by Hilary Duff
“No. There’s just one for Suzanne.”
I followed his gaze and saw Suzanne sitting at the kitchen table, a huge grin on her face. “Morning, Clea,” she chirped. Then she turned back to Ben. “Come on . . . you said you knew how to flip it!”
Ben slipped instantly back into his coat of charm, and carefully maneuvered the pancake on the skillet. “You ready for this?”
“Yes! Yes! Just do it already!” Suzanne cried.
Ben gave her an impish look and she blushed, darting her eyes to me. I pretended I hadn’t noticed.
“One . . . two . . . three!” Ben cried, flicking the pancake into the air with a flourish. It flipped in midair, and he caught it expertly on the skillet. “YES!”
Suzanne laughed. “I thought you said you were a master at this!”
“Nope, first flipped flapjack.”
“And you did it,” Suzanne said.
“What can I say? You bring me luck.”
Suzanne glowed.
“Are you done in there?” Piri’s voice roared from the laundry room.
“Just about, Piri!” Ben assured her.
Piri harrumphed.
“Thank you!” Ben added.
“Piri wasn’t very excited about Ben using the kitchen,” Suzanne explained to me. “But he charmed her into it.”
“I’m sure,” I said. “He’s quite the charmer.”
I didn’t want to stay in the kitchen anymore. It just felt toxic. I ducked into the pantry to see if there was anything I could grab and go.
I was impressed that Ben had convinced Piri to let him cook anything in her kitchen. She was clear about the fact that it was her realm, and swore the pots, stove, and oven responded to her specific touch and the tone of voice she used when she spoke to them, which she often did. Of course, I usually heard her cursing at them in Hungarian, so it’s possible that cooking implements respond best to tough love. Either way, it was a very rare occurrence that Piri would cede her realm to anyone. I had a feeling it was more Suzanne’s no-nonsense entitlement than Ben’s charm that swayed her.
I found a Clif Bar and a bottled water, and headed out, waving a good-bye over my shoulder. As I went, I heard Ben presenting the finished meal to Suzanne. “A delicate balance of cakey, syrupy goodness, cut perfectly with the salted tang of the bacon . . .”
Suzanne’s giggle was like nails on a blackboard. I wondered if she’d eat either the pancake or the bacon. From what I’d seen, her diet was 90 percent protein shakes and Perrier.
Going out was a great choice. I felt refreshed and alive. Petra had said she’d come to me. When she did, I’d have more clues. In the meantime, I’d do what I could on my own.
I went for a hike in the woods behind my property, snapping photos. I took some time over a family of deer I found half hidden among the trees. The doe looked lovingly at her mate, and they both stuck closely to their fawn. It was beautiful, but it hurt to see.
It was early, but the weather was already hot and humid, and when I came back two hours later, I was ravenous and ready for a shower. Piri was back in her kitchen, grumbling in Hungarian to the cookware, and made me an omelet and a pot of tea, which I took up to my room on a tray.
I made myself shower before I checked my pictures. I’d decided that if I was truly going to handle things on my own, I had to keep my emotions in check and act logically. First shower, then pictures, then research.
I found Sage quickly this time. He was in the third picture I enlarged, lying in the grass far, far in the background of a shot I’d taken of a butterfly.
He was alive. That was enough to keep me going.
I printed the picture and taped it to the wall by my computer, then set to work.
I didn’t know it then, but this would be my routine for the next several days.
Petra didn’t come; Amelia didn’t come.
I tried not to let it get to me. I started each day by finding Sage in a picture, so I knew he was okay . . . or at least alive. In the meantime, I got creative about my search for the New England inn. From my time as a freelance photojournalist, I had a ton of magazine contacts, many from travel-oriented publications. I approached them as myself this time, not Alyssa Grande, and sent them detailed descriptions of where I’d been. I used Photoshop to re-create a picture of both the room and the pasture I’d seen. I said it was a place I went on vacation with my parents several years ago, and while Mom and I wanted to go back, we couldn’t remember the name. Involving my mother in the story was vital—people wanted to fulfill a request for Senator Weston, and they acted much faster than they would have if it had just come from me. Annoying, I know.
Within a day of sending out my pictures, I had a list of ten places that my group of travel editors thought I was showing them. Four were in Vermont, three in New Hampshire, and three in Maine. While I knew there was no guarantee any of them was the right one, I felt good about the possibility. I made phone calls to see if I could suss out anything unusual about any of them—I couldn’t—and decided that if I didn’t have any more dreams, I’d make use of the CV’s military talents and have Sloane send out reconnaissance groups to each of the hotels. I felt uneasy about it, since it meant the CV might find Sage before me, and I had no guarantee that they’d give me a chance to escape with him, but Sloane had given me her word. I’d have to trust her.
The same night I decided that . . . I finally dreamed.
I’d cozied into bed with Epidemiological Similarities Between Appendicitis and Diverticulitis Suggesting a Common Underlying Pathogenesis, and made it about three pages in before my eyes slid closed.
I heard the music before I opened my eyes, and at first I thought I was having a flashback to my life as Delia, the doomed flapper I was in the 1920s. The song was a slow, jazzy riff on “It Had to Be You,” one of the songs Delia would sing in the speakeasy while Sage played piano. It was a favorite of theirs, and I smiled. I expected to open my eyes and find myself lounging on the baby grand, giving Sage a secret smile to show I was singing just for him, not for the crowd of admirers in the audience, and certainly not for Eddie, the boyfriend who owned both me and the bulk of Chicago . . . and who was destined to put two bullets into the heads of both Sage and Delia, killing her—me—instantly.
But this moment—me as Delia singing and sneaking secret looks to Sage—happened long before that, and I was eager to relive it. I already had a knowing smile on my face when I opened my eyes . . .
. . . but then my heart stopped.
I might as well have been hit by two bullets in the head.
Not two feet away from me, Sage and Lila sat on a thick bearskin carpet, lit by the glow of a roaring fire in a massive stone hearth.
They were kissing, wrapped tightly together, Lila’s hands clutching Sage’s shirtless back, his hands embedded in her loose hair, slowly but strongly pulling her mouth even closer to his. . . .
“Don’t think I like showing you this,” Petra’s voice whispered in my ear, “but you deserve to know the truth.”
I didn’t know if she was in the room with me. I didn’t look. I couldn’t take my eyes off Sage and Lila.
Suddenly Lila pulled away, gasping for air. Her eyes glowed with a mix of desire and sadness, but Sage’s eyes . . . I’d seen that look in his eyes before. I’d seen it when he looked at me.
He wanted her.
He reached for her.
“Lila . . .”
“No,” she whispered, but she didn’t pull her hand from his.
He entwined their fingers and whispered in her ear, “It’s what you wanted. You told me. . . .”
“I know, and I do,” she said. “So much . . . But it’s not right, Sage. You don’t love me. You love Clea.”
“I . . .” Sage looked into the fire, thinking.
“Get me out of here,” I whispered to Petra. I knew what Sage was about to say. He was going to say he didn’t love me anymore, and I couldn’t hear it. I couldn’t. It would kill me.
“I do
love her,” Sage said. “She’s my soulmate.”
“I know,” Lila said.
“But you . . .”
“I’m here,” Lila said with a knowing smile.
“Lila, I can’t do this.” Sage looked pained, and moved closer to Lila, folding his body around hers. “I have real feelings for you. This isn’t something I just do.”
“You can’t love us both,” I said.
Lila said the same thing. Had she heard me?
“No,” Petra said, guessing my thought, “she can’t hear you. You’re just playing out the oldest story in the universe. It’s the same every time.”
“I can’t,” Sage said, “but I do. I can’t explain it. Being with you like this . . . you feel so good. . . .”
He pushed her long hair off her shoulder and bent to kiss her neck. I could feel the kiss in my fingertips and toes, but it wasn’t mine. I wanted to disappear, I wanted to jump between them screaming . . . but I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t even move.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured.
Lila closed her eyes. Her resistance was weakening. Then she screwed her eyes tight and moved away from him so they were across from each other. The firelight flickered over their faces as her eyes bore into his.
“If you want this, there’s a way, but you’d have to do something for me first.”
“What is it?”
Lila closed her eyes, letting herself sink into his touch, then gave her head a shake.
“I told you how I came to the Saviors, right?”
Sage nodded. “They found you when you were in college.”
“After my father died. I didn’t know him well. He left early. And my mother and I . . . we didn’t have much of a relationship. The Saviors became my family. There’s a lot they do that I don’t understand. And the way they’ve treated you . . . I can’t understand that. But I’ve learned from them too. I’ve learned what love is, and I know real love isn’t torture . . . like the torture you and Clea have put each other through.”
“I didn’t want to torture her.”
“I know. That’s my point. You’re a good person, Sage. Clea must be too, or you wouldn’t love her the way you do. You both deserve better. You deserve happiness.”
Sage sighed, shifting away from Lila. “I don’t know what I deserve. But Clea . . . she deserves everything. She does deserve happiness. It’s all I wanted for her. Instead she gets me . . . and nothing but pain.”
“I know. But, Sage . . . that can change.”
“It can’t. I’ve tried to keep away from her. I’ve tried everything. Travel, solitude, other women . . . it’s deeper than you understand.”
Lila flinched when he said it. I felt my whole body hollow out. I guess Rayna and I had our answer to that question.
“None of it worked,” Sage said. “I always come back to her. I can’t help it.”
“You can,” Lila said. “There’s a ceremony. It will cut the tie that binds your soul to Clea’s . . . but it won’t work unless you go into it willingly, and ready to give her up.”
“Give her up . . . forever?”
“You say you love her and want to protect her. If that’s true, you can do it.”
Sage was silent. The fire crackled.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “I don’t know if I can give her up.”
“But if you love her . . .”
“You’re right. If I love her, I should do it. But I don’t think I can. I would die for Clea, but to cut her out when we’re both alive and there’s a chance, even the smallest chance, we could be together and be happy? . . .”
“Are you happy, Sage? Is Clea?”
“We have been. We’ve had moments of happiness more beautiful than anything else I’ve felt.”
“And yet you’re here with me.”
“And yet I’m here with you.”
He reached up to pull her close.
This time she didn’t pull away.
eighteen
* * *
I WOKE TO PETRA clucking in my ear.
“Don’t you love how he manages to seduce another woman by telling her how much he’s in love with you? I’m not sure who’s worse, him for being so manipulative, or her for buying it. Truth is, they deserve each other. And when he dumps her for the next thing, she’ll have no right to be surprised.”
“Get out,” I said, climbing out of bed.
“No girlfriend-to-girlfriend postmortem?”
“Leave!”
With a bell-ring of laughter, she did.
I checked the clock. One a.m. Perfect.
In the dream, I’d been frozen in disbelief.
But now I was awake, and I was furious. I was ripping myself apart to find Sage and bring him back. I spent every single day tortured because I missed him so much. And what was he doing? Screwing around with someone else.
And not the first someone else. He’d said that himself. He used “other women” to distract himself from me. For my own good, of course. Because he loved me and wanted to protect me from the terrible horror of being monogamously tied to Sage.
Bullshit.
How many other women had there been? And over five hundred years! So if when you have sex with someone, you have sex with everyone they’ve ever had sex with . . .
Ugh. I felt like I needed a shower.
He was an asshole, and I was an idiot for believing in him. I’d been right from the start—soulmates were for fairy tales. In real life, people were just people, and they couldn’t be trusted.
I took a shower and pulled on jeans and a low-cut T-shirt, but that wasn’t good enough. I traded out for my favorite black sundress, the one I’d worn in Rio just a few months ago. It was chilly for it, but I could wear it with high boots and a leather jacket and it would be fine.
I dried my hair, leaving it loose, then spent time doing an expert job on my makeup. With purpose, I studied myself in front of the full-length mirror.
I was on a mission.
I’d done well. I looked good. Irresistible maybe? Even Suzanne would be impressed.
Suzanne.
She could put a wrench in things.
I’d worry about that later if I needed to. It was a work night. There was a good shot it wouldn’t be an issue. I’d run with that.
I had taken my time getting ready. It was almost three in the morning when I left for New London, driving a solid eighty miles per hour. It took no time to get there. Glancing at the clock, I remembered this was around the same time it had been when I called here from Paris, panicked that Rayna had been hurt in a fire.
He was fine with it then; he’d be fine with it now. And if he wasn’t fine with it at first, he would be soon enough.
The faculty housing at Connecticut College was a series of small, charming clapboard and rock-faced homes, arranged in a patchwork pattern along a road that wound through an endless green lawn. They looked very similar, and I had to count to make sure I went to the right one. His was the seventh house on the left, which he told me I could remember by thinking about his name. B was the second letter of the alphabet, E the fifth. That adds to seven. His house was on the left, which was the north side of the street, and N stood for north.
When he told me this system, I assured him he was the biggest dork in the universe. But it was the way I remembered.
There were no cars in front of his house or in the driveway. A good sign.
I knocked on the door.
No answer.
I pounded on the door.
No answer.
It was three in the morning. It would take more than pounding to get him up.
I rang the doorbell once . . . then twice . . . then three times in quick succession just to make sure he heard it.
I heard a roaring groan from inside the house.
I waited for him to answer, but no one came to the door. I pulled out my cell phone and started dialing his number, but before I got halfway through, he appeared at the door.
“Clea? What the hell?”
He was wearing boxer shorts and no shirt. His front shock of hair was sticking straight up.
I put on my sliest smile. “Hi.”
“Seriously?”
I rolled my eyes. He was going to make this difficult.
“I need to talk. Can you talk?”
“Now? It’s . . .” He searched around for some kind of timepiece to help him finish his thought.
“Three in the morning . . . ish,” I said. “Can you talk?”
I tried to read Ben’s face. He was half asleep and looked like he wasn’t sure how to respond. I waited. I wasn’t going to accept a no, but I’d give him the time he needed.
“Yeah,” he finally said. “Okay, yeah.”
He fiddled with the doorknob so it wouldn’t automatically lock, then stepped outside and closed the door behind him. “What’s up?”
“Not here. I want to take you somewhere.”
“Now?” He looked over his shoulder, as if he could see inside the house. It had to mean that someone was in there, waiting. She must have gotten a ride in his car, which was in the garage. It was an obstacle, sure, but I wasn’t going to let it stop me.
“Now. Please. It’s important.”
“Why? You have another dream about Sage?”
I put my hand on his arm and moved closer, keeping my eyes on his. “Ben . . . I don’t want to talk about Sage. I want to talk to you. I need to.”
Ben met my gaze, and I didn’t let it waver.
“Fine. I’ll be right back,” he said.
He slipped back inside and I waited.
Five minutes later he was back. He’d pulled jeans and a hoodie over his sleepwear and put on socks and sneakers, but his bangs were still sticking straight up.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“You’ll see,” I said. “Come on.”
“It’s not far, is it? I mean, I can’t be gone for a long time.”
“It’s not far.”
He got in my car and we were silent as I drove. It was a ten-minute drive to Waterford, where I pulled into the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. It was an enclave for theater people, with a conservatory school for college students, plus showcases and retreats for playwrights and professional theater companies. None of that was my scene, but Rayna had dated a guy who was spending a semester of his junior year there, so we’d gone to visit several times. The center was pretty informal—just a group of rustic buildings set among the trees—but it was very close to a beautiful stretch of beach that the rest of the world ignored. When the conservatory was in session, students did tai chi every morning on the sand, but right now the beach would be completely empty.