Before and Again

by Barbara Delinsky

  I excused myself to talk with friends from the pottery store, then a coven of writers. But I couldn’t escape it. Grace always returned. Where was she while her son was hacking into other people’s computers? Where was she when he was alone in his room? Didn’t she know what he did with his free time? Didn’t she ask?

  We were eating by then, at times seated at long tables, at other times standing with plates in our hands. At least I didn’t have to worry about Liam. Or maybe I did. He was surrounded not only by people wanting seconds of his roll-ups but by more than one available sweet thing, and he was loving it. No way would he be leaving town after this.

  Nor, I feared, would my ex. The new head of the Inn was an important figure in town, and Edward—think Ned, Maggie, think Ned—was a beacon. People sought him out, curious about his vision for the Inn, the town, even the house he had bought. He could have easily stayed off on his own with plenty of company.

  But he kept returning to me. Like we were a couple. Like in spite of people wanting to get to know him, he was apart. It was something I felt more than saw—felt, because I kept remembering those damn tears and knowing I had never fully considered the fallout of Lily’s death on him. My own pain had been too great to allow for his. So now, here we were. Call it guilt. Call it atonement. However misguided his move here had been, he had abandoned old friends and didn’t yet have new ones. Like advising him on who should renovate his home, I could help him with this.

  Not that it was hard. Not that he couldn’t comfortably converse with these people. Not that I didn’t appreciate the admiring glances sent his way and feel just a little bit of pride that he chose to stand by me.

  Nina noticed. When he left to replenish drinks, she said, “He likes you.” Her voice held an edge. She was nervous about the upcoming meeting, but I couldn’t tell if there was more. Edward had suggested jealousy. If so, it was misplaced.

  “No,” I assured, “he just knows me from the Inn. I’m a familiar face in a sea of unfamiliar ones.”

  But Jessa, too, noticed his attentiveness. She and her husband had joined us right before Edward set off, and she waited only until her husband was distracted talking with the head of Fish and Game, also in our current circle, before leaning close to me. “Is something going on between you and the Inn guy?”

  I rolled my eyes, like the question was tiresome. “I work for him. He’s paying me.” In the broadest sense, it was true. Beyond that, I was only a vehicle, helping him break into Devon. Given our past, I could never be anything more.

  And of course that saddened me. Hell, I was human, too. I had loved Edward through our marriage and could argue that I agreed to the divorce for that reason. I had become convinced that being apart was the only way we could survive. Divorce was the humane escape.

  Still, my heart ached as I watched him pass out soft drinks and a plate of the Inn’s signature chocolate chip cookies, like the host he had been when we entertained at our home. He might not have helped with the cooking, but he had always taken charge of wine, flowers, and—oh God, how could I have forgotten—the grill. All those cookouts, with or without friends, and manning the grill was his thing. He might not buy, season, or garnish the steak, but he did like his grill tools.

  I hadn’t thought about this in years. I hadn’t allowed myself to. But a window had opened, lowering my defenses, so I was overly sensitive when, even with half-eaten cookies in hand, there was one more remark about Grace not seeing, knowing, stopping.

  “Does any mother know everything her child is doing?” I replied with more bite than was necessary, because though I was holding a cookie in my own hand, though chocolate chip ones were my all-time favorite, and though this one was nearly as good as those my mother’s bakery sold, my mind was still on cookouts at Edward’s and my house. This time, I recalled being in the kitchen, slicing sweet peppers for him to grill, while upstairs and out of my sight, Lily used colored markers to decorate the walls of her bedroom, the hall, and the stairs leading down.

  She was three. This was what three-year-olds did. But a dozen guests were arriving within the hour, so my first response was to panic. That was followed in succession by anger, frustration, and, finally, humor. Lily, even at three, could draw. As self-portraits went, hers was unbelievable. I had actually taken a picture. It was one of the items in my green velvet box. Not that I needed a refresher. The image was so vivid, even these seven years later, that my chest started to seize.

  Edward touched my back just lightly enough, just briefly enough to help me breathe again. I was vaguely aware of responses, though truly more focused on regaining balance. And I might have done it, if someone hadn’t used the word distracted.

  “Okay,” I said, letting my hand drop, cookie forsaken, “I’m really uncomfortable talking about this. Are any of us perfect? I mean, take any mother with her kids in the car. She looks away from the road to shoot a quick text to her husband to say she’s running late, or to fiddle with Spotify, or to pass a snack back to the kids. One second, and, if another car suddenly comes from the side, there’s an accident.”

  “Grace had more than a second,” said one of several men with us then. “It took time for Chris to plan this.”

  “If he did it,” I argued, “because we don’t know for sure. Hacking isn’t hard. There are other kids in town who could have done it and made it look like it was Chris. We haven’t seen evidence, and I know that’s for the trial”—I interrupted myself, needing to preclude that particular point—“but even if it was Chris, he’s fifteen, for God’s sake, which in some countries is old enough to be independent and leave home and even have kids, and as for Grace, she’s done good for lots of us, so hasn’t she earned the benefit of the doubt? And besides,” I ranted on, “maybe we shouldn’t be talking about her, because I’m not sure any of us is any better, and if you think she’s feeling good about all this, think again. Mothers blame themselves”—I thumped my chest—“like the buck stops here when it comes to responsibility.”

  Feeling that large hand on my back again, I sucked in a breath. Only then seeing the startled looks around me and feeling appalled, I lengthened my second breath and managed a sheepish smile. “Sorry. Grace is my friend.” I did believe she hadn’t known what her son was doing, any more than I had known about the STOP sign hidden in a swarm of red oak leaves. But we both felt responsibility. I always would.

  A tall beanpole of a man ambled up, and Edward quickly bent toward me. “Is that who I think it is?” He was a reader, so was clearly excited. Me, I welcomed the diversion. David Isenschmidt could be entertaining, in his gawky way.

  The world knew him as Dylan Ivory. After years working with a hugely successful mystery writer, he was now writing on his own. He had just returned from a publicity tour that had included appearances on the biggest of the big talk shows, and, after I introduced Edward, who had read his two latest, they began talking books. Suddenly, though, the author looked at me.

  “Who is she?” he asked.

  I drew back. “Excuse me?”

  “Grace Emory. You’re her friend. What don’t we know?”

  That quickly, I was alarmed. “Um, like what?”

  “Like where she came from or what she did before Devon.”

  “Does it matter?” Edward asked, but David’s eyes held mine.

  “If you want your story to be complete, there has to be a past.”

  “That’s not how Devon works,” I tried, but he talked right over my words.

  “No one knows squat, like where she grew up and why she has no family—like who the kid’s father is. For all we know, it’s Zwick. Sure, the boy hacked other accounts, but they could have been red herrings. What he did to Zwick was pretty ugly.”

  “What he allegedly did, David,” I said. “And nothing that happened to Zwick is any uglier than what he is doing now to a fifteen-year-old boy.”

  “QED. Zwick is known for ugliness. Maybe the kid inherited it.”

  “Are you planning to write about th
is?” Edward asked with a qualm I was glad to hear.

  David shot him a glance, which wasn’t the way I would reward a loyal reader, but the man was bizarre. “No. But it’s an interesting premise, is it not?”

  “It’s a wacky premise,” Kevin said, having walked over in time to hear enough. “Zwick wouldn’t go public if he was Chris’s dad. Why would a father put his son through this? Sorry, Davie. You won’t get a bestseller out of this one.”

  “My point,” said the writer Dylan Ivory, “is that things aren’t always what they seem.”

  I wasn’t laughing now. Things aren’t always what they seem. Nor did I have a comeback. No, they weren’t. He was building a story around Grace and Chris. Another time it might be around Edward and me.

  In that instant, I felt like a fraud.

  Kevin must have sensed it, because he slipped a comforting arm around my waist. At first I thought it was Edward. But no. Edward was watching, but the arm was Kevin’s.

  In the next instant, Nina’s amplified voice rose over the rest of the conversation. Shortly thereafter, we were seated in the nave, and Cornelia was beside me, holding my hand, asking how I was with the kind of concern that might have made me wonder, if I hadn’t been worried about Edward. I saw friends in pews front and back, but I didn’t see him. I had to search, smiling when catching the eyes of others, and then search more, before I finally spotted him at the back of the hall with Liam. Only then could I face front and settle in.

  The meeting itself was a settling experience. Cornelia whispered little facts, like how much had been spent on the last school renovation, who was supplying fire trucks to neighboring towns and at what cost, and the scene created by competing food trucks when last they had been allowed near the green. Kevin was in charge of munchies, alternately pulling candied walnuts, cookie halves, and Hershey’s Kisses from his backpack.

  We voted yes on renovations to the elementary school, no on funding a new fire truck, yes on both raising the police department budget and allowing food trucks to park in the center of town during summer months, but with restrictions on the latter relating to hours, size and color of truck, and type of food.

  It felt trivial in comparison to a Federal charge of hacking, but the sheer normalcy of it revived me. Small matters were the currency of daily life here.

  Actually, that told only half the story, I realized as the evening wound down. In the language of currency, trivial matters were loose change. The big money was being with people I liked.

  For that reason, I lingered with friends after the meeting adjourned. One by one, they left, but still I stayed. The church was the epitome of normalcy. I felt safe here.

  “All set, babe?” Kevin asked when less than a handful of people remained.

  I was in the outer lobby then, and, waving as those stragglers went out the door, I joined Kevin at the coat rack. Ours were the last parkas there. Hangers clinked as he freed mine and opened it for me.

  “Your brother headed home. He said he’ll see you there.”

  Liam. I grimaced as I inserted one arm, then the other. “I kind of forgot he was here.” Such was the power of compartmentalization. With both Liam and Edward out of sight during the meeting, I had barred them from my mind and, in so doing, had recaptured a little of the me I was in Devon. But now came the other me, worming its way right back in.

  “No sweat,” Kevin said. “He did good, by the way. He’s a fabulous cook, and people like him. I probably would, too, if he hadn’t been such a shit to you.”

  I shot him a chiding look.

  When he swung his parka around, his arms smoothly slid in the sleeves. “Yeah, I hold grudges.”

  “Isn’t it my grudge to hold?”

  “Not so long as you’re my friend,” he declared and, as soon as we were both gloved, looped an elbow through mine and walked me out.

  The night was cold, thanks to gusts of wind that rattled naked branches against each other. Gaslights lit the parking lot, which resembled the coat rack in its sparsely filled way. In a far corner were vans of the set-up, take-down crew. My pickup was several spaces from Kevin’s SUV. One row back and several more spaces over was a black Jeep.

  15

  Edward stood on the sidewalk at the bottom of the steps. Wearing only his barn jacket, he was huddled against the March wind with his collar up and his shoulders hunched.

  I stopped, forcing Kevin to as well.

  “And there’s another one to begrudge,” he said to me, then called to Edward over a whistle of the wind, “It’s okay, I’m walking her to her truck. You can go home.” Tugging my arm, he got me moving again.

  When we were down the steps and close enough to see a nose that was red from the cold, Edward said, “I need to talk with her,” but his eyes were on me.

  “It’s late,” Kevin replied. “She’s tired.”

  “Just for a minute, Maggie?”

  Kevin’s arm tightened in mine. “It’s been a long night,” he informed Edward. “Lots of drama.”

  “No drama here,” Edward insisted. “Maggie?”

  But Kevin wasn’t done. Over another shush of wind, he told Edward, “It’s freezing out here, and we can’t go back inside because they want to close up. How about tomorrow?”

  Edward’s brows met in annoyance. “Can she speak for herself, please?”

  “Why should she,” I asked, “when the two of you are so entertaining?” I freed my elbow, pausing only to briefly squeeze Kevin’s arm with a gloved hand. “I’m fine.”

  But his eyes were concerned. “I warned him, doll. I told him to leave you alone. I said you had plenty of support here and that he’d be in the way, and what did he do? Stuck to you like glue. He’ll hurt you, hun.”

  “I will not,” countered Edward, offended.

  “You did.”

  “This is not your business.”

  “And it’s yours? Last I heard, you two were divorced.”

  “Divorced means we were married once, and being married means I shared a hell of a lot more with her than you ever will.”

  “Excuuuuse, me,” Kevin sang on an up note, “but that sounded suspiciously like a homophobic remark. Is that your problem?”

  I might have laughed, if the two of them hadn’t been so serious.

  “Ah, Christ,” swore Edward, who didn’t swear often. “Are you seriously resorting to that? No, I’m not homophobic. I have gay best friends and gay business partners.” Looking at me, he hitched his head toward Kevin. “Tell him, Maggie. Let’s get this off the table right now, because I don’t want to fucking hear it again.”

  “He’s right, Kev,” I said quietly. “Try something else.”

  “Okayyy. How about his showing up here like he owns the place—”

  “I do own—”

  “—like you’re supposed to welcome him with open arms?”

  “I didn’t expect open arms,” Edward shouted. He sounded exasperated—competing with Kevin?

  “What the fuck did you expect?”

  “Guys,” I said to keep the hostilities in some kind of check.

  Edward lowered his voice, though it remained directed at Kevin. “I expected to be able to talk with my wife without a go-between.”

  He was turning to me again when Kevin fired back. “She isn’t your wife, she’s your ex-wife, and why in the hell would I leave her alone with you? I’ve seen her knotted up so hard she’s in pain. She came here all alone and got a good job and made friends, which was pretty obvious tonight, in case you didn’t notice. She’s finally getting her life straight, and now you show up, bringing her brother, no less, the two of you just messing her up again.”

  Edward stared at him, pale eyes lethal, voice grim. “You don’t have a clue.”

  “I think I do. Maggie is my friend. I love her.”

  Edward opened his mouth, about to speak. At the last minute, though, he turned from Kevin to me and said, “So. Do. I.”

  Utter silence followed. The words were just words. But the eye
s—those eyes—Edward’s eyes held mine, adding more angst than the words alone could bear.

  Kevin must have sensed it, because he said nothing at all, which made it worse. In that split second, I realized how alike these two men were. Both were perceptive. Both were guileless. Kevin’s continuing silence was a recognition of the import of the moment, which made Edward’s declaration all the more real.

  Suddenly, I was neither entertained nor mesmerized. What I felt was that awful tightness in my chest, and in my mind, pure panic.

  Flattening my gloves over my ears, I broke away. “Okay, I’m done here.” I set off for my car as quickly as I dared, ears covered until I was clear of them, or thought I was. But there came the crunch of boots on the freezing pavement, growing nearer, and Edward’s voice calling my name. I broke into a run.

  The footsteps gained anyway, and suddenly I saw myself reaching the truck but making a mess of climbing in and locking the door. So, the instant I grasped the door handle, I turned. He was right there.

  “No,” I ordered. “No, Edward.”

  “That wasn’t how I wanted to tell you.”

  “Do not say another word.”

  I pulled the door open and had a foot on the running board when he said, “I meant it.”

  “Which part?” I cried, because the past was right back with us. “The part where you asked how I could possibly miss a STOP sign—or the one where you said, forget the STOP sign, how could I not see the intersection—or the one where you said that everything changed, that nothing would be the same?” I climbed in. “Leave it, Edward. I had to. Let it go.”

  “We need to talk. I’ll come to your place.”

  “Can’t. Liam’s there.”

  “Then my place.”

  “Oh no. No, no, no. No sex.”

  “To talk.”

  I just shook my head, slammed the door, and started the truck. But then all I could do was grip the wheel with both hands and try to catch my breath. It had never been as bad as this before. From a far recess of my mind came the echo of a CALM order, but it was too distant to do much good. My chest was squeezing so hard it felt like my heart had nowhere to go but up and out my throat.