Chapter 8 — David Tells Margaret What Happened After Riverton
During dinner, Margaret and David spoke quietly.
Not like former lovers in a movie.
Like two adults comparing two completely different versions of the same weekend.
David had driven toward Seattle believing Margaret had rejected him.
He nearly turned around twice.
“Why didn’t you?” Margaret asked.
David looked toward Robert.
Then answered honestly.
“Pride.”
Robert’s interference started the problem.
But David did not pretend every decision afterward belonged to Robert.
“I could have called you directly from the road.”
Margaret nodded.
“I could have found another way to contact you in Seattle.”
“You tried.”
“Not very hard.”
Both had been hurt.
Both became stubborn.
David assumed that if Margaret wanted him, she would find him.
Margaret assumed that if David regretted leaving, he would call.
Neither did enough.
Robert created the first false story.
But years of silence helped it survive.
“Did you ever come back to Riverton?” Margaret asked.
David nodded.
Once.
Five years later.
He attended a former coworker’s funeral.
Someone told him Margaret had married Peter.
“That was when I stopped wondering whether I should contact you.”
Margaret nodded.
“Probably the right decision by then.”
“I thought so.”
There was no bitterness.
Peter had been a good husband.
Laura had been a good wife to David.
Those marriages were not mistakes created by Robert’s lie.
They were real lives that came afterward.
Margaret looked toward David.
“I don’t want tonight to become a story where everyone says we were supposed to be together all along.”
David smiled.
“Good. Because Laura would haunt me.”
Margaret laughed.
It was the first easy moment between them.
“Peter probably would too.”
They didn’t need to recover an abandoned romance.
They needed to recover the truth about how it ended.
Those were different things.