Friday, September 19

Life shouldn’t be this complicated. That’s what Hilary Kane was thinking as she took another sip of overpriced red wine at the bar at Jur-Ne, a pretentiously slick lounge in the newer Ritz-Carlton Hotel in downtown Boston. Well, she was thinking of that and exactly what had made it so complicated.

On either side of her, two coworkers, Amanda and Erica, prattled on about the energy and emotions that go into raising only mildly maladjusted kids. Men in suits coming from their jobs with mutual fund companies and white-shoe law firms jostled past for much-needed drinks. The too-cool bartenders were taking their time serving $13 Dirty Martinis.

None of it had the slightest effect on Hilary, who continued to sip her wine at a rapid clip and stare out the movie screen — size windows at the fading light of the city streetscape.

She had become a bad cliché, she told herself, queuing up the scene yet again in the videocam of her mind. She had been in Phoenix the week before on a rare business trip, a legal conference that her boss had sent her to. She had called her fiancé, Chuck, at 11:00 P.M., Boston time, eight o’clock her time, to wish him good night. She had said she’d see him when she arrived home the next evening, Saturday, his birthday. They’d have a nice dinner at a restaurant where she had already made a reservation. She didn’t tell him that she planned a morning surprise.

And that’s what she did. A few hours after her call, she climbed aboard the redeye flight from Sky Harbor International to Logan Airport. She took a cab to their Beacon Hill apartment. As she walked into the building foyer with her luggage in her hand, she had this vision that she’d find him standing before the bathroom mirror, shaving, the stereo playing Clapton or maybe B. B. King. She could picture the wide grin that would break out across his handsome face, the deep, familiar hug, the I-missed-yous and the happy birthdays as the two tumbled into their king-size bed.