Mikey glanced at her, then looked quickly away, out over the lake. “I shouldn’t have let this go as far as it did. I didn’t intend to. It just sort of…happened.”
“I don’t understand.”
“This can’t happen,” he said. “You and me. It can’t happen.”
“But I thought—” She broke off, puzzled, bewildered. Hurt.
“It’s the timing. It’s all wrong. I’m graduating in June. I did high school in three years, Paige. And I’m not going to Farmington.”
She tried to breathe, but wasn’t sure her lungs would allow it. “Where are you going?”
“I applied to Stanford. I’ve been accepted.”
“Stanford,” she said blankly. “Where’s Stanford?”
“Northern California. Near San Francisco. Dad doesn’t know yet. Remember when I said I wanted to load a suitcase in my truck and just head west? That’s what I’m doing. Right after graduation. I’m spending the summer on the road before I start school in the fall.”
“What does that have to do with us?”
He was silent for a long time. “I think about you,” he said quietly, gripping the steering wheel. “Did you know that? I think about you all the time. And a lot of those thoughts—let’s just say they’re not exactly G-rated. But you’re fifteen. Your father would kill me if I laid a finger on you. He’d kill me if he knew what I was thinking. And I wouldn’t blame him. He’s a good dad. A good man. I respect him a lot.” He finally looked at her, a glimmer in his eyes that might or might not be tears. “But I don’t think I can be with his daughter,” he said, “I don’t think I can be with you, without touching you.”
“I’m not like other girls,” she said.
“No kidding.”
“I don’t play games. I don’t lie. I tell it like it is. If I want to be with a guy, I’ll be with him, and I won’t worry about the consequences.”
“I know. You’re so brave, the bravest girl I’ve ever known. But the consequences are still real. You can ignore them all you want, but that won’t make them go away.”
She tried to make sense of his words, tried to find a way to spin them that wouldn’t feel like he’d just driven a knife into her gut. But no matter how she spun it, that knife was still there, buried to the hilt.
“Look,” he said, “if you were older, I’d take you with me when I leave. But you’re not. You’ll still have two years of high school ahead of you. I wish things could be different. I really, really wish they could be different. But they can’t.”
“So that’s it?” she said.
“If it’ll help, I’ll stay away from the family get-togethers from now on. I can find somewhere else to be on Saturday nights.”
“It’s your family,” she said. “Far be it from me to tear you away from their collective bosom. You can have custody of Saturday nights. I’ll just stay home with Leroy and watch Channel 6.”
“It’s your family, too.”
“Right. You can take me home now. You’ve said what you had to say.”
“Don’t be mad at me. Please, Paige. I’m so sorry.”
She took a last long look at that face. Imprinted it on her brain so she’d never forget. Allowed herself to feel the pain of his betrayal. Took a deep, shuddering breath.
And said, “Fuck you.”
***
When she came into the kitchen, her father was sitting at the table, cup of tea in hand, reading by the light of a single lamp. “Why are you still up?” she said.
He closed his book, shoved it aside. “I was waiting for you.”
“How come?”
“Funny you should ask. I hear it’s what parents do when their kids go out at night. Cup of tea?”
“Sure. Why not? Where’s Casey?”
“She pooped out on me and I sent her up to bed.” He got up and turned on the burner under the tea kettle. Took a cup from the cupboard and arranged a tea bag in it. “How was the movie?”
“We never got there.”
He turned, fixed her with a steady gaze.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “I didn’t hand over my virtue or anything.”
“Good to know. So where did you go?”
“Do we really have to talk about it?”
He studied her face, apparently saw something there that deterred him from the standard parental inquisition. Said, “Not unless you want to.” He poured hot water into the cup and carried it to the table.
Paige swished the tea bag around in her cup. “What would your adoring fans think if they saw you drinking tea like a little old lady?”
“Danny was the one with the adoring fans. And you can blame it on Casey. She’s the one who turned me on to it. I introduced her to wine, and she introduced me to tea.”
“You guys are such geeks. That sex, drugs, and rock & roll thing? You skew the stats all to hell.” She pulled out the tea bag, set it beside her cup, and took a drink.
“No flying high on ecstasy and trashing hotel rooms, you mean?”
“Yeah. Something like that.” She paused to stare into her cup. Sighed and said, “You two make it look so easy.”
“Being geeks?”
“Love.”
He took a sip of tea. “Oh.”
“You’re solid. A little silly, but solid.”
Her father shrugged. “You don’t understand the hell we went through before we finally found our way to each other. What you call silly, we call second chances.” He picked up his teaspoon and squeezed his tea bag against the side of his cup. “But we’re not bulletproof. You know that. Nobody is.”
“Love sucks.”
Her father nodded. “Sometimes it does. And sometimes it’s amazing and wonderful and it takes you to a place you never knew existed. When it’s right.”
“So what if you think it’s right, but the other party doesn’t?”
He seriously considered her question. “Then I’d say it’s not right. Because when it is, you both know it. You both feel it. You both want it. And just because it’s not right at this point in time doesn’t mean that couldn’t change in the future. Look at Casey and me. Look at how long it took us to become us. All those years, it wasn’t right, until one day it was.”
She nodded slowly. “I suppose it makes sense, if you look at it that way.”
“If it’s meant to be, that second chance will come around when you least expect it. And if it isn’t meant to be…” He reached out and chucked her under the chin. “Then it’ll be right with somebody else.”
She took a breath and said, “I didn’t expect it to hurt this much.”
He took her hand in his. Squeezed it. His hand, long-fingered and bony like hers, was warm and surprisingly comforting. A tear teased the corner of her eyelid. She said, “I don’t want you to feel sorry for me.”
“When I was in my early twenties,” he said, “I met my first wife. Her name was Nancy. Nancy Chen. She was a Chinese-American girl from the upper east side of Manhattan, and the only woman besides Casey that I ever truly loved. Her father was a surgeon. Big money. Her parents were very traditional in their beliefs, which didn’t include interracial marriage. When they tried to force her into an arranged marriage, she came to me for help. So we went down to City Hall and we got married.
“It was a huge mistake. A disaster right from the start.” He grew quiet, lost in the past. “I’d committed the dual cardinal sins of being not only poor, but Caucasian. Her parents freaked. But I was in love, and in savior mode, and when they did their best to split us up, I dug in my heels. Until they took out a court order barring her from seeing her little sister. It broke her heart. I’d never heard a woman cry that way. And because I loved her, it broke my heart. So I confronted her parents. They told me that they’d welcome her back to the fold with open arms, if only she’d divorce me.”
“Oh, boy.”
“I thought about it for a long time. I loved her so damn much. They’d already cut off her tuition money. She was planning to be a doctor, l
ike her father. I could’ve found a way to work around that. There’s always a way, if you want something bad enough. But there was no way I could work around this. Her sister meant the world to her—more than me, if I wanted to be honest—and her parents wielded all the power. So I caved. I loved her enough to let her go. I sent her home to her family, and I filed for divorce. It almost killed me, but I knew it was the best thing for her. I still do. I’m sure she’s a doctor now, with an appropriate Chinese husband and a houseful of kids. And I bet she doesn’t even remember me.”
Something clicked in some tiny corner of her heart. Softly, she said, “I doubt that.”
He let out a soft snort. “Yeah. Well.”
“Thank you,” she said. “For not asking. For not throwing buckets of sympathy all over me. For sharing.”
He squeezed her hand again, then released it. And said, “Better head off to bed, kiddo. It’s getting late. Things will look better in the morning. They always do.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Of course. They always do.”
Casey
With her hands at ten and two on the wheel and a prescription for prenatal vitamins tucked inside her purse, she sat in the parking lot outside the doctor’s office, her heart nearly exploding with joy. A baby. A baby! Not just a baby, but more importantly, their baby. After more than a year of trying, the indefatigable team of Fiore and MacKenzie had finally succeeded at their most significant collaboration. Sitting here in her car, mentally journeying back through their years together, through everything they’d survived together, everything they’d meant to each other, she was nearly overwhelmed by the absolute rightness of this.
Pregnant. It explained so much. The exhaustion. The random nausea. The fluctuating emotions. The anxiety she’d experienced when he’d left her for those three weeks that had turned into six. The terror she’d felt when he returned and she realized how far in love she’d fallen. The tears she’d shed, she who never cried, because he hadn’t been there sleeping beside her. Even the sexual aggressiveness—something so unlike her—could be blamed on pregnancy hormones.
She couldn’t believe she’d missed the signs. It wasn’t as though this was her first rodeo. But she’d been dealing with Rob’s absence and Paige’s presence, and she simply hadn’t been paying attention to the calendar. Hadn’t registered the significance of the rising fatigue or the mild tenderness in her breasts.
Ten weeks along. That was what the doctor had told her. Once she was able to stem the flow of joyful tears, they’d had a brief but serious discussion about how much she and Rob wanted this baby. About the sobering fact that she’d be thirty-six by the time it was born. About how her first pregnancy, at twenty-two, had ended in a miscarriage.
About the statistics indicating that scary things like miscarriages and birth defects were more likely with older mothers.
Dr. Levasseur had been calm and reassuring. “Your second pregnancy was normal,” she’d said, “and there’s no reason to think you won’t carry this baby to term. Nowadays, thirty-six is not considered old to be giving birth. And you’re in the bloom of good health. Just look at you. You have that glow!”
Now, sitting behind the wheel of her car, Casey took a deep, cleansing breath. Released it, and with that exhalation, everything simply fell into place. All the fear, all the confusion of the past few months just melted away, replaced by a certainty she’d felt this strongly only once before in her life: at the age of eighteen, when she’d walked away from Jesse to follow Danny Fiore to the moon and back. She’d been certain then, a certainty she’d felt clear to the marrow. And she was certain now. This was exactly where she was supposed to be at this point in her life.
Her time with Danny—and with Katie—had been finite. That season had been achingly bittersweet, but it was over. She’d moved on to a different season, with Rob and Paige and this new life she carried inside her womb. She couldn’t wait to tell him about the baby. He would be so excited. They’d wanted this for so long. He’d wanted this for so long. They’d been blessed with Paige, who had stormed into their life and stolen their hearts, but this was different. This was the two of them, Casey and Rob, making a baby together. Half of that child was his genetic material, and half of it was hers, all stirred together to create someone entirely new and breathtakingly perfect.
Any way you looked at it, this was a miracle.
Both her other pregnancies had initially brought confusion, dread, torn loyalties. The first time around, at twenty-two, she’d been on the pill. The pregnancy hadn’t been planned. But she’d wanted that baby so much, in spite of knowing what Danny’s reaction would be. Years earlier, they’d agreed to wait until the time was right, but the timing couldn’t have been more wrong. Their marriage was faltering, they were living in that godawful roach-infested apartment in the Village, and they were starving. There’d been no way she could justify bringing a child into that situation.
So she’d made the brutally painful decision to terminate the pregnancy. She hadn’t even told Danny she was pregnant. It had been Rob, her dearest friend, who had grudgingly checked around, found a doctor who did abortions, scheduled an appointment for her. It had been Rob who accompanied her to that appointment. And it had been Rob, with his no-nonsense Catholic upbringing, who’d taken her in his arms and breathed a huge sigh of relief when she changed her mind because she couldn’t go through with it.
And then nature, in its infinite wisdom, had taken the decision out of her hands.
She’d grieved so much for that lost baby, had grieved for years, right up until she became pregnant with Katie. With that second pregnancy, her loyalties shifted from her husband to her unborn child. She knew Danny had only agreed to having a baby because it was what she wanted. And she’d wondered, more than once during the course of that pregnancy, how she would manage to give her child a normal upbringing in the midst of the circus that was their life. She had adored Katie from the moment of conception, and had been determined that no matter what Danny did or said, their child would be raised with immense love and care.
She should have known better than to worry. His daughter had been the center of Danny Fiore’s world. Life certainly had its way of playing ironic little tricks. When they lost Katie to meningitis, it was Danny—he who hadn’t wanted a child in the first place—who had lost himself for a time. While Casey, in spite of battling unparalleled grief over her loss, had somehow managed to find herself in the aftermath.
She took another cleansing breath. All that was behind her now. The craziness, the drama, the tears, had all been part of another life. This time around, there was no confusion, no dread. Only joy and thrilling anticipation. This child, this new little green-eyed MacKenzie, would be wanted and adored by both its parents, as well as by a vast extended family.
She would tell him tonight, in their room, at bedtime, just the two of them. Candles, soft music. Champagne? No, sparkling cider. She had a bottle in the pantry. No more tippling for her, not until after the baby came. Her finest stemware, of course. Maybe she’d even wear the infamous dress, just so he could peel it off her. Because she had no doubt he’d peel it off. She knew her husband to the marrow. Knew the MacKenzie school of thought regarding celebrations and nakedness.
How was it possible to love a man this much? She’d adored him for decades, but that love had evolved into something so big she couldn’t have imagined it just a few short years ago. It hadn’t happened all at once. Loving him like this had been a process. An evolution. It had taken a year and then some of being his wife, of sleeping beside him at night and facing each new day together, of exploring her blossoming sexuality with him, to bring her to the place she stood now. It was a good place, the best place she’d ever been. MacKenzie might not be the first boy she’d kissed, but he would be the last.
If they were fortunate, they’d have the full sixty years he’d promised her on the day they wed. It wouldn’t be enough. There would never be enough time. But they’d gotten such a late start on thei
r forever that she knew better than to take it for granted. Life was too short, too unpredictable, to ever lose sight of how precious it was. Of how precious love was. Whatever time they had together, she would cherish each moment.
She inserted her key into the ignition and started the car. Just a half-hour left before dusk, and it was starting to spit snow. Rob would be looking for her soon. She hadn’t told him where she was going, and he had a tendency to worry. She didn’t want to leave him hanging. But there was business to be taken care of. Someplace she had to go first, before she embarked on this next stage of her life.
***
She parked atop the hill, beneath the towering elm, now shed of its leaves. Here at the top of the world, it was raw and blustery. She left the car running—she wouldn’t be here long enough to shut it off—pulled on her leather driving gloves and got out. The snow that had been just a flake here and there when she left town had now become a soft blanket of white, and she picked her way cautiously over slippery ground to his grave.
While fluffy flakes of snow peppered her face and swirled around her head, she studied that gravestone. Then she reached into her pocket, pulled out the cufflink, and leaned to set it on top of the stone.
“I’m giving this back to you,” she said. “I have no idea how you managed this, or what message you were trying to give me, but I can’t keep it, Danny. I can’t accept gifts from you. I’m not your wife any longer. It’s over, you and me. I can’t do this to myself anymore. Or to Rob. It’s killing him, and I won’t risk my marriage for anybody. Not even for you.
“I made a mistake, taking you back. A mistake I’ll regret for the rest of my life, because if I’d made the right choice, you’d still be alive. It’s my fault that you’re dead, and the guilt has been crushing me. I loved you so much. So very much, for so many years.”
Her voice softened. “We really had something special, didn’t we? You were my magic man, my love, my life. And I’ll never, ever regret it. Not even the bad parts. You’ll always have a place here—” She touched her chest. “—in my heart. But our time ran out. I don’t think it was meant to last. When I took you back that last time, although I still loved you—I’ll always love you—I wasn’t in love with you any more. Not the way I once was. Because by then, I’d fallen in love with Rob.”
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