Transpontine.

The night of Princess Diana’s funeral I cried silent tears, thankful that in the cover of darkness he could not see my humiliation. Thankful that under the cover of twin-sized linens he was too distracted to notice my silent tears.

Scarcely a month prior I had been in a potentially fatal accident, had hydroplaned across three lanes of nearly eighty-miles-per-hour traffic, had wrapped my tiny, two-door automobile neatly around a sturdy evergreen. Curiously alternating family vacations kept us out of touch that month, and only in an unexpected crossing of paths did he learn that he had nearly lost me. And only on the night of Princess Diana’s funeral did I learn that I had already lost him.

“I took Lindsay out to dinner,” he told me in a tone of slight exasperation. “I was supposed to show her a good time so I took her out to dinner,” he told me in the tone of one who doth protest too much. “The night Princess Diana died, actually,” he told me with the tone one uses in the presence of death.

My gaze swept from his delicate hazel eyes to the Cobb salad in front of me, concentrating my focus on a sliver of avocado, concentrating on focusing my suddenly scattered thoughts. Yet all I could muster was a meek, “But we haven’t even gone out to dinner yet,” followed by the silence that accompanies the end of a fairy tale. Followed by a quiet, “I told Alex I’d watch the funeral with her tonight.” Followed by a sturdier, “I’m sure you had a lovely time.”

And later I cried tears of humiliation and sorrow under cover of darkness. The night of Princess Diana’s funeral I mourned the death of happily ever after.