“That’s not a good sound,” Alice joked, setting the teacup in front of the older woman.
“If that’s the only thing that goes wrong, sweetheart,” she said, “you’ll be laughing. So far this is the most beautiful event I’ve ever seen.”
“Well, there’s tomorrow. Things could still go plenty wrong.”
She patted Alice’s hands. “I’m ninety years old and I’ve seen a lot of weddings. You have to trust me. You and your husband have done a very nice job.”
Alice was about to protest their marital state but she looked up to see Gabe in the shadows, his bright eyes on her, burning her through the darkness, and she couldn’t say anything.
At three in the morning, Gabe shot up in bed, startled out of a fitful sleep by what sounded like a gang of fighting toddlers. He pulled on the dress pants he’d shucked just a few hours ago and slid into his work boots before racing out into the front yard to see what was killing what and making so much noise.
Alice, in sweatpants and a chef jacket, her hair a wild halo around her head, was already there.
“What the hell is that noise?” she asked, peering into the dark, flashlight in hand. “It’s freaking me out.”
“I don’t know,” Gabe murmured. He turned toward the tent they’d erected for the ceremony only to see the canvas sides roll as if they were being buffeted by gale-force winds. “But it’s in my tent.”
They took a few cautious steps in that direction before Max was suddenly with them, in boxer shorts, work boots and a T-shirt.
“You guys making all that noise?” He growled the words, rubbing at his whiskered face.
“It’s racoons,” Patrick said, stomping past them armed with two old hockey sticks, one of which he tossed to Gabe as if he were John Wayne and they were about to fight marauding invaders.
“Raccoons?” Gabe asked. “In my tent?”
They pulled open the front flap to a scene of heartbreaking destruction. Most of the chairs were on their sides, and the topiaries with the fancy bows that had taken hours to tie were toppled over and half eaten.
“Oh, no,” Alice cried, and Gabe, furious and exhausted, caught sight of one of the giant mutant raccoons eating a bow and chased it, stick held high, out of the tent.
All along he’d expected something to go wrong. Some miscalculation or dropped detail. He hadn’t counted on Mother Nature sending rabid minions to destroy the event he’d sunk way too much time and money into.
Max joined in, clapping and yelling and corralling the animals in a corner so Patrick could chase them out one of the flaps.
Alice screamed. Gabe whirled and found her cornered by one of the animals, using a chair to keep him away from the topiary she was trying to repair.
“There’s a whole forest out there!” she cried. “Get. Scat. Shoo.”
Gabe charged, wielding his hockey stick like a giant ax, and the raccoon abandoned his campaign, turned tail and ran down the center aisle and out the front of the tent.
In silence Gabe took in the destruction. Half the topiaries were toast. The ribbons were a mess. The chairs were filthy and he’d stepped in raccoon poop. They all had. Raccoon poop was everywhere.
“No.” He moaned. “No. This is a disaster.”
“We’ll get it fixed up, Gabe.” Alice said, patting his shoulder. “I’ll go put on a pot of coffee and get some rags and hot water.”
“I’ll come with you,” Max said. “We need some trash bags.”
“No one will ever know, son,” Patrick told him and started righting the folding chairs and picking up what was left of the flower decorations.
By ten a.m., moments before the bride walked down the aisle, no one would have believed that hours ago the scene had been chaos. Carnage. The stuff of wedding disaster.
Nope, Gabe thought with satisfaction and a deep exhaustion. You’d never guess I was picking up raccoon crap in my underwear in the middle of the night.
Grandmothers were escorted in to Pachelbel’s Canon in D and Gabe stifled a yawn under his palm.
“Looks good,” Alice said from behind him. He turned, relieved in some deep place to have her next to him. The way he had been all night as they worked side by side until dawn, fixing the tent.
“Well, your idea to spread out the topiaries and scrap the bows altogether certainly made it easier.”
“I only suggested it so I wouldn’t be on poop patrol,” she said. Her hand on his arm burned through the sleeve of his black jacket and the white linen shirt beneath that to his skin, muscle and bone. “It looks beautiful, Gabe.”
Just a touch and he was branded.
“Well, I couldn’t have done it without you,” he told her, making a point of not looking at her. He could do this. He could tell her the truth and say goodbye as long as he didn’t have to say it to her face. “I owe you.”
She didn’t say anything and her silence forced him to glance at her. Tears trembled on her lashes, turning her dark eyes to obsidian.
“Alice?” he asked, startled by this sudden emotion. “What’s—”
She rose on her toes and pressed a wet kiss to his cheek. “You don’t owe me anything, but we have to talk.”
He shook his head, knowing instinctively what she meant. “There’s nothing to say, Alice. You know that. We’ve—”
“A conversation. That’s what you owe me.” Something fierce in her wet gaze made him nod his head.
“Okay,” he agreed softly as the sweet swell of “Ode to Joy” started. The bride arrived at the tent and the audience gasped, coming to its feet.
The music pumped and the lights twinkled. Couples danced, bridesmaids kicked off their shoes and Gabe quietly folded in the corner. He rubbed his eyes and wished he could put his head down on the table and sleep for a week.
“Hey, Gabe.” A little voice at his elbow made him open his eyes. Helen. He smiled, glad that Alice had invited Daphne and her daughter, because the little girl had twirled nonstop for hours. The bride had noticed her initially and asked her to dance and Helen had leaped around like a jack-in-the-box come to life.
“Hi, sweetie,” he said and pulled on her long ponytail. “You look like a princess. Have I told you that?”
“Like a thousand times, but I want to dance.” She jumped up and down in her scuffed black patent shoes.
“Then we dance,” he said. Luckily, the music changed and the singer crooned an old blues song about love coming at last.
He spun her dramatically and dipped her upside down and sang the words off-key so she’d giggle and hold on tight to the lapels of his jacket.
Finally she laid her head on his shoulder and he held her and swayed a little bit, his heart a puddle in his shoes.
“It’s time to take her home,” Daphne said at his elbow. “She’s out like a light.” Daphne looked tired but happy and still elegant in her red dress. She’d caught the eye of one of the ushers and Daphne had been out on the dance floor almost as much as her daughter. “Here,” she said, reaching for her.
“I got it,” Gabe whispered. “I’ll take her to your car. No sense in waking her if we don’t have to.”
Daphne nodded and led Gabe out the front doors, grabbing her purse and shoes from under one of the tables.
“It was a beautiful night, Gabe,” she said, walking to her sedan parked in the employee area behind the kitchen. “You did a great job.”
“Well, it was a team effort.” He deferred the glory, gladly. “Alice really deserves the kudos.”
“She told me about the raccoons,” Daphne laughed and shook her head as she unlocked her car. “Unbelievable.”
Gabe eased the little girl into her booster seat in the backseat and it was a testament to her exhaustion that she barely stirred while Daphne clipped her in.
“How is it going with Alice?” Daphne asked, standing up. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“It’s not. Going, I mean. We never should have tried in the first place.”
“I’m sorry to hear
that.”
He tucked his hands in his pockets and nodded. Not as sorry as me, he thought.
She reached up and kissed his cheek. The gesture didn’t even register a spark or flutter. Nothing. Daphne stepped away and he could tell in her eyes that she didn’t feel anything, either.
“You need to listen when the universe tries to tell you something, I guess,” she said. “You and I were meant to be friends.”
“Good friends,” he agreed and watched as she climbed into her car and drove away.
He wondered what the universe meant for him and Alice. What were they supposed to be?
“Gabe?”
He turned, and Alice, stepping over the small hill behind him, arrived.
He felt solemn. Sad even. His arms were heavy and empty and his chest, where the little girl had slept, cold.
“It seemed like Helen had a good time,” she said and they watched the taillights disappear down the road.
He nodded, words clogged in his throat, stuck behind emotions and a sickening lack of courage.
“She’s the exact age our daughter would have been,” she said and his eyes slid closed as grief lanced him.
I know.
“I won’t ask you to talk about the children we didn’t have,” she said. “But I need you to know that I love you, Gabe,” Alice whispered, her sweet voice tying ribbons around him, wrapping him up. “I am in love with you. I always have been and I probably always will be.”
He swallowed and the cowardice bobbed but remained stuck. He kept his eyes on the horizon, like a seasick sailor longing for solid ground.
“I want to stay here.” Her voice grew rougher, and he knew that his silence was making her angry, so he finally turned to her. She blazed and burned, casting a light that could keep him warm his entire life if he only would reach for it.
“I want to keep working on this dream.” She tilted her head. “On our dream.” She searched his face. “Don’t you have anything to say?” Tears gathered in her eyes and he felt the same burn in his. This constant echo of emotion between them. Whatever she felt, he did, too. It was exhausting. Destructive.
“What happens when things go wrong, Alice?” he asked, his voice scorched and burned by the heat of his barely contained emotions. “What do we do when the fights start?”
“We’re older now, Gabe. We’re different. We’ll handle it better. Look at today. We were a team today.”
He nodded. “Today. But two months ago I tried to fire you because you drank too much. Are you trying to tell me that we’ve changed that much in two months.”
“Yes. I have. I have changed that much.” She waited for his answer, no doubt longing for him to finally realize that he’d changed, too. That being back together, that seeing the success of this place had cleared the old cobwebs from his head and he was ready to start a different life as a different person.
But he wasn’t. He was the same. And slowly, as he watched her face, he saw her recognize that. His heart shattered when he watched the love in her eyes grow cold, turn to disbelief. Anger.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I can’t take the risk.”
“The risk that we won’t have children?” she asked. “That we won’t be able to adopt if it comes to that?”
He shook his head, opened his mouth. There was nothing but silence. He didn’t know how to say what he felt.
“You can’t take the risk of loving me and having me leave,” she said. “Like your mom.”
A hot tear seared down the side of his face.
“Like my mom, like those babies—” his voice cracked. “Our babies. I can’t.” He shook his head. “I wanted them, too, Alice.” He finally told her, an avalanche of words accompanied by more hot tears scalding his skin. “I named them when you said we should wait and see what they were like.” He closed his eyes, doing his best to shove these memories of Daniel and Chloe—his children—away. He rubbed his hands in his eyes, brushing away the tears. He mentally shook himself, took a deep breath and looked Alice in the face.
“Let’s stop pretending that everything is great, Alice. It’s not. As a couple you and I are always on the edge of disaster and I can’t live like that.”
She laughed. “Everyone is on the edge of disaster. Everyone. Love puts you there. You think having a relationship with a woman you don’t love is going to keep you safe?”
“Not being in a relationship with you will keep me safe,” he told her and watched his words hit home. She practically shrank and he wished he could take them back to spare her this truth, but she wouldn’t leave well enough alone.
She stepped backward, nearly tripped, but found her ground.
“You’re a fool, Gabe,” she said, turned and left.
Fool or not, he needed security, a security they’d never found together. Inside the dining room, the party raged on, his inn a success, his future, for the moment, set.
And he had never in his whole life felt so hollow.
Alice curled up on her bed, her hands cupped over her stomach as if that could protect her unborn child from all those things that could cause pain. Grief. Bone-deep loss.
She wished, stupidly, despite the rejection that she could do the same for Gabe. But it was impossible.
Grabbing the cell phone off the bedside table, she wiped her eyes and called her parents. They’d left hours ago but she knew her dad would only be dozing in front of the TV.
“Dad,” she said when he answered, sleepy and gruff.
“Hi, sweetie,” he said. “Everything okay?”
She bit her lips but the tears came anyway. “No, Dad,” she whispered. “I need a favor.”
18
Gabe came downstairs, braced for Alice. For seeing her, for her cold shoulder and red-rimmed eyes. So when he stepped into the kitchen at dawn, the last thing he expected to see was Michael. Sharpening knives.
“Good morning, Gabe,” he said over the vicious snick-snick of his chef’s blade running along the sharpener.
“Michael.” He nodded and took the long way around the giant man with knives toward the coffeepot. “Where’s Alice?”
“Albany, by now, I’d imagine.”
Hot coffee sloshed over his hand. “She left.” It was more statement than question. And Michael nodded, eyeing the edge of his knife, like a pirate about to commit murder.
“Did she say why?”
“No.” Michael turned to him. “But she asked me to fill in for the next two weeks and she was crying. Know anything about that?”
Gabe put down the coffeepot with shaking hands. It was over. Done. He didn’t have to worry about seeing her again every day, about the constant temptation of knowing she was within reach.
Turning from Michael and the threat of decapitation, Gabe put his hand to his forehead, a helpless moment to get himself under control.
“Thank you, Michael,’ he managed to whisper, throwing a quick smile over his shoulder, “for filling in.”
Michael slapped his knife down on the butcher’s block. “Jesus, you kids are killing each other.”
“It’s what we’ve always done best,” Gabe said and went into his office in an effort to lose himself in work.
Patrick didn’t even bother going to the gazebo when a driver finally delivered the letter. Patrick ripped it open in the driveway, reading it before the driver was even back in the car.
He’d expected a response right away. Truth be told he’d expected Iris right away. But as every day went by with no Iris and no letter, that hope turned to cement and filled his body.
Patrick,
Thank you. Thank you so much. I will be there, but I need time. It’s not what you think. But I need a few months. I will be there. Trust me. For once, I will be there.
Patrick scowled, heartbroken and disappointed and angry that he was actually disappointed. He crumpled the letter, unable to save this one. He’d believed her earnest and genuine desire to come here, to make things right. But he should have remembered the way his wife
could turn on a dime.
Now, he didn’t know what to believe.
Gabe stared blindly at the Bon Appetit spread on his desk. A rave review, pictures that made his inn look like something outside of himself, something he’d never seen before. The only reason he recognized it was because he and Alice were standing at the front doors in the first picture.
“Congratulations,” Michael said, his backpack over his shoulder, ready to go. “It’s a great article. You should get lots of business from it.”
Gabe couldn’t find the will to respond.
“Tim is going to be an excellent addition here,” Michael continued, but he might as well have been speaking French. “He’s got a lot of great ideas.”
“How is she?” he asked off the conversation topic, but she was the only thing he thought about these days. “Alice. How is she?”
“I won’t be your go-between, Gabe. My daughter is an adult. If you want to find out how she is, be an adult and call her.” Michael waited for him to say something, but there was nothing to say. Finally he shook his head in disgust and left.
God, Gabe sighed and kicked away from his desk, the contact of his foot against the metal felt good. Violent.
He’d thought things would get better after Alice left. He would find some clarity. Get back to being himself.
But nothing got better.
The final payment from the Crimpsons, along with a lovely thank-you note and photograph, arrived, followed by two phone calls from women who had been at the wedding and wanted to talk about having an event at the inn.
He didn’t know what to promise them. Alice, who had made all the magic possible for the Crimpsons, was gone and the magic was absolutely absent without her.
But he talked to the new clients and made empty promises that sounded good but echoed falsely in his mouth.
Wedding At the Riverview Inn Page 19