by Liz Flaherty
He gave Steven a nudge. “Are you going to let her talk to me like that?”
“You bet.” Steven handed Promise a cup. “I already know she can whip me. She’d make mincemeat out of you. Even my little sister scares you.”
Dillon allowed himself the pleasure of just watching his wife. She stood at the sink, poking the soil of a plant with one newly manicured fingertip. She stood with her feet apart, knees locked, her free arm around Promise’s waist. The realization that Promise probably needed the support saddened him. So did Grace’s pugnacious stance. She couldn’t win the battle for her friend’s life, and he didn’t know what she would do when she had to lay down her arms.
“You’re right,” he told Steven.
“Sometimes,” Steven said, his eyes going dark and hollow, “the fear is worth it.”
Chapter 29
Grace felt as though her eyes had been wide for one reason or another for three entire days. She had not disgraced herself on her first flight, even though she gulped two glasses of wine before the plane took off. Her new clothes had been entirely suitable for lunch with Dillon’s agent and dinner with his editor, and no one was shocked when she lost track of one of the shoes she’d removed under the table. She’d gone up in the Empire State Building, ridden in a subway, and had her eyes water dangerously when she visited Liberty Island and Ground Zero. She loved the house on Long Island, loved even more the beach that led to the endless sea.
She had enjoyed the freedom of being alone with Dillon. They had talked, made love whenever the mood struck and made liberal, naked use of the hot tub on the deck and the Jacuzzi in the master bathroom.
It had all been new and exciting and fun. She had seen “how the other half lived” and had witnessed firsthand how comfortable Dillon was in this place of housekeepers and cooks and people who maintained other people’s lawns.
There was a lawn service in Peacock whose employees mowed many of the yards on Lawyers Row and a landscaping firm that took care of flower gardens and tree-spraying. But no one had a gardener. Hardly anyone had a housekeeper who came every day whether the house’s residents were having a party that night or not. No one had a cook unless they’d just had surgery or a baby and the other women in the neighborhood were taking turns providing meals. Peacock residents who had money had it very quietly.
On the third day, while Dillon consulted with his agent in the house, Grace walked the beach alone. The sky and the sea were gray, the air cold and damp, matching her mood and frizzing her hair. She wanted to go home to her warm kitchen with the cats lying on the furnace vents and Promise and Steven sitting at the table and Maxie and Jonah coming in and going out at will.
But home wasn’t really home unless Dillon was there, and Grace didn’t see how he could leave this place where he was so comfortable and catered to and in demand. Each time they’d returned from a pilgrimage into the city over the past days, there had been a stack of messages beside the telephone in the foyer of the house.
He hadn’t ignored them as he did in Peacock. “I’m sorry,” he said, shuffling through the sheaf of notes. “I have to answer these.”
“It’s okay. I’ll just wander around.”
That’s what she’d done, ending in the kitchen where she exchanged recipes with the cook and sympathized with the housekeeper’s bursitis. They’d called her “ma’am,” and when she asked them to simply call her Grace, they compromised on Miss Grace. Even without the sound of Southern voices to soften it, the title was at least familiar, and she’d acquiesced.
Here in this elegant house with its balconied tower, Dillon slipped more and more often into a reverie where he couldn’t be reached. On the first day, Grace thought his distance was in her imagination, but the days since had increased the emotional separation. His eyes, with no touch of silver visible in their depths, gazed at points beyond her. Once, on the beach, a small dark-haired boy had run past them in giggling escape from his mother, and Dillon had nearly lunged into pursuit. She’d felt the stiffening of his muscles and their much slower relaxation and had realized if she placed her hand on his chest, she would feel his heart beating hard and fast the way it did after an orgasm. When she’d asked what was wrong, he’d said, “Nothing,” without meeting her eyes.
At night, he was himself again. They made love with passionate abandon, roused in early hours and made love again. Only this morning, after he’d awakened her before dawn, did she begin to wonder if—under the velvet cover of darkness—he was pretending she was someone else.
The idea was so painful it took her breath away, and she stood near the water’s edge, unable to move.
Small arms grabbing her legs nearly knocked her off her feet. Waving her arms for balance, she looked down at the small boy they’d seen earlier.
“No swim,” he scolded. “Cold.”
He had the flat features and slanted dark eyes often associated with Down Syndrome, as well as a certain lack of coordination that had its own kind of grace. He showed no sign of releasing her legs.
“Noah!” There was exasperated amusement in the voice of the woman who followed the child. “I’m sorry,” she told Grace. “He’s appointed himself winter lifeguard.”
“And a very good one he is too.” It was difficult to kneel with Noah still holding on as though she were going to escape into the Atlantic, but Grace managed. “Hello,” she said. “My name is Grace. Thank you for telling me not to swim. You’re right, it’s too cold.”
The boy dropped to his backside on the cold ground. “Story?” he requested.
“Sure,” Grace said. “Do you know what magpies are?”
Dillon shoved his hands into his pockets and looked around for his wife. He found her sitting on the damp sand, speaking seriously to the child they’d seen before, the one who’d reminded him so much of John. As Dillon watched, the boy’s mother lowered herself to sit near them and the boy inched his way into Grace’s lap.
“Hey.” He raised an arm and his voice at the same time, and strode across the beach. “I turn my back for an hour or so and what happens but I find you with another guy in your arms.”
The little boy peered at him around Grace and waved a hand that was both chubby and curiously flat. “Tom!” he crowed.
Tom? Then he remembered. Tom was Ben Magpie’s best friend. Dillon felt a niggle of satisfaction that she had been talking about him.
Her voice was slow and clear when she spoke. “Sometimes he’s Tom, but most of the time he’s Dillon. Dillon, this is my friend Noah and his mother Gilly.”
“How do you do?” Dillon smiled at the boy’s mother and grasped the still-waving hand gently. “Has Grace been telling you stories?”
Noah nodded so hard he bumped Grace’s head with his own. “Owie,” he said matter-of-factly, and kissed Grace’s forehead. Then he pointed at Dillon. “No swim. Cold.”
“Speaking of cold, young man, your nose is as red as a cherry. We need to get back.” Gilly extended her hand to Grace. “Thank you.”
Dillon watched them walk away. The child no longer reminded him of little John. Rather, he made him think inexplicably and painfully of Promise.
“She’d love him, wouldn’t she?” Grace said, coming to her feet clumsily.
He caught her with his arms around her waist when she would have stumbled. “Yeah, she would.” He kissed the top of her head and held her close. “Maybe that’s why you met him, so that you could love him in her place.”
She shrugged. “What are we doing the rest of today?”
“I asked Linda and Kelsey and their husbands to come to dinner,” he said, naming his agent and editor. Dropping his arms but catching her hand, he started up the beach. “I gave the cook and housekeeper the rest of the day off too. I thought maybe we could have chili.”
She almost tripped again, and he looked down. “Grace, it’s the last day of March. It’s too cold to go barefoot.”
“Not on the beach, it’s not. You mean you want me to cook chili?”
&
nbsp; “If you don’t mind. I’ll help,” he offered. “I’ll get the crackers out.”
“You’ll do more than that. Come on. I have to make sure we have the stuff.”
He’d worried that she’d be angry he’d invited guests on their last evening in New York. Instead, she seemed happier than she had since they’d left home. He shook his head. He was going to have to do a lot better at listening to what she didn’t say.
In the bedroom, she laid black jeans and a shimmery black sweater on the bed before she took a shower. She spread them out carefully and placed a black bra and panties beside them. Black flats were placed on the floor, just so, with trouser socks lying across them.
When the shower spray came on, Dillon began to undress. He kept staring at the neat array of clothing on the bed. She’d even put out black pearl earrings.
The clothes were pretty, they looked nice on Grace, but suddenly he hated them.
What she had intended as a two-minute rinse-off-the-sand shower became something else altogether when Dillon joined her. She left the bathroom with her body tingling and her hair sopping wet. Wrapped in a fluffy towel, she went over to the bed.
Her clothes were gone. In their place were her khaki bib overalls and the cream-colored knit top she wore under them.
“Dillon?”
He came into the room behind her. “You don’t have to dress to please anyone but yourself,” he said quietly. “If we were in Peacock and Jake and Kate and Deac and Jean came for dinner, what would you wear?”
She gestured toward the overalls. “Those. But this is your world, Dillon. I expect you to accept the way I am in Peacock, to live by my rules, for want of a better expression. It’s only fair that I try to be more…presentable in New York.”
Fury glittered in his eyes. “Well,” he said coolly, “by all means, let’s be fair. I didn’t realize we inhabited different worlds. I thought we were at home with each other, no matter where we were. Since I’m obviously mistaken, maybe you’d better clue me in as to the differences.”
She knew she’d hurt him, but she didn’t know how. “You’re the one who’s different,” she burst out, her voice blustery in her confusion. “Ever since we came here, you’ve been off in another place, answering phone calls and texting and emailing everyone. When you’re not doing that, you’re looking through me or around me at…something. The part of your past you won’t share, I assume. The only time I really feel like you’re with me is in the dark, and then—” She broke off. It had hurt badly enough thinking about that. She wasn’t going to grind salt into the wound by saying it out loud.
His anger dissipated as quickly as it had come, and she saw silver in his eyes when he came closer, his mouth lifting in the familiar half-smile. “Then what?”
She started to shrug, but his hands clasped her bare shoulders and stopped their movement. “If you don’t tell me,” he said, “I’ll tickle you until you beg for mercy. Should take me all of three seconds.”
She hesitated, unwilling to bare her soul on this strange turf. Temporary. “It’s nothing,” she said.
“Gracie.” His voice was soft, the hand that shaped her face so gentle as to nearly be her undoing. “Don’t hide from me.”
“I’m not.” She smiled up at him. “Really.” She moved restively under his hands. “Do you think maybe I should get dressed? I don’t think your friends are ready for this much of the real me.”
He released her reluctantly, then grasped her towel where it was knotted between her breasts and lowered his head to kiss her.
She gave herself up to the sensation of his mouth on hers, his fingers against her chest, the humming warmth of his nearly naked body close to hers. She drew in the clean scent of him and kept her eyes closed even after the kiss was over so that she could hear his voice in her mind.
He’d said they were at home with each other. It was as close as he’d come to professing love since the day they’d stood in the middle of Lawyers Row and decided they’d get married. That wasn’t something she’d make an issue of, however. She knew he loved her.
She was also sure his love was like everything else, including life itself.
Temporary.
Chapter 30
Spring, which had always been Dillon’s favorite season, came so quickly the trees were fully leafed before he even noticed buds on the branches. The lawn required mowing twice a week and dusty little boys in baseball uniforms were going door to door selling all kinds of things no one wanted but everyone bought.
Promise grew thinner. Pain etched weary lines around her eyes and mouth, but the eyes continued to sparkle, the mouth to smile.
Steven kept smiling too, when he was in her presence. Only when she was asleep or on “field trips” with Grace or Faith did he relax. At those times, he drank beer on the back porch and slam-dunked the crushed cans into the recycle basket. He lashed out at anyone who got in his way—usually Grace.
One afternoon, Dillon took off in Steven’s truck and came back with a basketball backboard and a pole.
“Chasing our adolescence, are we, Campbell?” Steven jeered from the stoop.
“Nope.” Dillon hefted sacks of concrete out of the truck bed. “Get off your half-drunk ass and come and help me.”
“Why?” Steven sat still, scratching Louisa May’s chin with long, restless fingers. “Is it going to make my wife—or my life, for that matter—better?”
“Well, it won’t make them worse.” Dillon climbed into the truck and drove it into the garage, coming back out with two shovels. “Come on.”
Steven came, accepting one of the shovels reluctantly. “What’s the point?”
“Do you remember Paris?” Dillon had to stop himself from flinching when he asked the question. “When Michelle’s family called you because I didn’t eat and didn’t sleep. I wouldn’t or couldn’t talk and they were afraid I was going to find a ledge somewhere and make the magical leap into the land of no more pain?”
Steven’s eyes met his in a flash of shared misery. “I remember.”
“Well, let’s not go back there, either of us. You have to do something with the anger, Elliot, so you may as well put it here.” Dillon pulled off his shirt and hung it on a rosebush, then turned a level gaze on his friend. “If you keep taking it out on my wife, I’m going to have to hurt you.”
Steven snorted. “She was my sister before she was your wife, and she understands.”
“I know she does.” Dillon pushed the shovel into the earth. “I do, too, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m going to kick your scrawny ass if you don’t stay off her case.”
Steven scooped dirt and threw it onto the pile Dillon had started. “I notice you took the best shovel.”
“So?”
“So when this thing’s done and the cement’s dry, we’ll just see who kicks whose ass.”
“Works for me.” Dillon wiped a forearm over his already-sweaty forehead. “Where’s Grant with his upper body strength when we need him?”
“He won’t talk to me about it.” Promise sipped from the vitamin-fortified drink Grace handed her and grimaced. “If you put any more sugar in that, I won’t be able to lift the cup.”
“Piss and moan.” Grace flapped a dismissive hand at her and sat beside her at the table on the back porch. “They look good out there, don’t they, all sweaty and male and cussing like sailors. Any minute now, one of them’s going to yell, ‘Hey, woman, get me a brewski.’ Any bets on which one?”
“Sometimes at night, I lie there and think about it and I want to talk about it, but Steven won’t. Or can’t. He just changes the subject and says silly things.” Promise’s blue gaze pinned Grace so surely she felt as though someone should have rung a bell and lifted Promise’s thin arm in victory.
“Point taken.” Grace nodded, even though her mind begged to continue saying silly things.
“Get a pen and paper.”
Grace had heard that tone in Promise’s voice before, usually when her students wer
e being recalcitrant. The students always bowed to it immediately.
So did Grace.
She returned with one of Dillon’s notepads and resumed her seat. “All right, go for it.” She gripped the pen hard. It kept her hand from shaking.
Promise’s voice was calm. “I would like to be buried wearing the sweatshirt my last class of kids made for me. You can dress it up with a turtleneck or something. No bra or shoes, either. Even though I believe the spirit leaves the body immediately, I want both my flesh and my ghost to be comfortable, thank you very much. No damn wig, either. Carol will have to make of this mess what she can.” She fluffed the pixie-cut of hair that had grown back.
Don’t make me do this. Friendship has its limits, after all.
Does it? You married Dillon against your principles to give her peace. How limited is that?
“Write neatly, Grace. If no one can read the notes, Faith will want to bury me in my prom dress or something.”
Grace cleared her throat. “Well, hey, you never got to wear it to the prom. You may as well get some use out of it. Drink that stuff.”
After a censuring frown that became a grin, Promise said, “I don’t care where you bury me, but I want my full name on the headstone. Promise Delaney Elliot. I don’t need all the beloved stuff.”
“You are, though,” Grace mumbled, forcing her hand to write the words.
“I know.” A thin hand, its nails painted a soft peach, rested on her arm. “Knowing’s enough.” For a moment, the blue eyes brightened with tears, then she shook her head and went on. “Music. Just play Kenny G in the background or something.” She looked through the screens, her gaze softening as it found the man with the ponytail. “And ‘Desperado.’ Sing that, Grace, as my last gift to Steven.”
Concentrate on writing, not on what she says. Bawling won’t help. It won’t keep her here. But I can’t sing “Desperado.” I can’t.