Sunlight glittered off the leaded windows and he tried not to remember how he’d jumped on the house, probably paying too much. But it hadn’t mattered at the time—the house was meant to be theirs.
And it had been a happy home for a year.
His neck went hot and his fingers tingled. He forced himself to fold the feelings up and shove them back in the box from which they’d sprung.
Don’t care, he told himself ruthlessly, hardening his heart. He let himself go cold, pushing those memories away with the ones of his mother until his heart rate returned to normal, his fingers stopped tingling.
It’s just a building. Not my home.
He got out of the truck and bounded up the slate walkway.
He lifted the blue frog with the bulging eyes that sat on her porch and—as expected—there was the key. But he couldn’t pick it up. His body didn’t obey the messages from his brain. His body wanted to run.
“Hey, man? You need something?” Gabe whirled to find a good-looking, tall…kid. Really. Couldn’t have been older than twenty-six. He stood in the open doorway, a backpack slung over his shoulder.
“Hi,” Gabe started to say. “No. Well, yes. Actually.”
“You selling something?” The kid pointed to the sign Alice had hand printed and posted on the mailbox: No Salesmen, No Flyers, No Religious Fanatics. This Means You.
He smiled, typical Alice.
“No,” he told the kid. “I’m not selling anything. My name is Gabe and I—”
“You’re the dude in the pictures.” The guy smiled and held out his hand. “You look good, keeping in shape.”
Gabe was knocked off stride but managed to shake his hand anyway. “Thanks. Um… I’m sorry, who are you?” And what pictures?
“Charlie, I’m Alice’s roommate.”
Roommate? Gabe’s mouth fell open.
“No, no, man, not like that.” The kid laughed. “Though I did try at the beginning but she pretty much let me know that wasn’t going to be happening. I just pay rent and live in the basement.”
“Why does she need a roommate?” he asked.
Charlie shrugged. “Why does anyone need a roommate? Money, I guess. It’s not for the company that’s for sure. I barely see her anymore. She used to make me dinner.” He whistled through his teeth. “Best food I ever had.”
Gabe’s head reeled, but he saw the sugar he needed to sweeten the deal. Alice needed money, it was the only way his incredibly private ex-wife would ever rent out part of her home and, horrors, share her kitchen with some kid who no doubt scarfed down freeze-dried noodles and Lucky Charms by the boatload.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be so hard to convince her—working at Johnny O’s, renting out the basement. He only needed to push down her pride and get her to see what an opportunity he had for her.
“She is a great chef,” Gabe said. “Look, Charlie. If you don’t mind, I was hoping to come in and wait for Alice to get home. I am supposed to have a business meeting with her.”
“Sure, no problem.” Charlie stepped out onto the porch, leaving the heavy wooden storm door open. “Don’t touch her booze, though. She gets crazy if you drink her stuff.”
Gabe nodded, suddenly speechless as Charlie walked by dragging with him Alice’s scent from the house. Roses and lemon swirled out around him, reminding him of the smell of her blue-black curls spread out across the pillows of their marriage bed, the damp nape of her neck after a shower.
“See you around,” Charlie said and took off on a bike.
Gabe lifted his hand in a halfhearted farewell.
Suddenly, the narrow hallway leading back to the living room with its big picture windows looked a mile long.
The brass key in his hand—a standard house key, identical to the one he’d carried on his key chain for years—weighed a thousand pounds.
Need a chef. Need a chef. Need a chef.
He wished it didn’t require going into that house.
He took a deep breath, buffered himself against the ghosts inside and stormed the gates. Immediately he was caught short by the familiarity of their home.
The foyer still had the cut-glass vase filled with overblown pink roses in it—she’d always loved putting it there—and the walls were adorned with their photos. Black-and-white shots from their various trips. Those were the pictures Charlie had referred to. Gabe was in some of them, standing next to the Vietnamese fisherman and the Mexican grandmother who made the best tortillas he’d ever tasted.
What is she doing with these still on the wall? He wondered. He’d emptied all his frames of her, his wallet and photo albums. Looking at his apartment, you’d never guess he’d been married. Looking at her house, you’d never guess she’d been divorced.
He stalked through the house and turned right toward the kitchen, resisting the urge to check out the family room and the back lawn.
More roses sat on the kitchen table. These were fresh, bright yellow buds still.
The kitchen was spotless. Their expensive renovation still looked modern and elegant, such a reflection of his wife.
Ex-wife. Ex.
An image—one of the few to have survived the war between him and Alice—came and went like smoke in sunshine.
The memory was of a random night—a Wednesday or something in March—when nothing special was happening. Alice had come home late from shutting down the restaurant and he’d woken up while she showered. He’d waited for her in this kitchen, dark but for the bright panels of moonlight that lay over the furniture like a sheet. She’d walked in wearing a pair of boxer shorts and nothing else.
She’d smelled sweet and clean. Powdery. Her hair a dark slick down her back. Her lithe body taut and graceful, her skin rosy and fresh.
“You’re better than sleep,” she’d said to him, pressing a kiss to the side of his neck, just south of his ear. He’d touched her back, found those dimples at the base of her spine that he’d loved with dizzying devotion.
And then they’d made slow, sleepy lazy love.
It surprised him at odd times when it seemed as though his Alice years had happened to someone else. When he thought he’d finally managed to put it all behind him.
But looking at his former kitchen, the memory ambushed him, rocked him on his heels and had him struggling for breath that didn’t taste of his ex-wife.
He tore open the maple cabinets, as if he could tear that stubborn memory out of his brain. But in cabinet after cabinet he only found empty shelves. Which was not at all like her. She used to say that having an empty pantry made her nervous. If there wasn’t pasta, garlic and olive oil on hand at all times she wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.
Something in his gut twinged. Remorse? Worry?
No, couldn’t be. He was divorced. Papers, signed by both of them, exonerated him from worry and remorse.
But his gut still twinged.
He pulled open the cabinet above the fridge only to find it fully stocked with high-end liquor.
No need for the Beaujolais.
Another cabinet over the chopping block was filled with freeze-dried noodles and cereal.
Charlie’s small stake in the kitchen.
Something warm and fluffy brushed up against his ankles and he looked down to find Felix, their French cat. Another thing she’d gotten in the divorce.
“Bonjour, Felix,” he said with great affection. The gray-and-white cat wasn’t really French—he was south-side Albany Dumpster—but they considered him so due to his love of anchovies, olives and lemon juice.
Gabe opened the fridge and found enough anchovies and expensive olives soaked in lemon juice to keep the cat happy for eons.
He pulled out a slick, silver fish and fed it to the purring cat. “What’s happening here, Felix?” he asked, stroking the cat’s ears.
During their last big fight, Alice had told him that she would be better off without him. Happier. And he’d jumped at his chance for freedom, relieved to be away from the torture they constantly inflicted o
n each other.
But, as he looked around the home that hadn’t changed since he’d left, he wondered if this empty kitchen was really better.
Is this happy?
He stopped those thoughts before they went any further. That cold part of himself that didn’t care about her happiness, that only cared about creating the life he needed, the dream that had helped him survive their divorce, slid over him, protecting him from any reality he didn’t want to see.
She stuck around way after her shift, even went so far as to contemplate sleeping in the front corner booth in order to avoid Gabe.
Maybe he’s left, she thought hopefully. She longed for her home, her couch. Her scotch.
Her promise not to drink had evaporated in the heat of Gabe’s smile. She needed a drink after today. She’d barked at Trudy—who only ever tried to be kind to her, even when she was a nag—she’d burned her hand and screwed up two tables of food. And now, as penance, she mopped the tiled floor around the stainless steel prep table as if her life depended on it.
Maybe I should not be a chef, she considered. Maybe she could get into the cleaning profession. Work in one of those big high-rises after hours.
She imagined going back to her home and telling Gabe that she couldn’t be his chef because she was making a career change.
She almost laughed thinking about it.
“Alice?” Darnell poked his head out of the back office that adjoined the main prep area. “Can I speak to you a minute?”
She set the mop back in the bucket and propped it against the wall, making sure it wouldn’t slip, and stepped into the minuscule manager’s office.
“Go ahead and shut the door,” Darnell said from behind the cluttered desk. She had to move boxes of recipe and conduct manuals out of the way in order to shut the door that, as long as she’d been here, had never been shut.
She guessed Trudy had tattled. Again.
“Have a seat.” He gestured to the one folding chair beneath the giant white board with the schedule on it. She had to move a stack of staff uniforms in order to sit.
“If you wanted me to clean your office, Darnell, you could have just asked.” She thought it was a joke, but Darnell didn’t laugh. His brown eyes behind the wire-rimmed glasses were stern and a little sad.
Maybe she’d have to up the apology to Trudy. She could buy drinks for the whole staff after work sometime. That should put her back in everyone’s good graces.
“What are you doing cleaning the kitchen?” he asked. “Did you, by chance, not notice the staff we have for that?”
“I was just helping out,” she said. “I’m a team player.”
His mouth dropped open in astonishment for a brief moment, and then he sat back, his chair creaking. “I can only guess you’re kidding.”
She sighed, pulled off her hairnet and yanked out the clasp that held her hair back. She scratched at her scalp. If she was going to get lectured, she was going to do it in some comfort.
“Do you want to be a chef here?” Darnell asked.
No. “Of course.”
“Is that why you show up late, take too many coffee breaks—”
“Everybody does that.”
“And order your coworkers around?”
“No, I just do that for fun.”
“Trudy doesn’t think it’s fun,” he said through pursed, white lips. “I don’t understand why you pick on her. She’s the nicest—”
That’s why Alice picked on her. Nice made her feel mean. Kindness hurt. “I’ll apologize—”
Darnell leaned forward on his desk. “I hired you based on your reputation and the few amazing meals I had at Zinnia.” Her gut clenched at the name of her failed restaurant, her baby, her reason for living after Gabe and she ended. “I thought you’d make this franchise something special.”
Her mouth fell open and she grabbed a recipe manual from the stack at her knee. “I cook from a manual, Darnell. It’s against corporate policy to do something special.”
“But you haven’t even tried, have you? We have nightly specials and I gave you carte blanche.”
“Right, and I’ve—”
“Served the same thing for two weeks, despite the fact that no one orders it. Our customers don’t like duck, Alice. But those ribs you made two months ago were amazing, and you served them for two days. That’s it. It’s like you don’t want to succeed.”
Darnell watched her expectantly and Alice dropped her eyes to the recipe manual. She didn’t want sympathy. She didn’t want to talk about her problems. She wanted to work, pay off the outrageous amount of money she owed the bank and annoy Trudy. That’s it.
And drink. Dear God. I need a drink.
“Alice, I don’t know the whole story behind what happened at Zinnia—”
“I’ll talk to Trudy and I’ll put the ribs back up on the specials board.” She stood, stared at Darnell with tired eyes. “I have to be back here tomorrow for—”
“No.” Darnell shook his head. “You don’t.”
She slumped.
“You’re fired.”
Alice’s car rolled slowly down Pape and she could see the dim lights, the shadow of someone moving through her kitchen window. She knew it wasn’t Charlie.
He’s still here, she thought and hit the garage-door opener on her dashboard. An itchy anger chugged through her bloodstream like a drug, making her head spin.
Gabe was the last thing she needed tonight.
The heavy white door lifted and she drove into the parking spot between the empty freezers and the golf clubs Gabe had left. She tried to gather whatever resources were left in her tired, drink-craving, jobless body.
After the day she’d had, there weren’t many left. Gabe reentering her life dredged up feelings she’d been managing, longings she’d been subduing.
But tonight those feelings were here in force, like weights on her heart.
I wish I wasn’t alone.
I wish I had a family.
And he was in there with dim lights and probably tomato soup, something she lost the taste for after he left.
She chewed her beleaguered thumbnail and watched the door between the garage and kitchen as though it might open and Gabe would come running out throwing knives at her car. Not that she was scared of him, just scared of what they were when they were together.
“I don’t need anything,” she whispered her oft-repeated mantra that eventually got her through the worst days. “There is nothing I want.”
But the fates had conspired tonight. Her mortgages—both of them—were due at the end of the week and she had only enough money to cover one.
Am I too old to sell my body? she wondered. But that was a bit drastic, even for her.
She felt raw and panicked, like a trapped animal. Gabe was going to make her an offer she couldn’t refuse and she wanted to punish him for it. She wanted him to pay for coming back here and rubbing his success in her face.
She wanted to pick the scabs between them, scratch at old wounds.
I want to fight. Alice smiled, feeling feral. And there’s nothing in this world that Gabe hates more than a fight.
She opened the door between the garage and the kitchen and Gabe looked up at her from the bread he sliced at her kitchen table. He was too handsome for words in this light.
“You’re still here,” she said, unbuttoning her dirty chef’s whites. “You make yourself at home?”
His smile dimmed a bit, no doubt startled by her biting sarcasm. She came out swinging, hoping to get a few licks in before he made her that offer and she had to take it.
“Did you take the tour?” she asked, throwing the dirty jacket on the table. “Visit the baby’s room?”
His eyes turned to stone. His smile became a grimace.
“Alice.” There was that sigh again. It told her, better than words, better than failed doctor’s appointments, better than divorce papers, that he was disappointed in her.
And immediately she regretted wanting to fi
ght over this. A fight she never won.
“Alice, there was no baby.”
3
“For you,” she said, her eyes narrowed like a cat backed into a corner. “That’s the problem, isn’t it?”
He didn’t want to deal with this Alice, the Alice from the end of their marriage. He’d take her cool sarcasm, her judgment and disdain over this Alice—the Alice who wanted to talk about things.
He didn’t like this Alice.
“There were no babies, period.”
Every fiber in his body, his gut, told him to walk out the door. He didn’t have it in him to go another round over this.
She still wallowed in their old misery, he could see it in her black eyes. The miscarriages were all fresh. Real.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” he said, pushing away the bread. “I’m not here for that.”
Her laughter sounded like ice breaking. “Really? And here I thought you finally wanted to sit down and talk—” She pretended to be surprised when he stood.
“This isn’t going to work.” He slammed the serrated knife onto the small cutting board. “Coming here was a mistake.” He grabbed his keys and headed for the front door.
“Ah, the infamous Gabe Mitchell cold shoulder as he heads for the door. How I have missed that.” Her sarcasm raked him and suddenly he couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
He put his hand on the doorknob and at the same time, she tentatively touched his elbow and a spark of electricity shot up his arm.
“No. Stop. Please, Gabe.” Her tone held a certain honesty that he couldn’t walk away from. He could walk away from her anger and sarcasm, her lies and evasions. But when she was vulnerable—he just couldn’t walk away.
He stopped, his shoulders hunched as if to protect himself. He noticed and immediately straightened.
“I’m—” He could hear her swallow around the words. “I’m sorry. I…forget I said anything.”
He weighed the cost of turning around. Of sitting back at that kitchen table, the one from her grandmother.
He needed a chef and she was the best.
He turned and looked right into her liquid black eyes. “No more talk about the marriage or the miscarriages.” He shook his head. “It’s counterproductive. For both of us.”
Wedding At the Riverview Inn Page 3