“Did you really think we wouldn’t forgive you? Would stop loving you? Silly goose.” Caroline hops off her perch to come hug me.
“Jesus, Anneke, you can be angry with someone you care about for something they’ve done; it doesn’t mean you hate them, you’re just disappointed in their behavior. You hate the thing they’ve done, not the person.”
“After everything you’ve been through, don’t you get the whole family thing YET, you idiot?” Hedy asks, exasperated.
“I’m working on it.” I sniffle.
“You better be,” Marie says.
“Yes, you hurt our feelings, and yes, we forgive you,” Caroline says.
“But you have some serious ’splaining to do, Lucy,” Hedy says, cutting off a small chunk of cheddar and popping it in her mouth.
“I know. Everything will be revealed.”
I wipe my face, and drop the beans in the steamer and the noodles in and begin my saga. By the time I’ve drained the pasta and dressed it with melted butter and chives, and tossed the green beans with a little bit of garlic oil and lemon, I’ve told them how hard it was to feel like such a charity case, and how much of a loser I felt like here by myself. By the time I’ve pulled the brisket out of the oven and everyone has made their plates and sat around the small table, I’ve told them about my decision to marry Jag, and how much it was related to my belief at the time that I just wasn’t cut out to be in a real long-term relationship. They mostly listen and nod, and Marie and Caroline add the occasional “oh sweetie!” or “poor thing” and Hedy periodically snorts. I fess up about Grant and the money, which prompts Caroline to smack me in the back of the head most uncharacteristically. “What on earth is the fucking point of being stupidly rich if you can’t help your friends???”
“Um, Caroline, chill,” Hedy says. “You know that we’d all call you for bail money, and we’re delighted to receive your generosity, but none of us would ever borrow money for our day-to-day life. It’s not how we roll. That part, at least, makes sense to me.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“The rest is fucking twaddle,” she says with a smirk, and I know that everything is really going to be okay. We finish our meal, which is really delicious, while I confess to the hardest of all, my kisses with Liam and my conflicted feelings and the whole Murph-trying-to-steal-my-house business.
“Okay,” Marie says as I dish out the sticky toffee pudding, generously dousing each bowl with caramel sauce, while Caroline adds scoops of vanilla ice cream. “Knowing you, I do get almost every part of how it all went down. I could still fucking kill you for not telling us the Jag thing was a fake, but by the same token, I know how seriously you take keeping a promise and holding a secret, and he certainly made clear that he had made you swear not to tell.”
“I’ll totally pay you back for the wedding, Caroline, I know you spent a ton making it so wonderful . . .”
“You’ll do no such thing. It was a lovely party, and apparently for a very noble reason. It was my pleasure to do it, and I’ll kill you if you don’t let me do it again should you ever decide to give a real marriage a go.”
“The Liam thing, that’s a lot trickier,” Hedy says. “I mean, I get that he sparked something major in you, but that might just be that you’ve never been with a great kisser before. Or maybe you’re just a late bloomer. I mean, they always say that a woman reaches her sexual peak in her midthirties; maybe yours was an all-at-once peaking, and not a gradual thing like with the rest of us.”
I think about this for a minute. “So you think that maybe I’m not having emotional feelings for Liam, but instead it’s just a chemistry/physical attraction/loneliness thing.”
“I think you’re in love with him,” Marie says.
“That seems extreme,” says Caroline.
“I think that’s ridiculous. Her kitten is ruling her head at the moment.” Hedy waves her hand dismissively at Marie.
“I think the last ten years have been foreplay. I think all his poking at you all this time is like the boy in kindergarten who pulls your hair. And frankly, in all this time you’ve never once been able to say one truly horrible thing he has ever done to you specifically to warrant how intensely you disliked him. It’s Moonlighting. It’s Sam and Diane. It’s Scully and Mulder. It’s Ross and Rachel. He’s Mr. DARCY for chrissakes. It’s the classic you hate each other because you love each other and you’re perfect for each other.” Marie says this as if she is reciting the findings of her doctoral thesis.
“Holy shit, Nipple Girl could be right. You might actually love him,” Hedy says.
“She does make a couple of good points,” Caroline admits.
“Great. Now what? And what if he was in cahoots with his cousin? If Grant hadn’t been at least partially honorable, I could have lost this project.”
“Deep down, do you believe he did it?” Marie asks.
I nod. “That’s the problem. The way he swanned in, kept pushing to get his foot in the door even after I said no at first. The amount of time he put in, even though he wasn’t getting paid for the work beyond the eventual profit on the house. He and Murph are like brothers, so yes, I can see him doing it. And you’re right, Marie, it would actually be the first thing he did to me specifically to warrant hating his guts, and even though I think he very well may have done it, I still want him.”
“Then it really is love, because if it weren’t, and you thought he did it, you’d want to cut them off, and not cup them,” Hedy says.
This makes us all crack up, and we dig into our desserts with gusto. At the end of the day the girls all agree that I need to talk to him face-to-face. To ask him point-blank what his part was or wasn’t in the whole Murph debacle. To explain my behavior and see what it is that he feels, and prepare myself for the fact that he may indeed have orchestrated an attempted takedown, and that he may not have feelings for me that emanate above his waistline. I’m not sure how I would deal with either of those eventualities, frankly. But I know one thing. My girls have my back, and my conscience is clear. And for the first time since this whole ridiculous turn my life has taken began, I feel free and light. Our evening ends with a round of hugs, and promises from me to never ever do any of this shit ever again.
I clean up the kitchen, take Schatzi for a walk, and think about my next move with Liam, since that is the final piece of this puzzle to put in place. With the offer on the table, and the need to be proactive about moving out and moving on, I have to fight my instinct to put my head in the sand, and just do the grown-up thing. So I text him.
We have an offer on the house. Need to discuss. Can you come over sometime in the next couple of days to meet? A.
He replies quickly.
Will be there after work tomorrow, if that is convenient. L.
It is. See you then. A.
Let the countdown begin.
Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?” Jag asks.
“I desperately want you to stay, but I think I’d better face the music alone.” Emily has gone to visit her dad for Christmas for a few days, and the house is weirdly quiet without her.
“For what it’s worth, I just think his feelings are hurt.”
“I know. But I’m not really sure what to do about that.”
“I tried to tell him it was my fault, that I was the one that told you we couldn’t tell him.”
I hadn’t realized that they had been in contact. “Did he buy it?”
“Not really. He sort of said that he was pretty sure if that was true it was because you told me that he wouldn’t be trustworthy.”
“He’s not wrong. I appreciate your trying to take the fall, though. You’re a mensch.”
Jag comes over and gives me a hug. “Is this just about mending fences with a friend and colleague, or do you want to admit that there is something more going on here?” It’s the first time he’s ever come close to prying into
my personal life.
“I don’t know for sure.”
“For what it’s worth? I think you guys would be good together. And I really don’t believe he would have plotted against you with his cousin.”
“I wish I was sure of that. It would be so much easier to be confident.”
“Whatever happens, I’ll be pulling for you. And tell him if he’s mean to you, your husband is going to kick his ass.” He grins.
“Thanks, hubby. Give my love to your mistress.” I wink and he laughs.
I have a lot of nervous energy, so I take Schatzi out for a walk. When we get back, Liam is just coming in the back door, and Schatzi pulls the leash out of my hand and becomes a heat-seeking gray blur, launching herself about four feet off the floor and into Liam’s arms, licking him all over his face, and biting his nose like he is a disobedient puppy.
Liam laughs and snuggles with her, muttering about how much he misses her.
“You can have her, she clearly likes you better than me.”
“Well, who can blame her?”
“Want a beer or something?”
“No, I’m fine, thanks.” We stand awkwardly, not really making eye contact.
“Should we go up to the kitchen to talk?”
“Fine.”
I lead the way up the back stairs to the kitchen, and sit at the breakfast bar. Liam sits beside me, and I am powerfully aware of the physical presence of him, his scent, the warmth of him so close to me.
“So, we have an offer?” he says, all business.
“Yes. Jacob got an offer, so I wanted to talk to you about it.” I quickly run through the details, and give Liam a copy of the bullet points that Jacob pulled together for me, along with the spreadsheet Jag and I did when going over all the financials. Liam looks it all over carefully.
“If you want to take it, you should take it, it’s your project.”
“It’s our project, you are an investor, you did a tremendous amount of work, you got us amazing bargains on a lot of the finishes and fixtures. I want to know what you think.”
He sighs. “I think if you feel comfortable with the numbers, then I do too, and you should feel free to say yes.”
This pisses me off. You’d think he was some pouting teenage girl. As if I’ve done something so horrible. He kissed me first!
“Fine. I think I’m going to take it.”
“Fine. Is that all?”
This unbelievable bastard. “Well, if you are going to be some petulant ass, then yes, I suppose it is. We close in January, I’ll get you a check as soon as I can.”
“You’re mad at ME, little Annamuk? That’s rich.”
This pierces. He hasn’t called me by the wrong name since the night at Del Frisco’s. “What did you want from me? It may shock you, Liam Murphy, but the world does not revolve around you. And based on your behavior, what choice did I have? I couldn’t risk the arrangement Jag and I had, certainly not in the beginning, and then the lie was so, you know, THERE, even when I realized we could probably trust you, I didn’t know how to . . .”
“PROBABLY trust me? My word, you are hard as nails, lass, impenetrable.”
“But I’m NOT. And you know that more than ANYONE you enormous cockcrumpet.”
“Is that an apology? If it is, you are very bad at it.”
“AAAAGGGH! I’m SORRY. Do you get that? I am. I never wanted to hurt you.”
“But you also never wanted to like me. Isn’t that at least part of this? Because if I’m not the world’s biggest shitheel, then your high horse isn’t so high, is that it?”
“No. Liam. I never wanted to like you. And I sure as shit never wanted to want you. And yet I do. And I don’t know what to do with it all. You were in a box, and I knew what label to put on that box, and then you went all rogue and kind and knight on white horse, and I? Have no idea how to manage what that dredges up for me. So yes, I am horribly sorry. And scared. Because I don’t know specifically what I feel or how to contain it, and I have so much I need to do to get my life together, that having all of this in my head is like trying to climb a huge, uncertain mass of Jell-O.”
“Cockcrumpet?”
I can feel myself blushing. “It just came out.”
Liam runs his hand through his hair, and rubs his eyes. “Look. I get it. More than you think. I know what you’ve been going through, at least a lot of it, and obviously a lot more became clear at Thanksgiving. I think you need to figure out your life and your future with you. I can’t be a part of that, and I shouldn’t be. I’m sure part of why I was so upset, why I’m still a bit tender about it, is that I know that a lot of who I have been, a lot of the Liam you knew, warranted being treated like that. It makes me not like who I have been very much, and I have to think about who I want to be and how to get there. And that is what I have to deal with. On my own.”
I take a deep breath. “I just need to know, did you make a plan with Murph to try to steal this project from me?”
“What on earth are you talking about?!”
“I’m talking about your asshole cousin making Grant multiple offers to buy out his investment in this property because between that share and yours the two of you would have controlling interest and could push me out.”
“He didn’t.”
“He most certainly did.”
“And you think I was in on it.”
“I don’t know what to think. I want very much to believe that you wouldn’t have done that. Certainly my feelings for you underscore the depth of my desire to believe that. But I also know that he is like your brother and you owe him a lot, and at least when you first came in here I certainly hadn’t treated you in a way that would make you loyal to me. And I have no idea how he would know about Grant and the money on his own. I knew he had blacklisted me with all the subs, and I know he’s called all the big firms to tell them not to hire me, and none of that really surprises me, but trying to get this project . . .” I trail off.
Liam runs his hands through his hair. “That ass. I’m going to fucking kill him.”
“You told him.”
“I told him I was coming in on your project, as an investor. I told him you and Grant had split and you needed a new investor because you weren’t going to take more cash from him. He must have hatched a little plan on his own and run with it, but I swear, Anneke”—he uses one finger under my chin to force me to look into his eyes—“I never was a part of a plan like that, and if he had been successful in buying out Grant, I never would have sided with him over you on this project.”
My heart unclenches, and I believe him. “I’m really glad to know that. So where does that leave us?”
He pauses. “At the bottom of the Jell-O.”
“What do we do?”
“Climb.”
“But not together.” It sounds like he is saying we can’t even be friends, and I can feel my throat get tight.
“I think we’ll like ourselves and maybe even each other more if we do it alone.”
“You kissed me.” It’s the only thing I can get out.
“So I did, lass. And you kissed me. So I think, for now, that makes us even.”
“So what, are we friends? Or just, done?”
“Oh, Anneke. Of course we’re friends. Always that, no matter what else happens. I don’t mean that we can’t . . .” He shakes his head. “I just think that we both have a lot to do, internally, and we shouldn’t complicate it unnecessarily.”
“Okay.” But it doesn’t feel okay. “I, um, well, Jag and I thought maybe we’d do a quiet New Year’s Eve here, sort of a good-bye party to the house. Just small and low-key, good food, some champagne . . . do you think, I mean, would you want to come?” Which we totally have not even discussed, but suddenly I feel the need to put at least another meeting on the books, and I’m sure Jag won’t mind.
&
nbsp; “I would. But I have another engagement.”
Of course he does. “Okay, then.”
“Okay. We did good work here. For what it’s worth, it’s the best work I’ve ever been part of, and I will always be grateful for that.”
“Me too, Liam. It wouldn’t have happened without you.”
“Of course it would, lass. You can do anything. I was just along for the ride.” He reaches over and squeezes my shoulder. “Congrats, Anneke, on your first project. Sold before getting to market. That should look good on a brochure.”
I laugh. “Yeah. Go me.”
He stands, slips back into his coat, leans over and kisses me lightly on the temple, leaving a mark that I can feel long after he is gone.
34
From Gemma’s Journal:
Everything is abuzz with the coming of the New Year, especially such a monumental year. 1920. Seems impossible, as if the distant future snuck up on us all. The Rabins have decided to host a classic dinner party, a nod to the old world, sixteen people, fourteen courses in the old Victorian style. The table in the dining room is extended to its full eighteen feet; a new linen cloth and napkins have been sewn for the occasion. I’ve hired in two extra cooks, and a pastry chef to assist, as well as three young men to serve. Starting Monday, we will begin preparing in earnest, and hope that a week will be enough time to get everything perfect. In the meantime, tomorrow is the annual servants’ Christmas dinner. Since the Rabins don’t celebrate, they always go out for dinner on Christmas Day so that those of us who have family nearby can spend the holiday at home, and those of us without can make a party here at the house. They give me free rein to put out a feast, and we eat in the dining room and pull crackers, and decorate a tree belowstairs. It always touches my heart that they embrace the celebration of a holiday that isn’t theirs in their home, and they always return in time to join us for Christmas pudding and biscuits, and Mr. Rabin will bring a bottle of port up from the cellar, and the family gives us all gifts, small handmade things from the children, personal items from the Missus, and envelopes with bills from the Master. It is probably the happiest day of the year, and one of the days I am most delighted to be me.
Recipe for Disaster Page 43