The Truant Husband

A porcelain-idyll of connubial bliss shatters when Edwardian hearth-spirit Billington, draped in lace patience, indulges every caprice of her genial mate Ryan—an uxorious Peter Pan cushioned against the abrasions of adult consequence. Into this perfumed equilibrium drifts the perfume of yesteryear: Hamilton, the erstwhile inamorato whose glance still smolders like a forgotten gas-jet. Under the pretext of a business jaunt, Ryan slips the matrimonial leash and boards a lake-steamer of recollection, steering toward a rendezvous where gilt-edged memories blur into present-tense desire. Blythe, the sardonic confidante, hovers at the margins, dispensing flapper wisdom sharp as a flapper’s bobbed fringe. Terhune’s scenario—equal parts moral fable and gossamer reverie—lets the lovers re-enact their private myth against autumnal resorts and shuttered dance-halls, only to confront the entropy that lurks inside every nostalgia. The final epiphany lands like cold rain on smoldering coals: yesterday’s champagne has lost its effervescence; the only durable vintage is the quotidian kindness already waiting at home.