She threw the challenge right back at him. “Like what?”
“I see you sitting up there in your window. What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking how lucky I am to be here.”
“Anything else?”
“What else would there be?”
He didn’t speak, but she felt his answer right there where it was every morning, in the pit of her stomach. It was a tiny ache, unwelcome and annoying, but there.
She took a step back and held up a hand. “Hey, if you’re thinking there should be something else, that’s your problem. Me? I’m free and clear. We agreed that if anyone thought there might be something, they were totally misguided. There’s nothing. Absolutely nothing.” She took a fast breath. “And even if there were something, I wouldn’t act on it. In case you hadn’t realized it yet, Tess is a handful.” She began walking slowly back toward the road. “I’m a mother, first and foremost. That doesn’t mean I don’t feel things. Of course I feel things. But that’s as far as it goes.” She jogged backward now, adding breaks to the flow of her voice. “And even if I was attracted to you, it’d be a moot point. I may be a sucker for nice legs, but I’m no masochist.”
She turned, accelerated gently from a jog to a run, and poured her concentration into staying on the road in the dark.
IT WASN’T OVER. The next morning at dawn, she was there on the window seat, having slept less than five hours. Tess hadn’t come home until ten-thirty. Then they spent two hours talking about sensitivity, respect for others, and the endurance of motherly love. After that, Olivia had lain awake for a while before finally dropping off—and still she was up at first light.
It struck her that since today was the Fourth of July, Simon might be sleeping in.
But there he was, right on schedule, emerging from under the awning and walking to the edge of the patio. There was no coffee cup in his hand, though—that was a first. Curious, she watched him put his hands on his hips. He stared out over the vineyard as he had done so often before. His back was straight. Same with his legs. There was no casual one-hipped stance today. To her, his stance indicated that something was wrong, and she wondered what it was.
Then he looked up at her over his shoulder, hitched his head in the direction of the vines, and set off down the path.
Her heart began to thud. His gesture had been an invitation—no doubt about it.
Did he want to talk? Did he have something to show her?
She kept her eye on the path, thinking he might reappear and give her a clue. When he didn’t, she made a snap decision. In two seconds, she had the nightshirt off and a T-shirt and shorts on. Snatching up flip-flops, she went barefooted through the bathroom to check on Tess, then returned through her room and ran quietly down the stairs.
It had rained not long before. The patio stones were still wet. She put on the flip-flops and set off.
Dampness was thick in the warm July air. Add that to the rain itself, and the grapes couldn’t be pleased. Perhaps the unwanted rain was the cause of Simon’s tension. What she had imagined to be the hitch of his head might have simply been a gesture of frustration.
But she reached the vineyard path and, with the slap of the flip-flops, Strode on, looking down each row, wondering where she was supposed to find Simon. Suddenly it struck her that she was probably making a fool of herself coming out like this. She should have stayed in the window. She should have stayed in bed.
Still, she went on. She was at the very end of the block of vines when she saw him way off to the side. He was leaning against a fat old maple tree, arms and ankles crossed.
He was waiting for her. She approached more slowly, stopping when she was a dozen feet away, and tucked her hands in her pockets.
“You called?” she asked sweetly.
He grunted, shot a look to the side, and almost smiled.
Just as she was thinking that if an almost smile made her this weak, a full one would absolutely make her melt, he crooked a finger, inviting her closer.
Heart pounding, she took a single large step toward him and stopped. “Yes?”
Uncrossing his ankles, he pushed away from the tree and closed the distance between them. His eyes were serious as they searched hers. Seconds later, he took her head in both hands and tilted her face up for a kiss.
There was nothing gentle about it. It was a hard, open-mouthed thing that spoke of raw hunger.
Olivia felt that hunger right down to her toes. She had admired him once too often, had watched his lean-hipped walk and seen those biceps lift and pull. There was a mystery to him that increased the hunger. There was also about him an element of the forbidden. His kiss was all the more exciting for the fact that it wasn’t supposed to happen.
He wasn’t smooth. There was no finesse in the way he held her head or manipulated her mouth, but raw hunger didn’t allow for finesse. Olivia didn’t care, though—she craved hunger far more than style. Slipping her arms around his neck, she kissed him back. Suddenly she had an image of her daughter, and she smiled inwardly. Yes, Tess had been right saying that he smelled—he smelled wonderfully clean and totally male. His hair was damp and thick to the touch, his neck warm, his shoulders strong. She slid her palms over the swell of his chest, but they quickly returned to his neck. She had to hold on. Her legs wouldn’t support her.
She had thought it was only her. She had thought the tingling She felt watching him each morning was one-sided, but it didn’t feel that way now. His body was tensed, straining.
So maybe he had been without for so long that any woman would do. When he tore his mouth from hers, he pulled her into his body and held her there with an arm across her back and a hand on her bottom. He was fiercely aroused. It was an incredible thing for a woman to feel. Would any woman have caused it?
She didn’t want that. She didn’t do anonymous sex. She didn’t do surrogate sex.
But that was her name she heard murmured by a hoarse, broken voice seconds before he drew his head back, and those were her eyes that his found and held. Looking into his eyes, she saw surprise and confusion. She saw heat. His breathing was rough, his brow damp. His jaw was square, newly shaved so that only the ghost of a dark beard remained. His mouth was lean, slightly ajar. His eyes were a deep, deep blue.
Those eyes were wide open and knowing. Yes, he knew it was her. Unbelievable, given that she was no blonde bombshell, but he did know it was her.
That made it more sweet when he kissed her again, gentler this time, tasting more than devouring. His tongue moved against hers, sliding up, slipping back. His movements became slow and arousing, tempting as all get-out. She ached inside.
She gave herself up to the ache, moving against his body for relief, searching his mouth for whatever she could find. But just as she didn’t do anonymous sex, she didn’t do one-night stands—or one-morning stands, which was where they seemed headed. It was totally exciting and utterly terrifying. And absolutely impossible.
Exerting a small pressure on his shoulders, she broke the kiss and stepped back. Breathing hard, she stared at him.
Breathing equally hard, he stared right back.
This time, she didn’t have the wherewithal to stare him down. Dropping her gaze, she flattened a fist on her thudding heart and took a breath that should have calmed her. But one wouldn’t do. Her insides were wired. She took a second breath and then a third. Without looking at him again, she held up a hand.
She should have waited longer. Her legs were far from steady. But she feared she might change her mind and go back for more, which wouldn’t do at all.
She was the woman. She was in control. She could say when she wanted to be kissed and when she didn’t, and right now she didn’t.
Turning in a way that sent her heel skidding off its flip-flop, she caught herself, raised her chin, and walked off with as much dignity as a woman on wobbly legs could muster.
Sixteen
“WHY DIDN’T YOU MARRY CARL in 1942?”
“Because I m
arried Alexander.”
Olivia looked at Natalie for a minute, then shook her head and smiled. “Why am I not surprised by that answer?”
Natalie was smiling, too. “Why aren’t you? Tell me.”
“Because you always see the cup as half full. And because you don’t like talking about things that are painful.”
“Or embarrassing.”
“Embarrassing? The reason you married Alexander instead of Carl?” Olivia could only think of one embarrassing reason—her being pregnant with Alexander’s child. But there was no way that would happen. No way. Natalie loved Carl.
“Yes, embarrassing.”
“Why?”
Natalie rolled her eyes. When they returned to Olivia, they held a sheen of tears. Her smile was self-conscious now. “Because …” She started, but stopped. She rose from the wicker lounge chair and began gathering dirty paper plates and cups from the nearby table.
It was late afternoon on the Fourth of July. Waves of heat rose from the gas grill as it burned off remnants of hamburgers and hot dogs. Madalena and Joaquin had returned salads, rolls, and condiments to the kitchen. The dozen or so friends who had been there for lunch had departed. Carl had taken Tess and Jill for ice cream cones.
Simon hadn’t showed. Carl had been asked about him, though it was more a query about how he fared than about where he was. Apparently no one had expected to see him—and while Olivia found that sad, she was profoundly relieved. She was still trying to decide exactly what had happened this morning out there under that tree.
It was much easier to focus on this.
Rising, she helped Natalie clean up. Beneath mustard and ketchup stains, and the occasional potato chip or hot dog bun scrap, the paperware was a patriotic red-white-and-blue.
“Why is it embarrassing?”
Natalie emptied fruit punch leftovers into a single cup and stacked the empties underneath. “Maybe ‘embarrassing’ is the wrong word. Maybe ‘ashamed’ is better.” She quickly looked at Olivia. “Not that the decision I made was wrong, or that Alexander wasn’t a good man. I don’t want my children to think that, because it isn’t true. He was a fine man. I liked him. I came to love him. We had a good life together. If I was in the same situation and was given the same choice, I’d do exactly the same thing now as I did then.” The fire left her. She frowned and toyed with the cups.
“What?” Olivia prodded gently. “What did you do?”
“By today’s standards, what I did sounds shallow. It sounds like a betrayal of the first order. It sounds materialistic.”
Olivia could only think of one way that could be. “You married Alexander for money?”
The fires had barely been extinguished, the bodies removed, and the damage assessed at Pearl Harbor when every able-bodied man in town began to think about enlisting. Carl was one of the first, he felt that strongly about it. Before I could turn around and say that I thought we should be married before he left, there he was in uniform, ready to be shipped overseas.
It was early 1942. A raw February day. February 8—I won’t ever forget the date. Carl and I had agreed that I wouldn’t go to the train station. It would be too painful. We were in the tractor shed, awake all night holding each other. We didn’t care that it was cold there. We had nowhere else to go.
The sun came up—cruel sun, on such a dismal day. The fields were barren. Ice coated all the little spikes of dead grasses and plants in a way that might have actually been beautiful, had the circumstances been different.
We didn’t talk. There wasn’t anything to say. He was doing what he had to do, and I supported him in it. But he was about to be sent God knew where and suffer God knew what. We had never been separated before.
Three times he went to the door to leave. Three times he came back. Then he couldn’t put it off any longer. He went to the door a fourth time, stood there with one hand on the big iron latch and the other limp at his side, and looked back. I remember the details of it as clearly as I remember seeing him when I was five. The clothes were bigger, but with the exception of work pants for overalls, he was dressed much the same—similar hat and jacket, similar boots. His hair fell over his brow. We knew it would be shorter by the time the day was done. His shirt hung out of his pants, the last of that kind of thing, too. His eyes held me, touched me, loved me. Then he put his head down and slipped through the door.
My heart went with him. I ran to the door and watched him walk away. The farther he went, the smaller he grew, until he turned onto the path that led to his house and disappeared from my sight.
I slipped to the floor and cried. Just cried. Had I not known how strongly he felt about doing this, I would have run after him and begged. But that wouldn’t have helped either of us. I just … sat there … sat … and cried.
No. I’m … all right. Give me a minute.
It was just … oh my … just a heart-wrenching time.
There. I’m fine. But that isn’t what you really want to know. What you really want to know is why we didn’t marry before he left.
Believe it or not, he didn’t ask me. And I didn’t think anything of it. Things happened so fast. It was like he was here one day and gone the next. I just assumed that we would get married when he came home. If he came home. Yes, I do see the cup as being half full, but the reality of those days made it harder. Hitler was a monster. We may not have known the details of it back then, like we do today, but we knew he was evil.
Who was Carl to fight that? He was a gentle man. A nonviolent man. I told myself he was strong and determined, and that those qualities would carry him through the war and let him come back in one piece. But there were bombs falling. We heard them on the radio each night. How could Carl protect himself from a bomb?
I was seventeen, and I was terrified for him. Yes, I wish he had proposed before he left. It might have given me an argument not to marry Alexander—and again, I don’t want that misconstrued. Alexander was a good man.
But I loved Carl.
Was I angry that he hadn’t proposed? No.
Actually, yes. The days that followed were so tumultuous for me that it’s only natural anger should be one of the emotions I felt. However—and this is important, Olivia—I did not marry Alexander on the rebound. There were other reasons why I married him.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s go back to my not marrying Carl. Like I said, I didn’t think about it in the flurry of his departure. Once he was gone, though, I did. Other girls I knew were marrying their sweethearts. It struck me that we might have been married, too, and suddenly I was desperate for it. But Carl hadn’t been. For years, I wondered why. I asked him about it only recently—it took me that long to get up the nerve.
His answer surprised me. I had thought that the timing was his only reservation—my age and the rush of his induction. But he had other reasons to pause. He was Catholic, we were Protestant. His parents were immigrants, mine were blue bloods. He wasn’t educated. He wasn’t rich. He wasn’t a landowner. He felt inferior to the man my father had been in his prime. He said that in all the years my parents had known him, as kind as they had been to his parents and to him, they had never once taken him seriously as son-in-law material.
He was right. My parents made that clear to me when Alexander proposed.
I didn’t see it at the time, though. I was so in love with Carl that I just assumed my parents knew how I felt and what I wanted. There was no reason to talk about it. I was only seventeen. I hadn’t even finished high school.
My parents had been discussing my future between themselves, though. In the months leading up to Pearl Harbor, while I was dreaming my girlish dreams about marrying Carl, they were nurturing other thoughts. Alexander Seebring was the son of a successful businessman. His family had spent their summers in Newport way back when we did, so I knew who Al was. We hadn’t been friends, though. He was ten years older than me.
That fall before Pearl Harbor, our families started getting together. I remember the prepar
ations—the cleaning and polishing and sprucing up designed to impress guests. I was stunned that things could look so nice. My mother had been sick on and off, and hadn’t put any effort into appearances, so I was accustomed to something simpler. When everything was done up, though, we didn’t look quite so poor.
Even then, I didn’t think anything of it when the Seebrings came to visit. Alexander was giving my father a hand. The Seebring business was shoes, which meant that Al made regular trips to Europe. He was helping my father in his quest for the perfect grape.
I used to ask Al about those trips. He could talk for hours and be totally enchanting. It didn’t occur to me that our parents were encouraging those talks for anything deeper.
I did know that my father was better when the Seebrings were around. As soon as they left, he would sink back into depression, and that was before war had been declared. After Pearl, after Brad died, the depression deepened. He would go for days without saying a word, leaving the work in the fields to Jeremiah and us while he sat and withered alongside his vines.
My mother was in a panic. She couldn’t talk about Brad, because his death was painful and fresh, and my father was getting worse by the day. So was she. We later found out that what we had thought was chronic indigestion was a tumor. All I knew at the time was that she was painfully thin and growing more frail by the day.
Carl had barely been gone a month when my mother suggested I marry Alexander. She was so desperate that she didn’t even dress up the reasons. We needed money, she said. Alexander had it. She claimed that if I married him, he would pour untold resources into the vineyard. My father would be able to buy many more vines and make them grow this time. He needed this desperately. Otherwise, he would die.
Yes. That was what she said. If I didn’t marry Alexander—if there was no infusion of funds—my father would die. For my part, I was thinking that my mother might die first, and that if this was her last request, how could I possibly deny it?
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