14 Valentine Place

by Pamela Bauer

  She pushed the pillow aside. “It’s over, Krystal,” she said, then burst into tears.

  Krystal gathered her into her arms and comforted her as only a friend could do, saying all the things a friend was supposed to say at such a time.

  None of them eased her pain, but it was comforting to have Krystal there to listen to her pour her heart out. And to bring her a pint of chocolate chocolate-chip ice cream, which they devoured together.

  “You know, Maddie, you should talk to Leonie about this,” Krystal said as she gathered their empty bowls and spoons together.

  “I can’t.” Nor could she tell Krystal the true reason for Dylan’s reluctance to commit to a serious relationship. Not without revealing his secret. “She’s Dylan’s mother. I can’t put her in the middle.”

  Krystal sighed. “I suppose you’re right.”

  Maddie knew she was, but she also knew that if there was one person she’d want to give her advice, it would be Leonie. As soon as Krystal was gone, Maddie got out of bed and went to her computer. She couldn’t talk to Leonie, but she could send her a letter…an anonymous letter.

  DYLAN WOKE THE FOLLOWING MORNING feeling as if someone had used his tongue as a street cleaner. As he tried to sit up, a sharp pain circled his head, intensifying until he thought he must be sleeping on a pillow made of nails.

  He staggered to the bathroom, where he discovered his stomach was in worse shape than his tongue or his head. After being sick, he collapsed in a heap on the floor, which is where he felt he deserved to be. He couldn’t believe he had a hangover. After Maddie had left, he’d gone to the bar across the street for a few drinks, but not enough to warrant this.

  A few minutes later, he managed to shower and get himself together. He discovered just how not together he was when he saw his reflection in the mirror.

  This should have been a morning on which he’d awakened next to Maddie, made love with her, made plans for the next time they’d be together. Should have been. He wasn’t with her. She was gone. Out of his life.

  He didn’t think his day could get off to any worse start. Then he went home. He knew his mom would be upset that he and Maddie had split, but he hadn’t expected the silent treatment from his own mother. She didn’t say one word about Maddie. She didn’t need to. Her silence was more deadly than any words she could have cast at him.

  It had always been that way. When he and his brothers were kids and had done something wrong, she’d never yelled or criticized or even punished them. That had been their father’s duty. She’d simply given them a look that said, I thought you were better than that. You disappointed me.

  Today the look said, You ought to be throttled and hung out to dry. Then, as he rummaged through the cabinets looking for something to settle his stomach, she said, “You don’t look so good. Are you feeling all right?”

  “No, I have an upset stomach,” he told her, then made a dash for the bathroom.

  Concern had replaced the disappointment on her face when he saw her again. “Are you going to be able to travel this afternoon?” she asked.

  He wasn’t sure of anything at the moment except that he felt awful. “I’m going to lie down until it’s time to go to the airport,” he told her, then staggered into Jason’s room, where he crawled onto the bed.

  He slept until there was a knock on his door. Expecting it to be his mother, he was surprised to see Garret.

  “You look awful. Didn’t you shave this morning?” he asked as he approached the bed.

  “It wasn’t high on my priority list. What are you doing here?”

  “Mom’s worried about you.”

  “Me? Don’t you mean she’s worried about Maddie?”

  “Maddie’s not the one who looks like something the cat dragged in. Mom says you’ve been throwing up all morning.”

  “It was the Scotch I drank last night.”

  “Drowning your sorrows, were you?” He pulled the chair away from the desk and set it next to the bed. “You have any pain?” he asked, sitting down.

  “No, I’m always doubled up like this. Of course I have pain!”

  Garret clicked his tongue. “The abuse a brother has to take. Now be a good boy and let the doctor check you over and we’ll see if we can’t make you feel better.”

  “HE’S WHAT?” Maddie asked in horror.

  “He’s not leaving until Valentine’s Day,” Krystal told her. “After you left Dylan last night, he went to some ratty little hole-in-the-wall bar to drown his sorrows and ate some wings that weren’t cooked properly or something. Ended up with food poisoning.”

  “Serves him right,” Maddie said smugly, although she had to fight the urge to run downstairs and see him.

  “Garret says he’s pretty miserable.”

  “Good.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “You’re right. I don’t.”

  Krystal sat down next to her on the love seat. “Why don’t you go downstairs and talk to him? Maybe you two can work things out.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not going to do that. I can’t.”

  Krystal spread her hands. “Okay. You want me to keep you posted?”

  “Would you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Nothing’s going to change between us, Krystal.”

  Unfortunately, her friend didn’t disagree.

  SHANE ENDED UP taking Dylan to the airport, because Leonie had a Valentine’s Day luncheon she couldn’t miss. Noticing that his brother was still pale, he carried both of his suitcases for him, saying, “You sure you don’t want to wait another day or two before you leave?”

  Dylan didn’t want to wait. Having to spend the extra days at his mother’s knowing that Maddie was in the same house had been an additional source of pain for him. He’d get on the plane and suffer if need be.

  “I’m a little weak, but it’ll do me good to get back to the sunshine,” he told his brother as they headed for the departure gate.

  To Dylan’s relief, Shane didn’t say a word about Maddie. No one had—except Garret, who hadn’t been able to resist saying, “I warned you not to get any ideas about Maddie.”

  “I’m glad you came home, Dylan,” Shane said as they said their goodbyes. “It was good to see you.”

  “I feel the same way,” he told his brother.

  “I hope that means we don’t have to wait another two years before we see you.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said, but he knew that since Maddie and he had broken up, he wouldn’t be coming back to Saint Paul as often as he’d planned.

  When the boarding call for his flight was announced, Dylan gave his brother a wave, gathered his laptop and his carry-on and headed for the gate. It felt strange to be leaving—almost as strange as it had felt when he’d come home. In a little over a month he’d once again started to think of Saint Paul as home.

  A perky, young flight attendant helped him with his carry-on bag, then saw that he was comfortably seated in the first-class section. “Would you like something to read? Magazine, newspaper?” she asked, with a smile that told him she’d be open to other things if he wanted to inquire what they were. He didn’t.

  “No, thanks,” he told her. “I have the paper.” It was the last thing his mother had shoved at him this morning when they’d said their goodbyes. He’d tucked it into his laptop briefcase and pulled it out now.

  It wasn’t the daily news, but a smaller local paper. On the front page was a story about Valentine’s Day. Next to it was a Post-it note from his mother. It was heart shaped and said, “Just in case you want to see your mother’s work.”

  He found the page she’d indicated and began reading, smiling at the words his mother had chosen to use in her responses.

  Then he got to the last letter. It said,

  Dear Leonie: I’m in love with a wonderful man who says he loves me. The problem? He carries around the burden of being the only one who knows that his father cheated on his mother. It’s a secret he’s kept
from his mother and the rest of his family. Now I’m afraid this destructive secret has destroyed our love.

  It was signed “Sad in Saint Paul,” but Dylan knew who’d written it. Maddie. He anxiously read his mother’s reply.

  Dear Sad in St. Paul: The secret of infidelity is a terrible burden for any child to bear. Is your boyfriend sure it is a secret? It could be that his mother knows about the affair but has never discussed it with him because she doesn’t realize he carries this burden. No matter what the reason, he needs to understand that infidelity is a choice, not a matter of genetics.

  It only took a moment for Dylan to move into action. He unbuckled his seat belt and reached in the overhead compartment for his carry-on.

  “Sir, are you all right?” the stewardess asked as he pushed his way past passengers continuing to board.

  “I will be once I get off the plane,” he said as he strode toward the exit.

  DYLAN COULDN’T BELIEVE what he’d done. He rarely acted on impulse, yet here he was sitting in his mother’s kitchen instead of flying back to Saint Martin.

  The sound of the front door opening had his heartbeat increasing. He knew his mother would see his jacket hanging on the coat tree, notice his carry-on sitting next to the door.

  As he expected, she burst into the kitchen with a look of surprise on her face. “Did you miss your plane?”

  “Did you want me to? Is that why you gave me the paper to read this morning?”

  She approached the table cautiously. “I always told myself I wouldn’t stick my nose in my kids’ love lives, but I knew we needed to talk, Dylan.”

  “You know, don’t you.”

  “That Maddie is ‘Sad in Saint Paul’? Yes. I know that food poisoning was nasty, but lucky for you it delayed your leaving and I could get her letter and my response into the paper before you left.”

  He stood then and took her in his arms, holding her close. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  “No, I’m the one who’s sorry, Dylan.” She gently eased away from him. “I didn’t realize you knew about your father.”

  “Dad didn’t tell you?”

  She shook her head and gestured for him to sit down beside her.

  “But you knew about the affair? Didn’t you realize that it was the reason Dad and I had so much trouble that summer?”

  “I didn’t learn about the affair until years after it was over. He never told me you knew and I never connected the two incidents. I thought the anger you always had toward your father was because the two of you were simply destined not to get along. You were so much alike,” she said, shaking her head reflectively. “It never occurred to me that you could have known.”

  “He should have told you…or me,” he said soberly.

  She nodded in agreement. “But I didn’t want to know the details. It was enough that he’d been unfaithful.”

  “You forgave him.”

  She nodded soberly. “But I never forgot.”

  He gave her a puzzled look. “Then how can you act as if you had this wonderful, happy marriage?”

  “Because it was wonderful and happy. Dylan, just because your father made one mistake doesn’t erase all the good things we shared. Don’t get me wrong. It hurt something awful to think that he went to another woman to get something I thought only I could give him.”

  “Yet you stayed married to him.”

  “Because I loved him and he was a good man. And I wasn’t willing to throw away twenty years of marriage because of one mistake he regretted immensely.” She studied his face. “You don’t understand, do you.”

  “I want to, Mom, but…”

  She reached for his hand. “There is no perfect love. We all want to think there is, but there isn’t. Love can be such an incredible high it often makes us believe we’ve got the best thing in the world.”

  “Is this what you tell your clients?”

  “I tell them to be honest. Honesty is the single most important ingredient in a relationship.”

  “Then how could you forgive Dad?”

  She sighed. “There is no easy answer, Dylan. I could have carried around the bitterness the rest of my life, but it wouldn’t have made me happy. What made me happy was surviving an incident that could have very well ended my life with your father. You may not realize this, but he paid dearly for his mistake. If I can let go of the pain, you should be able to.”

  He wanted to.

  “Why did you get off that plane, Dylan? For me…or for Maddie?”

  When he didn’t reply, she leaned closer to him, “She thinks you won’t commit to her because of what you know about your father.”

  “Is that what you think, too?”

  She paused, as if debating whether to tell him what she thought. “I don’t think this is about your father.”

  He leaned back in the chair, tipping back on two legs. “You don’t.”

  “No, I think it’s about you. Ever since you were little you needed to be the one in control. You needed to be in charge. Love isn’t something you can control, Dylan. You put your heart at risk. You have to let someone else take care of something you’ve always guarded closely.”

  Maddie hadn’t said those exact words, but the message had been implied that night when she’d stormed out of the hotel room. “I thought I was doing the right thing for Maddie…letting her go.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t need for you to tell her what’s best.” She stood, smoothing the wrinkles from her skirt. “I’ve said more than a mother should say and I need to change my clothes. I have a speaking engagement.”

  Dylan stood, too. “You said what needed to be said, Mom. Thanks.” He kissed her cheek.

  “So what are you going to do now? You’re off the plane. It’s Valentine’s Day for another eight hours.”

  “I think I’ll find a way to celebrate,” he said with a slow grin.

  MADDIE THOUGHT that the only good thing about Valentine’s Day was that the stores were filled with chocolate. One could go into any candy shop and buy as much of the deepest, darkest, richest chocolate as one pleased without anyone knowing they weren’t a gift for a Valentine, but a salve for a broken heart.

  It’s what Maddie had done. As soon as she’d broken up with Dylan, she’d gone and bought the most expensive box of dark chocolates she could find and consoled herself by eating them one by one. As wonderful as they’d been, they hadn’t taken away the ache in her heart.

  She wondered if anything would do that.

  Certainly being alone on Valentine’s Day didn’t help. She’d come home from work to an empty house, knowing that Krystal had a date and Leonie had gone to speak at a special Valentine’s dinner for residents of a convalescent home.

  It’s what Maddie should have done—volunteered to help at any one of the charitable events happening across the city. It would have been better than sitting home stuffing her mouth with the treats she’d received at the dance studio that day.

  She smiled as she looked at the assortment of paper Valentines and candies she’d dumped on the table. It was definitely one of the perks to her job—someone always remembered her on the holidays. Today her students had greeted her with cards and candies and even a flower or two. She picked up the wilting red rose and sniffed it, then sighed.

  “You look the way I feel,” she mumbled to the flower, then set it aside so she could sort the treats she’d received. Chocolate kisses in one pile, candy hearts in another. But she kept seeing that wilting rose and finally, when she could no longer stand it, got up to put it in some water.

  As she reached for a bud vase in the cupboard, she noticed an envelope on the counter. On the outside were the words, “To Sad in Saint Paul.”

  Maddie’s heart leaped into her throat. Leonie had figured out that she was the one who’d written the letter.

  Gingerly she lifted the flap and pulled open the sheet of paper. It was a typed response to her letter.

  Dear Sad in Saint Paul: You are right. Your boyfriend is afraid to commit
but not for the reason you think. This isn’t about his father, it’s about his feelings for you. He’s been using what happened with his father as an excuse not to face the real issue—which is, his inability to give up control of his heart to another person. Love has made him vulnerable. It’s also made him feel as if he could climb Mount Everest if it meant being with the woman of his dreams. You are that woman. If you’re willing to take the risk of being in love with such a guy, he could make this Valentine’s Day one you’ll never forget.

  There was no signature.

  Maddie’s heart pounded in her chest. She swallowed with great difficulty and tried to move, but her legs refused to take her anywhere. Cautiously she moved slowly out of the kitchen, down the hallway. She peeked into the living room, but it was empty. Then she walked toward Leonie’s office. The door was closed.

  She paused before entering, her hand on the doorknob, her heart pounding. Finally she pushed open the door. As she expected, it wasn’t Leonie sitting behind the desk, but Dylan.

  “Happy Valentine’s Day, Maddie,” he said in a voice that had her rushing to meet him as he rose to his feet.

  She nearly knocked him down as she threw herself into his arms and kissed him with an urgency that had both of them clinging to each other for support.

  “You didn’t leave,” she said as tears trickled down her cheeks.

  “I didn’t leave,” he said, holding on to her as if he were worried she’d disappear.

  “How did you know about my letter to Leonie?”

  “Didn’t you see the paper?”

  “She published it?”

  “And a response…that had me jumping off the plane at the last minute. My mom is a wise woman, Maddie.”

  “Yes, she is, and I will be forever grateful to her,” she said, staring up at his face. As long as she lived she didn’t think she’d ever get tired of looking at his face.

  “I will forever be grateful that I found you,” he told her. “I love you, Maddie, and I don’t want to think of a future without you in it.”