Read Online Where We Belong by Emily Giffin - Free Book Online Page A

ask, dying to know where her journey began, craving a visual of her neighborhood, her house, her bedroom. I have never been this greedy for information—not even at the start of a relationship when you’re eager, even desperate, to know everything about someone. In fact, it occurs to me that staring at her face, waiting for her to speak, feels a little bit like falling in love. There is intrigue and affection, with a narcissistic, needy ingredient.
    “I took a bus,” she says, as I notice a complete lack of an accent. At least there is nothing in her voice that I can detect or trace to a particular geography. “Greyhound.”
    “Oh,” I say, horrified, remembering the story of the man who decapitated his seatmate on a Greyhound bus.
    “Yeah. It was sort of gross. But it got me here.”
    I nod and say, “And where do you live?”
    “St. Louis.”
    “Is that where you’re from? Originally?”
    “Well. Originally I’m from Chicago,” she says, flashing me a pointed look. “But yeah, I’ve lived my whole life in St. Louis. In the same house.”
    I digest this with the eerie memory of my first and only trip to St. Louis, about ten years ago, when Kirby would have been seven or eight. I went there for a friend’s wedding, and after the ceremony, rather than heading straight to the reception, I went for a walk alone, meandering around the blocks surrounding the church. I distinctly remember the damp chill of the air, the steel-gray of the sky, and the thin, low-hanging clouds, all of which compounded the loneliness that comes with attending a wedding solo. I remember the sound of my heels crunching in the scattered remains of late fall leaves and the look of the modest brick bungalows with their gambrel roofs, stained-glass windows, and tidy, manicured yards. House after cozy house, many with American flags, window boxes filled with flowers, and metal screen doors adorned with initials. Most of all I remember turning the corner back toward the church parking lot and being filled with an intense pang, almost a longing for her, along with the chilling sense that she was nearby. Looking back, it seems an unlikely, eerie premonition—but then I realize that the feeling wasn’t at all unusual. I got it almost any time I was in a new setting, with strangers, and sometimes even in my own neighborhood. Yet I still confide the story now, telling her of the coincidence.
    She looks skeptical but humors me. “Where was the wedding, exactly? What part of town?”
    “I don’t recall,” I tell her. “It was a big Catholic church. Huge. Stone. Stained glass. St. Joseph’s? Or Mary’s, maybe?”
    She says, “That really doesn’t narrow it down.”
    Her reply isn’t impolite, but from it, I glean that she is not only smart but capable of being a smartass.
    “No. I guess it doesn’t,” I say.
    “But it could have been in my neighborhood,” she says, softening slightly. “I live in South St. Louis. Near St. Gabriel the Archangel. That’s our parish. Could the wedding have been there?”
    “Maybe,” I say, picturing her skipping along the sidewalk in a gaggle of girls, clad in navy and white Catholic-school girl uniforms. Crisp, pleated plaid skirts and woolen cable knee socks. On the way to a soda shop. One of them daring the others to smoke a cigarette that Kirby refuses.
    She holds my gaze then hesitates, taking a deep breath. “Well, guess what?”
    “What?” I ask.
    “Even though you had me in Chicago … I had a feeling you lived in New York.” She shrugs as if this admission embarrasses her as I wonder what she knows about me. Has she seen any of the few press photos of me at red-carpet events? Or maybe even the blurb with Peter from Page Six?
    “Yes,” I say. “I’ve lived here a few years. I work in television—so it’s sort of here or L.A.”
    She looks surprised—which in turn surprises me. “Television? Are you an actress?”
    “No. I’m a producer.”
    “Of movies?”
    “No. Television.