“Alice,” Gabe called, trying to keep his temper in check. “Joy and Marcus will want to interview you.”
“Fine.”
He took a deep breath. “It would mean a lot if you’d pretend to be human rather than a—”
“I said fine,” she repeated.
He stared at the ceiling and counted to twenty.
“What happened to her?” Max asked. “One minute she and Cameron are thick as thieves and the next she’s…like that.”
Gabe knew of course. He’d kissed her. He’d kissed her and then gone on a date with another woman.
“I’ll fix it,” he said and Patrick laughed.
“What?” he snapped at his father.
“There you go again, thinking you can finesse everything,” he said.
“I’m not finessing anything. Alice is angry with me and I’m going to fix it.”
“How?”
“I don’t know how!” he snapped. I never knew how. I still don’t. I can’t fix her. “I’ll think of something.”
“When your mother was mad at me she would only get madder if I tried to bring her flowers. I always had to—”
“I can’t handle this,” Gabe said to his brother. Max nodded and held a hand up at hip level. I got it, that gesture said, and Gabe thanked his lucky stars that Max was here.
“Has Mom been in touch with you, Dad?” Max asked when Gabe would have told his dad for the hundredth time to shut up. “Is that what all this is about?”
Patrick didn’t say anything, his blue eyes said it all, and Gabe fell back in his chair, as though he’d been blown down by a stiff wind.
Mom had contacted Dad.
He couldn’t even get his head around it. After he’d realized that Mom wasn’t on a vacation, that making her pancakes that got cold every morning wasn’t going to lure her back into their lives, he’d forced himself to think of her as dead.
But here she was, brought back to life.
“What does she want?” Max asked.
“To see you,” Patrick whispered.
“Forget it,” Gabe said, trying to get his legs under him. “We don’t want to see her.”
“I know,” Patrick said.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Dad?” Gabe asked, finding a vent for all of his pent-up anger and confusion. “She left us. She left you thirty years ago and never came back and now you’re acting like some lovesick kid? I don’t get it.”
“Me, neither,” Max agreed in a much quieter voice.
Patrick finally looked up, his eyes wet but burning with some dark emotion that made both Gabe and Max lean away or risk being scorched by his gaze.
“You don’t get to pick who you love,” he said. He looked right at Gabe, right into his heart. “Do you, son?”
“You’re wrong,” Gabe said, feeling a soothing cold wave of anger cover him. “You can control that, you can control yourself.”
Patrick laughed at him. “You’re doing a great job of that son. Wanting to want Daphne while you’ve got your wife—”
“She’s my ex-wife, Dad.”
“Paper doesn’t change things, Gabe.”
“Wait, wait.” Max held up his hands. “Are you saying you still love Mom, Dad?” Max asked, looking as baffled as Gabe felt. “After all these years, after never hearing from—”
“She’s your mother,” Patrick said. “She’s my wife.”
“No,” Gabe said, standing. “She isn’t, she hasn’t been for years. We don’t want to see her.”
He walked away, furious. Furious with his father, with Alice, with his long-gone mother and with himself.
How am I going to fix this? he wondered, his head spinning. How do I make all of this right?
During the last days of their marriage Gabe had loved to tell Alice she was a glutton for punishment. He used to say she could teach self-flagellation to a monk. It was tiring, he told her, living with a woman so happy to wallow in her misery.
Sitting in her car outside Athens Organics she realized Gabe was right.
What the hell is wrong with me? she wondered, ignoring the dog that sat, panting outside her open car window. This is high-school stalker stuff.
She had a list of things she needed considering the two vegetarian Canadians coming this weekend, but she could have called in the order and had it delivered, allowing her to never see Daphne’s and Helen’s pretty, wide-eyed happy faces ever again.
But no—she shook her head—I had to be sick about it.
She realized how stupid this was and quickly put the car in Reverse to leave before she was seen. But she looked out her side window and saw Helen standing with the dog and Daphne behind her.
“Hi,” Daphne said, shielding her eyes from the setting sun. “Did you need something?”
Therapy? Electroshock therapy? A friend? “Mushrooms,” Alice finally said, putting the car in Park and turning off the ignition.
“Do you want to get out of the car?” she asked carefully, as though she knew what kind of mental case Alice really was.
Is it written on my face? Alice wondered.
“We’re having smoothies,” Helen said. “After-school snack. You want one?”
She nodded numbly as Helen’s sweet voice sent arrows through her.
“Or a glass of wine,” Daphne offered. “You look like you might need something stronger than blueberries and bananas.”
Alice wiped her mouth with hands that shook and knew that at any moment she could be crying or screaming.
This is what working with Gabe had brought her to. She’d stopped feeling this way, she’d numbed the pain with alcohol and work she didn’t care about. And now here it was all over again.
“I just need to pick up a few things for opening weekend.” She took the list from the passenger’s seat and opened the car door.
“Okay,” Daphne said diplomatically, her eyes scanning the list. “We’ve got it all. I can just run down…” Daphne paused, her eyes flickering to her daughter then to Alice and, in that moment, that brief gap, Alice knew Gabe, who would never talk to her, had talked to Daphne about the babies.
The betrayal tore the breath from her body and she leaned against her car, suddenly feeling a million years old, everything about her too tired to keep pretending.
“Helen, can you go down to the hothouse and give Dan this list and ask him to bring the stuff up to the house?” Daphne asked, sending her daughter away with a pat on the bottom.
The dog barked and took off for the fields after Helen, startling some bird nesting in the trees by the house. Daphne stared at Alice and she stared back, wondering what had possessed her to come here. And more important, what was possessing her to stay.
“Gabe said there is nothing between you,” Daphne said.
Alice nearly laughed. “Nothing good,” she said. “You don’t need to worry.”
Daphne smiled, but it was grim. “He said the reason you split up was because you wanted the same things but couldn’t give it to each other.”
“He was chatty,” Alice said through clenched teeth.
“I had some questions, seeing as how he is supposed to be dating me.” Daphne crossed her arms over her chest. “Would you agree with him? You couldn’t give each other what you both wanted?”
“That about sums it up.”
“That doesn’t sound like a good enough reason to spilt up,” she said. Alice rocked back, angered at this woman’s presumption, angered that it was the same way she had felt at the beginning of the end, as though there should have been something they could do to save themselves. Then she’d learned better.
“Trust me,” she said, getting her bearings. Maybe this was why she’d come here, to put it all into words, to sort out the reasons and track the fall of their marriage to someone who didn’t have front-row seats.
Or to start a fight.
She wasn’t sure yet.
“It was plenty good enough,” she said. “We were young and headstrong and in the end we just couldn’t give a shit.�
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Daphne smiled, warmer this time. “Now you sound like a divorced woman.”
“Great,” Alice said, not sure if she should laugh or cry. “I’d hate to get the vocabulary wrong.”
“Are you here to tell me all the things wrong with Gabe?” Daphne tilted her head, her braid falling over her shoulder like a rope.
God, wouldn’t that be nice, Alice thought. Give the woman a little map to the dangers ahead. But she shook her head. “He’s a good guy,” she said, surprising herself. Warmth bloomed in her chest as her heart was bombarded by memories of better days, when he was the best guy. “One of the best.”
Daphne’s eyes narrowed again and Alice wondered if she was giving away too much of herself. If this woman could see through all the years to the twenty-four-year-old woman who had loved Gabe so wholeheartedly.
Do I still? she wondered, hollow and scared. Is that what’s so wrong with me?
“Gabe said you couldn’t have children. I’m sorry,” Daphne said. “What—”
“Two second-trimester miscarriages, thousands of dollars in doctor bills, a load of disappointment and no babies.” The words poured out of her, like water from an upended pitcher. She couldn’t control them or stop them and didn’t want to.
She stared at the blazing ball of the setting sun until the tears that burned in her eyes turned to water and slid away.
How can this be so easy? She wondered. For years she’d held this stuff in, refused to discuss it except to punish Gabe who never wanted to talk about it. And now that it was gone…she felt taller. As if she’d grown in the last few minutes.
Her mom had told her she needed to embrace group counseling, let it heal her, and at the time she’d wanted to tell everyone to leave her alone. But, now, this felt good.
“The doctors said for me to carry a baby to full term I would need to be on bed rest from about three months on and even that wasn’t a guarantee. And I just…” she shook her head. “We couldn’t afford it. I didn’t believe it.” The pain of the truth, that she might have caused her own tragedy, sliced through her over and over again. “And in the end it didn’t matter. The last miscarriage did us in.”
She stared at the sun for a long time, until her face got hot, her body, freed of all of its bitter underpinnings relaxed into something else, something less brittle, something human.
Blinking, she turned to face Daphne. “I’m not sure why I said any of that.”
Daphne smiled. “I’m a stranger on a bus.”
“A stranger dating my ex-husband.”
“Do you want me to stop?” she asked, eyebrows raised.
Yes. Yes. I do. Until I’m gone. Until I can’t see.
“Of course not,” Alice said. “We split up five years ago. There’s nothing between us.”
Nothing. No marriage. No house. No family.
“How about that glass of wine?” Daphne asked.
“Just one,” she said, ready to sit down with the devil for a drink. “I’m driving.”
11
Gabe poured himself some peach smoothie from the silver pitcher and placed it back into its dish of ice. The silver pitchers had been Alice’s idea.
Another one of her great ideas.
Like the fresh frittata and the cinnamon rolls and the Swiss muesli in the silver bowl beside the pitcher.
He should tell her, of course, walk right over to where she sat at the corner table waiting for him and Marcus from New York Magazine for the first of their interviews. It was Sunday, the last day of the opening weekend and in a few hours all the guests would be gone, giving them time to prepare for the next arrivals.
Saying those words, compliments, empty or not, used to be so easy for him. A way to grease the wheels and keep things running smoothly between him and anyone he worked with.
He watched her drink from her coffee cup, brush the dark hair from the side of her face and he knew she was hungover. Had been the whole week. But it didn’t stop her from working. She worked like a woman possessed, which was great for him.
So why do I feel so bad?
She’s doing everything I need her to do. She’s got a month left and then she’s gone and she can self-destruct on her own time.
He knew part of it was guilt. A part of this situation had been brought on by him. By the kiss and Daphne. He understood that. But Alice had been blaming him for all the mistakes, all of her hurt feelings almost the entire time he’d known her.
How much more responsibility could he take?
“Gabe?” Lori Zinger and her husband, Ian, one of the Canadian couples, stood beside him dressed for a morning hike.
“Hi, guys. Everything okay?” Gabe asked, tearing his thoughts and gaze from Alice.
“Wonderful,” Lori said emphatically. “We just wanted to let you know that we’re going to come back later in the summer with some other friends. This place is such a find!”
Gabe smiled and asked them to just write the dates down and he’d give them a return-visitors’ discount.
“Another reason to love the Riverview,” Ian said, grabbing a cinnamon roll as he walked out the door.
Gabe picked up one of the carafes of coffee and his own smoothie, then walked over to where Alice sat, shielding her eyes from the morning sun.
“Hi,” he said, pouring more coffee into her mug.
“Thanks,” she muttered.
“Food looks great.”
“People seem to like it,” she said and took a sip of coffee.
“One of the Canadian couples is coming back later in the summer.”
“That’s good news for you.”
Every word between them was coated in acid, and compliments weren’t making it better. Maybe reminding her of their partnership, of the investment she had in this place, would return this tin woman, this robot, into something familiar.
“The drawing for the decorations was approved by the Crimpsons.”
She nodded as if she couldn’t care less.
He took a deep breath and tried to remember what his father said about how sometimes things couldn’t be finessed, that sometimes he had to beg.
“You ready for the interview?”
She shrugged and he felt the banked fires of his temper flare. He sat down opposite her and leaned in, wanting to shake her, to rattle her until she cared, just a little bit, about what these interviews meant to him.
He opened his mouth to tell her how much he needed her on her game right now. That she could go back to being a ghost, to blaming him for everything, to drinking away her life—
“You can’t fix this, Gabe,” she said, her eyes bone dry and burning. “We already tried.”
His anger sizzled and died in a shroud of white smoke. Her pain spoke to his—the confusion, the weariness of the fight in her voice and eyes—spoke to all those matching emotions in him.
And it seemed, even in this, in their defeat, they were joined.
“I take everything too personally and you…do, too.” She rubbed her forehead. “You just don’t know it. Or don’t show it. Or…” She smiled, a shaky, trembling thing that tore at his guts. “I don’t know anymore, Gabe. I only know…you can’t fix us.”
Him, of course, it was supposed to be up to him.
“I’m not responsible for this, Alice.”
“Of course not, Gabe.” She reached out and touched his hand, a small incendiary touch, and then her hands were tucked back in her lap while his flesh burned. He flexed his fingers to shake off the feeling. “You are only responsible when things go right.”
“That’s not fair,” he protested, but he knew if his father were sitting here he’d be nodding his head in agreement.
“There’s not much about any of this that’s fair.”
“Is it because of Monday night? After the conference call?” he asked, the words when we kissed lodged in his throat, the memory of it stuck in his head. Not so much the dry touch of her lips to his but the feel, the beautiful remembered feel, of his wife in his arms. He�
��d never realized how much he missed the perfect fit of her head under his chin until she was back there.
It was why he didn’t want to talk about it. He could tell in the way she didn’t meet his gaze, it was why she didn’t want to talk about it, either.
“Is it because of Daphne?”
She sighed and shook her head. “It’s me Gabe. It’s—” She looked up at the ceiling, her elegant neck arched, the pale white of her skin pulsing with her heartbeat. He felt the same pulse in his body.
He wanted to push these feelings away, the smoky tendrils of connection, of understanding and of caring that still lingered around his heart, tying him to her. He wanted them gone so he could get on with his life.
“Every time I want more—” she swallowed, her voice a rasp “—every time I reach out for something I don’t have…” She shook her head and tried to laugh and he nearly cringed at the heartbreaking rattle. “I’m just reminded of how much better it is to not want anything.”
“What did you want that night in the kitchen?” he asked and the air between them was still. She didn’t move, didn’t blink. His heart didn’t beat. His lungs didn’t work.
What answer do I want? What am I doing even asking this?
He felt himself pushed toward the edge of some cliff. A cliff he’d gone over once before and had no business flirting with again.
“You, obviously.” Her voice was a sigh and his heart thudded painfully in his chest. “I think I wanted what we had. Before everything went so wrong. Working together just reminded me of the good times.”
“But I could never make you happy,” he told her, repeating his bare-bones reason for leaving the marriage. His failure that haunted him and drove him away.
“It shouldn’t have been your job,” she said. “And I think we both expected it.”
These were words they’d never spoken. The truth they’d hidden behind fights and anger and slammed doors.
“I just want you to be happy.” He said, turned and came out with this suppressed wish. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you,” she whispered. Her eyes were on his, the beautiful obsidian gaze, and he felt himself fall over that cliff again. Back into feeling something for this woman. “And I wish, so much, that I was the person who could make you happy, Gabe.”
Wedding At the Riverview Inn Page 12
