evening, Chad stole me away from the chap I was talking to. 

“Mark, old boy, I’ve been debating about whether or not to tell you something, and I’ve decided that you should know the truth,” he said while leading me to his room. He closed the door.

“So this may come as a bit of a shock. Or it may be that it won’t surprise you at all.”

“Fire away, old friend. I figure I can handle anything now.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I am.”

“Do you know Ray Hagen?”

“Sure, nice fella, Russian Studies, as I recall.”

“Yup, that’s him. Well brace yourself, old boy, Ray confessed to me recently that he had an affair with your late Pippa last Fall. Said it amounted to about a dozen or so assignations over a couple of months.”

I didn’t bat an eye.

“I’m not surprised. You know Pippa told me the day before she was killed that she had a date with Nick but promised me she’d cancel it and be forever faithful. The next day she went to his house, and they made love before he killed her. So I’m not surprised. Before the night of your party, I wouldn’t have believed it for a second. But I’ve learned there was a side to Pippa that —”

“I’m glad you’re taking it so well, Mark. I was a little worried about telling you.”

“In a sense, it doesn’t matter one way or the other since she’s dead. But I am — for what it’s worth, getting a fuller picture of the girl.”

“And so, what do you think?”

“Well, I’ve got to process this new bit of news, but it seems to point to the fact that Pippa and I would not have had a long or successful relationship. More than anything on this earth, I wish she were still alive. But the loss of our relationship seems less a tragedy than it initially had.”

“You won’t mention to Hagen that I said anything.”

“Course not. Don’t see him much anyway.”

“Kind of a low thing for him to have done.”

“I bear him no malice.”

Chad’s revelation affirmed that — as tragic and horrible as Pippa’s death was — it had not cost me a life partner. After all, there might have been others besides Nick and Hagen and likely would have been more to come. 

But none of this eased the pain of her death, not in the slightest. 

**********************************************************

I needed to get away from the physical memories, so I continued my graduate studies in Boston the next semester.

There I soon met a woman and fell in love. Constance (never Connie) came from the same traditional Brahmin stock as I did, though with even more and older money. Constance was tall, slender, delicate, and highly refined. She had expensive taste in conservative clothes, favoring tweeds. She had a clipped officious manner of speaking, and while I suffered fools badly, she did not suffer them at all. Her dream was to have a high-level job at a top art museum. Constance was, in many ways, the opposite of Pippa, except behind closed doors. Alone in her apartment or mine, she was an utterly uninhibited force of sexual nature who drained every ounce from me, leaving me an empty, if sated husk. 

As I began my Ph.D. program, Constance graduated with her MA in Museum Studies and landed her first job. We moved in together, and the sexual gymnastics that she favored were virtually a nightly occurrence. I was happy, though I felt somehow unfulfilled and wondered if lingering memories of Pippa were keeping me from being as happy as I should have been. I had passing thoughts that Constance might not be my perfect mate but ignored them.

It was a year later that I saw Pippa again. 

Or thought I did. 

On the way home from a class, I stopped in a produce market to look for fruit. I was sorting through Royal Gala apples when I happened to look up and see a woman who could have been Pippa’s twin. She looked up from the cantaloupe she was examining and saw me staring. 

“Mark Radcliffe!” She exclaimed with a broad smile.

It was otherworldly. Had the dead risen? Was this a ghost?

The woman walked purposely towards me, put down her shopping bag, and embraced me.

Looking me in the eyes, she frowned. “My god, you don’t know who I am, do you?”

I shrugged.

“Maggie! I’m Maggie, Pippa’s sister.”

I was relieved not to be dealing with supernatural phenomena.

“Of course. It’s amazing, you look just like Pippa did.”

“You think so? Mom had said I was starting to look more and more like her, especially when I cut my hair, but I don’t see it.”

Maggie looked like Pippa, all right, only prettier. In fact, she was downright stunning. Was Pip ever this beautiful?

“What are you doing in Boston? How are you? How’s your family?”

“First of all, I’m fine. Mom and Buddy are doing well. Dad had a huge heart attack last year and had to retire, and kind of has to stay calm, quiet, and at home a lot. He’s happy to be alive but not happy with his new lot in life. I think it’s tougher on Mom having him around all the time, but they’re adjusting. Buddy is in charge of the company if you can believe that. He’s married, and his wife is expecting their first.”

“Wow, a lot’s changed. And what of you?”

“I did two years at a CC, and now I’m in my first semester at Boston University. My life kind of turned around. I’ve gone from hating school to loving it, zero to sixty. How about you?"

“I’m in a Ph.D. program at Harvard and thoroughly enjoying it.”

“God, I remember when I thought you were such an egghead like Pippa. Now I admire you.”

“Would you like to get a coffee or a drink?” I asked, hopefully.

“Sure.” she smiled.

Three months later, Constance moved out of our apartment after discovering my affair with Maggie. Three months after that, Maggie moved in with me. That’s where things stand now. I swear I’ve never been happier. (I now can’t figure out what I saw in Constance — was it just the sex?) 

In some ways, it’s like having Pippa back in my life, but that’s based solely on the physical resemblance. Maggie is into organic cooking; Pippa loved gourmet restaurants. Maggie likes a good comedy; Pippa preferred costume dramas. Maggie plays volleyball; Pippa hated sports. Maggie loves dancing; Pippa watched the ballet.

We’re not making any plans — yet. Both of us are determined to live in the moment. If I had to guess, I’d say we’ll likely stay together for a very long time and that we’ll probably get married. But I know how suddenly things can change.

It’s in some way strange to be living with Pippa’s sister — especially given the physical resemblance — yet I hardly ever think of Pippa anymore. Sure, I’ll always miss her, but the pain is long gone. I don’t think about the specifics of her death anymore, nor do I contemplate her infidelities. It’s like she’s an ex of mine who died -- and nothing more. Maggie rarely speaks of her, and when we visited her folks — they were delighted we were together — Pippa was barely mentioned. 

People learn to carry on in the aftermath of tragedy. We have to. And sometimes good things come to us. It gets better. It has for me anyway.