The Life Intended

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To anyone who has ever loved and lost.

And to the love of my life, Jason.

I can’t imagine a world without you.

“Music is the space between the notes.”

—FRENCH COMPOSER CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862–1918)

One

I
t was 11:04 when Patrick walked through the door that final night almost a dozen years ago.

I remember the numbers glowing red and angry on the digital clock by our bed, the sound of his key turning in the lock. I remember his sheepish expression, the way his five o’clock shadow had bloomed into an almost-beard, the way his shirt looked rumpled as he stood in the doorway. I remember the way he said my name,
Kate,
like it was an apology and a greeting all in one.

I’d been listening to Sister Hazel’s
Fortress,
my favorite album at the time, as I waited for him to come home. “Champagne High,” the fourth track on the CD, was playing, and just before he walked in, I was mouthing the lyrics, thinking to myself how “the million hours that we were” was such a poetic way to describe a life together.

Patrick and I were just four months into our marriage, and I couldn’t imagine a day when we’d no longer be with each other. I was twenty-eight then, Patrick twenty-nine, and the years seemed to stretch before us into an endless horizon. I remember reflecting that a million hours—just over a hundred years—didn’t sound like enough time.

But as it turned out, our hours together were almost up. The number that defined us in the end was only fifteen thousand and nine.

That was the number of hours that had passed since we’d met at a New Year’s Eve party on the last night of 2000, the number of hours we’d spent knowing we’d found our soul mates, the number of hours we’d spent thinking we had it all. But fifteen thousand and nine isn’t even close to a million.

“Honey, I am so, so sorry.” Patrick was all apologies as he fumbled his way into the bedroom, where I sat on top of our comforter, knees pulled up to my chest, checking my watch pointedly. The relief that he was home safely was being quickly supplanted by annoyance for making me worry.

“You didn’t call.” I knew I sounded petulant, but I didn’t care. We had made each other a promise the year before, after my uncle had been killed in a hunting accident, that we’d always make an effort to let each other know when we were going to be late. My aunt had been blissfully unaware of her husband’s death for nearly twenty hours, which had horrified Patrick and me.

“I just got caught up in something,” Patrick said, averting his gaze. His thick black hair was mussed and his green eyes were full of concern when he finally looked back at me.

I glanced at the phone on our bedside table, the phone that had been silent all night. “You were stuck at the office?” I asked. It wouldn’t have been the first time. Patrick was a risk management consultant for a firm in Midtown. He was young, hungry, one of those people who would always pitch in if there was extra work to be done. I loved that about him.

“No, Katielee,” he said, using the affectionate nickname he’d been calling me since the night we met, when he’d mistaken my maiden name, Kate Beale, as I shouted it above the din of the
crowd. “My beautiful Katielee,” he murmured as he crossed the room and sat down beside me on the bed. The back of his right hand grazed my left thigh, and I slowly unfolded my legs, melting into him. He inched toward me and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. He smelled like cologne and smoke. “I was with Candice,” he said into my hair. “She had something important she needed to tell me.”

I pulled away from him and scrambled out of bed. “
Candice?
You were with Candice? Until eleven?”

Candice Belazar was the girl he’d dated just before me, a bartender at a smoky dive in Midtown. It had been a short-term fling and they’d broken up two months before we met, but she’d been a thorn in my side as long as I’d known him. “It was just a physical thing,” he’d tried to explain the first time he told me about her. “I was in a rut, and she was there. I got out of it as soon as I realized how wrong we were for each other.” But that hadn’t been much comfort.

We’d run into Candice once at a restaurant in Little Italy, and having a face to put with the name only made things worse. She was several inches taller than me, with huge, obviously fake breasts, stringy bleached blond hair, and hollow eyes. She had smirked as she looked me up and down, and I’d heard her stage-whisper to her friend that Patrick apparently couldn’t handle a real woman anymore.

“Kate, honey, nothing happened,” Patrick said quickly, reaching for me. “I would never do anything to hurt you.”

“Then why didn’t you call?”

“I’m so sorry.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “There’s no excuse. But I would never, ever cheat on you. Ever. You know that.” His voice caught at the end of his sentence, but his eyes were as guileless as ever. I felt my shoulders relax a little as some of my indignation rolled away.

“Whatever,” I huffed, because I couldn’t think of a better response. I knew he was telling the truth, but the thought of waiting at home while he sat in a bar with his ex-girlfriend still stung. I wasn’t going to tell him it was okay, because it wasn’t.

“I’m totally wrong here,” he said, spreading his palms in a mea culpa. “But it was a heavy conversation, and I didn’t feel like I could walk away to make a phone call.”

“Yes, heaven forbid you offend Candice,” I muttered.

“Kate . . .” Patrick’s voice trailed off.

“I’m going to bed.” I knew I was supposed to soften, to tell him it was all right. But I couldn’t bring myself to.

“Don’t you want to talk about this?” he asked.

“No.”

Patrick sighed. “Kate, I’ll explain everything tomorrow.”

I rolled my eyes, stormed into the bathroom, and slammed the door behind me. I blinked at my reflection in the mirror, wondering how, nearly two years after they’d broken up, Candice still managed to hold some kind of power over my husband.

But as I climbed into bed ten minutes later, I could feel myself thawing a little. After all, Patrick had told me right away where he’d been. I knew he was being honest. And besides, he’d chosen me, and deep down, I knew that he would choose me every day for the rest of our lives. As I pulled the sheets over me, my anger receded in slow, steady waves.

I was already half asleep when Patrick came to bed. I turned away from him, facing the wall, and after a moment, I felt his arms encircle me. He moved closer, pressing into my back, entwining his legs with mine.

I thought for a moment about pulling away, but it was Patrick, my Patrick. He would tell me in the morning what had
happened, and I would understand. So after a pause, I relaxed into his warmth.

“You know I’d never hurt you, Katielee,” he whispered. “Ever. In a million years. Nothing happened.”

I closed my eyes and breathed in. “I know.”

Patrick kissed the hollow beneath my left ear, sending a shiver up my spine. “I knew before I met you—” he murmured, just as I began to drift off to sleep.

I smiled. “—that I was meant to be yours,” I replied. It was the way we always said
I love you,
our own special language.

I knew I’d feel that way for the rest of our lives.

S
unlight streamed into the bedroom along with the scents of coffee and bacon when I awoke the next morning. I blinked and rolled over to look at the clock. It was 6:47, and Patrick was already up, making me breakfast. I knew it was his version of an apology, but in truth, he was already forgiven.

“Morning,” I said, covering a yawn as I walked into the kitchen a few minutes later. Patrick turned around holding a spatula, and I began to laugh. He was wearing a yellow
KISS THE CHEF
apron over his
I LOVE NY
boxers and white T-shirt. His feet were bare, his hair sleep tousled.

“
Le chef
eez at your service,” he said in an exaggerated French accent, which made me laugh again. “Sit, sit,” he said, gesturing toward our tiny kitchen table with his spatula. “Breakfast is served, madame.”

He set two plates of scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, and toast with strawberry jam on the table with a flourish. A moment later, he returned with two steaming cups of coffee, already lightened with cream and sugar, and sat down beside me.

“You didn’t have to cook, honey,” I said with a smile.

“
Mais oui.
”
He kissed me on the cheek. “Nothing but the best for my girl.”

I took a bite of my eggs and looked up to see him watching me, his gaze intense. “What?” I asked, my mouth still full.

“There’s no excuse for me not calling last night,” he said, his words tumbling out. “I feel terrible. I didn’t mean to make you worry.”

I take a sip of my coffee, then I draw a deep breath. “It’s okay,” I said.

Relief spread across his features like a sunrise. “You forgive me?”

“I know I overreacted.”

“No, you didn’t,” he said quickly. He took a bite of his bacon, and I watch his strong jaw work as he chewed. “Look, there’s something I’d really like to talk to you about,” he said. He blinked a few times, and his expression made me suddenly uneasy. He seemed almost nervous. “Can I take you to dinner tonight? The restaurant at the Sherry-Netherland, maybe? I know you love that place.”

I smiled. “Sounds great.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Patrick asked a moment later, as I crunched on a piece of bacon.

I looked up. “What?”

He pulled his apron taut and turned to face me. “It says Kiss the Chef.” He smiled at me, and when I met his eye, he winked. “And it’s only polite to follow apron instructions.”

I laughed. “Is that right?”

“It’s one of the laws of kitchenocracies around the world.”

“Kitchenocracies?”

“Of course. Sovereign kitchen nations. Like this one.”

“I see,” I said quite solemnly. “Well, I don’t want to violate any laws, sir.”

“It’s probably in your best interest to just follow along, then.” He smiled at me, stood, and held out his arms.

I laughed and got up. He bent his head, I stood on tiptoe, and our lips met.

“Good enough?” I whispered after a moment as he wrapped his arms around me, folding me in.

“Not even close,” he murmured back. Then he was kissing me again, parting my lips gently with his tongue.

We made love that morning, quickly, urgently, drinking each other in. Then I cleaned up our breakfast dishes while he showered and dressed for work.

“Looking good!” I marveled with a whistle as he reemerged into the kitchen with freshly washed hair, charcoal pants, a crisp blue shirt, and a striped gray tie.

“I didn’t think the apron and boxers would cut it at the big meeting I have this morning,” he said, “although—and I don’t want to brag here—I
do
have some seriously sexy legs.”

I laughed and stood on tiptoe to kiss him good-bye. “Good luck with the clients.”

“Who needs luck?” he asked with a crooked, dimpled smile. “I have the greatest wife in the world. Life is good.”

“Life is good,” I agreed. I kissed him again, and this time, it was Patrick who pulled away too soon.

When I opened my eyes, he was holding up a silver dollar from his grandfather’s old collection. “Listen, would you hang on to this for me until tonight?” he asked.

I took it with a nod. “What’s this one for?” Patrick had a tradition of tossing a silver dollar somewhere nearby whenever something good happened to him.
You have to pass the good luck on,
he always used to say.
That way, someone else gets to make a wish.
We’d thrown a silver dollar into Central Park the day I’d gotten into graduate school, another into the fountain outside
City Hall when Patrick got a big promotion last year, and a third into the ocean near his parents’ house on Long Island after we got married in the spring. “Must be something big,” I added.

“It is,” he promised. “You’ll see. I’ll tell you at dinner. We can throw it into the Pulitzer Fountain after we eat. And Katielee?”

“Yeah?”

He stood in the doorway and stared at me for a long moment. “I knew before I met you—” he finally said, his voice soft.

My heart fluttered. “—that I was meant to be yours.”