by Grace Palmer
Probably wasn’t the man, actually. Just the stress of the last few months piling up. The death of her father, pregnancy hormones, and a sudden breakup, all compounding into a weird misfiring of her once rock-solid mental circuitry. Yes, that made way more sense. This man was just a catalyst for all that. Nothing more.
He nodded again. His eyes hadn’t left hers since the moment they’d first met. Intense was exactly the right word for him. He didn’t blink. Just stared at her with those piercing green eyes.
“May I sit?” he asked, pointing at the stool next to hers. “I’m done for the night.”
She hesitated, then nodded. “Sure. Make yourself at home.” The man settled down next to her. “You know,” she said, turning to him, “I didn’t catch your name.”
“Oliver,” he replied.
“Oliver what?”
“Patterson. Want a business card?”
That, she knew, was sarcasm. She blushed again. She’d never been much of a blusher—until tonight. “Sorry. Just wondering if I knew your family. Are you from Nantucket?”
He shook his head and grinned sheepishly. “Now it’s my turn to apologize for being aggressive. To answer your question—no, I am not from Nantucket. Tennessee, originally. Been kind of floating around the East Coast for a while now. Got sick of the snowbirds in Florida, so here I am.” He spread his arms wide. “King of the Bar.”
Eliza hid her laughter behind a drink from her glass. Big Mack came by and refilled it, giving her a subtle wink on his way over. “Quite the kingdom you’ve got here, Your Majesty,” she teased.
“Oh, you don’t know the half of it,” Oliver said with a shimmer in his eye. “Everything from the Coors Light taps to the men’s restroom is my domain. My loyal subjects worship at my feet.”
“Watch it, bud,” Big Mack warned with a chuckle from behind the bar.
Oliver waited until he strolled away, then stage-whispered to Eliza, “Insolence will not be tolerated.”
“I heard that!” Big Mack called.
They all laughed.
“So, Eliza Benson,” Oliver continued, turning to her and steepling his fingers, “you must be from around here, then. What’s your story?”
Eliza opened her mouth, then swallowed her words. For a wild moment, she’d been about to launch into the whole thing. Not just the recent stuff, but also the way-back stuff. The growing-up-here, golden-child stuff. The sprint-to-the-city stuff. The GS-and-Clay-and-unexpected-pregnancy stuff.
Why on earth would she spill her heart out like that to this man?
“Cat got your tongue?” he asked with an arched eyebrow.
“No, it’s just—I don’t know you, and I was about to tell you my whole life story.”
Oliver smiled. His eyes stayed locked on hers. “Give it to me, Eliza. I’d love to hear it.”
He looked sincere. So she did.
By the time she caught up to the present, two hours had passed, and some of the patrons were starting to filter out of the bar to go home. Oliver had scarcely blinked for the whole time she was talking. The craziest thing was that, once she started, she couldn’t have stopped if she wanted to. It was like she’d been dying to unload her burdens on a stranger, though she hadn’t felt any such impulse even once in her entire life before now.
Well, no—the actual craziest thing was that Oliver had listened to the whole thing, start-to-finish, with a full-body intensity that unsettled Eliza. She’d never felt so seen before. Oliver was straddling his stool to face her, and he nodded and laughed and looked heartbroken in all the right places. It was like he was feeling her life through her, feeling it with her. It was, to put a word on it, really freaking weird. But not necessarily weird in a bad way. More like weird in a way as if she’d relived every moment of the last few years and realized that she’d had a ghostly presence alongside her the whole time. Once she got used to it, it was actually kind of comforting.
“… And so, here I am, nursing a lukewarm seltzer water and contemplating what my life has become, when some smart aleck who thinks I have sad eyes comes along and spills his beer on me.”
Oliver nodded. “Guilty as charged. I am your rock bottom.”
“Cheers to that,” Eliza said, tapping her glass against his in a mock toast.
“A very handsome rock bottom though, wouldn’t you say?” he pressed with a smile.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” She hadn’t stopped smiling since Oliver first bumped into her, and her cheeks were starting to hurt. But their banter was infectious. It felt natural. They’d fallen right into it without any hesitation or confusion. No stepping on each other’s feet. She’d never felt anything like that with Clay. Or with anybody, really. Her dad, maybe, but that was a whole different kind of relationship. This was like fencing, which she’d dabbled in at a roommate’s insistence back at Penn. Shanti was the daughter of a telecom executive in Mumbai. She went to a prep school somewhere in the UK before coming to Philadelphia for undergrad. She was a sweet girl with a mischievous streak. She’d dragged Eliza to an open call for the fencing team one summer when Eliza had run out of excuses to avoid it. Eliza had picked it up quickly—she was a good athlete, after all—and found that the rhythm of it, the back and forth and advance and retreat—was pleasing to her. The best fencing matches had a beautiful cadence to them. This, now, felt like that had felt back then. Lunge, parry, riposte, retreat. A place for everything and everything in its place. It was oddly satisfying.
“What’s on your agenda tonight then? First day of the rest of your life, you know. Since I’m your rock bottom and everything. Can only improve from here.”
“Lord, I hope so,” she muttered. Oliver pretended to let his jaw fall open like she’d mortally wounded his ego. She blushed immediately. “Not like that! Not like that. Honestly, you’re the best thing that’s happened to me in months. My dad is gone, my brother might as well be, and my sisters are … well, they’ve got their own stuff to deal with. I’ve always been a little more independent than them, anyway. It’s nice to just sit and talk with such a good listener.”
Oliver smiled, nodded, and smoothed away the loose bangs that had fallen over his forehead. “It sounds like you need to have some fun.”
Eliza nodded. “Yeah. Like a hot date. Know anybody?”
He sat up straight, serious as a heart attack, and looked around the bar. “What about him?” He pointed at an old man slumped in a corner with a half-empty whiskey dangling from his hand.
“About forty years too old, I think,” Eliza retorted, playing along.
“Him?”
“Too bald.”
“That one?”
“Too old and too bald.”
He shrugged. “Guess you’re stuck with me, then.”
Eliza laughed. “It would appear so.”
“So how ’bout it? A hot date with the king of the bar?”
“I’ll have to check my calendar.”
Oliver stood up, nearly knocking over his stool. “Nonsense. You look free to me. Come on.”
“Now?”
He nodded with the utmost seriousness. “Right now. You’ve been sitting in that chair way too long and depriving the dance floor of a beautiful woman’s presence. Plus, I love this song, and I’m one hell of a dancer. So, take my hand, and let’s go cut it up.”
Eliza gnawed at her lip again. She thought about saying no. Flirting with this handsome stranger was one thing. He was funny and charming and also smart and perceptive. He had a presence that seemed bigger than himself, like it could wrap her up in him. And the dimple in his chin was very, very cute.
But on the other hand, she’d just ended an engagement not too long ago. She had the smoldering ruins of her happily-ever-after still looming in the rear-view mirror, and it didn’t feel right to turn her back on that quite so soon. After all, what would Clay think?
That was the thought that made her stand up and take Oliver’s hand. What would Clay think? More to the point was, who cared what Clay
would think? Clay was no longer a part of Eliza’s life. As far as she was concerned, this baby was the product of immaculate conception, and whatever relationship she once had with the man in the Hermès tie was now dissolved by mutual accord. She was leaving behind helicopter engagements and dinners at Tao and expensive abstract art.
That sounded lovely to Eliza.
She took Oliver’s hand, and they went dancing.
20
Holly
Holly Benson was about to rip her hair out by the roots. Her house looked like a war zone. Decapitated G.I. Joes and Barbies were strewn across the living room floor. Holly and Pete thought they were connecting their kids to their own childhoods when she’d given each of them the toys they’d grown up with, instead of the fancy new gadgets that every kid on the block seemed to crave these days. But that had backfired, clearly, because Grady loved nothing more than performing gruesome surgery on the figures—transplanting heads, trading out arms for guns, and on and on like that. And Alice—her sweet, gentle Alice—thought that it was the funniest thing in the world, to Holly’s surprise. So, between the action figure debacle, snack time that had devolved into a food fight despite Holly’s best efforts and sternest Mom Voice, and the housework that seemed to pile up and never, ever end, she was this close to losing it.
Summertime was always tough, with the kids home from school. But this summer was especially hard. She’d been having—well, calling it “PTSD” felt wrong to her; that was for soldiers, not housewives—but it felt something like that. She wasn’t sleeping well. Pete either rolled around or he didn’t move at all and she wasn’t sure which option was worse. Most nights, she woke up from what little sleep she could find to check his breathing and make sure he was still with her. When the kids weren’t looking, she’d had a half-dozen “episodes,” as she called them, when she would find herself getting short of breath and dizzy and having to grip the kitchen counter just to make sure she didn’t fall over. She jumped at unexpected noises and lost her temper far more easily than ever before.
She was always the mild-mannered middle child. Easygoing, pleasant, upbeat.
Not so much these days. Not so much at all.
And Pete … where even to begin with the problem of Pete? He had tried to do what he could in the wake of her family’s tragedy. He’d said the right things and held her at the right times. He was a good guy at heart, after all. But even while holding her tight and kissing her forehead and wiping her tears away, he still felt … distant? Absent? She wasn’t quite sure what the correct word was, but it was obvious that, even when he was with her, he was never fully present.
He had his own things to handle. It was clear that he was just as frustrated as Holly with the kids’ newfound chaotic tendencies. Beyond that, he was continuing to drown in work. The firm had taken on a bevy of new clients, which was ostensibly a good thing, but as far as Holly could tell, thus far it meant only more hours for Pete and no concordant bump in pay. He left the house early and came home late or not at all. Spending multiple nights per week at the office wasn’t something a thirty-three-year-old husband and father should be doing, in her opinion. But the partners at the firm couldn’t seem to care less. Work needed doing, and Pete was apparently the one who had to do it.
They hadn’t had a date or a night alone together in God knows how long. Even on those rare nights when all the stars aligned and both Grady and Alice had sleepovers at friends’ houses, she and Pete just sat on opposite couches and watched TV until one or both of them fell asleep. They’d almost made it through a whole half-hour sitcom without snoring, once. But for the most part, they were like two ships passing in the harbor. Some muted greetings in the morning, a quick kiss goodbye, and then off into their own worlds.
Holly missed Pete. Not Pete as he was currently constructed, but the old Pete. The goofy, dorky Pete who loved her like he loved breathing. The Pete Things had all but disappeared. In their place was the behavior of a soulless automaton. He left the best parts of himself at the office each day and either couldn’t or wouldn’t bring his heart home to her like he always had before.
She’d understood, at first. She’d been supportive. But it was weighing on her now like the sky itself had settled on her shoulders. When she wasn’t anxious, she was sad, and when she wasn’t sad, she was exhausted.
This was no way to live.
She looked up at the clock. It was seven forty-three p.m. That meant she could hustle the kids through the bath and into bed in seventeen minutes. That wasn’t such a long time span on paper, but it seemed like a daunting eternity with how dog-tired she was from chasing after her children all day. Grady thought it was funny recently to yank on his sister’s pigtails, and Alice had learned a few curse words from a bad kid at school, so it had been tête-à-tête between them since the moment they opened their eyes.
Who on earth invented summer vacation? It was the bane of Holly’s existence at the moment. Sure, she enrolled her kids in various camps and daily activities like any good mom would do. But those weren’t every day, and the weekends still loomed like a bear in the back of a cave. Thankfully, Grady and Alice would both be going to a five-week summer camp in the Green Mountain National Forest, starting tomorrow. Holly had had the date circled on her calendar for months. She felt guilty for being so giddy about it. A good mom would be sad about her kids going away for five weeks. Did looking forward to it make her a bad mother? She wrung her hands and decided not to think about it. She loved her children, but being a stay-at-home mom felt like a thankless job from hell some days.
She spent the next seventeen minutes making herself a cup of tea and keeping an eye through the window on Alice and Grady running around in the backyard. The fireflies were out in the dim light of the setting sun. It looked like the kids were having a contest to see how many they could catch.
The tea helped calm her nerves. She checked her cell phone. There was a text from Pete. Not super late tonight. Be home in an hour, give or take.
She texted back, Love you, but he didn’t respond.
An hour later, the kids were bathed and bedded. They’d both been reasonably good throughout the process. Running around outside must have worn them out, because they were both asleep pretty much as soon as their heads hit the pillow. Thank the Lord for small favors.
Holly pulled the door of their shared bedroom closed behind her as silently as she could. Tiptoeing down the hallway—avoiding the creaky spots in the hardwood floors, as always—she went into her bedroom and let out a long sigh.
Her heart hurt. She missed her dad. He was always so good at cheering her up on the rare occasions she got down. She wondered what he’d say right now. Something cheesy, no doubt. Keep your chin up, or Don’t let the rug rats drive you too crazy! It was the way he said things more than what he said. She still had a voice mail he’d left her almost eight months ago. She listened to it sometimes when she felt really sad. It was just him rambling about Christmas plans, but she loved hearing the timbre of his voice again. Little mementos like that were the last things she had left of her father. She treasured them all.
She took a quick shower and then wrapped herself in the fluffy white bathrobe that Pete had gotten her for their wedding anniversary two years ago. It had “Mom” embroidered on the breast pocket. The big master bathroom was steamy from the hot shower. She swiped away a patch of fog and eyed herself in the reflection.
She was pale and worn, that much was obvious. Bags under her eyes and red-rimmed irises stared back at her balefully. She pinched and tugged at the skin of her face. She felt thin—not thin as in skinny, but thin like a sheet of dough that had been rolled out too much. Like one good poke from something unexpected would do irreversible damage.
She heard Pete arrive home. First, the car pulling into the driveway and the engine cutting off. The jangle of his keys as he opened the front door, then the clomp of his feet down the hallway towards their bedroom. She winced. He never avoided the squeaky spots, and he was such a he
avy walker. She’d read him the riot act if he woke up either one of their little hellions. She held her breath and listened for the telltale “Moooom!” that would erupt from their room if that happened. But, thankfully, it didn’t. He pushed into their bedroom.
“Holly?” he called softly.
“In here.”
She heard the thump of his briefcase hitting the ground, followed by one shoe, then the other. “Christ almighty, I’m beat.”
“Long day?” she asked.
“Relative to my other days? No. Relative to the normal limits of human exhaustion? It went above and beyond.”
She waited for him to ask her, And how was your day? Pete always asked her that. She had an answer ready. It was long. I needed you here. The kids were terrible and the house is a disaster and I’m at my wit’s end. If I knew you were by my side, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. But I feel like you’re nowhere to be found when I need you the most, and even when you’re here, you might as well not be.
But the question never came.
She sighed, pivoted, and pushed open the bathroom door. Pete was already snoring softly on the bed, still wearing his suit and tie. She looked at him for a long moment. Should she say what she had been contemplating for weeks now? It was on the tip of her tongue and she wanted to say it so badly. But once it was said, it couldn’t be unsaid, so she had to be very, very sure.
She loved Pete. That much was never ever in question. But her dad had always told her, on those occasions when Brent consented to let one of his sisters join him and Henry out on a fishing expedition, that a good fisherman knew when to cut bait.
