The Last Time They Met by Anita Shreve

romantic, now slept alone in that very bed and couldn’t imagine wanting to destroy it.
    — Why did you do it?
Thomas asked.
    He was looking resolutely toward the skyline of the northern city. He would have been wanting to ask this question for years. Twenty-five of them, to be precise.
    She could not, at first, answer him. They watched together a movie of pleasure boats and tankers going into port.
    — What difference did it make,
she asked.
In the end?
    He looked at her sharply.
We might have worked it out.
    — How, exactly?
    — Maybe with time, we’d have found a way.
    — You delude yourself.
    — But the way it happened,
he said.
You left no possibility.
Perhaps he felt his daughter’s death entitled him to be accusatory, she thought.
    — I was drunk,
she said. She who did not normally look for excuses.
    — Well, yes,
he said.
But it was more than that. You meant to hurt.
    — Who?
she asked sharply.
Myself? Regina?
    — Regina, certainly.
    But she hadn’t meant to hurt; she’d meant only to convey what seemed like some great truth, as cosmic in its way as the laughter that would shake her years later. That she should have been so appallingly cruel had always shocked her.
    — It was the most selfish moment of my life, Thomas. I can only think I must have wanted it over. All of it.
    — Oh, Linda,
he said.
Of course, I’m just as guilty as you. More so.
    Her face burned with the memory of that terrible evening.
It’s hard to believe that anything could have meant so much,
she said.
    She’d been drinking scotch straight up. Against a wall, Peter had stood, not comprehending at first what the fuss was for, but knowing something irretrievable had been said. He’d seemed a minor player then, only a witness to a larger drama. That, too, had been unforgivable on her part. Not to have seen how shamed he’d been. How good he’d been not to make himself the point. Until later that night, in the privacy of their hotel room, when he’d wept for her betrayal, so absolute, so public. And she’d sat mute beside him, feeling only terror that she’d lost her lover.
    It was better not to remember.
    — A comedic writer would make of it a farce,
Thomas said.
The confessions in different rooms, and so on.
    — The comedic writer might not be a Catholic,
she said.
    ----
    They negotiated a path that ran between low scrub. The cottages were boarded up, waiting for summer owners to return. No cars were allowed on the island, and she wondered how such houses were built. Did walls and tiles and chimneys come across by boat?
    — Islands always remind me of the Isles of Shoals,
Thomas said.
A hellish place.
    It was a moment before she remembered and understood. The realization stopped her on the path.
    He turned to see where she had got to.
It doesn’t matter. I’ve been back there any number of times.
    It was a kind of bravery, she thought, the ability to look the worst in the face. Would there be a grave, a marker? How could such a sight be borne?
    — What happened to Regina?
she asked when they had walked on.
    — She’s in Auckland now, and has two children.
    — Auckland, New Zealand?
    — We write occasionally. She works for a pharmaceutical company.
    The difference in air pressure between the disastrous and the mundane was making Linda light-headed.
    — Her husband owns a sheep farm,
Thomas added.
    — Not permanently scarred, then.
    Thomas began to roll his shirtsleeves.
Well, who would know?
    They stopped at a small white house with bright blue shutters that had been turned into a teahouse for those who had made the journey on foot across the island. Linda, surprised that she and Thomas had walked as far as they had, was perspiring inside her silk-like blouse, its synthetic material seeming considerably less clever a purchase in the unseasonable heat. She untucked the blouse and let it billow over her jeans. She felt a coolish breeze stir around her midriff. Her hair was sticky at the back of her neck, and she