Five Years Gone

by Marie Force

  “It’s going to be better now. I promise.”

  I still want to know what changed, but I don’t ask. Whatever it was, she seems to have made peace with the situation, so what does it matter how it happened?

  “The only thing that matters to me is you and your well-being. If you’re happy, I’m happy.”

  “I feel really lucky every day to have been matched up with you at my sister’s wedding, but never more so than I have in the last few weeks.”

  “No matter what happens, sweetheart, I’m right here with you, and I’m not going anywhere.”

  She tightens her arms around me. “That means everything to me.”

  * * *

  AVA

  With our date set and Eric’s dad fully onboard with our plan to take over his home and yard, I go full steam ahead into wedding planning, to the exclusion of everything but Eric and work. I avoid the news and the internet and anything that might trigger a setback. I feel strong again, focused, determined to keep moving forward and to leave the pain of the past behind.

  A week after we set the date, we invite Rob and Camille to dinner at a five-star restaurant that requires suits, ties and cocktail attire for women. We’re all dressed up and in high spirits as we discuss the wedding.

  After we’re served a round of drinks, I glance at Eric, who nods. “So the reason we asked you here tonight is because we’d like to ask you both to return the favor as our best man and matron of honor.”

  Camille lets out a squeal that draws the perturbed attention of other diners and the tuxedoed waitstaff.

  Rob clamps a hand over her mouth.

  “You owe me fifty,” she says to her husband, her words muffled by his hand.

  “You guys bet on why we wanted to see you tonight?” Eric asks.

  “Duh,” Camille says. “We bet on everything. I usually win, and I’ve never been happier to be right than I am now.”

  “Does that mean you’ll do it?” I ask.

  “Duh,” they say together.

  “Of course we will,” Rob says. “It’d be an honor.”

  “We should all go somewhere together for the bachelor and bachelorette weekend,” Camille suggests.

  “Not happening,” Rob says. “No chicks at the bachelor party, except the strippers.”

  Eric laughs, and his brother offers a high five.

  “Do it and you’re dead,” I tell him.

  “Sorry, bro. I’m gonna leave you high and dry on that one.”

  “Already whipped, and you’re not even married yet.”

  “Shut up, Rob,” Camille says, “or you’ll be high and dry. Emphasis on the dry.”

  Rob offers his wife a shit-eating grin. “Yes, dear.”

  Camille rolls her eyes at him and raises her glass. “To sisters marrying brothers!”

  “To our kids being double cousins,” Eric adds.

  I hadn’t thought of that, but how cool will that be? We touch our glasses and offer other silly toasts that keep us laughing. I’m afraid they’re going to kick us out before we eat at this rate.

  “Speaking of sisters marrying brothers,” Rob says, “I told one of the New York Times reporters who covers Dad that my brother is marrying Camille’s sister, and they want to do a Vows article about the governor’s sons marrying sisters.”

  “That’s so cool!” Camille says. “You didn’t tell me!”

  “Truthfully, I forgot about it until right now. What do you guys think?”

  I glance at Eric.

  “It would be some positive publicity for the family and your campaign after the parental scandal from hell,” he says.

  “That’s my thought, too,” Rob says.

  “But only if Ava is in favor,” Eric says, looking at me. “I know how private you are.”

  “I’d be okay with it,” I tell them. “How soon do they want to do it?”

  “The reporter said they’d jump on it if we give the go-ahead,” Rob says, “so probably fairly soon. I’ll let you know.”

  * * *

  The next day, Eric and I interview two caterers and choose the second one because he seems to totally get the relaxed vibe we’re going for, whereas the first one wanted to turn our wedding into a society affair.

  My mom comes into the city the following weekend to go wedding dress shopping with me and Camille. I find the dress I want in the first place we go and refuse to try on any others after finding “the one.” It’s simple and elegant and classy, with intricate bead work on the bodice that transforms it into a wedding dress.

  “You don’t have to decide anything today,” Mom says.

  “This is the one. It’s exactly what I want.” I try to picture myself walking toward Eric wearing that dress, and I can see it so clearly. He’ll love it as much as I do.

  “Well,” Mom says. “That was easy.”

  “You can say it, Mom,” Camille adds. “She’s nothing like me.”

  “You said that,” Mom replies, smiling. “Not me.”

  “Since we have the rest of the day, we can spend it helping Camille pick her dress.” I’ve told Camille, Jules, Amy and Sky to pick navy-blue cocktail-length dresses in any style that works for them.

  “One day won’t be enough,” Mom says, making us laugh.

  We have such a great time that Mom decides to spend the night in Eric’s guest room so we can choose invitations on Sunday before she goes home.

  In bed that night, Eric refuses to come anywhere near me because my mom is sleeping in the next room. Naturally, when presented with a challenge, I bring my A game to convince him he’s being silly.

  “She knows we sleep together and that we have s-e-x.”

  “Hush. Leave me alone and go to sleep.”

  I suppress the urgent need to giggle madly. He’s so damned cute and funny and sweet. Sitting up in bed, I tug at the hem of the T-shirt he told me I had to wear to bed because we have a guest. He wore a T-shirt that he tucked into flannel pajama pants.

  “What’re you doing?” he whispers.

  “I’m hot.” I fan my face for effect.

  “You who are cold in the middle of summer are suddenly hot?”

  “I’m roasting.” I lift the T-shirt up and over my head and toss it aside. “That’s better.” Gathering my hair into a ponytail, I hold it up with one hand and continue to fan myself with the other. “Did you crank up the heat?”

  “You think I don’t know what you’re up to.”

  “What am I up to?”

  “You’re trying to break me.”

  “Why would I do that? I love you. I don’t want you broken.”

  Laughing softly, he says, “Yes, you do.”

  I release my hair and crawl across the wide expanse of bed he put between us for the first time ever.

  His eyes, illuminated by the street light coming in from outside, flare with desire. “Go away.”

  Smiling, I lean over him and begin to kiss his neck. “No.”

  “Yes,” he says, sounding more desperate as I move toward his abdomen.

  “Make me.”

  He buries his hands in my hair but makes no move to relocate me. “Ava…”

  “Hmm?”

  “What’re you doing?”

  I tug on his T-shirt. “Breaking the seal.”

  “Not with your mom here.”

  “Yes, with my mom here.”

  “You know I can’t resist you.”

  “So why do you try?”

  He gasps when I take him into my mouth. “Ava.”

  “Shhh, you wouldn’t want her to hear, would you?”

  “I thought you loved me?”

  “I love you so much. More than anything.” Sensing his surrender, I set out to show him just how much.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  ERIC

  Ava has thrown herself into wedding planning with a feverish urgency that alarms me. I worry she’s using our wedding to deal with the other thing we never talk about. Don’t get me wrong… I’m thrilled she’s excited ab
out the wedding and caught up in the details of planning it. All I care about is her happiness and to see her eyes sparkling with joy as she devours bridal magazines and checks items off her massive to-do list. But underneath it all, I worry that the thing we never talk about is lying dormant like a creature in the deep, dark ocean, waiting to come surging to the surface and turn our lives upside down again.

  I worry incessantly about her, enough that I take the unusual step of asking Camille to meet me for lunch because I need to talk to someone about it—and I need to know if I’m the only one who’s concerned that the wedding frenzy might be a front.

  Camille comes into the restaurant looking windblown, her cheeks red from the brisk March breeze.

  I wave to her, and she winds her way through the tables to reach me. Standing, I kiss her cheek. “Thanks for meeting me.”

  “No problem.”

  “How’s the job?” I ask, not wanting to hit her with the reason for this meeting the second she arrives.

  “It’s very… rewarding. I like it a lot. I’ll be able to truly enjoy it once I pass the bar and can put the incessant studying behind me.”

  “You’ve got this.”

  “I guess we’ll see, won’t we?”

  Our waiter comes to take our order. I get a pastrami sandwich that I don’t really want, and she orders a salad.

  “What’s going on, Eric? Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, everything’s great. I just…” I fiddle with my water glass and force myself to say it out loud, to express my concerns to someone who knows her almost as well as I do. “How does Ava seem to you?”

  “Really good, actually. I was just saying to Rob last night that she seems like her old self again. She’s super excited about the wedding.”

  “I know.” I glance at the window, where people rush by, moving fast the way they do when it’s cold. This winter is holding us in its grip until the last possible second.

  “You don’t think that’s a good thing?”

  “It is. It’s just I wonder if maybe she’s using the wedding to avoid dealing with the other thing.” There. I said it. My fear is no longer a private thought. It’s on the table to be picked apart and analyzed.

  She stares at me, mouth agape. “You honestly think that?”

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  “Every bride goes crazy planning her wedding. Ava is no different.”

  “Ava is different, and we both know that for her to be totally embracing every second of planning the wedding is somewhat out of character for her. I could see you doing that—no offense.”

  She waves a hand. “None taken. It’s true.”

  “But it’s not like Ava to care so passionately about centerpieces and lighting that she stays up all night to thoroughly research her options.”

  Camille ponders that, and when she looks up at me, I see concern. “She did that? She stayed up all night?”

  “More than once.”

  “And you think it’s related in some way to… the other thing?”

  “I’m afraid it might be how she’s chosen to cope with finding out he’s alive. I don’t think she realizes she’s doing it, but it’s like she’s using the wedding to drown out her thoughts of him.”

  “Eric… She loves you. She can’t wait to marry you.”

  “I know that. I don’t doubt for a minute that she loves me and she’s excited about the wedding. That’s not what I’m saying.” I take a minute to gather my thoughts. “I feel like her single-minded obsession with the wedding is unlike her, but then I wonder if I know her well enough to make that observation. Which is why I called you.”

  “You know her as well as anyone, but it is… unusual, I guess you could say, for her to care so much about the details.”

  “So you agree it’s slightly worrisome?”

  “Slightly.”

  Our lunch is served, and I pick at the pastrami while she pokes at the salad. My stomach hurts, and I couldn’t be less interested in eating.

  I take a sip of water, wishing it could wash away the lump that has taken up permanent residence in my throat. “When she found out he was alive, she was off for weeks, but then one day, it was like she decided not to give a shit that he survived the raid but hasn’t contacted her. She came home that night, full of enthusiasm for making dinner, and seemed to make a concerted effort to get back on track with me and everything else. She’s never again mentioned his name or said anything about him when she has to wonder where he is and why he never bothered to reach out to her, you know?”

  Camille nods. “How could she not wonder?”

  “Exactly.”

  Silence hangs heavy between us as we continue to pretend we’re eating.

  The waiter comes by and stops short when he sees we’ve barely touched our food. “Is everything all right?”

  No, not really. “Yeah, we’re good. Thanks.”

  “What do we do?” Camille asks in a small voice that’s so unlike her. It tells me how concerned she is, which makes me feel bad for unloading my worries onto her.

  “I don’t know. It’s not like I can come right out and ask her if she’s using our wedding to mask her despair over him.”

  “No, you really can’t do that.” She taps her fingertips on the tabletop for a few minutes. “But what you could do is take her away for a weekend with no wedding planning, no nothing but you two spending time together.”

  “I like that idea. I like it a lot.”

  “There’s an inn upstate that she loves. We went there once with our parents to meet up with some friends for a weekend. I’ll send you the info.”

  “That’d be great. Thank you.”

  “Maybe you can get her to open up to you while you’re away.”

  “I hope so.” She’s stuffed her feelings about John into a box full of wedding details that keep her so busy, she has no time to think about him. I’m sure of it, and while I love the idea of taking her away from it all for a weekend, I’m desperately afraid of what might happen if he gets out of that box.

  * * *

  CAMILLE

  “She’s going to crush him,” Rob says when I tell him about my lunch with Eric. “I feel it coming, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.” We’re in the back of an Uber on our way to a fundraiser for his campaign that was organized by longtime supporters of his father.

  I recoil from his certainty. “She’s not going to crush him. Don’t say that.”

  “Why shouldn’t I say it? Everyone else is already thinking it.”

  “Who is thinking it?” I ask, shocked to hear that.

  “Jules, Amy, my dad. Ever since we heard that this guy she’s pined for all this time is alive, we’ve been worried about her pulling the rug out from under Eric.”

  “It’s not going to happen.”

  “How do you know that, Camille? What’s she going to do if this guy… John… resurfaces and wants her back? He’s been off fighting for our country all this time. He’s a fucking national hero. How can Eric compete against that?”

  “It’s not a competition. She loves Eric. She’d tell you herself that he saved her life in more ways than one.”

  “I believe she loves him. I really do. We can all see that she does. But that doesn’t mean she’ll stay with Eric if the other guy wants her back.”

  I feel chilled to the bone by his certainty that Ava would walk away from Eric after everything they’ve shared and been to each other. “If nothing else, Ava has proven that she’s a loyal person by staying true to the man she loved for more than five years when she didn’t even know he was alive.”

  “She’s a very loyal person, babe. That’s my point.”

  “You’ve got this all wrong, Rob. She won’t do that to Eric.” The thought of it makes me shudder. What would it mean for my marriage if my sister breaks the heart of my husband’s brother? The very thought of it makes me sick.

  “I don’t mean to be hard on Ava. She’s a sweetheart. And she’s been through
so much. I admire her as much as I like her. But I’m scared for my brother in this situation. You saw him after Brittany…” He shakes his head, his expression grim. “You know how awful it was. If it goes bad with Ava…”

  “It’s not going to.”

  “I hope you’re right. I really do.”

  So do I. The alternative is unimaginable.

  * * *

  AVA

  I’m bouncing with excitement as Eric drives us out of the city just after noon on a Friday in late March. We both took half-days so we could get out of the city ahead of rush hour. He won’t tell me where we’re going, just that he wanted to get away for the weekend and spend some time alone with me.

  That sounds good to me. We’ve both been so busy in recent weeks that time alone has been hard to come by. Last week, we met with the Vows reporter from the New York Times and posed with Rob and Camille for the photographer they sent.

  The feature is scheduled to appear in this Sunday’s paper. Everyone at work is excited about the article, and Rob is thrilled about the positive publicity for his campaign after a tough year for their family. We also celebrated Camille passing the bar exam on the first try, not that any of us are surprised.

  Eric has put me in charge of road trip music, and I’ve got Nirvana blasting.

  He turns it down a smidge. “You’re going to blow my speakers.”

  “Wimp.”

  His mouth falls open in shock that makes me laugh as I dance in my seat to the music of my youth. I adored all things Grunge in high school.

  I love that Eric orchestrated this weekend for us and that I can say anything to him and not have to worry about him reacting badly. I’ve never had that with anyone, even John, who could be sensitive about perceived insults.

  John.

  Why am I thinking about him when I’m on a getaway with Eric? I have no space in my brain or time in my life for him. That phase is over. Finished. Ended. I have a whole new life now, and that’s where my focus belongs.

  “Are we there yet?” I ask Eric, feeling itchy about my thoughts straying into dangerous territory.