by Laura Abbot
As he let the hot water pour over his shoulders, he sang lustily, feeling happier than he could remember being in a long time. How could he have guessed that the simple act of reading an entry in a guest journal at an Arkansas bed-and-breakfast would change his life? Nell had given him so much. She was gentle and kind and fun. And just unpredictable enough to keep life interesting. He’d bet his last dollar she had no idea the extent to which she turned him on. Well, time would certainly take care of that little problem.
On the way to Nell’s, he made a quick stop to pick up a bouquet of daisies. The choice had been easy. They reminded him of her—dainty, yet perky. A natural, refreshing kind of beauty. When he reached her house, he stood a moment on the front porch studying the seasonal wreath, a circle of grapevines decorated with plump, purple artificial grapes and dried leaves. That simple touch left him misty-eyed with a vision of what he could have with Nell.
Yet even with those thoughts, he was unprepared for the wave of feeling that flooded him when she opened the door, her face glowing with a welcoming smile, her slender body reedlike but appropriately rounded in places his fingers itched to explore. “I missed you,” he choked out.
When she laid the flowers on the hall table and walked into his waiting arms, he knew this truly was home. “I thought eight o’clock would never come,” she whispered.
He looked beyond her, then back into her eyes.
She read his mind. “She’s in her room.”
“Good,” he said just before leaning closer to capture her sweet, full lips and show her with the power of his kiss just how much he’d missed her. That’s all it took before his body reacted. He groaned.
“Oh, my,” she breathed when she finally managed to step back. “We could be in trouble.”
“Bring it on,” he growled.
“I’d love to oblige, but there is Abby to consider. What kind of example would we be setting?” Her eyes were playful, but the boundaries had been made clear. She picked up the daisies and nestled them to her chest. “Thank you,” she said, then took his hand and led him into the family room, where a plate of brownies and an insulated carafe were waiting. “I thought you might be hungry after your flight.”
No way would he tell her he’d just eaten. “Don’t mind if I do,” he said, helping himself to a brownie.
She busied herself getting a vase for the daisies, then sat beside him on the sofa and poured two cups of coffee.
He took his coffee from her and grinned. “So all we can do is talk?”
“There’s nothing wrong with that. It gives me a chance to tell you you’re spoiling me. First the bird-of-paradise, and now daisies. A girl could get used to such treatment.”
He set down his cup and moved closer, wrapping an arm around her. “I certainly hope so.” He ran a finger down the slope of her nose. “You’re worth it.”
He couldn’t believe it. There was genuine doubt in her eyes, when she faced him. “You think so?”
“I know so,” he said, planting a kiss on her forehead.
She relaxed against his arm. “Tell me about your trip.”
She was a good listener and he found himself elaborating about his disenchantment with the pretentious and competitive lifestyle he’d once cultivated. “The contrast with Fayetteville is mind-boggling.”
In a careful tone, she said, “This isn’t paradise, Brady.”
“No place is. We make our own heavens and hells.”
She tensed, looked at the ceiling, then finally spoke. “Brady, maybe now is a good time to tell you—” But before she could go on, the phone rang, shattering the silence. From her bedroom, Abby hollered, “I’ll get it.”
Nell seemed somehow…relieved by the interruption. “Cross your fingers that’s the new boyfriend calling. She’s been agonizing all weekend. There’s a school dance this coming Friday and she’s dying for him to ask her.”
“And he’s all of thirteen, right? Trust me, he’s scared spitless to invite her for fear she’ll turn him down. Asking a girl for a date is the torture of the damned for a guy that age.”
“And this is the voice of experience speaking?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Although the scene forming in his mind was hardly as innocent as one from Happy Days. Sheryl Clay. He hadn’t thought of her in years. A ninth grader with tits that were the talk of the junior high locker room. His eighth-grade teammates had dared him to ask her to a school barn dance and hayride. “Screw off, runt,” she’d said in response to his stammered invitation. Just one more in the series of rejections that were the rule rather than the exception when he was growing up.
“Where’d you go just now?” she asked.
“Nowhere.” He didn’t want to tell her and run the risk of opening the door to his past again. She’d just have to understand. That area was hands-off. It wouldn’t do her any good, and it sure as hell wouldn’t benefit him.
“Mom?” Abby burst into the room with a smile that made it clear the kid had screwed up his courage. “It’s Alan. He asked me!” She shrieked with delight. “Can I go?” She went down on one knee. “Please.”
Nell moved away from Brady and affected mock sternness. “Before I give my answer, haven’t you forgotten something?”
Abby looked confused, then turned to Brady. A light bulb went on. “Oh, hi, Mr. Logan.”
“It’s nice to see you, Abby.” When he uttered those words, he realized it really was nice to see her. That he was enjoying the adolescent drama being played out before his eyes.
Abby wiggled with impatience. “Mom? Can I?”
Nell relented and smiled. “Yes, darling, you may.”
“I love you,” Abby offered her mother before running down the hall.
“Thank God,” Nell breathed. “I wasn’t sure how she would handle rejection.”
“She’s your daughter. She’d have survived.” He pulled her closer and played with a lock of her hair. “You know, I just realized something important.”
“What’s that?”
“When I left California after the accident, I made mental shrines to Brooke and Nicole, not allowing myself to see them as anything other than paragons. Somehow I was able to move beyond Brooke when I met you, but I have to confess Abby was giving me serious difficulty.”
“What do you mean?”
“She and Nicole are, uh, were so close in age. Nicole had long blond hair, too. Every time I was with Abby or heard you talk about her, all I could focus on was Nicole. On what I was missing. Being a father was very important to me.” He paused to collect his thoughts. “I wasn’t totally sure about us, Nell, because I didn’t know if I could accept Abby. I knew I needed to, but it wasn’t happening.”
“And now?”
“Saying goodbye to Nicole and then seeing Abby tonight, so upbeat and excited…I finally realized I can’t blame Abby for not being Nicole. And if I shut Abby out, then I lose not only you, but the opportunity to enjoy watching another girl grow up.” He could hardly go on. “I don’t want to miss out on that. On any of it.”
Nell laid a soothing hand on his cheek. “I hope you won’t have to.”
He nestled her closer. “We’re pretty lucky, aren’t we?”
“Maybe we have the chance to make our own heaven out of the hells we’ve been through.”
He waited for the pounding of his heart to slow before cupping her face and searching her eyes. “I’m counting on it.”
“Brady,” she breathed, pulling his head closer and lifting her lips to his.
With the diabolical timing of a twisted film director, the phone rang again. Nell pulled back. “Abby’ll get it.”
Reluctantly, he moved away. “Guess I’ll have to behave. We wouldn’t want to be caught in the act.”
Nell chuckled. “How does it feel being chaperoned by a thirteen-year-old?”
Before he could answer, true to form, Abby yelled down the hall. “It’s for you, Mom. It’s your sponsor from AA.”
Brady could feel blood eddying i
n his ears. Surely he hadn’t heard Abby right. But the stunned look on Nell’s face verified that nothing was wrong with his hearing. “AA?” He stood. There had to be some mistake. Something he was missing. As his gaze homed in on Nell, he was helpless to curb the anger twisting his gut. “What is she talking about?”
Nell turned away to pick up the phone, leaving him alone in the silence of what might well be the second worst moment of his life. “Nell?”
Nell murmured something into the receiver, clicked it off and set it on the coffee table, then faced him, her head bowed. “I was going to tell you.”
“Tell me what exactly?”
Threading her fingers together in anguish, she lifted her ravaged eyes. “Brady, I am an alcoholic.”
CHAPTER TEN
HIS FACE DRAINED of color and his chest heaving, Brady stared at her, awareness slowly replacing shock. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
Nell summoned her voice somehow. “No, Brady, I’m not.”
From his distorted mouth came the ragged parody of a laugh. “Some secret you’ve been keeping from me.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Give me a minute.” Then, drawing a shaking hand through his hair, he went to the window where he stood, his back rigid.
Nell had expected him to be surprised and had wondered if he would have trouble accepting her once he knew. But this felt like total rejection. And she had no tools to combat it.
Her forehead beaded with clamminess, and she was afraid she was going to throw up. Swallowing hard, she wiped her damp hands on her slacks, then began speaking, her voice a low monotone. She had no idea whether he would listen, but she had to try. To explain—and confess.
“I know I should have told you sooner. I tried to. Earlier, before Alan called. But it’s not the sort of thing you go around announcing to people.”
He hadn’t moved, except to thrust his balled fists into his pockets.
“For what it’s worth, I’ve been sober for six years.”
She could barely hear him mumble, “You want a goddamn prize?”
Her face reddened and her heart pounded double-time. “No, but I wouldn’t mind a little understanding.”
“That’s asking quite a bit.”
What had happened to the sensitive, gentle man she’d fallen in love with? This icy stranger was someone she didn’t know.
He whirled around. “All right, tell me about it. Tell me how you justify it.”
“I don’t justify it. Alcoholism can happen to anybody. No one is immune. And it happened to me. It’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s a fact I live with every day.”
“Why?”
Nell recoiled. That one anguished word was as much of a concession to understanding as he was going to make. She wanted to pace, to work out the explanation through movement. But she stayed where she was, rooted in an agony that went beyond any AA testimonial. And so she began—with her history of social drinking, her insecurity, the liquid escape she had sought from her father’s death and Rick’s unfaithfulness. When she finished, she stared into Brady’s implacable eyes. “I’m not asking you to condone what I did, but I’d like to think you could understand. Forgive?” The last word came out tremulously as a question.
He shrugged disgustedly, and in that moment Nell knew they were doomed.
“While you’re at it, you may as well tell me the rest.”
“The rest?”
“How in some moment of glorious revelation you decided to go to AA.”
“Glorious revelation?” She snorted. “I wish. Then I wouldn’t have come close to losing Abby.”
He stepped toward her, his face even grayer. “What are you talking about?”
“The night Rick delivered the divorce papers, we got into a huge fight. He walked out. Abby overheard us and was semi-hysterical and kept crying ‘I want my daddy, I want my daddy.’ No amount of vodka numbed her protest, so I decided to take her to Rick and let him see just what a mess he’d made of our lives.”
She paused, wishing she didn’t have to go on. Brady leaned on the arm of the sofa and waited, his jaw working.
“It was a snowy night. The roads were icy. I…I didn’t care.” Her voice broke. Clearing her throat, she went on, knowing she had to finish, had to accept every measure of damnation from him. “We got to the car, and I strapped Abby in the back seat. She wouldn’t stop howling. I dropped my keys in the snow. How I wish I’d never found them.” She stopped, unable to continue.
Brady’s eyes were locked on his laced fingers. From down the hall Nell could hear the pinging of pipes. Abby was taking a shower.
“Go on,” Brady said like a man condemned to hearing the worst.
“But I did find them, and I started driving toward Clarice’s apartment. On these hilly streets, ice is treacherous,” she said in grotesque understatement. “I never could remember exactly what happened, which wasn’t surprising since I was drunk. I woke up in the hospital.” Her eyes moistened with emotion, but she struggled for control. “Abby could’ve been killed in the accident. Only a matter of inches saved her.”
A strangled moan erupted from Brady and he strode again to the window.
Determined to finish, Nell went on. “That’s what got my attention. AA saved me.”
“How convenient for you.”
Shocked, Nell rose to her feet and took a step toward him. She’d never encountered such indifference. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Slowly he faced her, his own cheeks tearstained. He looked devastated, and when he spoke, she had the impression he didn’t know or care that she was there.
“That your story has a nice, tidy ending. Happily ever after.” He practically choked on bitterness. “Brooke and Nicole weren’t so lucky. Their particular drunk driver failed to stop at a highway intersection and he hit them broadside.”
“Their drunk driver? What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. Don’t you get it? The tanker driver had a blood alcohol level well above the limit. Brooke and Nicole weren’t as lucky as Abby. As if ‘luck’ had anything to do with it. People like you and that truck driver never consider anyone else, do you?”
She deserved it—every last ounce of his scorn and fury. Everything he valued in life had been lost because someone else, someone like her, had a consuming thirst that blinded him to anything but his own needs for self-gratification or escape. What could she say? Finally, she heard herself mumble, “I’m sorry. I’d undo it if I could.”
“You can’t, Nell.” He started for the front door, then hesitated and turned around. “I’m sorry, too. I thought we had something magical. I guess I’m not as good a judge of character as I thought.”
After he left, emptiness echoed throughout the house. She should’ve known better than to trust that she’d be given a second chance. Reentering the family room, she looked wildly around, trying to beat back a desperate craving for alcohol. Brady, Brady, Brady. She couldn’t stop repeating his name or gasping with the painful knowledge of the wound she’d opened up in him tonight. And in herself.
For something, anything, to do except grab her keys, dash to the liquor store and drown the fear lodged in her throat, she picked a daisy from the bouquet Brady had brought her earlier, when things had been happy, promising.
One by one she plucked each petal. “He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me…”
Finally one last petal remained. Why was she surprised? “He loves me not.”
She collapsed on the sofa, stifling her wrenching sobs with the overstuffed pillow, knowing she had hurt him beyond repair.
But that didn’t mean she’d stopped loving him. She couldn’t.
CLUTCHING THE STEERING WHEEL like a lifeline, Brady threaded his way through the light traffic on Fayetteville’s main drag. Flashing neon lights were nothing more than a haze in his peripheral vision. Goddammit, goddammit! With the flat of his hand, he pounded the wheel. He wanted to kick a wall, drive his fist through a pane of glass, anything to obliterate the pain h
olding him captive.
He still couldn’t believe it. He forced himself to repeat Nell’s words over and over in his brain. I am an alcoholic.
Before, he’d only wondered if God had a malicious streak, now he knew for sure. Enraged, he shook his fist. “You listening up there? Okay, you win. I cry ‘Uncle.’”
Of all the things Nell could have done to destroy him, this was the worst. Had it been only a few hours ago he’d considered her unpredictability interesting?
What an ass he was! Thinking that by reading some sappy entry in a B-and-B journal he could find true love. Happiness. Oh, yeah, happiness. Like there was any such thing.
I am an alcoholic. Why hadn’t he seen it coming? She didn’t drink, her husband had walked out. All the pieces had been there, but he’d painted her as he’d wanted her to be, as he’d needed her to be. The sweet, fun-loving Nell he thought he knew was merely the projection of his own lonely imagination.
He’d thought he was doing a great thing by loving her, restoring her damaged sense of her desirability. But what was that all about? Had she been using him? He’d read somewhere that alcoholics could be manipulative. Had she been playing him?
Beneath his anger, he knew he was raving. That he was doing Nell a disservice with such cynicism. But he had no outlet for the force of his anger and disillusionment. For…name it…his desolation.
First Brooke and Nicole. Now Nell and Abby. Lost.
Eventually he became more aware of his surroundings. He was in the old-fashioned town square, symbolic of everything he’d come to love about the town—the slower pace, friendlier people, simpler lifestyle.
But was it all based on an illusion? Wishful thinking? Without Nell, could he be happy here?
He grunted. He couldn’t be happy anywhere.
That being the case, what did it matter whether it was California or Arkansas? Neither could be home.
It was well after midnight when he finally gave up and returned to his condo. The forlorn, repetitive hoot of an owl accompanied him as he walked from his parking space to his door. The musty smell of stale pipe smoke assailed him when he stepped inside. In the moonlight streaming through the windows, he made out the boxy forms of the antique furniture his landlord prized.