Before and Again

by Barbara Delinsky

  “Not a pretty picture.”

  “Nope.”

  “What about foxes?”

  “Same picture.”

  “But they aren’t ugly. I saw one the other day from the kitchen window. It was handsome, a rich orange-red against all that green.” His face had grown wistful. He might only be starting to know the good and bad of the woods, but he had liked seeing that fox and those deer.

  Total agreement here. Our eyes met and held.

  Then, with a quick intake of air and the shift of his arm to my shoulder, he returned the other to the mouse and used it to point. “As the crow flies, we’re a half-mile from the highway. Those woods are a buffer. Car, truck, semi—don’t hear a thing.” With another click of the mouse, an interior floor plan appeared.

  Though I hadn’t seen much of the inside of the house last time either, my first impression was that the proposed work was extensive, transforming a traditional design of many small rooms into one with fewer, larger. In the drawing on the screen, the kitchen was joined with the room just beyond it—a den, apparently—to make a huge open space. Adding to that even more, the entire back of the house would be bumped out a dozen feet, significantly enlarging the master bedroom to allow for a sitting area, walk-in closets, and a huge bathroom.

  As he narrated, Edward’s jaw was at my temple so that he could view the plans from the same angle as me. His hand was deft on the cursor, his narration steady, but his voice held the same mix of excitement and nervousness I’d sensed in the car.

  He had just clicked into closer views of these first floor rooms when he murmured, “Lift up a second.” His hands elaborated, bringing me to my feet. In no time, he sat where I’d been and drew me back onto his lap. “Better,” he sighed and stretched his spine.

  It actually was better. Like my holding Lily on my lap, Edward’s holding me in his lap was familiar, too. We had always fit together well like this, and being five years older hadn’t changed that. My right arm fit his neck, his left fit my waist, and the narration resumed.

  Other than refinishing the wood, he said, the library in which we sat wouldn’t change. Nor would the living room or dining room. “She felt strongly about keeping the integrity of the original house, at least here at the front. Because I kept asking, she drew up one version that opened these rooms too, but it didn’t work. She was right about that.”

  I drew back to see his face. Unable to resist his unique brand of soft and firm, I brushed a thumb over his lips. “She?”

  “Andrew Russ’s wife, Jillian. You know her.”

  I did. She did the design for the Spa renovation that had been done two years ago. “Does she know we were married?”

  “No. But I did tell her you were the love of my life.”

  “Edward.”

  “It’s true,” he said, without remorse. “I could tell she likes you, so it was a motivator. And she likes the house. She’s young, only a handful of years out of design school, so when she pushed for traditional over modern, I had to listen. What do you think?”

  “I think she’s right.”

  Eyes back on the screen, he clicked again. “Look what she’s done upstairs. With the bump-out, the two bedrooms there are larger. Each will have bigger closets and its own bathroom. Right now, they share a small bathroom down the hall. She wants to turn that into a utility room with a chute to the first floor laundry.” To point out the last, he clicked back a page and indicated the tiniest of the rooms along the hallway on the left. “What do you think?” he asked again.

  “It’s brilliant.”

  “Would your mother want to stay here?”

  I drew back again. His eyes were expectant. “My mother.”

  “She’ll come visit, won’t she?”

  I felt an inkling of unease—but what had I thought? Of course, he was renovating the house with the idea that I would be here. On some level, I knew that. He had been very clear about his feelings for me, and there was only one direction those feelings would lead.

  The reality, though, had a few thorns. “Edward—”

  “Wait,” he cut me off and, squeezing my shoulder, returned to the screen. “It gets even better. Here’s the new garage. The old one is detached, but from what I hear of winters here, I don’t want anyone walking outside.” Anyone. He had deliberately said that, but being vague didn’t ease my qualms. “Jillian suggests adding an attached three-car garage that would be accessible through a mudroom off the kitchen.” When I looked at him, his expression was all innocence. “For resale value. Everyone here wants a three-car garage. I mean, isn’t that where they store the snowplow for the pickup, the riding lawn mower, and the canoe?”

  I had to laugh—again laugh—at the image. He had nailed it.

  And resale value certainly made sense. But I knew Edward. He was assuming I would be parking there.

  Again I said his name. Again he rushed on, as eager as Lily would be showing me a sponge-art masterpiece from school.

  “The pièce de resistance?” He pulled up a whole new page. Pointing the cursor to a small sketch in the upper left corner, he said, “The current carriage house.” He moved the cursor to the center of the page. It showed a structure that was reminiscent of the first, but gentrified. “Raze the old and build this. It could have a guest apartment upstairs, like if Liam had to stay here, which would not be my first choice. Your brother may be a great chef, but he can also be a pain in the butt. Downstairs,” he clicked to the next page, “a pottery studio.” I heard the ta-da in his voice and would have stopped him then and there if he hadn’t already been moving the cursor from one spot to the next. “Work tables, a potter’s wheel, storage bins, sink. This end could be outfitted for finishing—tables, glazing supplies, and a kiln. Or two.” He was cautious at the end, looking at me now with those striking silver eyes.

  “Edward,” I breathed.

  “Kevin helped design it.”

  “Edward.”

  “This is a first pass. You can redesign it yourself. Redesign the entire house yourself.”

  “Edward,” I pleaded, cupping his bearded jaw. Our eyes held through a silence, until I finally asked, “What are you doing?”

  “Planning our future,” he said without a blink, a swallow, a breath.

  “Now? Right now? With everything else that’s going on?”

  His arm went more fully around my shoulder, drawing me that little bit closer. “Yes.”

  “How? We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, let alone next week.”

  “No one ever does.” His voice toughened. “Isn’t that what we learned last time? Through no fault of ours—and, no, don’t look at me that way, Mackenzie, because thirty seconds one way or the other, and that accident would never have happened. But in that split second, everything changed, and I don’t just mean Lily’s death or the divorce. I mean the course of our lives.” The toughness eased. “But our new ones are better. They’re more honest. More meaningful. Even if we still had Lily, I would choose life here, but if things hadn’t happened the way they did, I would never have known it.” He stared at me. Gradually, his eyes moved to my bangs. Pushing them aside, he traced my scar with his thumb.

  “I look awful,” I said. No makeup. Pale skin. Naked eyes.

  “You look beautiful.” He leaned forward and kissed the scar. Then, returning to a place where he could see my whole face, he gestured toward the computer and asked a vulnerable, “Don’t you want this?”

  “More than anything in the world,” I said, because it was seriously true. “But you’re showing me something I may never be able to have. Don’t you see? I could go to prison. If you’re drawn into the mess, your group could vote you out. You were taking a chance buying a home here in the first place, but if you leave town,” I gestured at the plans, “what’s the point?”

  “I’m not leaving town. I’m staying here, and, worst-case scenario, if Shanahan gets you locked up, all it means is that you’ll miss the mess of construction and come back to somet
hing beautiful and new.”

  “An ex-con,” I said, expressing the darkest of my fears. “A woman who has shared meals with felons and showers with murderers, one who has lost all dignity. And if you don’t want me then?” I asked.

  He gave a disbelieving huff. “Christ, Maggie, haven’t we gotten past that?”

  I paused. Actually, we had. Frowning, I looked away. The instant I’d asked the question, I had known it was wrong. But that was a change. When? Why?

  In a flash of understanding, I heard my mother’s voice. He loves you, too, she had said, and it wasn’t that I needed her approval of Edward. But I trusted her judgement. That was why our estrangement had hurt me so much. Along with everything to do with mothering, it reinforced the idea, never spoken but implied, that my choice of life partner had been poor. She had never before shown any fondness for Edward, certainly had never praised him. That she did now registered.

  But something else registered. He loves you, too, she had said, the too being key. She loved me. Despite the accident, the loss of Lily and my father and my name, she did love me. It had been right there in the comfort she gave back at the Inn. She said she wasn’t good at that kind of thing, but she was. I had simply been too close to it to see it at the time.

  That different feeling inside me? It had to do with healing. Something was intact where a ragged tear had been.

  Weaving a hand into my hair, Edward angled my face so that he could look me in the eye. “You won’t be going to prison, baby. There would be a riot in that courtroom if the judge buys into Shanahan’s case. You have a ton of friends, not the least being Jillian Russ, who drew up these plans extra fast because she thinks you’re the best. So do half the people in this town.”

  “Only half?” I asked, trying to make a joke, to lighten things up, to do anything that might explain why I was believing what he said.

  “The other half don’t know you. Once they do, they’ll adore you, too.”

  “Well, there’s another point,” I said. “Once Grace’s past hits the news and Shanahan does his thing, my secret’s out. What’ll the good people of Devon think of me then?”

  “They’ll respect you even more,” he said without missing a beat. “Seriously, Maggie. How can you not see that? They’ll be just as amazed as me that you were able to pick yourself up after a tragedy like that and rebuild a life. And you have. People here respect the hell out of what you’ve done since coming here. They told me this at Town Meeting when they saw us together. I was with your mother when Joe Hellinger told her what you do for his patients. Joyce thinks you’re one of the Spa’s greatest assets, which is accurate, according to online reviews. Cornelia loves you like a daughter, granddaughter, whatever, and your buddy Kevin? He thinks you hung the moon. I see the ways you’ve helped Grace and Chris—and don’t tell me people here will think less of her for what happened in Santa Fe. They won’t blame her for that any more than you do. So no, Devon people won’t be fazed when they hear about the accident. They know how much you give of yourself. You put you into everything you do. They see that.”

  When his eyes grew too intense, I looked back at the plans. Something still didn’t feel right.

  Trying to figure out what it was, I said, “You want kids.”

  “And if they come…” Voice trailing off, he brought the cursor to the last unexplained space in the master bedroom wing. It was a small room, with a closet and a new small bathroom.

  A baby’s room. The breath caught in my throat. A baby’s room was real. I wasn’t ready for that.

  “What if I can’t?” I whispered.

  “Then we won’t.”

  “You’d be happy with that?”

  “No. But better no child than no you.”

  And what could I say to that?

  “Do you know,” he said, “that when a couple loses a child, up to eighty percent of those marriages end in divorce? I don’t want to be one of the eighty percent.”

  “We already are.”

  “Not here,” he said, tapping his heart. He looked into my eyes, looked deeply. “Do we love each other?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s what matters, Maggie. None of the other stuff is as important as us. Family matters. We matter.”

  And so he knocked down that argument, too. I was running out of options, but something was still off.

  Feeling vaguely frantic, I asked, “What about my pets?” If we were talking about the future, my pets played a role. “You don’t like cats.”

  He surfed through the plans again. When a detail of the kitchen appeared, he enlarged a small insert.

  I leaned in, then glanced back at him. “What is that?”

  “A pet-feeding station.”

  “Built in?”

  “Better than tripping over food bowls. I told Jillian we had three pets. She has a setup like this in her own house.” When I stared at him in disbelief, he said, “It isn’t that I don’t like cats. I just don’t know them, but they’re yours. They matter. And then there’s your cabin.”

  “I love my cabin.”

  “Which is why we keep it. If you’d rather have your potting studio there, we can do that too.”

  “But I like going to Kevin’s studio.”

  “Then go there.”

  “But I like doing makeup.”

  “So do makeup.”

  These were meaningful parts of the life I had built on my own. That life held its share of loneliness, but it also held independence and pride. And here was Edward, seeming to understand that, seeming willing to accept me on my terms, to take what I treasured and work it into a future.

  I felt a stab of frustration. “How can you ask me to be happy with my best friend locked up?”

  “I’m not—”

  “You are. These things make me happy, Edward.”

  “Good,” he said and gave a grin that stole my breath.

  Suddenly, I needed space. From the start, back in that art gallery in Boston, Edward had been a force of nature in my life. It wasn’t that I couldn’t think straight when he was around, more that I simply wanted to go with his flow. Actually, no. It was more like his current was strong enough to carry my flow right along beside his.

  That hadn’t changed. It would be all too easy to jump in now and be swept along. But that wasn’t what I had become. I needed a minute of separation to remember myself. Something still bothered me. I needed to figure out what it was. Edward’s presence was too strong here to allow that.

  Pressing a kiss to a corner of his mouth, I slipped from his lap. On my way to the built-ins, I traced the long edge of the desk and, then, because its texture was too tempting to resist, the fluted edges of the bookshelves. The millwork was striking. It just needed a little love. Edward would give it that. He had the resources and the desire. It was a good mix. But something nagged.

  I went out into the front hall, which was wallpapered and bare. Money would fix this, too. Same with the living room, whose wide oak planks needed polish, stain, shine, something. Same with the winding staircase, whose newel post was worn and whose iron balusters should have been wood. Edward would fix all of these things.

  I sat there for a heartbeat but rose in the next and went to the front door. The instant I opened it, I felt relief. Breathing in the cool air, listening to the night sounds, I reached out. Here were my woods, the distant gurgle of my river, my creatures, my Devon.

  But my alone space wasn’t out there, either. It struck me that being alone just didn’t do it for me anymore. My happiness involved others.

  Short term, that meant Grace, Chris, and Michael Shanahan. Long term, it meant Lily. I wanted to be happy, really I did and, yes, I could find happiness here, in this house, with Edward. Whether I had the right to it was something else—but even that wasn’t the immediate problem.

  Confused, I remained at the open door looking out at the street. There were no lights, no cars, no human sounds other than Edward’s footsteps when he approached.

  “Do
you have neighbors?” I asked.

  He came up beside me, a tall, warm presence with his arm brushing mine. “One,” he said. “The house is farther down the street. It’s a biggie, impressive since they’re retirees. This is their summer home. They also have places in Palm Springs and Vail.”

  “Must be loaded,” I said and stood straighter. This was the last piece, I realized, the only other qualm I had. Trying to put it into coherent thought, I looked back at the living room, the stairs, and the library. By the time he was done, Edward’s house would be as impressive as anyone’s in the town.

  It was light-years removed from my tiny cabin, my modest life, even my pickup truck. I had chosen this lifestyle for a reason. The last one, fully loaded, had been a disaster.

  I looked up at him. His face was shadowed. With the lights flanking the front door either non-functioning or simply not on, the glow of the moon on the edges of clouds had too big a job. But I could see he was looking at me. So I said, “We had a three-car garage once before. Is that a bad omen?”

  He didn’t frown or flinch, didn’t seem to spend a single second weighing the matter, but said with utter calm, “Absolutely not. Our lives, our minds, our dreams are different now. They have nothing to do with the way we were. They aren’t even about the way we are now. They’re about the way we want to be.”

  There it was again, the issue of hope. That was what my mother’s love gave me. It was what Liam’s arrival had brought. It was what my friendships here in Devon added.

  With that realization, the final piece very softly clicked into place. I still had issues with me. But other people did not. They saw me as I was now, even as I might be in the future, not as I was back then. At some point, I had to hear what they were saying.

  Only when I was silent did Edward show the slightest doubt, but it was more about wanting my agreement. No dictator, my Edward, no philosopher spouting lofty sayings. We might have failed to communicate after Lily died, but that wasn’t the way we wanted to be.

  “Aren’t they?” he asked—our lives, minds, and dreams about the way we wanted to be.

  Turning into him, I slipped my arms around his waist. I inhaled deeply, and, when his arms closed around me, exhaled into a smile. “They are.”