They reached her street in less than ten minutes. Above him, the leaves of the maple and sycamore trees lining the curb rustled. Somewhere a squirrel chattered and cackled. A car with a noisy muffler revved its engine a block away. The night swirled around him, its sounds so much more peaceful than the constant traffic noises and shouting voices he heard while driving around his Brooklyn neighborhood.
He pulled into the driveway behind Talia’s van, and got out of his car when she did. But instead of following her to the front door, he called out to her. “Why don’t we take a drive?”
She glanced at her house, the porch lights glowing, a few lights left on inside, as well. Then she shrugged, spun around, and edged through the narrow space between his car’s front bumper and her minivan’s rear bumper. She was stepping out onto the tightrope again—but as she did, she warned, “Just a quick drive. I don’t want Wendy to come home to an empty house.”
“Not a problem.”
They settled into their seats and fastened their seatbelts. “Wendy says this car is so much fun to ride around in,” Talia said, as if she felt obligated to explain why she was sitting in his hot little Miata.
“I’ll try to make this as much fun as I can,” he promised as he backed down the driveway. Cruising around town in his car would not be as much fun as screwing their heads off in his hotel bed, but it would do. Just watching her hair blow wild and her face glow with a smile as he steered back to Atlantic Avenue and headed south on the road bordering the beach was pretty damned fun.
They didn’t talk. They just drove. The wind off the ocean augmented the wind caused by the car’s motion. Above them the sky was a sheet of royal blue, dotted with a few stars and that glorious moon, a silver rivet holding up the night. A magic token that made lovers dance.
When he reached the southern edge of town, he turned off Atlantic Avenue, navigating away from the water. “Where to?” he asked.
She didn’t warn him about the time, or caution him about not driving too far. All she did was smile at him, her expression radiant, her smile exhilarating, and say, “Your choice.”
His choice would be to hop on the nearest highway and drive to California. Or U-turn and head north until they hit Canada. Or point the car skyward and drive straight to the moon.
But it wasn’t fair for him to force Talia to be the practical one all the time. Wendy would be home in an hour. And he had other obligations, as well. “How about some of the seniors-only complexes in town?” he asked. “I ought to check some places out for my mother.”
She seemed surprised. She’d probably expected him to suggest California, or Canada—or even the moon. But her smile grew gentle as she appraised him. “You say she’s not ready for assisted living, right?”
“I don’t think so. She can still manage on her own. But she needs a place with no stairs. And wide doorways so she can get around without bumping into the walls. Someplace safe.”
Talia stared forward, lapsing into thought. “Okay. Make a right at the light,” she said, indicating an intersection a few blocks down. “There are a few fifty-five and older complexes here in town. I have clients living in some of them.”
“Great.”
He drove more slowly, giving her hair a chance to settle down, although it still resembled a rat’s nest. She provided directions and pointed out landmarks along the way: the town green, the Town Hall building, the Unitarian church, the synagogue. Her favorite farm stand, her second favorite farm stand. The Community Center where Wendy had learned to swim, and where she’d played basketball on a recreation-league team when she was in middle school. The middle school.
Talia navigated him to a condominium development with pretentious fieldstone structures framing the driveway. “I’ve got two clients who live here,” she said as he steered through the stone gateway, slowing for a speed bump. The units lining the winding lane also featured lots of fieldstone highlights on their façades, Palladian windows and two-car garages.
“This is where the rich retirees live, I take it.”
“It is kind of pricy,” she allowed.
“I’m not going to get that much money for my mother’s house,” he said. “The place is pretty rundown.”
“Okay. I’ll show you another complex that’s less expensive.”
They wound up driving through three condo developments, and she also showed him the two assisted-living residences in town. They were both charming, landscaped with flowers and endowed with expansive porches that reminded him a little of the veranda at the Ocean Bluff Inn, although furnished with chairs that were a lot easier for people with arthritic knees to get out of than those deep Adirondack chairs at the hotel.
“The assisted living places aren’t cheap, either,” Talia told him. “But she’s still getting that stipend, right?”
“She can afford First Aides,” he said. “Assisted living, doubtful.” He pulled out of the parking lot of the second assisted living residence and merged onto the street. Hardly any traffic. Even on a weeknight, his neighborhood in Brooklyn would be jammed with cars, cabs, buses, bikes, and little kids on scooters. Driving down his street was a pain in the ass, regardless of the hour.
He had enough sense of direction to figure out which way was east, and he pointed the car that way. The clock on the dashboard read nearly ten-thirty. A half hour until Wendy showed up. They could make good use of another condom if they worked fast.
But Talia seemed deep in thought. She gazed out the windshield, her hair flying all over the place again, the skirt of her dress fluttering against her thighs. She looked sexy—of course she did—but she didn’t look at all interested in getting naked with him again. He told his dick to forget about it.
Once he reached Atlantic Avenue—he couldn’t go any further east without driving into the ocean—he turned left, heading back to her house. Although he’d been in town for just a few days, he already knew his way around, at least a little. He knew how to get to the inn, the high school, and Talia’s house. He could probably find his way back to the town green without turning on his GPS. And he could make his way to that bar with the antique jukebox, that bar where he and Talia had heard “Moondance.” If they hadn’t heard that song, would they have made love earlier? Would he want her as much as he wanted her now?
She’d left him, he reminded himself. She’d walked out on him and taken their daughter with her. She’d rejected him. She’d told him she no longer trusted him, no longer felt she could depend on him, no longer believed they could make a go of it.
Yet he still wanted her. If only she were still that sweet, trusting eighteen-year-old, willing to follow him away from the safety of her friend’s party, through the city, down a dark alley. He’d shown her that color and brightness could exist in an alley, that beauty could blossom there. Back then, she’d believed.
Was this what growing up meant? Experiencing disappointment? Losing faith? Learning that it was better not to believe?
***
She must be crazy.
The sanest thing she’d done since Cory’s arrival in town was to tell him she couldn’t see him on Wednesday. On Wednesday she had to run Lynnette Morley’s laundry and prepare a few meals for her—Lynnette was one of her original clients, and Talia couldn’t bear to hand her over to one of her employees—and she had a meeting with her lawyer, Niall Mullen, to analyze her options for expanding the company to include a health-care service. Cory said he had to meet with his real estate broker in Boston to check out a few other potential sites for his company’s New England branch. The senior class was going to an amusement park for the day and wouldn’t be getting home until around eight o’clock. Before Cory could ask Talia to have dinner with him, she told him she simply didn’t have time.
He’d taken her turn-down well. Too well, obviously. He’d been so calm and casual, he’d managed to lull her into saying she would accompany him to see his mother on Thursday. “She’s really reluctant about moving,” he explained. “Maybe you can help me
persuade her that it’s the best option for her.”
Why had Talia said yes? She didn’t want to see Tina Malone. The last time she’d seen her former mother-in-law had been about eight years ago, when Tina had driven up to Brogan’s Point to fetch Wendy for a weekend with Cory in Rhode Island. Once Wendy had turned ten, Talia and Cory had agreed that Wendy was old enough to take the train down to New York City by herself. Talia would drive her to South Station in Boston, where she would board the Amtrak to Manhattan. Cory would be waiting for her at the other end of the trip. Tina’s assistance was no longer needed.
Yet here Talia was, dressed in jeans and a neat blouse, waiting for Cory to pick her up. God knew, she might have agreed to accompany him to his mother’s just because riding in his car was so much fun, but the morning was drizzly, so they weren’t going to enjoy any top-down driving.
She watched for him, and as soon as he turned onto her driveway, she stepped out onto the front porch and locked the door behind her. She didn’t want him to enter the house. If he came inside, they might start kissing, and who knew where a kiss would lead? Making love with Cory had been too wonderful. Until she knew what the hell was going on between them, she couldn’t risk doing that again.
She wasn’t a teenager anymore. She couldn’t let him sweep her off her feet, the way he had back then. A whole lot of life had occurred between then and now, and she needed to keep her wits about her.
If she’d had her wits about her, though, she wouldn’t have agreed to this trip. With the top secured, his car was too tiny, too snug. Only the width of a gear stick separated her from him, and it was a pretty skinny gear stick.
“Why am I doing this?” she asked aloud. She couldn’t come up with an answer, but maybe Cory could.
“I need your help,” Cory explained. “My mother doesn’t want to move.”
“Then maybe she shouldn’t. Turn right here—it’s a little faster.” She gestured toward the intersection. “Maybe she should stay where she is.”
“She can’t. Her house is falling down around her. I figured you could explain what First Aides does, how it would serve her needs.” He shrugged. “She doesn’t listen to me, but she’ll listen to you.”
“I doubt that.” After all, Talia had left her home—and her son. She’d called Tina a bad caretaker, a thoughtless, careless woman. They had not parted on good terms. On those occasions when Tina had come to Brogan’s Point to get Wendy, Talia had maintained a chilly detachment from the woman. When she could, she used to let Grammy deal with Tina, so Talia wouldn’t have to see her at all.
He sent her a cajoling smile. “Come on, Tally. I know it goes against everything you believe in to help me out, but be a pal.”
She gritted her teeth, remembering how he’d tried to wheedle her into staying with him, even when he’d been too busy living his far more satisfying life to stay with her in anything other than the most basic legal sense. “Have a little faith in me,” he’d say. “Be patient. This is all going to work out.”
If she’d stayed, it would have worked out for him. For her, though? She doubted it. “I just don’t understand why your mother has to be my problem,” she muttered.
He shot her another look, this one grim. “You were once her problem,” he reminded Talia, his voice taut. “She took you in. She did for you what your own parents wouldn’t do.”
She sighed. Now he was going to make her feel guilty, indebted to the woman who’d been such a dreadful caretaker for Wendy. Talia again recalled the nights she’d come home from her job at the convenience store and found Wendy sitting on a dusty floor in a soggy diaper, eating ice-cream with nuts in it, nuts she could have choked on. She recalled working late shifts and staggering home at midnight to find Wendy still wide awake, sitting beside Tina and watching a crime show full of blood and gore and dead bodies on TV. She recalled finding Wendy in the back yard, sticking a dandelion into her mouth, and Tina saying, “Don’t worry. It’s organic.”
Organic weeds. This was the woman Talia was supposed to feel beholden to.
She subsided in her bucket seat and stared forward, stewing. She shouldn’t have come. She shouldn’t have let Cory back into her life. All these years later, he could still persuade her to do things she shouldn’t do.
If only she hadn’t made love with him... If only she hadn’t danced on the beach with him… If only she hadn’t gone with him to the Faulk Street Tavern and heard that song… If only he wasn’t so skilled at seducing her with his dark eyes, his artistic brilliance, his talented hands, his charisma.
She couldn’t very well bolt from his car and tell him to continue to Providence without her. They were already on Route 128, and flinging herself out of a car cruising at sixty-five miles per hour down the highway seemed like an unwise idea. The morning drizzle had thickened into a steady rain, and she focused on the wipers sweeping back and forth across the windshield.
The trip to Providence took less time than she’d expected. Once he exited the interstate and started weaving through the narrow streets of the city’s west side, Talia felt her stomach tense. So many years had passed since she’d last been here. Once she’d moved to Grammy’s house in Brogan’s Point with Wendy, she’d never come back. That part of her life—the part with Cory—had ended. She hadn’t wanted to revisit it.
Cory’s mother hadn’t lived in one of the swankier neighborhoods, but as he steered onto his mother’s street, the houses looked even shabbier than Talia had remembered. He pulled into the driveway and she winced, noting that the front porch sagged more than she’d remembered. The concrete path between the driveway and that porch was cracked, with scraggly strands of grass sprouting through. That grass looked healthier than the patchy brown front lawn, which was so small, Talia used to joke about cutting the grass with a scissor rather than a mower.
The clapboards needed painting. The pane of one window had a crack running through it. It wasn’t a bad house, but it was in desperate need of tender loving care.
“Does she know I’m coming?” Talia asked as she and Cory darted between the raindrops to the front porch and up the stairs. They were splintery, and dry rot had attacked the hand rails.
“I told her I was bringing you,” he said as he pressed the doorbell.
“How did she feel about that?”
Before he could answer, the door swung inward. Tina stood on the other side. She seemed to have aged far more than the eight years since Talia had last seen her. Her hair was cut short and uneven, and it had turned a drab gray. The right corner of her mouth turned downward, and her right eyelid drooped slightly—from her stroke, perhaps. She was thinner than Talia had remembered, the knuckles of her left hand straining her skin as her fingers curled around a cane. Her jeans were baggy, drooping around her scuffed sneakers.
Her face blossomed into a smile—a crooked one, given that drooping corner of her mouth, but a genuine one. “Talia! Look at you! All grown up!”
Talia was stunned into silence. For one thing, she hadn’t expected to be welcomed so warmly. For another, she’d been pretty grown up when she’d moved in with Tina, and when she’d moved out. Grown up enough to be a mother. Grown up to know what she needed, to take steps to get her needs met.
But Tina was waving her in, and Cory was nudging her with his hand at the small of her back. So she stepped inside.
The living room was still cluttered—way too cluttered for someone with mobility issues, Talia thought as she assessed the overgrown house plants, the scratched occasional tables, the faded ottoman, the piles of books and crossword-puzzle magazines heaped on one cushion of the sofa. The air had a faint yet familiar incense smell. Was the woman still smoking grass?
“Come on, come in,” she babbled, even though both Talia and Cory were already inside. She hobbled over to Cory, her right leg dragging slightly, and kissed his cheek. Then she turned back to Talia, regarded her with obvious affection, and gave her a big hug, her cane banging against Talia’s back.
“I didn�
��t know if you’d be glad to see me,” Talia murmured.
She fluttered her free hand through the air, as if batting away a housefly. “Bygones. Come in the kitchen. I’ll make some herbal tea. You remember my herbal tea, don’t you?” she asked Talia.
Talia remembered that Tina had made it herself, growing and curing herbs from her backyard garden. Talia also remembered that it had tasted vile. But Tina was being so gracious, she didn’t give voice to that memory.
The kitchen was as cluttered as the living room. Pots that didn’t look clean enough to pass Talia’s inspection dried in a rack by the stained porcelain sink. Perhaps Cory had learned from his mother to leave dirty dishes crusting on the table while he pursued more pleasurable activities.
She felt her cheeks grow warm as she recalled the pleasurable activities she and Cory had indulged in. Had he made love to her as a ploy? Had he softened her up in bed so she’d travel to Providence with him and do his bidding with Tina?
“How was the drive?” Tina asked as she puttered around, filling a kettle with water to boil and then stuffing a tea ball with a wad of what appeared to be mulch.
“Not too bad, considering the weather,” Cory told her, pulling out a chair at the table for Talia. She sat, and he gathered the mail scattered across the stained table cloth and thumbed through it. Evidently none of it struck him as important, because he set the stack on a counter and took a seat.
“I miss driving,” Tina confessed, eyeing Talia pensively. “I suppose Cory’s told you I’m not getting around the way I used to.”
“He’s mentioned your health issues, yes.”
“Health issues.” She sniffed at the euphemism. “He wants me to move, but I don’t want to. Just because I can’t drive doesn’t mean I can’t live here. I can get a bus just two blocks down. I’m not a cripple.”
“You look like you’re doing well,” Talia fibbed. It wasn’t a huge lie. Tina could get around her kitchen, do things, fix things. And she’d never been particularly neat or fastidious.
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