Chapter 3
So he made a choice.
Three days.
He would disappear for three days.
Then he would go home and face everything.
Three days.
That was the promise Adrian made to himself.
He lasted until the second night before hunger became stronger than pride.
By then, Boston had turned viciously cold.
The rain had stopped, but the wind cut between the buildings like a blade. Adrian had spent most of the day walking because sitting still made the cold worse. His white dress shirt had dried into a wrinkled gray mess, his tuxedo pants were stained at the knees, and one of his shoes had begun separating at the sole.
No one looking at him would have guessed that forty-eight hours earlier, eight hundred guests had been waiting to watch him marry beneath a ceiling covered in imported white orchids.
That evening, Adrian found shelter beneath the awning of a closed laundromat.
Across the street stood a tiny diner.
Warm yellow light glowed through its windows.
He could see people eating soup.
Coffee steamed from ceramic mugs.
A waitress carried a plate of eggs past the window.
Adrian’s stomach twisted so painfully that he looked away.
He had gone almost two days on water and half a granola bar a stranger had abandoned on a park bench.
Then the diner door opened.
A woman stepped outside carrying a paper bag.
She was perhaps thirty-two.
Her brown hair was pulled into a loose ponytail, and she wore faded jeans, old sneakers, and a dark green coat with a broken zipper.
She stopped when she noticed him.
Adrian lowered his eyes.
He had learned something during the previous forty-eight hours.
Eye contact made people uncomfortable.
If he looked at them, they sometimes crossed the street.
The woman didn’t.
She walked toward him.
“Are you hungry?”
Adrian almost said no.
Pride was a strange thing.
Even when everything else had been stripped away, pride remained.
Then his stomach answered for him.
“Yes.”
She looked at the paper bag in her hands.
For a moment, she hesitated.
Then she held it out.
“Here.”
Adrian stared at it.
“What is it?”
“Chicken soup, bread, and half a turkey sandwich.”
“You bought it for me?”
“No.”
She smiled faintly.
“I bought it for myself.”
That made him look up.
“Then keep it.”
“I asked if you were hungry.”
“And I said yes.”
“Then take it.”
“What will you eat?”