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"Maybe I'm just disciplined," I teased as Erik and I stepped into the sticky midsummer night. Even the sky looked sunburned, a hot fiery pink.

"Disciplined, huh?" It was a Sunday. Only a few cars in the parking lot. "I wish that's what I was." He squinted past me, and I felt a pang of regret. Who was I kidding? I wasn't disciplined either.

But then he shifted his blue eyes back to me and grinned. "So, are you too disciplined to get a frozen custard with me?"

"Are you kidding?" I smiled. "Half the reason I come here is so I can eat stuff like that." This wasn't true either. But Kopp's Frozen Custard was down the road, and the sky was still light, and the thought of spending another night eating salad while I watched TV felt beyond lonely.

* * *

We didn't talk about anything personal that night. In fact, he made a point of it. "Let's have a moratorium on families, exes—especially exes—serious illness, therapy...." He handed me a paper cup of custard. "My last date covered all that and more in the first ten minutes."

"No tattoo descriptions either," I laughed. I didn't think he had any. I glanced at his tanned, ropey arms.

"Tattoos? You've had tattoo confessions? On first dates?"

"You haven't?" I dipped my spoon into the custard. "Well, okay, only once, but still. He thought I should know up front where his ex-girlfriend's name was tattooed. Talk about too much information."

"Jesus," he laughed. "No kidding."

We were sitting outside at one of a dozen picnic tables, the place loud with staticky music played from speakers, the crunch of tires over gravel, zigzagging strings of multicolored Christmas lights. It felt like a scene from the 1950s. Laverne and Shirley; Happy Days. We were both in workout clothes—running shorts and a tank top for me, my long brown hair in a ponytail; basketball shorts, Nikes, and a T-shirt for him.

 

We talked mostly about our jobs. The year before, he'd become project manager of the Ten Chimneys restoration. Ten Chimneys. The name was vaguely familiar. He told me it was the summer retreat built in the 1920s by Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, the most critically acclaimed American stage actors of the twentieth century.

"Does it really have ten chimneys?"

He cast a bemused look my way. Bemused. Had I ever used that word?

But already I was different. Relaxed; happy.

"You have heard of Lunt and Fontanne, right?" he asked. And then, "Are you a theater person at all?" He arched an eyebrow, because no, I wasn't a theater person, though in that moment I wanted to be.

The sky was nearly dark, fireflies flashing, the murmur of conversation filling the air. "My closest friend growing up was—is—an actress." I was surprised at how easily the words slipped out, though as soon as I said them, I felt the night shift, memories kaleidoscoping: Kelly sitting on the beach, knees to her chest, practicing lines for Ophelia, or Kelly waving a pair of Broadway tickets, a Christmas gift from her parents, and of course she was taking me! Kelly in Audrey Hepburn sunglasses and red lipstick; Kelly flopping dramatically onto her bed, clutching the acceptance letter from Yale to her chest. No wonder Ten Chimneys had sounded familiar. She would have known who Lunt and Fontanne were, had probably mentioned them, mentioned Ten Chimneys. In another life, I would have phoned her the minute I got home and told her, I met this guy and you'll never guess where he works. Except that made no sense because in the life where Kelly had been my friend, I was married to her older brother.

"I need a moratorium on my job, don't I?" Erik said. "I'm sorry. I start talking about Ten Chimneys and—"

"No, no. It's fascinating." And it was. Noël Coward was such good friends with Alfred and Lynn, he'd had his own bedroom at Ten Chimneys; Katharine Hepburn used to visit, Helen Hayes, Laurence Olivier.

"We call him Larry around the office." Erik leaned forward and stage- whispered, "Vivien used to visit him during breaks in the filming of Gone with the Wind. He was still married."

 

"Vivien Leigh?" I whispered back. "Here?"

"It's wild, isn't it? All those people in this little town no one's heard of."