“Waiting?” she repeated inanely.
“While you take your shower. All that sand and salt must be driving you crazy.”
He couldn’t have cooled her off more effectively if he’d tossed her back in the ocean. He wanted her, but it had to be the sanitized version. He was no more swept away with desire than Iran was interested in a good neighbor policy with Israel. She purposefully removed her hand from his. “What’s going on, Brandon? Why did you really come here today?”
“I told you. I realized how wrong I’d been when—”
“Cut the crap. I’m not buying it.”
His eyes flashed a mixture of anger and impatience, emotions he usually managed to keep under tight control. “What’s gotten into you, Katherine? When did you start questioning what I tell you?”
Had he always talked to her this way?
As if realizing he’d gone too far, Brandon said, “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I’ve been a mess since you left. I can’t concentrate, and I haven’t been eating properly. My sermons are even beginning to suffer.”
“What did you expect? I took care of you morning, noon, and night for twenty years while you were busy taking care of everyone else.”
“I don’t understand what’s happening here,” he said. “I thought you wanted to save our marriage, that it was as important to you as it is to me.”
“Wait a minute. Just when did our marriage suddenly become important to you? As I recall, when you asked me to move out, you said it was the end, that there was no way we could ever get back together.”
“Let’s not play the blame game, Katherine,” he said in a teacher-to-student voice.
She was cold and uncomfortable and needed time to think. “I’m going to take a shower.”
“Good idea. You’ll feel better, more like talking, when you get out.” He leaned forward to kiss her cheek and pat her arm. “I’ll make coffee.”
“How long are you staying?”
He clearly hadn’t expected the question. “I guess that depends on you.”
If it really was up to her, he would be gone when she got out of the shower. The thought brought her up short. When . . . how had she gone from believing he was the source of her happiness to looking forward to a life without him?
Chapter 9
You can’t do this,” Brandon said. “Not after all I’ve done for you.” His expression changed from worried to cajoling. “What is it you need, a little time? I can handle that. I can even understand why you might want to see me suffer a little before you come back. But you have to believe me, Katherine. It may not be obvious, but I’ve already suffered just as much as you have. I can’t begin to tell you the number of nights I’ve lain awake praying I did the right thing or how much I think about you during the day and how much I miss having you greet me at the door when I come home.”
Katherine reached for her coffee. Her hands were shaking so hard, the hot liquid splashed over the rim and landed on her white slacks, leaving a stain the shape of a lopsided heart. She put the cup down again.
“I’m not going to live a lie for anyone, not even you, Brandon.” Knowing the real reason he’d come made everything so much easier. “You should have considered what a divorce would do to your chances to be on the council before you asked me to leave.”
She reached for a napkin to blot the stain. “And what about everything I’ve done for you? You could never have made it as far as you have without me.”
“You’re right,” he said without conviction. “I’ve never given you enough credit for all that you do, but that’s in the past. From now on I promise I’ll do better.”
She’d never seen him like this. She tried the coffee again and managed to get it to her lips without mishap. A small but noteworthy accomplishment. “Tell me now, Brandon.”
“Tell you what?”
“All the things you say you now recognize that I’ve done for you.”
He seemed lost. “You’re being unfair. I can’t just come up with things. I need time to think.” He let out a defeated sigh. “What will it take to get you to come home with me? I’ll do anything you want.”
“For how long?”
He recoiled. “Have I ever broken a promise to you?”
“You mean other than ’till death do us part’?”
“You made that same vow, Katherine. You know God would want you to do whatever you can to save this marriage. Even if it means you have to swallow some pride.”
“Is that what you think this is about? Pride?” For the first time she raised her voice. “And how dare you use God to try to manipulate me?”
“All right, I admit I made a mistake. Is that what you want? Now will you forgive me?” He took his cup to the sink, turned, and looked at her. “I’ve certainly forgiven enough of your mistakes.”
Whenever she felt herself beginning to falter, he managed to say something to boost her up again. To go back to him now would only delay the inevitable. Whatever glue had held them together was gone.
“Wonderful, Brandon—even with all my faults, you’re still willing to give me another chance. I can’t let you make that sacrifice.” Sarcasm was something new. She like it.
“After all that you do for everyone else, you deserve to be married to someone who will make you happy—really happy. I know that being on the council seems like it would be enough, but in two or three years when the newness wears off, we’d be right back where we are now. I don’t want to go through this again. I won’t. I deserve better.”
He shook his head. “I never would have believed you could be so vindictive. If you won’t come back for me, what about Michael and Paul? Think what it would mean to them to have their parents together again.”
“Where was this deep concern for your sons when you told me to move out?”
He sat down again. “What could you possibly hope to gain by punishing me for that now? No, let’s get this straight. If you insist on going through with this divorce, it will be Michael and Paul you punish, not me.”
A knock on the front door kept her from answering. It was Peter. His timing couldn’t have been worse.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, looking past Katherine and seeing Brandon standing in the middle of the living room. “I didn’t know you were here. I must have missed your car.” To Katherine he said, “I just stopped by to see if . . . uh, to see if you needed anything from the store.”
“I’m fine,” she said quickly. “I went shopping yesterday.”
“Then I’ll let you get back to what you were doing.” He made a small wave to Brandon. “Nice seeing you again.”
Brandon waited several seconds after Peter had gone before giving her a withering look. “You and Peter? What a joke. He’s gay, you know.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She moved to step around him. He blocked her way.
“I wondered why you would want to come down here alone. But I thought you knew. Oh, this is just too funny. Telling him Peter wasn’t gay would only complicate things.
“I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.”
“I came here willing to do whatever necessary to work things out between us, but I can see now that my prayers are not going to be answered.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Perhaps this is God’s way of telling me I’m not worthy to sit on the council.” He waited. When she didn’t say anything, he went on, “I just hope for both of us that it’s His hand making the decision, not yours.”
“If it’s God’s plan that you be on the council, He’ll show you another way.”
Brandon moved toward the door. “I’ll tell Roger to get things started as soon as I get home. There’s no sense dragging this out any longer.”
“You’re using Roger for the divorce?” He and his wife, Martha, were the first friends they’d made when they moved to Woodland. She felt as close to them as she did to her own family.
“He seemed the logical choice.”
How could Brandon be
so sensitive to the most minor problem of one of his parishioners and blind to her feelings? “Please find someone else.”
He opened the door and stepped outside. “I’ll think about it.”
She followed him out. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“My freedom.”
Katherine stayed in the house the next two days, venturing out only to pick up the newspaper. The dense morning fog reflected her mood, and when sunshine broke through in the afternoons, she closed the blinds.
There had never been a divorce in her family. Her mother and father would take the news hard, as would her brothers and sister. They knew about the separation but had refused to believe she and Brandon wouldn’t work things out. All marriages went through rocky times. How could they expect hers and Brandon’s to be any different? They adored Brandon and talked about him the way parents did when one of their children became a doctor or lawyer. There was no higher calling than to serve God.
Katherine didn’t even bother wondering whose side they would be on—especially when they found out he’d asked her to come back and she’d refused. She had no hope they would ever understand her newfound need to discover the woman she was and the woman she wanted to be.
Had she really thought that? Did she honestly believe there would be sides to take? Her prayers changed from asking for strength to see her through the months ahead to being shown a way to keep friends and relatives from feeling they had to champion either her or Brandon over the other.
The third morning of her self-imposed exile, the sun greeted her as she climbed out of bed. She decided it would mark the end of her introspective depression. She’d touched bottom; it was time to get on with her life.
Fresh from her shower, dressed in her yellow terry-cloth bathrobe with a towel wrapped around her head, Katherine was headed for the kitchen for a cup of coffee when she heard a car pull into the driveway.
She went to the window and peeked through the blinds. Surprise hit first, then puzzlement, finally delight. She opened the door. “What are you doing here?”
“I got fired,” Paul said, grinning. “Old man Fielding caught me stealing grapes.”
“You did not.” She put her arms around her youngest son and gave him a longer-than-usual hug, leaving no doubt how glad she was to see him.
“What is it you think I didn’t do—get fired or steal grapes?” He had a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.
“Either one.” She smiled as she looked past him to the other two boys who’d gotten out of the Mustang. They were Paul’s best friends, the bonds established in preschool. “I hope you’re planning to stay awhile.”
“If it’s okay,” Tom, the taller of the two, said.
She reached up to adjust the towel on her head as it slipped to one side. “Of course it’s okay. Have you had breakfast?”
“We stopped on the way,” Charlie told her.
“That was two hours ago,” Paul said. “I’m starved. What’ve you got?”
“Pancakes? Or, if you’d rather, French toast.”
“Pancakes,” they said in unison.
“Give me a couple of minutes to get dressed, and I’ll see what I can do to fill those hollow legs of yours.”
The morning turned into the best she’d had in months, filled with teasing and laughter and good-natured roughhousing. The pancakes disappeared as fast as she could make them, followed by the last of the milk and all of the juice. Charlie and Tom threw her and Paul out of the kitchen while they cleared the table and washed the dishes.
Alone on the deck, the ocean breeze directing their voices away from the kitchen window, Katherine asked Paul, “Now why are you really here?”
“I just thought you might like some company.”
“And what made you think that?”
He shrugged. “Dad was acting kind of funny when he got back.”
She was caught between curiosity and prying. “I like knowing how much you care, Paul, but I don’t want you to feel you have to take care of me. What’s happening between me and your dad is our problem, not yours.”
She thought about what she’d said. “I take that back, it’s your problem, too. You had every right to think your dad and I would be together forever. And now you have to deal with your last year of school and getting ready for college and a mother and father who should be there for you but are—”
“Jeez, Mom, if you keep this up, you’re going to have me feeling sorry for myself.”
She was filled with a love for her son so intense that it brought tears to her eyes. “I must have done something very special to deserve you.”
“Just remember that next time I forget to pick up my room.”
She laughed and wiped at her eyes. “Forget?”
“All right—postpone.”
“What are your plans for this afternoon?”
“Nothing special, maybe hang out here for a while, check out the chicks on the beach.”
“Chicks?”
He laughed. “You’re so easy, Mom.”
“Since you don’t have anything special planned, how about if the three of you help me make ice cream? I found a machine in the cupboard that looks brand new, and I thought it might be fun to give it a try.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said, obviously more to please her than out of any real excitement about homemade ice cream. “You want us to go to the store to get the stuff?”
“I’ll take care of it.” He’d be the rest of the morning shopping if she sent him with her list. There wasn’t enough food in the house to feed three boys another day, let alone a week. The groceries would take a big chunk out of the money she’d budgeted for the rest of the month, but she couldn’t think of a better way to spend it.
Chapter 10
Katherine looked up from the bed of snapdragons where she was gathering flowers for a bouquet and saw a boy who looked to be eight or nine watching her. “Hi, there,” she said, and smiled.
“Hi,” he answered without returning the smile.
She sat back on her haunches, keeping herself at his level. “Were you looking for someone?”
“My friends used to live here. But they died.”
Now she understood the missing smile. “You must mean Joe and Maggie,” she said gently.
He nodded. “Do you live here now?”
“For a little while.”
“Do you have any kids?”
“I have two boys, but they’re almost grown.” She cut a bright red snapdragon and stuck it in the pail of water beside her. “Do you live around here?”
“Me and my sister are staying with my dad over there.” He pointed to Andrew’s house.
Peter had told her a writer was living in Andrew’s house while he was away. He’d been gone when she first arrived and must have returned while she was holed up trying to get her life back in order. “I’m going to make ice cream this afternoon. Would you like to come over and have some? You can bring your sister and dad, too.”
“What kind?”
“Strawberry.”
“I like peach,” he said softly. “That’s what Maggie made.”
Her heart went out to him. “I could make peach instead, but I have a feeling it wouldn’t be as good as Maggie’s.”
“That’s all right. Me and my sister have to go back to my mom’s today anyway.” He raised a small hand as he turned to leave. “Bye.”
She watched him cross the pathway back to his house. As much as she hated what her and Brandon’s divorce would do to Michael and Paul, she was profoundly grateful they’d stayed a family unit long enough to see them through their childhood.
She moved to the giant marigolds that grew beside the gate, looked up, and saw Peter at his mailbox. He noticed her and waved. She waved back. When he returned his mail to the box and headed her way, her heart did a funny skipping beat in anticipation.
She stood and brushed herself off, wishing she’d taken more time with her hair and makeup that morning. Slowly, during the past
two and a half weeks, barely more than a fleeting thought at a time, she’d begun to understand how connected Peter was to her feelings about coming to the beach house every year. He was as much a part of her August as listening to the waves, long walks on the beach, and the smell of salt-laden air.
“I haven’t seen you around lately,” he said, stopping outside the gate. “Is everything all right?”
“Paul showed up with a couple of friends.” What was it about Peter that always made her feel special when she was with him? She had a feeling it had a lot to do with the way he actually looked at her when she was talking to him, as if whatever she had to say, no matter how inconsequential, were important. But he didn’t just listen, he responded. And he cared. “They’ve been keeping me pretty busy.”
“I meant before that.”
She didn’t know how to answer him. Their friendship wasn’t one of private revelations, and she was afraid to take the chance that things might change if she unloaded her problems on him. “I didn’t feel very good for a couple of days after Brandon left.”
“You should have called me. I make a great chicken soup.”
“I’ll remember that.” She was tempted to tell him chicken soup was a personal favorite and that she would gladly let him make it for her anytime, but was afraid he would get the wrong impression. “How’s the painting coming?”
“It’s finished.”
The news was both exciting and a little scary. Not only would she be seeing herself through Peter’s eyes, so would the rest of the world. “May I see it?”
“Anytime.”
“Now?”
“If you’d like.”
“Give me a minute to clean up.”
“You’re fine just the way you are.” He held the gate for her.
“I really should wash up a little.”
He reached for her hand. “It’s not a gallery opening, Katherine, just you and me.”
They were halfway to his house before she realized they were still holding hands. “I can’t stay long. I told the boys I’d fix them lunch when they got back from swimming.”
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