by Nancy Thayer
“That’s his work,” Bella reminded Morgan. “Slade and I have something personal.”
“Bella,” Natalie asked, “tell me. Have you slept with him yet?”
At the same time, Morgan said, “Bella, Slade came on to me.”
Bella blinked. “What?”
Natalie sighed. “Oh God.”
Morgan explained, “It was when he delivered the Victorian settee. The day we painted your shop. We left for a while in his van, remember? He’d brought it out from Ralston’s in Boston. He’d suggested it to sort of jazz up the ambience. So we carried it into the house. We sat down on it. To kind of test it, you know. It’s extremely soft and comfortable, the fabric is very expensive quilted silk—”
“Forget the stupid settee!” Bella cried.
Morgan hurriedly continued. “Hang on, this is relevant. We sat next to each other on the settee. I’m trying to remember this exactly as it happened. I think I said the silk was soft or something. Slade said, Just like your hair. He said my hair is silky. No. He said luxurious. He said the settee was luxurious, like me.”
“What a tool,” Natalie muttered.
“Go on,” Bella insisted.
Morgan shifted her gaze away from Bella. “He touched my hair. He said my skin is like satin. He … he looked at me. He told me the settee was long enough for people to lie down on.” She paused, remembering. “We kissed. I’ll admit the kiss was my fault. I instigated it. Actually, I sort of jumped him … but you’ve got to understand, Josh and I have been like strangers lately. I don’t even know if we’ll stay married. He doesn’t seem to care for me anymore.”
“Oh, honey,” Natalie cried, full of concern. “Of course he loves you! He’s writing a novel, and it’s almost ready for the agent, and then—”
Morgan swung around so abruptly she knocked over her glass. Peach-tinted fluid spilled across the glass tabletop and dripped down onto the wooden deck.
“Josh is writing a novel?”
“Yes!” Natalie held out her hands. “Morgan, Josh loves you so much! He wants to complete the novel, and—”
Morgan stood up, hands clenched at her sides. “Josh told you he’s writing a goddamned novel and he didn’t tell me?”
“Wait a minute!” Bella sprang out of the lounge chair and stood towering between them in all her five foot two quivering rage. “Morgan. Finish about you and Slade!”
Morgan forced her attention back on Bella. “What? Me and Slade? There’s nothing else to say! We kissed, that’s all. We didn’t commit any kind of infidelity as serious as telling someone else a really, really HUGE secret!” Tears flooded her eyes.
Bella wouldn’t let go of it. “Please. Morgan. This is important to me. Is that all you did? Kiss?”
Morgan looked at her petite, optimistic friend, and with great effort, she wrenched her mind back to that moment with Slade, and not only to that moment, but to the significance of it, the reason she wanted to warn Bella. But she was also still fueled by her hurt, her anger at Josh and Natalie. “Oh, this is important to you? So I should forget Josh conspiring with Natalie?”
Natalie sighed. “We hardly conspired. Morgan, I apologize. Let me explain.”
But Morgan was speeding down some mental slide as if shoved, and emotional gravity was not about to let her stop. “Okay, Bella, here’s what happened. I kissed Slade. He did not push me away. He did not say, ‘Stop, Morgan, I love Bella.’ ”
“Morgan,” Natalie interjected. “No need to be harsh.”
“He pulled me down on top of him on the settee. Our bodies were all tangled up together. We kept kissing. He had a hard-on, I could feel it through his jeans. He said—not me, he was the one who said—the settee was not wide enough to have sex, and he wanted to go up to my bedroom. I was the one who put the brakes on.”
Bella was pale.
Seeing Bella’s shocked expression, Morgan hit the bottom of the slide, and it felt like slamming down into the water, feeling the impact of collision and her actions flying out to slap other people. Abruptly ashamed of herself, she cried, “Bella, listen, I’m not trying to hurt your feelings. I’m not trying to compete with you. I’m your friend. I care for you. I think Aaron is a great guy, a wonderful guy, who loves you truly, I can see it on his face every time he’s around you. What happened between me and Slade was nothing. Nothing to me, and nothing to Slade. But I can tell it means something to you, and you really should think about it before you make any life-changing decisions.”
Bella’s face was miserable, but her voice was calm. “Okay. I know you’re right, Morgan. I’m glad you told me about Slade. It helps me.…” Her voice trailed off as her thoughts went interior.
Morgan walked around Bella and towered over Natalie. Natalie was still seated, although she’d drawn up from the lounge position and turned sideways to set her feet on the deck, her arms crossed over her chest defensively.
“Okay.” Morgan spoke with clenched teeth. “Tell me again. Josh told you he’s writing a novel?”
“Sit down, please, Morgan.” Natalie waved at the end of her chair.
“Why? Am I going to faint?” Morgan shot back sarcastically.
“Fine. Stand. It just hurts my neck to look up at you.” Natalie reached her hand out and touched Morgan’s arm.
Morgan flinched. Stepped back.
“Morgan,” Natalie said, “I apologize. I made an enormous mistake, letting it out like that. I can’t tell you how terrible I feel.”
“I can tell you exactly how terrible I feel!” Morgan retorted.
“Let me explain. It was the night of the painting party.”
Morgan remembered. She wanted to know all of it. She sank down onto the lounge chair, careful not to touch Natalie. “When you babysat Petey.”
“Right.” Natalie let it all out in a rush. “Josh came home, only a few minutes before you got back, and he saw the drawing I was doing of Petey, and I suppose that made him want to talk about his own creative work and how worried he was because even though he has an agent who thinks the novel will sell, he won’t ever make as much writing as he will working for Bio-Green.”
“He told you all that?” Morgan was dumbfounded.
Earnestly, Natalie said, “He loves you and Petey so much, he feels a tremendous sense of responsibility to protect you both financially, to make enough money to send Petey to college.…”
“Thanks,” Morgan said curtly. “Thanks so very much for telling me all this private stuff my husband shared, not with me, but with you. You’re really reassuring me about the state of my marriage, you know; you’re really a loyal friend, listening to my husband and keeping what he said secret.”
Natalie protested, “He asked me—”
“—to stand right in the middle of our marriage? To go around every single minute of every single day knowing something about my life, my marriage, that I didn’t know? How could you do it, Natalie?”
Bella interrupted. “Maybe we’re all getting kind of carried away—”
“Oh, you think?” Morgan was shaking.
“You didn’t tell me about kissing Slade,” Bella pointed out.
“Slade is not your husband!” Suddenly Morgan’s anger transformed into a terrible self-knowledge. “What kind of a wife am I?” she asked herself aloud. “What have I done to Josh that he couldn’t confide in me? Why would he tell you, Natalie, and not me? Am I a monster?”
“No,” Natalie said soothingly. “It’s not like that, Morgan.”
Morgan buried her face in her hands. She’d plunged down the slide, hit the surface, and now she was hitting bottom, the cold, dark truth of the state of her marriage. Sitting on this expensive furniture on the deck of this magnificent house, she was caught in the murky reality of her marriage, how this house was anything but a home. So this was why Josh never came home at night. So this was why he worked so late in his study. So this was his secret file. She knew how much he loved reading; why hadn’t she ever talked to him about the possibility of his writing?
How could she love the man and not be aware of his deepest needs? She was angry with Josh. And she hated herself.
“I’ve got to be alone.” Morgan stood up. She walked away from the spilled Bellini and the glasses of gleaming yellow liquid, from the two women who sat watching her with tears in their own eyes. She walked into her fabulous house, slid the door shut, and locked it.
23
After Morgan stormed into her house, Bella and Natalie stood helplessly while the peach Bellini drizzled down the table onto the deck.
Bella grabbed her napkin and tried to soak it up.
“Morgan can hose it off,” Natalie told Bella. “Still, what a mess.”
Bella added softly, “All kinds of messes.”
Natalie sank back down on the side of her chair. “I don’t know how I let Josh’s secret out. It was just the heat of the moment.”
“Maybe it’s best that she knows.” Letting her napkin fall, Bella sat down facing Natalie. “I wouldn’t want my husband keeping a secret like that from me.”
Natalie flinched. “You think I should have told Morgan right away?”
“I’m not saying that. I don’t know what I think, actually.” Bella looked miserable, too.
“I’m sorry about Slade,” Natalie told Bella.
“It’s hardly your fault. Besides”—Bella opened her hands, as if offering an explanation—“Slade has a sweetness about him, Natalie. Truly.”
“If he wants to,” Natalie agreed with reservation. “Bella, Slade can act the wounded baby bird if it will get him laid.”
Bella cringed. “Charming.” Narrowing her eyes at Natalie, she asked, “Did you ever consider that perhaps you’re possessive of your brother? That you go around warning women off him so he won’t choose a woman who will be more important in his life than you?”
Natalie gawked. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
Bella stood her ground. “I know your father left you. Slade is the man in your family now. Slade—”
“Oh, stop this.” Natalie rolled her eyes. “You think I made Slade come on to Morgan? You think I was behind that seductive Victorian settee whispering, ‘Go, boy, go’?”
“That’s disgusting.”
“No more disgusting than what you’re saying!” Natalie reached over to take Bella’s hand. “Bella, I would be thrilled if Slade fell in love and married and had someone who was truly his. I’d be over the moon if he had a family. You’ve gotten way off track here. Slade is hardly the man in my life. I scarcely saw him in New York. It was only after I moved into Aunt Eleanor’s that he started staying with me.”
“So maybe he is interested in me,” Bella said.
“Maybe he is,” Natalie agreed. She paused, seeming to think her words over. Slowly, she pieced together her thoughts. “Bella, you warned me about Ben. How he’s got a one-track mind, he’s the absentminded professor, he’s consumed by his work.”
“True.” Bella squeezed Natalie’s hand. “Perhaps Ben will be different with you. I hope so.”
“I hope so, too. So maybe I’m wrong about Slade, Bella. Maybe he’ll be different with you.”
“Has he said anything about me?” Bella asked hopefully.
Natalie thought. “He did, several weeks ago. We were out in the boat. He told me he liked you.”
“Liked me.”
“That’s a huge thing for Slade to admit. I’d forgotten that. And it’s true, he’s been around here, helping you all the time.”
The two women looked at each other. A flash of white caught their eye as a neighbor sailed his boat out onto the lake. Overhead, birds chirped, endlessly cheerful.
Natalie looked toward the glass door leading into Morgan’s house. “I wish Morgan would come back out.”
“Bella!” Next door, Bella’s father appeared on the Barnaby deck, waving a newspaper at her. “The paper’s here! The review!”
“Coming, Dad,” Bella called back. “Want to come, too?” she asked Natalie.
“You couldn’t keep me away.”
They went down the deck steps, across Morgan’s lawn, and up the Barnabys’ steps to their deck.
“Let’s sit inside,” Dennis suggested.
They all gathered around the kitchen table: Louise, Dennis, Bella, and Natalie listened while Dennis read the review from the Hartford Courant.
Bella’s, a new art and antiques shop located on Route 202, held its grand opening last Saturday night to a crowded and appreciative coterie of connoisseurs of crafts and creations of all kinds.
Most impressive were the works of Natalie Reynolds, recently from New York, whose abstracts are dazzling and whose charcoal drawings are worthy of comparison to the old masters. The furniture, mostly nineteenth-century antiques, pulled the eye with its polish and panache as it sat on luminous Persian carpets, also for sale. The prices, I must warn, are high, but deservedly so.
Stunning jewelry handmade by Penny Aristides, wife of local surgeon Stellios Aristides, added a contemporary gleam. Perhaps the only puzzling pieces were the ultramodern sculptures by Shauna Webb. Neither attractive nor comprehensible, these were at least small enough to overlook.
As the Amherst area becomes more raffiné, Bella’s should fill the bill for the discriminating buyer. My only caveat is the location. Route 202, a few miles from Amherst, seems too rural for such a boutique and may be its downfall.
“Oh.” Bella slumped in her chair. “Rural.”
“He does end the review on a negative note, Bella,” her father told her, “but the rest of it is pure praise!”
“Poor Shauna Webb,” Louise mused.
“Raffiné?” Natalie snorted. “Who even knows what that means?”
“All the raffiné people know,” Bella groaned. “Whoever they are.”
“We still have the Daily Hampshire Gazette article.” Louise patted Bella’s hand. “That will come out in the Style section next Sunday.”
“It’s always more fun to be critical than approving,” Natalie reminded Bella.
Bella just nodded, considering the consequences of the review.
“Bella.” Louise squeezed her daughter’s hand. “Let’s have some dinner before we think about this anymore. It’s easy to get discouraged on an empty stomach.”
“I’m not discouraged, Mother,” Bella said. “I’m not hungry either. I’m just … thinking.”
Natalie understood exactly where Bella’s mind was. She’d been there many times herself. “I’m going to head home.” She stood, kissed the top of Bella’s head, and said, “Congratulations, Bella. It really is a splendid review.”
“He certainly liked your work,” Dennis said heartily.
“Yes, he did. And I’m so grateful to Bella for showing it.” Natalie waved at the three of them gathered around the table and let herself out the sliding glass door.
“What shall we have for dinner?” Dennis asked. Now that Bella worked at her shop all day, he and Louise were sharing cooking tasks.
“I made a potato salad earlier,” Louise told him. “Is there enough cold roast chicken left over?”
Bella spent a moment gazing fondly at her parents, then excused herself. “I think I’ll go for a walk.”
“Oh, darling, it’s so hot out.”
“No, it’s fine. It’s cooled down from earlier today.”
Before they could object, Bella hurried down the hall and out the front door.
She clipped along down the slate sidewalk bordered with her mother’s flowers, then turned left, toward the main road. Toward rural Route 202. She didn’t want to walk the route around the lake. Too many people knew her and might come out to chat with her about the newspaper review, and right now Bella wanted to be alone with her churning thoughts.
The verges of the two-lane road were narrow and thick with grass twined with Queen Anne’s lace. A forest, cool and dim, stretched endlessly on either side. In the silence, her mind calmed, and the disturbing revelations of the day settled down, shrinking in significance.
S
lade and Morgan. How could she be surprised?
The review of Bella’s. Natalie must be thrilled.
Aaron. San Francisco.
Her shop. She had wanted to create a place to inspire people to fill their homes with beauty, and perhaps she had achieved a tiny portion of that goal, although a grand opening and one day did not prove anything, really. The review would bring people in. The reviewer had said that the customers were appreciative, so that was good. And it was no small achievement to have introduced Natalie’s art to this part of the world. It helped Bella believe that she had a good eye for art as well as for furniture.
Aaron hadn’t yet taken the San Francisco job. If he did take it, he wouldn’t start until September. She had a few more weeks to see how her shop went, to test her creative judgment, before she made a decision about staying or moving. Her talent in life was beginning to come clear to her, like a ship arriving through the parting mist. She loved Aaron. She was infatuated with Slade.
But most of all, she cherished the spark of possibility burning inside her at the thought of what she, Bella, could do with her life.
24
Morgan was a time bomb waiting to explode.
After she sweetly, sanely, tucked Petey in bed, she stormed around the house beating pillows back into plumpness, folding laundry, doing anything she could to use up some of the manic anger whirling inside her like a tornado building up from a small funnel into a roaring twister.
Josh had told Natalie he was writing a novel. What else had Josh shared with Natalie?
At ten o’clock, she heard Josh come in. She waited for him to climb the steps and peek in at Petey as he usually did. Then he walked into their bedroom.
Morgan was in a nightgown, pretending to read.
“Hey,” Josh said.
She intended to be cool about it all, but the sight of him broke her open.
“Oh, Josh.”
“What?” Puzzled but wary, Josh perched on the end of the bed.
“Natalie told me.”
Josh drew back just slightly, as if she’d punched him. “She told you I’m writing a novel.”