by Nina Lane
“No. I can’t.”
It’s the first time he has ever admitted that. And I don’t want to imagine how much it cost him to finally do so.
A lengthy silence descends, taut with painful foreboding. I don’t know where we go from here. I don’t know what will happen to us, to him, to our lives.
I can’t imagine Dean being banned from the university. It will make him crazy not to be able to teach or lecture, especially with a spurious investigation going on. He’ll feel trapped, helpless, like a caged tiger leashed with rage.
And what if he sees his students and fellow professors in town, what if they start asking too many questions, what if Maggie makes an accusation that ends up in the university newspaper, and Dean is unable even to defend himself…
A sudden dizziness hits me. My heart is beating too fast.
Before I can think too much, I grab my cell phone from my satchel and scroll through email. I find the message Simon Fletcher CC’d to me.
Dean,
The Cambridge team will be here soon and specifically asked for funding to lure you as an advisor on the excavation of site 4000. Plans starting in Feb and continuing into summer. Lots of folks looking forward to seeing you again and correcting your abysmal Italian pronunciation.
Did I tell you James Fenton from the U. of Glasgow is here? Says he owes you a beer from some ancient bet. Apartments are basic but comfortable. Weather’s good. Food and wine excellent. Nice break from the arctic Midwest, I’m sure, and you ought to meet Dr. Billings. Make arrangements soon so we know when to expect you.
—SF
I read the message twice, aware of a strange feeling inside. A simultaneous breakage and flowering, like a green shoot pushing its way through a dry seed.
“Simon’s letter.” I look up at Dean.
He’s watching me, his expression suddenly wary. I force myself to say the only thing I can. The only solution.
“I want you to go to Altopascio.”
“No.”
In my entire life, there is not much I’ve been certain about. The ground has always shifted beneath my feet. I’ve had a hard time planting myself firmly on it, trying to figure out in which direction I should or even could grow. I’ve questioned everything—my mother, myself, my choices, my decisions.
But I got Dean right. From the beginning, I knew I could trust him, trust myself with him. I knew we were meant to be together. I knew our love would burn as bright as the stars, no matter how dark the night became.
I know that still.
“I want you to go.” My voice is stronger, more resolute.
“I’m not leaving you, Liv.”
“No, you’re not.” I approach him, reaching out to rest my palm on his chest. His heart beats steady and strong against my hand. “But you need to heal, and the only way you can start is to get away. You can’t stay in Mirror Lake. You can’t be near the university. You can’t be around me.”
“Liv, you just had a miscarriage!” He pulls away from me in frustration.
“We saw Dr. Nolan last week. She said everything is okay now.”
“The hell it is.” His eyes harden mutinously. “I’m not leaving you alone. No way.”
My thoughts are spinning, tumbling, but all centered around the growing conviction that this is what we both need.
“Dean, do you remember that trip we took to see the monarch butterflies in Pacific Grove? The monarchs had migrated back from Mexico for the winter. All those eucalyptus trees, alive with orange-and-black monarchs like tiny, stained-glass windows. The air was just filled with butterflies. One of them landed on your shoulder.”
“I remember.”
“And do you remember the guide told us that scientists don’t really know why so many generations of butterflies return to the same place every year?”
“I remember.”
“I think it’s because they instinctively know where home is.”
“So do I. And it’s with you. Not halfway across the world.”
“The butterflies migrate to survive,” I say. “They need to escape the cold. They need nourishment. And once they have that, they always return home.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
I take a breath, trying to find the strength to press forward. “Dean, I’m not asking you to go.”
“What?”
“I’m telling you to go.”
He stops. Turns to stare at me.
“I know you, Dean,” I remind him. “I know you’re burning with the need to defend yourself, to clear your name, to prove that girl is lying. You want to take action. You want to throw yourself into work, hire a legal team, get back into the classroom, host the huge conference… all while worrying about me and our marriage.
“And during all of that, not once will you acknowledge that you’re hurt too. You won’t even realize that you need to give yourself time and space to grieve. And you can’t do that if every day you’re confronted by the reminder of what you think is failure. You can’t do anything here. You can’t.”
He just looks at me. I can almost see every muscle in his body deflecting the truth of my words.
“I want you to do this,” I say. “You have to.”
I know this now too—he needs to be out in the open space of medieval ruins where he can find treasures and relics hidden in the soil. He needs to have discussions with fellow professors about medieval settlements and material culture. He needs to see old friends, drink good wine, visit the museums in Florence, eat fish that tastes like the sea. He needs to remember that life is both transitory and filled with permanence.
“If I go, then you’re coming with me,” he says.
For a moment, I feel myself waver, picturing the two of us escaping to Italy together. Then I shake my head.
“Allie already has my days scheduled for the rest of the month at the bookstore. I’m working ten hours a week at the museum helping organize a new exhibition, and I’m volunteering at the library on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. I just took two weeks off from all of that without notice when we had to go to California. I can’t leave right away again. People are counting on me.”
It feels good to say that, so I say it again. “People are counting on me.”
I look down at my phone and hit the reply button on the email. I start typing. This is a tough tactic, but I’m up against both my husband’s stubbornness and his overprotectiveness. The only thing I can do is appeal to his professional reputation and career, both of which are in serious danger.
“What are you doing?” Dean asks.
“Emailing Simon. I’m telling him that you’re going. He’ll announce it to the team, and they’ll all be expecting you. The Cambridge people have applied for funding on your behalf already. You won’t let them down.”
“Liv—”
“Otherwise you’ll stay here stewing and growling, hating every minute that you can’t go to the university and can’t do anything. And you’ll hate it so much you might very well end up doing something to make things worse.”
I finish typing the message and send it to Simon. “Or you can go to Italy, Dean, and see old friends and do what you love to do. You need this. You need to get away.”
I look up at him. A tender ache fills me. My beautiful, strong husband is standing with his shoulders slumped and his face ashen, lines etched deep around his eyes and mouth. Tears sting my eyes.
“I can’t leave you,” he says, his voice a hollow echo.
“You’re not leaving me.” I struggle for a moment with the realization that when he goes, I’ll be alone. “I have things to do too, Dean. I’m going to help Allie come up with another way to save her bookstore. I’ll make Kelsey take me out for margaritas if I start to feel morose. I’ll read picture books to little kids at library story time. I’ll think about you and miss you and talk to you, all the while knowing we’re doing the right thing.”
Silence falls, pulsing with the truth of what I’ve learned and what Dean has yet to acknowledge
. Our relationship, our love, cannot and will never be perfect. It will, however, always belong only to us in all its flawed, intense beauty. Perfect in its very imperfection.
“Kiss me,” I whisper.
His expression softens. He crosses the room and cups my face in his hands, tilting my head to exactly the right angle before lowering his lips to mine. I close my eyes and sink into the feel and taste of my husband, the warmth of his body burning away the lingering cold. I press my hand to his face and part my lips beneath his.
And there is us again, the familiar, lovely way that we fit together, the slide of his tongue across mine, the delicious way he kisses my lower lip. I feel him as part of me, his heart beating in time with mine, the center of his soul enclosing everything we have ever been to each other and all that we will ever be.
I move my hand to the back of his neck, drawing him into me, knowing, knowing that we are the same, that the differences and difficulties we’ve had will never have the power to destroy the very essence of us.
Dean lifts his head, resting his palm against the side of my neck.
“The semester after I first met you…” He brushes his thumb across my lips, then moves away from me. “After I knew I wanted to be with you, wanted to know everything about you… I taught a course on medieval cosmology.”
“I remember.” I swipe my damp eyes with my sleeve.
I cling to a memory of Dean stretched out on the old sofa in the university apartment he’d lived in during that first year. Jeans and a T-shirt, his standard attire on those long weekends when we’d hole up together to work, study, play, make love. He was reading a book about medieval philosophy, his reading glasses a sexy professorial contrast to his wavy, overlong hair and whiskered jaw.
I was sitting across from him, writing up a report on digital preservation. I thought we were both immersed in our studying, but when I snuck a glance at Dean from across the coffee table, I found him watching me with an intent gaze that sparked heat through my entire body.
Without a word, we both pushed our papers and books aside. He held out his arms. Smiling, I got to my feet and then fell against him as our mouths pressed together hot and deep.
Bliss followed. Pure and raw.
“You… you were teaching something about the constellations, I think.” I curl my hand around the back of a chair. “And celestial astronomy…”
“Music of the spheres.” Dean unwraps the loop of string again and twists it around his fingers. “That was part of the curriculum. It was based on Pythagoras’s discovery that a length of string produces the certain pitch of a musical note. The medieval concept is that the planets and stars are set on concentric spheres that rotate around the earth and are arranged in harmonic ratios. Each sphere produces a musical tone, and the revolution of the spheres together creates a kind of mystical symphony.”
“It’s a beautiful idea.”
“You know I’m not much of a romantic.” He looks at me. “But that semester, even I had to admit it was more than just a coincidence.”
“What was?”
“The fact that I was studying the perfect harmony of the stars and planets at the exact same time I was falling in love with you.”
I can only stare at him. I can’t even speak.
Until this moment, I didn’t know it was possible to love my husband even more than I have for the past five years. I didn’t know this kind of love existed, the kind that can both make you whole and shatter you to pieces.
Dean twists the string between his fingers a few more times. Then he pulls his hands apart and shows me the pattern stretched between his palms.
A heart.
I smile through my tears. For a long time, we just look at each other. A thousand emotions thread the air. Rather than sorrow, my soul fills with love and tenderness. With hope. With strength. Fortune favors the brave.
“You became my world the minute I saw you, Olivia Rose.” He breaks our gaze first and drops the string onto the foyer table. “You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes. And it’s why I know you’ll do this for us.”
I move toward him. He meets me halfway. We stop a foot away from each other. He holds up his left hand. I put my palm against his. Our wedding bands make a familiar, soft click before I slide my hand over so we can weave our fingers together.
“I’ll be here, Dean, love of my life.” I tighten my hand around his. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
The first time I brought Dean to meet Aunt Stella, it was spring. Wisconsin bloomed with dandelions, green leaves, tulips. Even the town of Castleford seemed brighter, more colorful, although now I suspect that my perception had less to do with the season and more to do with Dean’s presence.
Aunt Stella and Henry lived in a little, two-story house that was a polar opposite from the West family’s beautiful villa. My aunt was a sour-faced woman who gave me a brief embrace and looked Dean over with a critical eye. Henry, thin and wiry, shook Dean’s hand and then disappeared into his garage workshop.
“Sit down.” Stella patted her short-cropped hair and gestured to the worn sofa. “Olivia, fetch your… guest something to drink.”
I scrounged through the rusted refrigerator and came up with a pitcher of lemonade. After pouring three glasses, I returned to the living room where Dean was complimenting Stella on her choice of circus-themed artwork.
“Heard anything from your mother?” Stella looked at me.
“No.” I handed her a glass and sat beside Dean on the sofa. “Have you?”
“Got a letter maybe a month ago. Said she was in New York, New Jersey. Something like that.”
A knot formed in my chest. Though Aunt Stella was my father’s sister, my mother occasionally dropped her a letter or note—and I could not help believing that was because she knew Stella was the only way she could reach me. If she ever wanted to.
“How is she?” I asked.
“All right, I guess. Living with a mechanic or a musician. Something like that.”
“Did she give you an address?”
“Nah. Likely she’s moved on already.”
Likely.
My glass was cold and slippery between my palms. I hated to ask the question, but couldn’t help it. “Did she ask about me?”
Stella shook her head and sipped her lemonade. Dean settled his hand on my thigh.
“Looks like you’ve had a warm spring, Stella,” he remarked. “I noticed the tulips along your front walk.”
Stella brightened a little and began chatting about her garden. I rubbed my shoe over the brown shag carpet and tried not to wonder where my mother was now. Tried not to wonder if she ever thought of me.
We stayed through a dinner of meatloaf and potatoes. Dean asked Stella what she put in the meatloaf to make it so moist (it wasn’t). He listened to Henry’s description of repairing a chain-link fence as if it were interesting (it wasn’t). He wondered if the serving spoon was an antique (it was).
He asked about the town, the local businesses, Henry’s electrician job, and Aunt Stella’s bridge club. He asked about the schools, their church, the last state election, the farmers’ market. He asked how much snow they’d gotten last winter.
When we returned to our room at the only motel in town, I watched Dean as he unbuttoned his shirt.
“I love you,” I said. It was the easiest confession I had ever made.
He stopped in the motion of pulling the shirt off his shoulders. My heart skipped a beat. For a frozen instant, he just looked at me.
Then he smiled—slow and beautiful.
“I’m really glad to hear that, beauty,” he said. “Because I love you too.”
The words sang through me, filling my whole being with light, hope, and happiness. I flew across the room into his open arms. He enclosed me in a hard embrace. I wrapped my legs around his waist and lowered my head for a kiss.
I love you. Love you. You.
Within seconds, our kiss was deepening with heat, our tongues sliding toge
ther. I ran my hands over his smooth shoulders, his skin so warm and taut with muscle. His breath brushed my cheek as he trailed his lips down to my neck and the hollow of my throat. I shivered, squirmed.
He lowered me to the bed, his eyes darkening as he undressed me. He eased my skirt off, pulled my shirt over my head, flicked open the front clasp of my bra.
Naked, I felt different, bared to the depths of my soul. I watched with a pounding heart as he kissed his way down my body, licking the peaks of my breasts, smoothing his hands over my hips, dipping his tongue into my belly button.
He slipped his hands between my thighs and eased them apart.
I lifted my head to stare down at him. “Dean…”
“Easy.” He stroked my thighs in a soothing motion, much the way he had the first time we made love. “Do you trust me?”
“I… of course.” I trusted him with everything—my heart, my soul, my life.
“I’ll make it good,” he promised.
And he did. He always made it good. He rubbed me through my underwear, pressing the damp cotton into my cleft. So smooth, so adept was his touch that I started twisting my hips and panting. Urgency spiraled through me.
Dean moved lower, his fingers tangling in the elastic as he pushed it aside. His hot breath contrasted deliciously with the sudden rush of cool air. My eyes drifted closed, my body strumming with excitement as he probed gently with his forefinger. Then he slipped his tongue into me. I gasped, bucking upward so hard that he settled his hands on my hips to keep me still.
“Oh, God… Dean… Dean.”
Pleasure cascaded over me, in me. I stretched my arms over my head and pushed toward him, trying to intensify the stroke of his tongue against every intimate crevice.
I shifted, reached down to grab a fistful of his hair. “Dean, please.”
My plea went unheeded as he continued to take his time. It was more than good. It was exquisite—a slow exploration of my sex, an increasing push toward rapture. He stroked, licked, sucked. I writhed, panted, moaned. Finally, when convulsions broke in waves over me, Dean held my thighs open and used his mouth to urge every last sensation from my body.