His Cinderella Next Door

by Cara Colter

  Somehow, she was capturing a light in people that she had never captured before. She was digging deeper.

  Even though she had walked away from love, the irony was that she felt as if she was on intimate terms with love for the first time.

  It was when she was not working that the memories would hit.

  Oscar in his chef’s apron. Oscar with pomegranate on his face. Oscar covered in mud. Oscar riding a bike, leaping off a zip line, lying in the grass beside her.

  But that was the place she could not go.

  Oscar lying beside her.

  That was what she missed the most. Her world had gone from wholly complete to wholly empty, from total bliss to total despair.

  In the blink of an eye.

  She learned to distract herself at the first twinge of a memory. She could watch a movie, as long as it wasn’t a romantic one. Hockey games were great. So was playing word games on her phone, or watching talent shows. She could chat online about photography.

  She could make it okay. She could make life bearable.

  As long as she did not think of his eyes.

  His smile.

  His deep voice whispering in her ear.

  His lips on her hair.

  And on her lips.

  And on her...

  Damn. She was crying again. The strong one, the resilient one, a hot mess of emotion. It seemed totally unfair to be this emotional, without the pregnancy.

  A knock came on the door. Everything in Molly froze. Maybe he had come. But why would he? She had run out on him, not once, but twice. In his heart, he probably knew, just as his mother did, that he was better off without her.

  So, who then?

  She got up and looked out her peephole. It felt like déjà vu. Mrs. Clark was standing outside her door. For a moment, Molly considered not answering it. What had Oscar’s mother ever brought her other than pain?

  But there was something about her that was not the same. Her hair was disheveled. Her makeup was smudged.

  What if something had happened to Oscar?

  Molly flung open the door.

  “Oh, Molly, thank goodness. It’s been so hard to find you.” His mother—his self-contained, controlled mother—burst into tears.

  “What’s wrong? Is Oscar okay?”

  “N-n-n-o-o-o,” she wailed. “I’ve lost both my sons.”

  “He’s—?”

  “No, no, he’s not dead. But he might as well be.”

  Molly’s heart went into her throat. She fought down the pure panic she was feeling, ushered her in and set her on her sofa. Her heart was beating out of her chest.

  “Mrs. Clark, please tell me why you have come around the world to find me. And please tell me Oscar is okay.”

  “I’ve come around the world to find you because I couldn’t very well ask Oscar for your phone number. And, anyway, I needed to speak to you in person. I need you to understand and I wasn’t sure I could convey that on the phone.”

  “Understand?” Molly whispered, still trying to fight down panic.

  “He’s not okay. He won’t even speak to me now. He’s not going into the office. I sent Cynthia to check on him. He wouldn’t let her in, but she said he looked horrible! His place was a catastrophe. She could see it behind him, even though he was blocking the door.

  “It’s all my fault. He won’t forgive me. I pretended I hadn’t been there when you left. I pretended I had just showed up.

  “But he said he could smell my perfume. He knew. When I told him I felt you were unsuitable, Molly, he lost his mind. And then he told me he knew about the other time, too. About me buying your farm.

  “I’ve never seen him like that. He was nasty. He said my world had never brought him one moment’s happiness. He said all the rules, looking a certain way, acting a certain way, getting a degree, achieving success, having anything money can buy, finding a woman who fits in that world—he said none of that had brought him one moment of happiness. He said it was all a complete illusion.”

  Mrs. Clark looked imploringly at Molly. “Do you think that’s true? Not one moment’s happiness?”

  “Of course not,” Molly said soothingly.

  “He even accused me of not loving Ralphie. He said I had no idea what love was. That it wasn’t about manipulating people to get them to meet your needs.”

  Mrs. Clark took a huge shuddering breath. “And he’s right,” she said. “Even when you were children, I saw the way he looked at you. The way you looked at him. You put out the sun in each other’s worlds every morning and drew down the moon at night. I wasn’t jealous. I wasn’t. But...”

  Her voice drifted away, and then came back stronger. “I wasn’t jealous, but maybe scared. He was right about love. His father and I didn’t have one of those warm, cozy relationships. I had my boys and they gave me a sense of purpose. They made my world feel justified and important. Oscar, in particular, was so bright, and had so much potential. It felt like a reflection on me.

  “But I could feel him moving toward a different world. The one you held out. And I tried to stop it.

  “Oh, Molly, I tried to stop my son’s happiness to meet my own needs. He was right about me, wasn’t he? Not that that matters. I don’t matter. I’ve made my mistakes and I’ll live with the consequences.

  “But I don’t want him to live with the consequences. To be unhappy forever because of what I’ve done. He won’t come to you, Molly. He won’t. Because he wants you to choose. He needs you to choose.”

  “Of course, I choose him,” Molly said.

  “He doesn’t need you to choose him. He needs you to choose yourself.”

  And just like that, Molly saw the truth in what Mrs. Clark was saying. She needed to make the choice to overcome all of her insecurities. All of her fear. All of her self-doubts.

  To rescue Oscar, she needed to be more than she had ever been before. What had passed as bravery before would not do for this assignment.

  And she could not have a single reservation left about love. To save Oscar—and herself—she had to throw herself at the mercy of the most powerful force in the entire universe.

  When Oscar woke up his mouth tasted gritty and his hair felt caked to his head. Someone was knocking at the door. He closed his eyes and willed himself back to sleep.

  Except he heard the door open, the tap of footsteps coming down the hall.

  He braced himself. Only two people had keys to his apartment. His mother and Cynthia. He did not want to see either of them.

  But it wasn’t either of them.

  It was Molly, in travel clothes, her hair springing up on one side of her head and crushed on the other. She didn’t have on a speck of makeup.

  And he had never seen a woman look so beautiful.

  Not that he could let her know. Ever.

  He loved control and he had found the perfect way to control the whole world. And that was not to engage with it.

  Molly was not going to threaten the thing that was most precious to him, ever again.

  “What do you want?” he growled.

  “I hope that smell isn’t you,” she said. “Poor Georgie. When’s the last time you changed the litter?”

  Maybe his world wasn’t quite as controlled as he thought.

  She marched over and opened his drapes. The light flooded in, hurting his eyes. She turned and looked at him. What he saw in her eyes—the softness, the understanding, the connection to him—could make a weaker man give up on control forever.

  But he had been weak. He had given up on control. He had fallen for Molly when he knew better. It had not had the result he wanted. And he was still enough of a scientist not to do the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

  “Why are you here?” he asked.

  That traitor cat had found his way out from u
nder a mess of blankets and meowed a greeting at her. She went and picked him up, and he snuggled against her, purring rapturously as if there were no abandonment to be forgiven.

  “I came,” she said softly, “because I couldn’t stay away.”

  “Huh. You wouldn’t have had to stay away if you hadn’t left in the first place.”

  “Truck, I thought I was pregnant.”

  He sat straight up in bed. He was out of his fog in an instant, staring at her. “Are you?” he whispered.

  “No. It’s probably a good thing. Can you imagine me raising children?”

  He could, actually.

  “I can imagine you raising children,” he told her. “I’m sorry you aren’t pregnant.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  MOLLY GAZED AT OSCAR—at the unshaven face, the rumpled hair, the sharpness of his cheekbones.

  I’m sorry you aren’t pregnant.

  “Isn’t that lucky for all of us?” Molly said. “Me not having a baby?”

  She kept out of her voice how she had wept when she had seen the negative flash across the little screen.

  It wasn’t until that moment that she’d realized how totally selfish she could be—if she couldn’t have Oscar, she had wanted his baby.

  Even knowing she would be the world’s most unlikely mother.

  “Maybe we could talk about babies in a minute,” he suggested, and Molly heard some tenderness in his tone that made her want to melt into him when she most needed to be strong. “I want to sort out the past, before we tackle the future.”

  The future. Her strength felt as if it abandoned her a little bit more.

  “My mother told me it was her behind you leaving.”

  “I thought she was right, Oscar,” Molly said quietly, marshalling what was left of her strength, after a long soul-searching trip. “That I couldn’t fit into your world. That I’m just kind of a wild girl from the wrong side of the tracks—”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Because I realized it wasn’t really about her and whether she was right or wrong. It was about me. All my life, I’ve been rewarded for being brave, for taking chances. And yet, the greatest risk of all filled me with terror. I looked for any excuse to run from it. So, that’s what I did. I used your mother as an excuse to run from what my heart was telling me.”

  “What was your heart telling you?” he asked. His voice was so gentle, so safe. She was coming home, finally, to her Truck. She was one truth away.

  “It was telling me the only truth worth knowing. That I love you. Past. Present. Future. The possibility of a baby confused everything. Would you feel honor-bound to do the decent thing? It felt like a baby would remove choice from the equation.”

  “Choice,” he said hoarsely. “Baby or no baby, I would never choose a world without you. Why would I want that? That hurts me. That you would know me so well—maybe better than anyone else on earth—and yet you would think that keeping the stuff in my world, all the trappings of success, would mean more than you... I would rather live under a bridge, in a cardboard box, with you, than live in a world without you. That’s how alive you make me feel. How full to the top.”

  “There’s so much I don’t know,” she warned him. “I don’t know the rules everyone else plays by. You do. You had a place where the rules were clearly defined. A place where dinner was always ready at the same time. You had a place where if you got arrested, people were appalled rather than applauding. What can I give children? I can’t even keep a plant alive. I don’t know how to bake cookies. I tend to see a kitchen counter as a great place to store cameras and parts. I think a great supper is potato chips with a side of onion dip. I—”

  Oscar stepped in close to her. The look in his eyes mesmerized her. He laid a finger across her lips.

  “Stop it,” he ordered her softly. “Did you come here thinking I would listen to your arguments and be convinced you’re somehow wrong for me?”

  “I just want you to know exactly what you are getting into.”

  “Oh, I already know exactly what I’m getting into. Do you think I don’t know what you’d be like with a family? With children? I’ve watched you for years.

  “I watched you with your dad. I saw your fierce loyalty to him. You loved him unconditionally, flaws and all. What a gift that would be to give children.

  “And I watched you with Ralphie. Of all the people who knew him, you were the one always coaxing him to be himself, rewarding him for being himself, loving him for being himself.

  “And the whole swim team—gathering them around you, making the hardest things fun, making them into a family, for each other, for you, for us.

  “I’ve watched you with Georgie, ever since he was a little scared kitten, teaching him it was okay to trust, and okay to love.

  “And most of all, Molly, I’ve watched you with me, taking my rigid thinking and bending it on its ear. Challenging me—to take risks, to press boundaries, to challenge truth, to be more than I ever was before.”

  He turned from her and took something off his bedside table. “I’ve been sleeping with this beside me. Tormenting me, but also giving me hope.”

  He came back to her.

  “I can’t live without you,” he said. He went down on one knee. “This isn’t how I planned it, Molly, but I’ve always known, with you, things don’t go as planned. Sometimes, they are so much better than anything I could have dreamed.”

  Her hands flew to her mouth and covered it as Oscar—her Truck—held out a velvet ring box.

  He snapped open the lid.

  “I bought this on Ralphie’s birthday,” he said softly. “I was going to propose that night, at dinner. I didn’t want to waste another six years without you.”

  “Do you really feel as if those years were wasted?” she asked him through tears.

  “Yes!”

  “I feel so differently. I feel as if it showed me what I most needed to see—how empty a life without you would be. I think those six years might be what are making me brave enough to say yes, Truck.”

  “I haven’t asked you yet!”

  “Yes!” she said, again.

  “Would you wait? I have the most romantic—”

  “I’m not waiting,” she said, “I don’t regret the six years, but I’m not waiting one more minute.”

  And then she launched herself at him, and knocked him off his knee and they were on the floor with her on top of him, covering his face with kisses.

  And Oscar was aware, for all of his planning, he could not have imagined a more romantic ending to his proposal than this one.

  EPILOGUE

  OSCAR COULD FEEL the faint pleasurable burn in his legs as he climbed the high hill. The baby, thankfully, had finally fallen asleep inside the kangaroo pouch Oscar had strapped to his chest.

  Ralph—unlike his big sister, three-year-old Harriet—was a difficult baby.

  “Can’t we put him back?” Harriet had asked this morning, when the crankiness had started.

  “Um, that would be a little painful for your mother,” Oscar had said, and slid Molly a look. His wife. His partner. She seemed to grow more beautiful each day, even now with this fractious new edition intent on keeping the whole family from sleep.

  “I’ll take him for a walk,” Oscar had volunteered. Being stuffed into the snuggly baby carrier seemed to be the only thing that soothed the crabby baby. Molly shot him a grateful look, and Harriet, having had quite enough of the baby brother, did not even volunteer to join him.

  Now, the baby slept, finally, and Oscar found a rock and perched on it, taking in the spectacular view with wonder. He could hear Walter—a donkey Molly had rescued—braying incessantly, every bit as demanding as the new baby when it came to his feeding schedule.

  Below him, looking like toys in a giant’s game, was his mother’s property: the
sweeping grounds, the white colonial style mansion, the sparkling waters of the pool, the clipped hedges, the rose garden, the trimmed lush pastures. Even from this height, it was evident everything was manicured, ordered into place.

  And next to that was Molly’s farm.

  Their farm now, since Oscar had bought it back from his mother. This is where they came when they needed a break from everything. They could have gone and skied the Alps, or lounged on some of the best beaches in the world. They could have gone to Paris and explored little cafés and strolled the banks of the Seine. They could have gone on safari in Africa.

  But no, more and more, they came here. And each time, it seemed they stayed a little longer and were a little more reluctant to head back to Vancouver.

  From his vantage point, so high above it, Oscar could see Molly’s childhood home had come a long way from what it had been. The house was looking good, painted white, the wraparound porch, with its deeply cushioned furniture, looking cool and inviting. Three small cozy cabins had been built, and dotted the wooded area behind the house. Molly was putting the pieces in place to host photography retreats, someday.

  Still, for all the improvements, he could see the property needed a lot of work. The pasture was weed-filled. The fence was leaning haphazardly. The barn looked as if a good wind would take it down. A dead tree needed to be looked after.

  Possibly a lifetime’s worth of work. For some reason, that increased Oscar’s sense of contentment.

  Inch by inch, day by day, she was uncovering the true beauty of the house that had gone a bit to ruin over six years of being uninhabited. When Oscar had seen that the roof had leaked and rodents had gotten inside, he had thought maybe they should just tear it down and start again.

  But, no, she saved things. Just like she had saved him.

  She was showing what was underneath the water-damaged ceilings, what was underneath the peeling wallpaper and what was underneath the vinyl floors that had been curling at the corners. She had discovered shiplap and original hardwoods and custom tile work. The walls had hidden fireplaces and someone, sometime, had decided it was a good idea to cover up a stained glass window with a wall.