There was so much about Annie that reminded me of Mum. The linen napkins. The polished silver. The unyielding pessimism.
“All right. Now that that’s out of the way,” Bill said, wielding a battery-powered carving knife with a manic gleam in his eye. “Let’s eat.”
Passing the dishes about gave Annie and I time to cool off from our argument. Penny seemed bewildered by the amount of food and the speed at which it was distributed, and since her attention was focused on the elaborate culinary dance that was a Pratchett family dinner, Annie didn’t get a chance to dig at her. But once we were all served and our glasses were full of the wine that likely would not help our tempers, my sister was back at it.
“So, Penny. How long have you and Ian been together?” she asked as she cut a bite of turkey and brought it to her mouth.
“Since the end of August,” Penny answered, her eyes drifting upward as she mentally counted. “So, three months now?”
Annie swallowed. “Three whole months. My brother tells me the two of you are quite serious. Talking about marriage, already.”
I’m sure the goal was to frighten Penny away, but she just smiled slyly at me. “Have we?”
“Sure, earlier this week.” I winked at her.
“Is it official, then? Have you set a date?” Danny asked, so helpfully I wanted to bash him. “You need six months for counseling at the very least.”
“She has to come over, first,” Bill supplied, because we didn’t have enough horrible going around the table.
“Come over?” Penny sounded confused, and slightly frightened.
“Convert,” Annie explained. “But they can’t get married in the Church, anyway, because of the divorce.”
“No one is converting to anything,” I snapped finally. “Leave her alone, for Christ’s sake. That’s a long way off. Neither of us have asked, and nobody has said yes.” I took a deep breath, getting myself under control. “Besides, we wouldn’t even think about a wedding until I came back from Nassau.”
Penny went very still beside me. I wanted to turn to her and tell her that I would marry her, right now, in this dining room, if she said the word. Even if I had to give my nephew merciless charlie horses to get him to agree. But that wasn’t the kind of declaration I could make with Annie waiting there like a bomb about to explode at the slightest provocation. Penny didn’t need that.
Ask her. The thought came to me so easily it shocked me. Artificial timelines be damned. I could ask Penny to marry me that night. Sure, I didn’t have a ring. And it wouldn’t be terribly romantic with both of us stuffed like ticks. But nothing was stopping me.
Nothing except an acknowledgment of my past romantic history, and what rushing into things had cost me in the past. I wanted to marry Penny, and I wanted that marriage to have a solid foundation.
I had to give my sister credit. Throughout the dinner, she did make an attempt to be kind to Penny. She didn’t go on the attack, at least, not toward her. She did, however, tell plenty of embarrassing stories about me. For example, the brief period of time when I was five years old and obsessed with peeing out of windows. My Flock of Seagulls haircut—which I maintained was not as terrible a look as Annie made it sound—was also roundly mocked. But all of the stories were told lovingly. My sister was truly trying to make an effort, and I appreciated that, at least.
After pie, Bill stood and declared, “Well, I’ll get to these dishes.”
“Nah, Dad, I’ve got them,” Danny said, though there was no danger of him actually having to do them. Bill secretly enjoyed doing the washing up.
Bill waved a hand at his son. “You don’t get many days off. Go take a nap while you can. I’ve got the whole weekend.”
“I can help,” Penny said, shooting up from her own chair. Bless her, she wanted so badly to make a good impression. Why couldn’t Annie see that?
“And Ian and I can take out the garbage,” Annie said. “Starting with that carcass.”
Of course she would want to get me alone again. As we packed away leftovers and scraped off plates, I tried to guess Annie’s angle. Would there be more shouting? More scolding? Whatever it was, I didn’t want to hear it.
We took the rubbish out to the bins, and Annie snagged her cigarettes from the mouth of the ceramic frog. She offered me one without asking.
I lit up gratefully. “So. What do you think of her? Or shouldn’t I ask?”
“She has a nice laugh,” Annie conceded. “And she doesn’t seem like a gold digger. Or a monster. And she’s not a child, though she does look like one.”
“I’ve seen her mother. The youthful look seems to be genetic.” I took a long inhale. As I exhaled, I added, “Though I pray she doesn’t become that bitchy.”
“Well.” Annie took a drag as she contemplated. “I suppose it doesn’t matter what I think.”
“It doesn’t.” I shook my head. “I love you, Annie. You’re my sister. I will always love you. But you have to trust me to learn from my own mistakes. Penny is good for me.”
“But are you good for her?” Annie sighed. “I’m not asking this because I don’t want to see you happy. Or because I don’t trust you. I’ll never understand why you would lie to us about how your marriage ended—”
“I didn’t lie to Danny,” I pointed out. “He just couldn’t tell you I was lying.”
“The secrecy of the confessional is bullshit,” Annie muttered.
“Why do you think I’m not good for her?” I asked, genuinely curious and not confrontational. I knew that if Annie had some kind of concern, she wouldn’t hide it, and it was probably something I needed to hear.
“You’re too old for her, Ian.”
Hearing it from Annie’s mouth was a far more devastating blow than when I said it in my own mind. I could ignore myself—I was good at it—and to hell with what anyone else said. But if Annie thought it…
“It’s not fair,” she went on. “You’re saying you want to have children, and that’s fine. I wanted that for you, too. But we’re both getting older. You know as well as I how fast things can change. Look at Da.”
Our father had passed away from cancer at age sixty. One day, he seemed fine. He just had some acid reflux. Then he was diagnosed, and within two months, he was dead, the cancer eating him alive from the inside out. That fast, and he was gone.
I flicked the ashes from the end of my cigarette. While I could rationalize to myself that anyone could die at any moment, that I could be hit by the proverbial bus the next day, it would be flippant to ignore the reality that as a person aged, their chance of death and illness increased. Da had been sixty. I was fifty-three. If I died then, our child wouldn’t even be ten years old.
The back door opened, and I spun to see Penny hauling another garbage bag behind her. “Ian?” she asked, grimacing and waving away wisps of blue that drifted toward her. “You smoke?”
“No.” I tried to hide the cigarette behind my back. I had no clue why the hell I was doing that, when I’d already been caught.
“Then is your coat on fire?” Penny demanded.
“He quit a long time ago,” Annie said, yanking the cigarette from my hand. The burning end raked across my knuckles and I cursed, bringing my fist to my mouth.
“I’m a bad influence on him,” she explained.
“You burned my fucking hand is what you did.” The coldest thing near me had to be the metal railing on the stairs. I pressed my injured flesh against it. “Sorry, Penny. I swear, this isn’t a regular occurrence.”
“No, don’t worry. It’s, um.” She shook her head. “No, don’t worry about it.”
Oh God, she was angry. Women her age had gone through all of that “Just Say No” education, hadn’t they?
“Don’t tell on me, would you?” Annie asked, pointing to the house. “I think I do a good job of hiding it.”
“It must run in the family,” Penny said, and the wry humor in her voice preyed upon my abundance of Catholic guilt.
Penny jerked
her thumb over her shoulder. “I’m going to go back in.”
“I’ll be along in a minute.” I scuffed the soles of my shoes on the pavement. How could I be so cold, but my fingers burn so much? “I’ll need ice for my hand.”
“Well, I have to put this trash away first, actually,” she said, as though she’d just remembered the bag in her hand.
“No, let me.” I stepped up to take the handles of the bag from her. “Consider it my penance.”
She went back inside, and I waited until the door closed behind her.
“You’re in trouble,” Annie sing-songed, and we both laughed. It was good to feel the tension between us ease some.
“I am in trouble,” I agreed. “Annie, I know you love me. And you’re always looking out for me. But maybe this time, I have to see my selfishness through. I know I’m not going to live forever, but none of us are. I want a child. And Penny isn’t stupid. She knows that our age difference is going to leave her without a husband long before she’s old. But she’s willing to do this with me. Do you realize how important it was to her to stay a virgin?” I lowered my voice, because I didn’t want Penny to overhear inside the house. “She didn’t want to be with anyone before, but she chose me because she trusted me.”
“I hope you were responsible,” Annie said.
“Yes, mother, we used a condom. I’ll be sure to confess that,” I threatened.
“Not to my son, you’d better not!” she hissed.
Annie was in very deep denial as to what kinds of things Danny heard in the confessional. She sighed. “Do you love her, Ian? And by love, I mean, are you ready for her to be the last woman you’re with, for your entire life?”
“I am.” I could say that without any hesitation. “That’s the God’s honest truth, Annie. I really am.”
She put her hands on my shoulders, the cigarette she’d stolen from me still burning between her fingers. She flicked her finished one to the ground. “Then I’m happy for you. I truly am.”
When we entered the house, it felt as though we’d left our earlier argument outside. A massive weight had lifted from my chest, and I felt as though I could finally breathe and enjoy the rest of the holiday.
Bill, however, stared at us as though he’d witnessed a murder.
“Bill, you look like you’re going to pass out,” I joked, and laughing, asked Penny, “What did you do to him?”
When she turned, she glared as though she were ready to take my head off. Something was not right, and the hair stood up on the back of my neck.
“We were just talking about you and Gena,” she said, cold fury in her tone.
Everything came over a bit like in a war movie, when shells are exploding and men are losing their hearing.
“No, no, no,” I said, as though I could somehow reverse whatever Bill had told her. Ah, fuck, I knew what Bill had told her. “Penny, it’s not what it probably sounded like.”
“I don’t think this is the proper place to discuss this,” she said, in the same tone with which she’d told the women in the park to fuck off with their ugly babies. I didn’t like being the target of that tone at all. “Let’s go talk about it in the car while you drive me home.”
She turned to Annie and Bill. “Thanks for inviting me today. It really was a lovely meal. I definitely got to know someone better.”
Her voice cracked, and she hurried through the kitchen door.
“Ah, damn it.” I ran my hand through my hair.
“He didn’t know,” Annie said, as though I might turn on Bill.
“I know. I know, I just—” I brushed it off with a wave of my hand. Annie could explain it all. I needed to go after Penny.
“You’re going?” Danny asked her as she pulled her coat on. She bolted out the door without answering.
I didn’t answer him, either. There would be plenty of time for that explanation later, as well. Hopefully not during a conversation about why Penny and I had broken up.
I cursed as I pulled my coat on and hurried down the front walk. Penny stood beside the car. She shook all over, bouncing one foot in agitation. I’m not sure she even realized she was doing it. “Thank you for bringing me here. I got a much clearer picture of who you are.”
“Penny, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this.”
“You’ve been saying that a lot, lately.” She had a point there. It wasn’t much of a leap to imagine what she thought of me. She’d been convinced I’d been cheating on her before, too.
And that wasn’t fair. I’d never given her any reason to think that of me. “And you’ve been assuming the worst of me a lot, lately. Get in the car. I don’t want to have this fight on the sidewalk in front of my sister’s house.”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” she nearly screamed. “And don’t tell me to be fucking reasonable about this. You cheated on your ex-wife!”
“I didn’t cheat on Gena!” Don’t shout at her. Your lies did this, not her. “I told Annie that I cheated on Gena so she wouldn’t know the real reason we got divorced.”
“On what planet is that supposed to make sense to me, Ian? ‘I didn’t want my sister to know that my marriage broke up because of this totally not horrible reason, so I told her I was a complete asshole, instead?’”
When she put it like that, it really did sound like a pathetic attempt at a lie.
“I know it sounds implausible—”
“Implausible?” She laughed bitterly. “Ian, why should I trust you?”
“When have I lied to you before?”
“You told me that Gena didn’t want to have children. Bill says that the two of you saw a fertility doctor.” She crossed her arms over her chest and waited. “You apparently smoke, that’s out of left field—”
“I smoke an occasional cigarette, that doesn’t make me a murderer!”
“But it does mean that there are fairly simple things about you that you haven’t bothered to share with me. Do you think if you just don’t tell me things, they don’t count?” She stopped and pressed her fingertips to her temple. “How do you really know Carrie Glynn?”
Ah, damn it. Another lie, even a lie by omission, wasn’t going to help this. When this fight was over, if I hadn’t come clean, it would only reopen this entire argument all over again when she found out. “We used to work together. And we slept together a few times.”
Penny took a ragged breath.
“I would have told you—” I began.
She cut me off. “And you and Gena. Did you try to have a baby?”
I looked away, because I didn’t want to see her face when I admitted the evidence that shouldn’t damn me but would. “We did see a fertility doctor. And we did try to have a baby, for over a year.”
When I turned back, her eyes were shut, tears coursing down her face.
If she’d wanted me to, I would have taken her into my arms. I knew her body language well enough to know that any attempt to touch her would be physically brushed off.
“Penny, I promise you, all of this… It seems indefensible. I know that it must look like I’m this…pathological liar, but I’m not.”
Please believe me. You have to believe me, because losing you… I can’t lose you.
“No. You cheated on your ex-wife, and you lied to me about it. You know what I just went through—”
My anger was so sudden and so fierce, I couldn’t hold back. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, I am not Brad!” I’d been dying to say it since the night she’d “caught” me with Carrie. If I ever saw that man… Well, I wouldn’t do anything, for as much as it was satisfying to say you’d punch someone or run them over with your car, it wasn’t something I’d ever do. And that just made me feel more helpless.
I didn’t want to shout at Penny, but I gave into my frustration and did. “You were hurt, and I understand that, but I’m not going to be punished for something someone else did to you. If you need to work out your feelings about your last relationship, feel free to end this one!”
&nbs
p; And that was where we’d arrived. We were supposed to have had a nice, slightly awkward family dinner. We were supposed to go back to my apartment and make love, and wake up to laugh over breakfast and fall into bed to do it all again. We were supposed to be together, and yet, with those words, it felt fairly certain that we were not.
Why did you say them?
“Just take me home,” she said, her entire being shrinking before my eyes. There was nothing to her but hurt, and it was very small, and very hard. “No, wait. Take me to the nearest train.”
I didn’t know what to say. So I did what she asked. We drove in silence, and I pulled up to the closest station I could think of. You should offer to drive her home. At least that way, you could talk more.
She’d made it pretty clear that she didn’t want to be in the car with me, but I’d made it seem clear that I didn’t want to be with her at all. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Somehow, I found my voice to say, “I don’t want to break up, Penny.”
“Well, you don’t really get a say,” she snapped back.
“I was going to say,” I began again, as though I’d meant to continue the thought all along. Now, I was just looking for a lifeline. “I don’t want to break up. But I do wonder if you and I both needed more time to get over our last relationships. I do love you, Penny. But our timing is…” Say something, Doll. Say anything to let me know I should fight for this. But she didn’t, and I found myself bargaining for even a shred of hope. “Maybe I go to Nassau, and when I get back…”
“When you get back, you won’t have lied to me?” she asked. “When you get back, I’ve spent two years waiting for you, without being with you, on the off chance that you’ll be different?”
There was no way for me to prove my innocence, short of tracking down Gena and begging her to intervene. That was never going to happen, and what would it prove to Penny besides that I was a liar, just not to her? Not yet.
“I love you, too,” she said, a hitch in her voice. “Or at least the parts of you that were real.”
“Penny—” I began, but she got out of the car without another word and slammed the door behind her.
First Time: Ian's Story (First Time (Ian) Book 1) Page 26
