by Alison Kent
Jan sighed and mirrored Eva's pose. "It's great, isn't it? To have reached our peak and actually have a man who can perform and not just show up?"
Even in his earlier days, Carson had done more than just show up. Eva'd been too young to know that then. She knew it now and knew it well. He'd been right about the physical between them reaching spiritual heights.
"To dazzling performances," she said, lifting her Diet Coke in a toast.
Shaking off her dreamy daze, Jan got back to work counting out sticks, using one as a pointer as she talked. "So, if he's as good as you say he is, will you remind me again why you're over here whining."
Oh, yeah. Back to that. "Because he's butting into my son's life."
"I see. He's telling Zack things you'd rather Zack not be told? Is that it?"
"No. That's not it." Eva was beginning to regret running to her friend. Jan always made too much sense. "I mean, I wasn't there for the conversation, so I don't know exactly what was said."
"But he told you what they talked about? When they talked about sex?"
"Only in the most general of terms." What was the point of whining when her entire whine defense was being picked apart? Eva felt like a hot-air balloon with a leak.
"Sheesh. I shoulda been a dentist. At least I'd've been paid for pulling teeth."
"Okay. Okay." Restless, Eva rose to make the coffee. She needed to stay busy, stay focused, stay sane. "They talked about Katie. And about responsibility. And about condoms."
"Wow. I'm impressed. A man who knows how and when to best use his mouth. What on earth is the problem?"
Whoosh! Eva totally deflated. "I'm the one Zack's supposed to talk to."
"Eva. Just because you wiped his runny nose and taught him to tie his shoes doesn't mean he's going to talk to you about sex."
Eva jammed the coffee scoop down in the can. "We've always been able to talk about anything."
"But he's not a little boy anymore. And you're his mother." Jan concentrated on beading a line of glue the length of one craft stick. "I don't think either one of you would be very comfortable discussing his physical relationship with Katie."
"He's too young to have a physical relationship with Katie." And even as she said it, Eva recognized the mother's lie for the wishful thinking that it was.
"Face facts, Eva. As much as you may want to believe otherwise, he's not too young. And you should be glad Zack has a man to talk to. Especially since Carson seems to be saying all the right things."
"It's not that what he's saying is wrong. It's just ..."
"It's just what?"
Eva wasn't sure she could put her thoughts into words that would make sense to Jan. Or to anyone who didn't know Carson like she did. "Okay. He sees what he thinks is a problem? He tries to fix it."
"So far, so good."
Shaking her head, Eva pressed on. "Not so good. It's like talking with Zack. He didn't stop to think that I, me, Zack's mother," she emphasized, tapping fingers to her chest. "That I might approach my son's problems differently. This time our beliefs coincided. But next time …"
The coffeemaker gurgled and steamed. Eva inhaled deeply of the aromatic brew. "Carson has this need to make things right. To make things perfect. He's hard enough on himself as it is. I don't need him filling Zack's head with expectations so high they're inhumanly possible to meet.
Yes, his advice to Zack was needed. And appreciated. But quite frankly, I can't live through the sort of upheaval Carson would bring to my life. Not again." Not when she wasn't sure of his feelings. She had to be sure of his feelings. This time she had to be sure.
"Then don't. Don't get that involved." Jan shrugged. "Call it a vacation fling and then be done with it."
Leaning her elbows on the counter, Eva buried her face in her hands. It was too late and she knew it. When had her life become so complicated? "I can't have a vacation fling. I can't have him hanging around here getting closer to Zack."
"I hate to say this, Eva. But Carson sounds like he could be a very good thing for Zack." Jan gave up on the Alamo and turned in her chair to concentrate on Eva. "And good for you as well."
"Zack doesn't know about my past with Carson."
"Why not go ahead and tell him? Not about the miscarriage, but the fact that you two were involved. What could it hurt for Zack to know?"
"Because he likes Carson. Because he talks to Carson. And because he doesn't know not to tell Carson that I'm not his real mother." There. The crux of the problem she'd danced around since entering the kitchen. She crossed her arms on the counter- top, beat her head against the X of her wrists, and groaned. Oh, what a tangled web we weave.
"This is where I'm lost," Jan said. "Tell me again what house of cards would come tumbling down if Carson knew that you weren't Zack's mother."
"Carson knows I've been pregnant. And if Zack's not my son, then ..." At Jan's lifted brow, Eva added, "It was a small slip of the tongue and, trust me, I've been regretting my big mouth ever since."
"Telling him you've been pregnant was not a lie."
"Semantics. I definitely left him with the impression that I carried the pregnancy to term and then gave birth to Zack."
"So tell him the truth."
"And say what?" She gestured theatrically with one hand. "'Oh, Carson, by the way. When I told you that I'd been pregnant? What I meant to say was that I'd been pregnant when I left New York, pregnant with your child, which I later miscarried. And oh, yeah, Zack is not my biological son.'"
Jan gave a considering nod. "It needs a little fine-tuning, but you've got the facts straight."
"Oh, get real, Jan. I can't say that to him."
"Why not?"
"It's been seventeen years. What good is it going to do to tell him now?"
"Have you enjoyed seeing him again? Have you even once, once, "Jan emphasized, "during the time he's been here thought what it might be like if he stayed?"
"Yes," Eva whispered, admitting the elemental truth at last. Along with familiar anxiety, she experienced an overwhelming sense of rightness.
"Then that's why you have to tell him. Face it, Eva. You're still in love with the man. You're too honest to go forward with this relationship without telling him. And you're too gutsy to give up on him again."
"I'm not gutsy. I'm flat out scared." An understatement if she'd ever uttered one.
"Then consider your options." Jan held up one finger. "You have the vacation fling and cross every appendage you have that Zack doesn't say anything to Carson."
"That would mean dogging the two of them every minute. I don't have the time or the energy to do that."
"Okay. Option number two." A second finger went up. "You don't see him again. You tell him you've given the matter some thought but you don't see any way you two can make a go of this relationship. And then you tell him good-bye."
"Won't work." Thank God.
"Because?"
"Because he won't leave. Because he's Carson. Which means he'll make it his mission to convince me that there's no way we can fail." She sighed. "And because I'm not strong enough to deny him that chance."
"Which means you love him."
"I love him."
The gentle look Jan bestowed might've been directed at a toddler owning up to a crayon mark on the wall. "Finally. Was that so hard?"
A smile tugged Eva's mouth. She shrugged.
Jan rolled her eyes. "So, you ask him to stay. And agree to give it a try. A no-brainer decision, right?"
"I can't," she wailed miserably. "Don't you see? To do that I have to tell him about the miscarriage. I have to tell him that Zack is not my son. He'll hate me for being dishonest. And then I'll lose him forever. Oh, Jan. What am I going to do?"
Jan took Eva by the shoulders and guided her back to her chair. "You're going to sit there and come to your senses. And then you're going to make the only sensible choice. Straight coffee? Or should I add an extra strong, extra rich dose of chocolate?"
Two nights later, Eva wa
s as undecided as ever. I tell him. I tell him not. I stay with him. I stay with him not. I love him. I love him not.
The last wasn't even a question. Days ago, Eva had accepted what she'd known all along to be true. There was no man in the world for her but Carson Brandt.
She had loved Zack's father. Bobby Shelton had been a wonderful husband, a caring and attentive father. a tenderly passionate lover, a compassionate friend. Never, not once, had she questioned his love for her. Nor her love for him.
But he hadn't caused her heart to beat faster, her skin to sing with the song of anticipation. He hadn't made her smile at the sound of a car door slammed in the driveway. Or been the cause of a night wasted on bad TV for the chance to cuddle away the uninterrupted hours.
Carson did all these things and more. It was like they'd never been apart, they were so in tune with each other. Yet it was like they'd never known one before that day he'd walked into Blooms. And here all this time she'd thought her life had been so simple. So settled. When what it had been was staid and stale.
She slammed the door of the minivan and hit the electronic control panel, lowering the door and plunging the garage into a darkness redolent with strong chemicals and stronger exhaust. This was her home, where she was happy. Where she would remain happy if it killed her. She grounded herself in that reality before going inside.
Walking into her house to find Carson Brandt camped out on her sofa in front of the television, or stir-frying chicken in a wok on her stove, or sitting at the kitchen table going over studies with Zack had become so commonplace and so ... comfortable, Eva would've been surprised to arrive home and find her house empty.
This evening it was only half empty. Carson sat alone behind the table in the breakfast nook. The only evidence of her son to be seen was his backpack weighted with textbooks sitting on the end of the kitchen counter. "What have you done with Zack?"
Carson looked up from the yellow legal pad and the outline of notes he'd penciled in a grid across the page. He gestured with his pencil toward the street. "You just missed him. He left with Katie and her mother. Something about a cheerleading tournament in San Antonio tomorrow."
Eva set her purse on the counter next to the backpack and frowned. "I didn't think they were leaving until later tonight."
In fact, she knew the chaperones and the kids— both the competitors and their personal cheering sections, aka boyfriends—had plans to leave this evening and arrive in San Antonio around ten. Zack would be going with Katie and her parents even later, once Jim Crenshaw closed his diner at eleven.
"Seems there was a change of plans," Carson said. "Katie called and wanted Zack to go early. I guess the Lake City squad isn't competing until tomorrow afternoon, so the kids wanted to get in a night at Six Flags." He erased the contents of one square. "l told Zack I didn't think you'd mind if he went ahead."
Standing at the kitchen sink, Eva stopped in the middle of washing her hands. "He asked you about going early?"
Carson stopped in the middle of jotting a note and raised his eyes from the tablet. "If I'd thought for a minute that you'd object, I'd've told him he'd have to ask you. But we both know that whether he left at three or at eleven wasn't going to make a hill of beans."
She reached for a towel to dry her hands. "It doesn't. It won't. But he knows to ask me for that sort of permission."
"He asked if I thought you would mind. I told him no."
"Which he took as scripture instead of double checking with me himself," Eva said and, even as the words left her mouth, she reached out to grab them back. To the outside world looking in, her efforts to separate Carson and Zack were unreasonable, raising suspicions she didn't want raised. Suspicions based in truths she needed to deal with.
"Tell you what, Eva." Carson tossed his mechanical pencil onto the tablet, crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back, stopping short of his head hitting the yellow and white and fruit patterned wallpaper. "Next time Zack asks me anything, I'll tell him to ping you. How's that?"
Eva sighed, turned off the kitchen's overhead light, and returned to the breakfast nook. "He may have tried. Until I checked to see what time it was, I didn't know my phone was dead."
"So? No harm, no foul, right?"
"I guess not." She pulled out a chair from beneath the table and dropped into it, feeling like she weighed four thousand pounds.
"You guess not." Carson shook a weary head. "We've been through this a dozen times now, Eva. I'm not trying to win away Zack's loyalty or his affection. I just happened to be convenient."
"I know. I know. Feel free to ignore me." She waved a hand. "I'm just feeling sorry for myself."
"Sorry for yourself about what?"
She shrugged off the importance of her feelings. Because they weren't important. They were pathetic. She didn't want to look at Carson, but his gaze compelled her. Her smile felt tired and a little bit sad. "He's getting older. And the apron strings are getting looser."
"Why would that make you feel sorry for yourself? Because you've raised a son to seventeen years old? A son who's able to think for himself and has a maturity that's impressed even a hard bitten cynic like me?"
She shook her head, then nodded. But the web of mixed emotions only tightened as she struggled in its hold. "Because I've raised a son who's going to quit needing me long before I quit needing him. And because I'm really pathetic for even saying that."
Carson chuckled. He pushed his chair back as far as he could, and banged his cast against the table as he got up and changed seats, sitting beside her and turning her chair so it backed up to his. Then he settled his hands on her shoulders.
When he started kneading, working his thumbs over the tendons in her shoulders, loosening the muscles drawn tight at the base of her neck, she decided there was a lot to be said for being female and giving in to a male's physical strength.
It wasn't so bad having him around for other things, either. But she'd never been able to think straight when he touched her. And she was feeling too weak and too vulnerable and too needy right now when she wanted nothing more than to feel independent and strong. She slipped away, feigning the need for a cold soda. He declined her offer for one of his own. From the safety of the kitchen, she sipped then nodded toward the yellow legal pad.
"What have you been working on?"
Carson frowned as if he'd never understand women. Warm one minute, cold the next. "My book."
"Your book?" This was the first she'd heard of this. Interesting.
"I've been wanting to put it together for a while now." He picked up his pencil and doodled a circle on the tablet's spine. "I've just never taken the time to work out any concrete ideas. This seemed like the perfect opportunity."
"I can't believe you're writing a book." She returned to her chair. "What's it about?"
He looked at her like he was insulted that she'd had to ask. "I'm not writing a book."
"But then what ... Oh, duh." She smacked her palm to her forehead. "Photography. A book about the craft? Or a coffee table book? Wait, no. I've got it. A candid behind-the-scenes look at the early world of modeling. I bet you'll make a mint."
Carson moved the tablet out of Eva's reach and range of vision. "This isn't about money. Or about modeling. It's a photo essay."
She looked across the arm he'd braced protectively over his work. The squares had the names of different countries penciled in. She saw India and Israel, Afghanistan and Argentina. She pointed at the square that said New Zealand. "I thought this was a book about photography."
"You assumed this was a book about photography. I told you what it is."
She flinched at his clipped tone. "A photo essay."
"Right."
"But not about the modeling industry."
"No."
O ... kay. Not modeling. Obviously traveling, touring. This was related to the countries he'd finally visited. Hmm. Surely he wasn't putting together anything as basic as a travelogue. "So, tell me about it."
He frowned. "I'm not sure I want to."
"Carson, please. I'm very interested. It's about the countries you've seen, isn't it?"
"In a way." He doodled more, scratching Xs on the four corners of the grid. Finally he said, "It's about life. It's about living."
And when he said that, she knew it wasn't about the best way to see Bangkok on a budget. But it still seemed she was going to have to pry out anything wanted to know. Life. Living. Hmm. "People. It's about the people of the countries?"
He gave a single brief nod, obviously unwilling to reveal much of anything at all. She didn't blame him, what with the way she'd made no bones about not letting him in on the details of her own life. So, what about life and living would he want to say with his photos?
The Carson of years ago would've been easier to pin. He'd've been impressed by the genius of Italian masters. Captured by the voluptuous sensuality of women. But this Carson, sitting beside her today would find beauty in simplicity, art in innocence, dignity in austerity.
He'd know the value of a winning out snagged by an all-American shortstop. Or the symmetry in a lily christened after a woman with no family to share her name.
Eva tapped her finger in one of the squares. She'd start in the uppermost left-hand square. "Tell me what you saw in Ireland."
When Katie'd told her mom she wasn't feeling well enough to go to Six Flags with their friends and had begged Zack to stay with her at the hotel, he'd known something screwy was up.
Especially since it had been Katie's idea to talk Bonnie and Ben and Holly and Aaron into coming to San Antonio earlier than planned so they could all hang out at the amusement park.
Mrs. Crenshaw was one of the chaperones, and Zack doubted she was supposed to go off and leave any of the kids without supervision. But since it was her own daughter staying behind, and since Linda Crenshaw trusted Zack, he'd kept his mouth shut, and she'd gone on ahead.
Katie'd told her mom they were going to order in a pizza and watch Star Wars. Zack had decided then that parents were much too trusting—even if it was true that he was a Star Wars freak and that Mrs. Crenshaw knew that.