by Anna Adams
“Because you went for a walk and I waited, hoping you’d show up. Because I care about you, and you care, too.”
Cared too much. She had her son. He had his grief to recover from. “Did you love Madeline?”
His body went rigid. “Where did that come from?”
“I wondered. She’s on my mind a lot, too.” Why wouldn’t he relax into her arms again? How did Madeline still do that to him?
“Do we really want to talk about her right now?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, warily.
“When I’m making love to you, I’d rather not talk about my former wife.”
That shook her.
“Do you feel guilty?” She sat up, tucking the sheet around her breasts. “Are you still in love with her? I worried about you feeling guilty, but I didn’t think of that. Why are you in bed with me?”
His dark eyes glowed with satisfaction. “I’m in bed with you because I don’t want to be anywhere else.” His mouth, in a slow curve, made her want to sink against him. “My feelings for Madeline are complicated,” he said. “Would you believe me if I said they weren’t? But I didn’t think of her as a wife for a long time before she died. I tried to. I wanted to, but I spent so much time trying to protect her that our marriage changed for me.”
“That’s not specific. Do you still love her?”
“Are you jealous?”
“Worse than that,” she said. “Afraid. You’re not over her.”
“I am.” But he looked uncertain. “I saw a therapist for several months, and he said I should move on. Use my name to do something for people who suffer from depression.”
“You haven’t. I would have heard.”
“No, you wouldn’t. I’m not some teenage girl with a dog in my purse.” As she stared, he shrugged. “I’m not as interesting, but I’ve spoken to a medical group at home about building a center that offers the kind of care Eli’s getting.” He stopped, looking self-conscious. “For people who can’t afford to go away. At the worst, this would make it easier for their families to visit. At best they’d be outpa—”
“No.” Beth took the sheet with her as she stood. She found her shirt and underwear.
“Yes.” He propped himself on his elbows, slightly amused, and not as concerned as she about being nude. “I’ve been there. I know it’s moving forward.”
She leaned down to put on her panties. “I’m glad you’re helping, but I asked you about your feelings, and you switched to something you’re doing. When it comes to how you feel, you try not to answer.”
“Feelings.” He might have been swearing. “How can you doubt what I feel after last night?”
“That’s sex. It’s like wanting food. Or water.” Straightening, she flung her hair back. “Or absolution. Eli and I don’t need you to build a little health center for us in my brother’s cottage.” She looked for her skirt, found it in the doorway and scrambled into it. “I’m getting out of here. Why wasn’t I thinking? I’ll get all attached to you. Eli already is, but you’re looking to cleanse your soul. I will never understand men. You all fool me.”
“You’re jumping to the wrong conclusions because I can’t find exactly the words you want.”
“It’s the only explanation,” she said.
“For what?”
“We liked each other on sight. We’re drawn to each other sexually. You found a couple of wounded creatures you could heal, and meanwhile, Madeline is still in your heart.”
“Heal?” He touched his chest. “Look at me. I’m the one who’s healing.” His eyes widened. “I forgot to be afraid I’d die.”
“Oh, my—” She caught her zipper on the hem of her shirt and tried to pull the zip back down. “Thank God, I didn’t think of it, either.”
“I mean, why would I be arrogant enough to think I could save anyone?”
“Because you lost your wife.” She jerked at her zipper and then her shirt and then let both go. “You’re trying to keep Eli and me alive as some sort of penance to her.”
“Wait.” He moved to the end of the bed, his eyes searching hers.
“I’m overreacting,” she said, “because I’ve just spent the night with you, and I don’t do that often, but you are still wrapped up in Madeline. You hardly say her name, and when I do you can’t talk about her.”
“Beth, you know me. I’m not just some guy.” He grabbed the sheet and wrapped it around his waist. “I’ve admitted you and Eli felt like my chance to make up for Madeline, but everything changed the second I saw Eli in the woods. With Madeline I knew I was too late. I was—you can’t imagine.” Beth flinched because he still felt so much. “But I got mad at Eli,” he said. “I decided he wasn’t going to die. I hope he understands how fragile life is, that he has only finite moments allotted to him, because I learned it in a flash, looking down at him on the ground.”
“You’re killing me. I don’t want you ever to feel pain, but how did you make Madeline believe you loved her?”
He licked his lower lip and she wanted to sit down on the floor and cry. “I would have said anything to save her,” he said. “I couldn’t find the right words to make her believe, so I made some up—and that didn’t work, either.”
She exhaled as if he’d punched her in the stomach.
“You aren’t like her, Beth. You’re strong, and I don’t lie to you. You can’t trust that I’ll never hurt you because people do that accidentally, but you can count on the truth from me.”
“I lie, but never to you? That’s believable.”
“You’re looking for reasons to go.”
Even if he was right, it didn’t matter. Her gut told her to run. She departed Aidan’s bedroom and his house, but she was too late to escape.
He already owned too much of her heart.
SINCE HE HADN’T DIED saving Eli or losing Beth, Aidan stopped taking life easy. He put in a fax machine and a small copier, which Van okayed. He even made a run into D.C. after office hours, where he picked up work and earned himself an affronted phone call from his parents the next day.
“Dad,” he said, midlecture, “I like living out here.” An hour and a half wasn’t that bad a drive.
Unless a man were making it for a woman who invented reasons to avoid him. Beth wouldn’t even answer the phone to ask him to stop calling.
“What are you talking about, son?”
“He’s trying to divert us,” his mother said. “Pretending he wants to quit the company and move to the country to molder away at forty-two.”
“I’m talking about an office in Honesty,” Aidan said. “Maybe even in my home if I build one.”
“Uh-huh? When I look out my window and see you zipping by on a flying monkey, I’ll believe it.” His mother took a deep breath that nearly blew out Aidan’s eardrum. “If you’re well enough to work, ask for what you need and we’ll send it. Don’t try to shock us into shutting up with threats of quitting or moving.”
It didn’t matter. Beth didn’t want him. Eli had told him to go away.
He drove down the road to the fishing lodge a night or two during the next two weeks. The roof had gone up with lightning speed, as had the Sheetrock. On a Thursday at about ten at night, he saw Beth in a white tank top, her hair curling around her shoulders, taping and spackling the drywall.
She tilted her head, evidently blowing her hair out of her face. Strands of it caught rays from the work light that hung on a hook above her head.
She looked good enough to—beg.
He backed down the driveway and out to the anonymous darkness of the main road, afraid he’d give in to temptation and fall on his knees at her feet.
He pulled out his cell phone and left a message at his cardiologist’s office. “I’m through playing around. I’m going back to work, and if you don’t want another patient, you should call my mother and let her know you’re available if she needs you after I show up.”
Next, he dialed Van’s number. Van actually picked up.
“Aidan, are you ca
lling for Beth? Has something happened to Eli?”
“He’s fine as far as I know.” Aidan’s voice jumped as the car bumped over a pothole he couldn’t miss.
“How about you?”
This family. They saw him as an invalid with a weak mind. “Fine, Van. I just wanted to let you know I’m going to start moving back to D.C.”
“Already? You’re welcome to the cottage for as long as you want it.”
“I appreciate that, but I need to work again.” Then he thought of actually leaving Beth and Eli. He didn’t want to. “I’ll take my things back gradually. I’ll still be in and out.” Having made love to Van’s sister all night long with more pleasure and hope than he’d felt in his adult life, he felt uncomfortable with her brother. “So, I’ll talk to you whenever I’m back if you’re around.”
“Great. We should meet next time I’m in D.C. Catch a Nationals game.”
“Sounds good.”
It was all bland. Talk and times he’d share with clients and colleagues. He wanted more and he wanted it with this man’s sister. “Talk to you later, Van.”
Van needed no further prompting to hang up, and Aidan envied the other guy his busy schedule.
He tried Beth’s number one last time. It rang and rang and rang three more times. Then there was a click and a second one. She’d answered and hung up. She didn’t even want him in her voice mail.
IF THE CELL PHONE weren’t her only tie to Eli, she’d have thrown the thing into that still cold lake. Beth wiped sweat off her forehead with the back of her wrist and slipped the cell back into her pocket.
Her jeans were fitting looser. Worry and work, an unbeatable diet, but not one she’d recommend.
In the past two weeks, she’d prepared almost every inch of the lodge for painting. As soon as the crew put up two pieces of drywall, she’d taped and slathered on spackling. Then came the sanding. After the first hour of doing it by hand, she’d rented an electrical sander.
Each night, a couple of the drywall crew stayed behind to help. She donated beer and pizza and gratitude.
And she wished that just one of them would make her feel the slightest hint of interest. All tough, hard, good-looking guys, they were just friends. Her only interest was in Aidan, who’d invaded her dreams day and night.
When the phone rang again, she almost didn’t look at it. She didn’t trust herself to talk to Aidan. But she had to check the caller ID.
Her knees buckled when she read the camp’s name.
She punched the Talk button. “Yes?”
“Mom?”
“Eli, are you crying?” She pressed her hand to the wall and smeared her palm in spackling. Eli’s name repeated in her head. She couldn’t get to him.
“I’m not crying. I’m yawning.”
“Good try, buddy, but that doesn’t even work when you’re home. You’re still a man if you cry. No matter what your dad says.”
“Okay, I’m crying, but I have a good reason. You have to listen to me.”
“I am.” If she expected him to make changes, she had to as well. Campbell was a lousy father. She couldn’t change that, but she could stop being an overprotective, neurotic attempt at two parents for the price of one. She stood still when what she really wanted was to run to her son. “Tell me.”
“I think I—” He broke off, and then started again. But he was crying, sobbing.
“I can’t understand you, honey.”
He tried again, to no avail.
“Eli, I’ll come. I’m on my way.”
“No.” It must have been a magical threat because he pulled himself together. “I’ve been talking to the doctor here, and I told him something I couldn’t even tell Maria.”
“But you need to tell me?”
“I’m trying.”
She pressed her hand to her mouth.
“I think I burned down our house. I tried a cigarette, and it made me throw up. When I came back from the bathroom, my room was on fire, and I couldn’t find the cigarette.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You’re wrong, sweetie. You’re the victim of some horrible coincidence. Lightning literally struck when you did something you shouldn’t. The firemen told me, and they can tell the difference.” Poor guy. “This has been torturing you. It’s why you wouldn’t come to the lodge with me.”
“I left the cigarette. I burned the house.”
“No.” She didn’t know whether to laugh with joy that he’d finally told her something so painful or cry because he’d suffered for nothing. “If it had started with a cigarette, they’d know. Apparently, there are burn patterns, and our fire burned like a lightning strike.”
She expected him to be relieved, too. He didn’t say anything. She couldn’t hear him breathing any more.
“Eli?”
“I don’t know whether to believe you. Are you saying that because you’re afraid I’ll try to do that thing I did again?”
“I’m telling you the truth. You never had to worry about this. I just wish you could have told me.”
“That I ruined our life? I was afraid you’d start acting like Dad. Who would I have left?”
“I’ve tried not to say anything bad about your father, but you have to know one thing through and through. I’m nothing like him. If you need me, I’ll be there. You couldn’t do anything to make me leave you. If I’m still around when we’re both old and infirm, you’ll still be giving me that tired ‘Mom’ that means you wish I’d leave you breathing space.”
He laughed, but still with tears in his voice. “Okay.”
“Really okay?”
“I’m trying.”
Would he ever sound like a child again? “I love you, Eli.”
“I’m glad I didn’t burn down the house.”
“Me, too, ’cause when you come home, you’ll have no excuse to avoid helping me paint.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TWO WEEKS AFTER he left, Beth returned from her visit to Eli, singing. She parked in Van’s garage, noted her brother’s car with surprise, and climbed out of her own, balancing a wooden salad bowl Eli had made for her. By the time he came home, he planned to finish a set of six smaller bowls.
A man appeared in the garage door. With the last of the day’s sunlight at his back, he was only a long, tall shadow.
Beth gasped.
“It’s me,” Aidan said. “Sorry for scaring you.”
“I think Van’s in the house.”
“Don’t pretend I’m here to see him.”
“I’m sorry I ran out like that,” she said, facing him at last. “But it’s not just that Madeline’s on your conscience. You can’t even talk about her, and I’m afraid you still love her. I can’t stand to be around you thinking that.”
“It’s ridiculous, Beth.” He lifted one hand, to stop her from arguing. “Were you just visiting Eli?”
“He’s better. It turns out he thought he’d set the fire at our house. After he told me that, Dr. Cook said he started improving.”
“Did he start the fire?”
“Not according to the firemen.” She nudged the car door shut with her hip. “Not that I’ll be asking them to take a second look. He tried a cigarette to get back at me.”
“For what?”
“Being such a wet blanket,” she said. “So I’m trying to change.”
“But not with me?”
She couldn’t think of anything she’d rather do than make a happy, healthy life with Aidan. “You aren’t over her.”
“I told you everything changed when I found Eli. I wanted him to be safe. I didn’t help him because I thought he was Madeline. I wanted him to be safe. Your son—who matters to me, too.
She pressed her hand to her stomach. The words were exactly what she wanted to hear, but too late. “He doesn’t want you in our lives.”
“He told you that?”
“He told you.”
“He was upset that day. Let me try again with him.”
“I
’m trying to see myself clearly because I tend to want things my own way, and I have too much pride, but this is about you. Until you’re over your past, you can’t ask me or Eli to think of you as part of our family.”
He flinched. Then he turned and walked out of the garage, down the hill. She found it harder to stay put this time. She wanted to run after him and say it didn’t matter that he couldn’t talk about his ex-wife.
Except it did.
“HOW’S ELI?” Van handed her a beer as she set her stuff on the kitchen counter.
“Good. He’s bruised and he scratched his face on a rock, but he smiled—I don’t know how many times—and he organized a poker game. With cards,” she said. “It wasn’t on a computer screen or a portable game player.”
“Did he take your money?”
“Crackers. They’re not allowed to play for money.” She put the beer back and got water. Her chat with Aidan had left her throat dry. “Thank goodness. I’d have had to mortgage the car to get home. It’s burning oil.”
“I’ll look at it tomorrow.” He sipped his beer. “Was that Aidan outside?”
“Don’t bother with the careful tone. I’m not seeing him anymore.”
“But you were? I thought so in the hospital.”
“I thought he cared for me.”
“I think he does, too.” Van didn’t sound as if he approved.
“He wanted to save someone. His wife is still on his mind.”
“How?”
“He can’t talk about her. It’d be different if she was like Campbell—if he’d disliked her. But he loved her, and every time her name comes up, he changes the subject.”
“How does he say he feels?”
Beth’s skin went hot from her throat all the way up.
“You really care about him?” Van asked.
Just like that, “I love him” ran through her mind. “Eli liked him until he realized something was going on between us.”
“Eli needs a dad.”
“You think that’s what he liked about Aidan?”
“That and the hero act.”
“It was no act. He helped Lucy and Eli would have died without him.”
He smiled. “You’re arguing on his behalf.”