Page 25 of Love Conquers All

The other Salt Sisters rushed to apologize, too. Sylvie was stricken. She didn’t come from a world where apologies were immediate like this. She put down her glass of wine and looked Hilary in the eye again. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I’m not used to talking to people about myself. Usually, I’m the journalist, interviewing somebody else rather than the other way around.”

“That makes total sense,” Hilary said.

There was a moment of silence. Sylvie picked up a slab of cheese and put it on her tongue, then closed her eyes immediately, overwhelmed with the nutty and complex flavors.

“Oh my goodness,” she said, surprising herself. “That’s the best cheese I’ve ever had.”

Hilary laughed, and the other Salt Sisters joined in. There was an aura of goodwill. Sylvie relaxed into it.

“Tell me about yourselves,” Sylvie asked as a peace offering.

She needed to feel safe with them.

They went one after another, explaining to Sylvie the devastations they’d gone through and how they’d found themselves on the other side. Many of their ex-husbands had done horrible things, or were dead, or had both done horrible things and also died, but many of them had met men who’d made them fall back in love again, men who’d repaired the complex wounds in their hearts and helped them move forward.

“But we also have each other to thank for that,” Hilary said.

“I would have been nothing without you guys,” Rose affirmed. “Hilary even let me live with her for a little while. About a million years ago.”

“Most everyone lives at Hilary’s at one time or another,” Stella said.

Hilary tilted her head knowingly. “You’re staying at that little hotel downtown?”

“Uh-oh. Here we go!” Rose teased.

Sylvie laughed and waved her hand. “I can always stay at my dad’s inn or the house next door.”

“Both places are filled with bad memories and dust,” Hilary said. “If you want a place to crash, you better call me. I have plenty of room.”

“It’s like heaven on earth,” Rose said. “Do yourself a favor.”

Sometime midway through Sylvie’s second glass of wine, she found herself telling the Salt Sisters about Mike. It felt funny to bring him up first, rather than her father, but it also felt easier, like something more easily digested.

“We were supposed to go out for drinks to celebrate this silly award I’m getting,” she said. “He said he’d make reservations, the whole thing. I went out to meet him and found that he didn’t make reservations like he had said. So I sit around, waiting like an idiot. That’s when I got the call about my dad, by the way.”

“No!” Hilary smacked her hands over her mouth.

“Yes.” Sylvie sighed. “I went out to hail a cab, and Mike runs up to me. He’s like, we need to talk. I can barely think straight. So we go back to my place. During the entire cab ride, I thought I was going to throw up. When we get upstairs, he decides to pour me a glass of wine and ask me if I’m all right. I still don’t know what’s going on! Of course, I’m not all right! So then, he breaks down. Apparently, while I was in Thailand, working…”

“Saving the planet, more like!” Rose interjected.

“Ha. Maybe. But apparently, around then, he ran into an old fling from college,” Sylvie said.

“No!” Hilary cried.

“They started hanging out, going for drinks, whatever. He said he didn’t think it was a big deal. They walked down memory lane. Who doesn’t like to do that? But when he came out to visitme in Thailand, he apparently couldn’t stop thinking about her. He started to really think that maybe she was the one he was supposed to be with. That all that time we were together didn’t mean anything at all. The weird thing about this is, of course, that during the entire trip to Thailand, we were talking about our future together. We were talking about moving in together.”

“That horrible man,” Hilary hissed.

“Why do they feel the need to lie like that?” Tina demanded.

“You’re going to need another glass of wine,” Stella pointed out.

Sylvie felt laughter bubbling through her. “The entire time he was telling me this, all I could think about was my father and how he’d been dying for months and had never bothered to tell me. How angry I was at him! And then Mike gathered up his things and left. I guess I’ll never see him again.”

“Good riddance,” Rose said.

“He showed you who he was, once and for all,” Tina said.

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