Homecoming by Belva Plain

if you did not especially want to do it. Ellen really did not want to; no one had moved her deeply, as you were supposed to be moved; she wondered whether possibly no one ever would.
    Kevin was gentle, yet not too gentle. He thought she was absolutely beautiful, absolutely wonderful, and told her so, over and over. Then he took her home in a taxi, saw her to the door, kissed her, and the next day sent her a magnificent bouquet of two dozen roses.
    Maybe the roses were really too obvious. If I were a parent, she thought, I would put two and two together. But her mother had just had another chemotherapy treatment and was too miserable to notice anything, while her father, sheguessed, was so taken with Kevin Clark’s person and status that he would question nothing. Anyway, there was nothing he could do about the situation, and undoubtedly he knew it.
    You grow quickly attached to a person who glorifies you, provided, naturally, that the person is otherwise attractive. When she was back at college Kevin’s nightly telephone calls gave her something to anticipate all day and something to look back upon with a sense of fulfillment. As often as possible she now went home for weekends, which was something she had never done before. Once Kevin drove up for a weekend, and they spent a few hours at a motel, which was also something she had never done before.
    “Ellen’s a simple girl,” said those who knew her best. “She has always had very few wants.”
    Now suddenly she wanted life to be lavish, not in any material sense, but in the amorous and sensual. Reliving evenings that her parents assumed were being spent at the theater or similar places, she bought expensive underwear and perfume. She knew she was envied, except perhaps by her radical feminist friends.
    She went through finals, did very well, and wasgraduated in May. She had invited Kevin because he said he wanted to come, so there he stood with her parents and Gran, among the crowd that saw her go past with the robed academic procession. Everyone knew, yet properly, no one ventured a word about what was coming next.
    It came in Kevin’s apartment later that week. On the twenty-second floor she was looking out at the view, the spread and sparkle across the Hudson, north to the bridge that spanned it and south toward the tip of the island, where it met the bay.
    “It seems,” she murmured, “that in this city, the first thing people want in an apartment, if they can afford it, is a view.”
    “That depends. This has been nice for me, but for the long pull I like the kind of place where you live, lower down and near the park, so our children could play there, the way you did.”
    She turned about. This was the greatest moment in her life, she thought. Why didn’t she cry or feel something incredible? She felt merely pleased, quite pleased. But it was, after all, no surprise. She threw her arms around him, and they kissed, a very long kiss.
    “I take it the answer is yes. And with that in mind I came prepared. Here it is.”
    “It,” of course, was the brilliant ring, the family ring that had been kept for Kevin’s bride. Now everything was sealed, sealed and soon to be signed. They would have to wait not quite a year until he should be established in Paris. In the meanwhile he would have to be traveling back and forth for the firm to other parts of Europe. And in the meanwhile there was great rejoicing. His parents arrived from Ohio, were invited to a celebration dinner, and to another one at Gran’s place in the country. There were champagne and flowers; there were toasts. A lucky man, Kevin was. A lucky woman, Ellen was.
    She was very well aware of all that on the day she walked home after the encounter in the gallery on Fifty-seventh Street.
    Her mother was resting on the sofa in the library. Almost every afternoon during this past year she rested. And still, not wanting to admit the extent of her illness, she pretended surprise at herself. Her apology hurt