“You give me too much credit,” Sylvanne protested. She pressed herself close against him, her head on his shoulder. “The fates are strange animals,” she murmured. “They brought me here for what seemed a dark purpose, and now they bestow happiness upon me. I pray their work is done, and they leave us from here to build joy upon joy.”
48
Derek left a message on Meghan’s phone, but she didn’t return it. The next day he left another, and again she didn’t respond. He saw Betsy across the fence and asked her what was up—she told him her mom was super busy with work and kind of depressed. On day three with still no contact he wanted answers, and was about to walk next door to take matters in hand when Meghan showed up on his doorstep.
He decided to keep it light. “Hey neighbour,” he welcomed her. “I’ve been worried about you, not to mention dying to hear the latest—how’d the wedding go?”
“I don’t know,” she answered.
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I’m taking sleeping pills to stop me dreaming.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yep. Thomas asked me to. Because three’s a crowd. He didn’t want me there on the wedding night. He wants me to go away and leave them alone.”
“Wow. First impression, though, he’s probably right.”
“I know he’s probably right,” she said. “They need to get on with their lives, and have a healthy, normal, loving marriage, a happily-ever-after. He’s the grown-up who saw it and called it. It still hurts, though. Remember I told you it felt like I’d been dumped? Now I really feel like I’ve been dumped.”
“Half dumped,” Derek said. “I didn’t dump you. Though I was beginning to think you’d dumped me.”
“No, I didn’t. I haven’t. I just needed time. I got very angry, for a bit. I was mad at both of you—you and him. For conspiring against me.”
“Not against you. For Sylvanne.”
“I know that. I’ve calmed down. I’m on her side too. But I still need time.”
“Of course you do. Your heart is half broken,” he said. “Which is better than fully broken. It’s like the glass half full—we can fill it back up. We can mend the heart.”
“You’re very sweet,” she said. “I missed you.”
“What would you like to do?” he asked gently.
“I’d like to lie down with you on your couch, just lie on your chest, and kind of be held, and comforted. No hanky panky, just tenderness. I’m feeling tender.”
Derek led her by the hand and they lay down. It soothed her to curl herself against the contours of his body. He played with a few stray strands of her hair at her temple, and noted that she was making no effort to look into his eyes.
“Here’s the deal,” he said. “You taking those pills means he’s got his privacy now, but it doesn’t mean we do. He’s still in me, taking this all in, right?”
“Yep,” she replied. “It’s unfair.”
“So what should our strategy be? How do we proceed, knowing he’s there?”
“I want to start pretending he’s not. If I’m not dreaming him anymore it means I won’t see him, and he’ll become like an ex-lover, or ex-friend, or some guy I once had a crush on—he’ll fade from my mind. He’ll diminish, and then maybe, when I look in your eyes, I won’t distinguish what’s him and what’s you—maybe I’ll just start thinking it’s all you.”
“A lot of maybes,” Derek said. “You know what I think? I think we should just relax. Thomas or no Thomas, in the end we’re like any other couple trying to figure out if it’s worth it—it’s going to come down to how compatible we are, how lovable we find each other, and whether our neuroses clash or mesh. Right now it feels very good to lie here with your head on my chest. I wish we could just stay like this forever, but before too long we’ll need to get up and carry on. When we do, let’s just hold hands and keep walking forward. As long as we’re holding hands we’ll be fine.”
She didn’t say anything for a long time. He felt her breathing get slower, and synchronize to his own. With her head on his chest he couldn’t see her eyes, and he thought she might be falling asleep. He liked the idea of them curling up and napping together—it would bring on a sense of warmth, of trust and healing. But suddenly she sat up and said, “You know what? If we’re really talking about a future together, just aimlessly wandering into it holding hands isn’t going to cut it.”
“The plan is to get to know each other.”
Meghan chose her words carefully. “Some things I know about you make it difficult to really imagine it could work out.”
“Like what?”
“Like the way you drink, and smoke. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to take a page from Sylvanne. I was so impressed with the way she just laid out her conditions. I’m going to lay down mine. First and foremost, no substance abuse.”
“Well of course no substance abuse. No one likes abuse,” Derek answered. “But there’s also substance use—substances in small doses can actually be good. A glass of wine with dinner, an occasional puff of weed after a stressful day—that’s substance use. It’s moderate, and medicinal.”
“Don’t try to weasel out of it.”
“I’m not weaseling, I’m negotiating.”
“Okay, I’ll be more specific. No drinking to get drunk, and no drugging just to get stoned. No partying your face off, in other words. No drugs harder than pot—”
“I don’t do anything harder than pot anyway.”
“—and no pot around Betsy, or me for that matter. It’s the smoke I hate. I’d love it if you quit smoking.”
“You drive a hard bargain, Miss Meghan.”
“Not really. I’m already compromising on the pot. You can still sneak off and do it sometimes. Medicinally. Although what you have to be stressed about, I don’t know. You don’t even have a job.”
“I don’t need a job. I own this place, and I have money making money, not a lot, but enough to keep me out of the rat race.”
“Must be nice,” she said.
He brought his legs up to give her more space on the couch. She leaned back and rested her chin between his knees, looking at the playful smile on his broad face.
“I feel like quitting smoking, just to show you I can,” he said.
“It’s more the booze, really.”
“No no, if I’m going to do it, do it right. Do it big. Booze, drugs, cigarettes—I’ll tackle the whole shebang. Besides which, if we’re going to hold hands and walk into the future, then Betsy will be there too, and she might want to hold my hand sometimes, and you’ll have my other hand, and then, how would I smoke?”
“Exactly,” she laughed. “It’s not possible.”
“So it’s necessary I quit smoking, whether you want me to or not.”
She kissed his knee happily, then made a face. “Your jeans don’t taste very good,” she said. “They’re quite dirty, now that I look at them.”
“I’ll wash them more often. You see? I’m agreeing to conditions before you even express them. I must really like you.”
49
Of all his vices Derek found nicotine the hardest to wean himself from, but after two weeks he could think about a cigarette without his teeth clenching with the craving of it. He hired a cleaning service and two meticulous women came to scrub his house from top to bottom for three days straight, and he arranged for one of them to come back every Thursday afternoon to keep it ship-shape. He stocked his kitchen properly, and started to cook, not just for himself, but for Meghan and Betsy. Sometimes they came over to his house to eat, but usually he carried the meal over to their place. Very quickly this became a routine, and after a month, with Meghan’s approval, he built a gate in the fence between their back yards to speed the passage from kitchen to kitchen. One night at dinner he joked that they should just knock a hole in the shared wall between their townhouses and have one big place together. Betsy was very excited by that idea, and thought it would be the coolest thing in
the world to show off to her friends that the two homes, so normal from the street, shared an amazing secret. “Let’s do it!” she cried.
“I hate to be the party pooper,” Meghan told her. “But it’s a bit too rash and permanent at this stage.”
“Maybe someday though,” Derek said. “Then we could tear down the fence and have one big back yard, too.”
“Yes! Awesome!” Betsy yelped. “We could even play proper badminton.”
Meghan smiled. “Why do I always feel outnumbered by you two?”
“We operate on the same wavelength,” Derek said.
ON THE SIXTH-WEEK ANNIVERSARY of his smoke-free sobriety he showed up on Meghan’s back deck on a Friday afternoon and came in the kitchen without knocking. He had a handful of documents. “I need to you fill these out and sign them,” he said.
For a moment she felt wariness, and, almost, dread. “What are they?”
“Character references. I have to get a criminal record check, too. I went out and got a job. Not a paying job, but a volunteer gig.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I went down to the Boys and Girls Club on Spruce Street to see what I could do to help out. I’m actually thinking of going back to school and getting my CYC.”
“CYC?”
“Child and Youth Care. It’s a certificate you need.”
“I’m shocked,” she said. “In a good way.”
“Yeah, well. Being around Betsy so much has reminded me I like kids, and I’m good with kids. Working with them wouldn’t pay real well but it’s good for the soul. I’m lucky I’m set up financially, more or less, so I can do it for love.”
The way he said the word love sent a tingle through Meghan. “Let me hug you,” she said, and stood on tiptoes while he held her that way, so that she was nearly floating on air above the kitchen floor.
“I used to think hiding from the rat race and puttering around the property was the perfect way to live, but now I see that sitting on my ass for days and years was bad for me,” he told her. “It allowed me to slip. Sobering up isn’t just about quitting drinking, it’s having a cascade effect.”
“I’m so glad for you,” she murmured. She pulled back to look into his face. “Funny, isn’t it? You cleaned up, and now I wish I could.”
“Sleeping pills still messing you up?”
“More and more.”
“They’re meant to be temporary. Time’s up. Time to stop.”
“I want to. They’re horrible. I feel like a zombie—I never wake up refreshed or revived, or energized. Just, drugged. Sleep without dreams is like, half a life.”
“I’m staying over, right? Don’t take one tonight, and let’s see what happens.”
“Actually there’s been a change in plan. Betsy’s not going to her Dad’s after all—she didn’t want to, and I can’t force her. So she’s home.”
“Oh.” He shrugged good-naturedly. “You want to wait till I’m around to go off your meds?”
“I think so.”
Suddenly they heard Betsy shout from the living room. “It’s all right, you can stay, Derek!”
“Have you been eavesdropping?” Meghan called to her.
“Not on purpose.” She came into the kitchen. “I know he stays here when I’m not here, so what’s the difference?” she said.
“Nothing, I guess, if you can handle it.”
“I can handle it.”
AFTER DINNER AND DISHES they watched Shrek Forever After on DVD. In the early going Betsy had to explain a lot of back story to Derek, because he had never seen the first three installments of the series, and later Derek had to explain to Betsy what a metaphysical paradox was. Then it was her bedtime, occasioning a collision of wills between firm mother and feisty daughter that Derek stayed out of. When Meghan finally came downstairs from Betsy’s bedroom she wore that look of triumphant exhaustion that every parent knows. She slid next to him on the couch and said, “So, a night of firsts. First night you get to stay over while the kid is home, and first night I go without the sleeping potion.”
“How are you feeling about that?”
“A bit scared. But hopeful. I’d just love to have a regular old dream.”
“What if you see our friend?”
“I don’t know. I’ll tell him he’s been replaced.”
“Maybe you should have a plan—try to talk to him, tell him you don’t want to be there anymore. Supposedly we can control our dreams, if we consciously will ourselves to.”
“I thought about that. I’ve looked into it online. There’s a lot of BS out there. I’ll just see what happens, try to stay with it, assert myself if I can. Not that I expect I’ll really be able to. You dream what you dream.”
“Yeah. But tell yourself you’re in charge. Try to be comfortable with yourself.”
“I’m comfortable with you. Especially since you told me about your new plans. All the boxes are getting checked off—you’re smart, you’re funny, you’re good with Betsy, handy around the house.” She smiled, and snuggled closer. “You’re also handy in the bedroom. And now it seems like you’re shedding that aimlessness that I considered to be your last major liability.”
“Hurray for me.”
“Exactly, Hurray for you.”
IN THE MORNING SHE woke up and nudged him awake. Her smile reminded him of what needed to be asked.
“Well?”
“I saw them. Faintly, and from a new place, not inside Sylvanne’s mind, but outside, more like an-out-of-body experience. Sylvanne is going to have a baby. She’s thrilled, Thomas is thrilled, and I was happy for them too. Daphne looks great. I saw it all in a glance, and that’s all I needed. It was like I was waving goodbye, being carried somewhere else. And I had another dream—you and Betsy in bright sunshine, you were trying to ride unicycles on a sandy beach and got all bogged down. But you were laughing about it, and then there was something about an orange juice maker, the old fashioned kind where you pull a big lever to squish the orange.”
“I have one of those, somewhere.”
“It was mounted on your handlebars. You were making glasses and glasses of it and passing them around.”
“Unicycles don’t have handlebars.”
“Yours did. Hey, I dreamt about you!”
“And then you woke up, and here I was.”
“Kiss me.”
And he did.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Here’s to The Editorial Department, a sunny bunch down in Tucson, Arizona. Morgana Gallaway designed this book, and Kelly Leslie did the cover. Karinya Funsett-Topping and especially the indomitable Jane Ryder helped me straighten up the mess and reminded me which kind of endings make for happier readers.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Ch
apter 48
Chapter 49
A Lady Under Siege Page 24