“Not entirely. I thought you might want to marry me one day.” Yeah, throw a little fairy dust on that horrible description he’d just delivered of a ho-hum life. Continue clerking? Geeze… No, I saw Cinderella carriages, doves flying, and him dressed like Prince Charming. Please stay and be the prince, Mark.
He stepped backward, his hand raking through his unruly hair. “I love you, Amy. There is no doubt about it. You’ve changed me. You’ve given me the drive again to push me forward professionally and personally. I’m faithful…do you know I catch myself during the day smiling for no reason, other than knowing I’m going to be seeing you later? And I can’t imagine being with anyone other than you.”
So the problem is? I stretched my neck out, waiting for the answer to this subliminal question. This was knee-deep prince kind of talk.
“But I never imagined myself getting engaged again.”
“Oh.”
I could suddenly hear all the air go out of my balloon…and the water hit against the side of the boathouse. I’d not paid attention to it before. I guess when the lights go out on all your dreams, your other senses kick in. Like hearing the flatlining of your heartbeat. Funny how I never saw marriage as a problem with Mark. Maybe he was confused with the imaginary one we had in front of all his colleagues and administration. No, I was pretty sure I lived in the real world. I thought he’d bought a ticket to it, too.
“I thought living together showed my commitment to you…to this relationship.” He grabbed hold of my arms. He must’ve seen the light exiting from my eyes.
I heaved a long sigh. “Well, this is certainly something I never figured on as being miscommunicated. I realize the last time you were engaged that it never took on the wedding part, but I imagined it would be different with us.”
Hello Miss Uninformed. Nice to meet you. Come here often? To smelly boat shacks…to discuss marriages that were only taking place in your imaginary world?
“I’m sorry, Amy.” He dropped his hands to his sides. “The thought of picking out cakes, flowers, and a tux again puts me into another frame of mind. Not a good one.”
I checked on my feet, making sure they could still do the shuffle. The cold water rippled below the boards. “Well, I’m certainly glad I didn’t relocate, then.”
I looked at him, hoping he wasn’t going to catch me looking. Alas, he caught me. Those eyes that I could stare into forever now seemed like eyes in a photograph I’d one day remember fondly. Reminiscing and wondering what they were up to. Whose heart they were breaking by never being able to commit because he’d lost his first fiancée to tragedy.
I was certain it wouldn’t take long for him to find someone else. I certainly didn’t want to hear about it, see pictures of them smiling like lovesick coma patients, or know of any of the like. I would just remember him like he was the last few months we shared together—in a shallow kind of love. Moony eyes, and all. We were still in the beginning stages of two-week anniversaries and then three weeks, and then flowers sent to work and notes left on the fridge…good notes, not the kind that tell you you’re leaving. Which reminded me. Wesley was probably freezing out there waiting for us.
“So I guess this is it, then.” I just wanted to run away and cry in my pillow. Forget the whole scene of what-will-I-do-without-you. I’d seen enough Lifetime movies to last me a lifetime.
“I guess so.” His eyes fell to the ground.
I took his coat off my shoulders and handed it to him. He looked up, trapping me in his intense stare. My lips drew to his and before I could stop, my eyes went shut and my mouth was on top of his. I pulled away when I heard Wesley clear his throat.
“Jeff is walking this way.”
“Crap.” I looked at Mark with warning in my eyes. “Be careful driving home today…and in Chicago.”
“I will.” His eyes told me he wanted to say so much more than that. He wanted to perhaps be capable of so much more than he’d just told me. But he wouldn’t.
Jeff stepped into the now-crowded boathouse. He looked at the three of us and directed what he was about to say to Mark. “There’s no sense in leaving without something to eat. Come on in and have some roasted nuts and some brandy. Margaret and I just picked them up at the store.”
“No, really, I’ve got to get going. My mom will wonder what happened to me. I just wanted to stop by before leaving.”
“About that. Your office called and said something about a Dr. Phillips seeing me for my next appointment. What is that about? Are you—”
“I’m leaving for Chicago. All of my patients will be seen by Dr. Phillips. He’s a very thorough surgeon. You’ll be in good hands.”
What was going on here? I looked to Wesley for some sign of “I’ll tell you later.” Instead, I saw his wrinkled-up face.
“I see. Well, I wish you luck, then. I hope I can get in touch with you if I need to.” He reached out and shook Mark’s hand.
“I’ll see that you don’t have any problems, Mr. Tillion.”
“Very well. Safe travels, then.”
He walked out, leaving more questions in his wake.
“Is—”
“You’ll have to ask him,” Mark said, before I could finish my question.
“Are you all finished?” Wesley rubbed his arms.
“Yes.” I looked at Mark for the last time in a long time to come. “Have a safe trip, Mark. Keep in touch and let me know how things are going.”
He looked toward the door. “I’ll be sure to.”
I let him go first. I wanted to soak up all the misery I could in watching him walk away. There went my second failed relationship. How many did you get before you nestled in with a pack of cats and called it quits?
Chapter Ten
I had no time to lock myself in the room and cry until next week. As soon as Wesley and I got into the house, Jeff called us over to the table to have a seat. It was certainly an exercise to get my mind off my bleeding heart.
“Have a seat, you two.” Jeff motioned to the empty chairs.
Wesley and I exchanged glances as we took a seat.
Jeff began with a large sigh, and then grabbed the back of his neck. “Margaret, you want to come out here for a minute?” He yelled in the direction of the kitchen.
Margaret appeared, rubbing her hands on the front of her apron. I could hear Claire dropping pans and turned my head toward the living room. Tyler was asleep on the sofa and Nick was nowhere to be seen.
“I suppose you’re wondering how I know Dr. Reilly.” He waited for Wesley to say something.
“I guess, but it’s none of my business.”
“Actually, it is.”
Margaret pulled out a chair beside her husband and took his hand and rubbed it. Her face was soft and sad.
“I didn’t want to burden Thanksgiving with this. I thought I’d talk later about this to you, but since I’m sure you’re wondering, I’d better just go and get it over with.”
My eyes opened wide. Everyone definitely needed this kind of distraction after a breakup. I wasn’t even feeling the jaggedness of my half-heart beating at this moment.
“Dr. Reilly is…was my surgeon.” Margaret’s petting of his hand hastened. “The fact is, Wesley, I’m dying.”
I gulped. I’m pretty sure I heard Wesley gulp too. What?
Jeff looked at Margaret. Tears were in both their eyes. He cleared his throat. “A few months ago, I went to the doctor with severe headaches and bouts of nausea. And after continued tests, because the medicine they prescribed wasn’t touching it, I had a cat scan done. It showed a tumor.”
Margaret shielded her eyes with her other hand, and looked down at the table. Jeff cleared his throat again. His voice squeaked out like a teenage boy. “It’s inoperable and it’s growing. They’ve only given me a few months to live.”
Wesley grabbed his head and shook it back and forth. “I thought you were working on a case. That’s why you’ve been gone.”
“No, son. I was getting prodded and p
oked.”
“My God, Jeff. I had no idea.”
I looked at Margaret. She got up from the table and ran to the bathroom. Suddenly I didn’t hear any noises coming from the kitchen anymore.
“Do Claire and Nick know?” I asked.
“Yes. I told them last week when they invited me over for dinner.”
“Jeff, I’m so sorry.” Wesley continued to shake his head.
I reached out and rubbed his shoulder. Jeff was the last link to his father. I remember Jeff always putting his arm around Wesley and saying how proud he was when introducing him to clients.
“So, I need something from you, Wesley.”
Wesley stopped staring at the table and looked up. “Anything. Just ask it.”
“I need you to take over the practice.”
“What? Isn’t Nick—”
“Nick doesn’t want to. I’ve spoken to him and he doesn’t want all the responsibility that comes along with it.”
Poor Jeff. Nick didn’t want it; he had enough on his plate with Claire drinking most of her three meals a day. And his troubles with his son, Tyler. He was in the middle of a full-blown divorce crisis. One that Margaret told me he had to be repeatedly told by a therapist that his wife had truly moved on from what he considered the best thing that happened to him. Funny how best thing to one person is a complete disaster to another.
“But I’m not an attorney. I’m a paralegal. I never passed my bar exam.”
“Well, you better change that and quick.”
“Jeff, I can’t—”
“You can, son.” Jeff put his hand on Wesley’s shoulder and looked at him with fatherly love. “I know you can pass the test. You have to. Your father’s practice…my practice needs you to take over.” He looked over at me for a second. “Even Amy’s father would want you to carry it on.”
Wesley held his head. “What if—”
“Nonsense, Wesley. You can do this. Don’t let fear stand in your way.”
When Wesley graduated, he took the bar exam and failed. He wouldn’t take it again. For some reason, being a paralegal was good enough for him.
“Do it for me.” Jeff looked at him with pity in his eyes.
“Okay. I’ll do it for you.”
Just about that time, Margaret came out of the bathroom and walked directly back into the kitchen. I can’t imagine what was going through her mind. I just ended my relationship in a boathouse and watched as Mark drove away. Margaret didn’t have the pleasure. She’d have to give her soulmate up to death, and never see him again. I walked to the kitchen, suddenly drawn to her despair.
Claire sat her glass of whatever on the counter and walked out when I got there. Margaret was snapping beans. I went and stood by her, not knowing how to show my utter compassion for what she was going through. She looked up and grabbed me by the shoulders. I waited for her to have a good, healthy cry on my shirt. A few tears slipped out of me, too.
When her heaving slowed up, I pulled away to look at her. “Margaret, is there anything I can do for you? Just say it and it’s done.”
She wiped her wet cheek with her hand. “Well, dear, you could take over the foundation for a while. You know, until I come back.” She stared at the floor. “If I come back.”
“Where are you going?”
“Jeff and I always wanted to go to Paris, and we’re finally going to do it.”
That sounded familiar.
“And we’re leaving next week after his doctor’s appointment.” She reached up in the cabinet for a bowl to put the snapped beans into. “We’ll be gone for a few weeks, if Jeff’s feeling up to it.”
The foundation? I couldn’t run the foundation. The last time I’d been in the building where it was located, I was twenty years old. That was ten years ago. I went to see Mom. She worked there, in charge of the charity event planning. Maybe that’s why I liked attending them with Tom. They made me feel closer to Mom’s passion. As far as taking over in Margaret’s absence, I didn’t know the first thing about it.
“Claire is co-chair on most of the committees. She can help you out. You know, they’re the same committees Wesley’s mother began while she was… And your mom, Amy. She was wonderful at what she did. We all got along so great. I take pride in what we’ve accomplished in this community.”
Got it. Too much talk of death and people who’ve already walked the plank. Moving on.
“Anyway,” she pulled me close and whispered into my ear, “Claire can’t handle it. She’s overwhelmed with something right now.”
Sure, we’d pretend Claire was all right, but all of us knew she was twelve steps shy of being committed to AA. Poor woman fell off the wagon when her mother got sick last year and she had to go and take care of her in the last stages of dementia. What horrible deed had she done to deserve all of her misery?
“I’ll make sure you know everything you need to while I’m gone. The most important thing is to help Wesley pass his exam. Jeff is really banking on him becoming the successor of the practice. And nothing would make him prouder.”
“No problem. I will handle your things and see to it that Wesley passes.” I patted her arm. “You go and make memories with your husband.”
And I thought I’d be spending the next few weeks buried in a pillow crying, licking my wounds, and watching all the movies I could that took place in Chicago. All the while screaming out to the television screen, “I could be living there with Mark.”
Nope. I would be overseeing the foundation and its many nonprofit organizations: Ladies for Literacy, Feed the Poor in Our Community, and Peterson for Senate. All the while quizzing my soon-to-be ex-husband on legalese and judicial prudence kind of things. Just what a post-breakup needs.
I know; it was the least I could do for the world that was crashing down around Jeff and Margaret. I’d do it to the best of my ability and smile through Claire’s flask sipping. In the end, who knew? Maybe I’d have one of my very own.
Chapter Eleven
The ride home from the cabin was quiet. At least in the car. Inside my mind, there was major mumbling and shouting going on: Now what? Are you serious? Where are you going to live? How will you work at the foundation and your job at the courthouse? You don’t know the first thing about event planning and overseeing committees. You barely talk during your own meetings at work. You shove a bagel in your mouth the second someone suggests someone else take over with ideas that would improve something.
Oy, what just happened back there? Dinner was about as happy as someone pistol-whipping Bozo the Clown and leaving him gagged and tied on the dining room chair. Who could be thankful about anything? Jeff was dying, Tyler was in a catatonic state of denial about his failed marriage, Claire was practically pickled in liquor (I think she even sweats alcohol), and Nick’s leg shook under the table the entire time. The peas were even vibrating in the bowl. It was the only thing I could concentrate on, other than imagining me going to the bathroom and jumping out the window and thumbing a ride home. As if that was ever truly an option. Everyone knows that’s why there’s so many missing persons in the world: get into an unknown car and it’s lights out.
“So that was something.” Wesley set the cruise control for the long stretch of road before us.
“Something it was.” I’d tapped into my Yoda conversation skill-set. “Horrible it was. Awful it was.”
“Yeah, I had no idea about Jeff.”
“Well, are you going to do it?”
“Do what?”
“Take the bar and take over the practice.” Hello? Where’d he been?
“Oh, that.” He stretched out his legs and situated his pants. “I’ll give the illusion I’m doing it. I can’t let him down.”
“Illusion? What?” I leaned forward, turning my body in his direction.
“What, Amy? You know I can’t pass that thing. And what’s it been…three years since I cracked a book?”
“So? You work in a law firm, Wesley. You do law things. I’m sure it won’t be
like reading Japanese. Just study for it. I can’t believe I didn’t make you take it again the last time you failed.”
“I can’t.” He looked out his window, trying to avoid the high beams of my eyes on him.
“Why not?”
“Amy, this has been a colossal shit year for me. In case you weren’t aware.”
“Um, yeah. Remember me? I was the catalyst. The first one in your wake of destruction.”
He looked at me. His tense look softened into affection. “Amy, you weren’t the catalyst. You were my biggest regret.”
Hmm…that could go so many ways. Luckily, he elaborated.
“I should’ve never left you. I should’ve worked on us. I should’ve—”
“Well, you didn’t and it happened. We’re here right now, Wesley.”
No reason in playing coulda, woulda, shoulda. The poop was here. Smeared, stinking, and sitting in a pile before us. Now work with what you got.
“I could never do it without you. Why would I want to?”
“Want to what?”
“Amy, let’s face it. I’ve got nothing going for me if you’re gone. And if you won’t take me back, then I’m fine with being a paralegal. It’s not a bad thing. I actually do more than most attorneys do at the office. The clients call me all the time for favors. I know what I do inside and out. I just can’t pass the test to give me those initials behind my name, that’s all.”
“Wesley, do you want one of those other brilliant guys taking over? Because when Jeff leaves, there’s no one in line formally to take his place.”
There were two other lawyers in the firm, but their ethics were questionable. They had their own client base and merely paid for their office and use of secretary in the firm. The core value of the practice was leaving with Jeff. Who knows? One of those other guys might buy it after Jeff was gone and Nick couldn’t do anything about it. Claire might have a drinking partner before it was all over with.
“Will you help me?”
“Of course I will.”
What? I responded so quickly I didn’t have time to think about all that was involved. Whatever it was, though, I couldn’t stand to see the practice his dad and my dad started twenty years or more ago go to the wayside.
Leaving Amy (Amy #2) Page 9
