“That doesn’t sound good,” he said.
She didn’t say anything.
“I’m sitting in the parking lot. I just saw a man with a beard come out with a dog. I know you’re not open right now. So who was that? Is that what you want to talk to me about?”
“I’ll be right down,” she said. She quickly put on her jeans and a t-shirt and went downstairs barefoot. She hoped Sean wouldn’t show up while she was talking to Michael. When she got into Michael’s car she could tell that he was stricken. It was painful to see how hurt he was. He knew what was coming, but it wasn’t going exactly as Marla had planned. She had hoped to leave Sean out of it, but now she would have to explain it.
“I’m sorry, Michael. This is hard for me to say.”
“Probably not a hard as it will be for me to hear it,” he said.
“No, probably not. While you were gone last week I realized something that changed everything for me.”
“What was that?”
“I realized that I couldn’t fully give myself to you because I was in love with someone else. Am in love with someone else.”
“That guy with the dog?”
“Yes. But he had been out of my life for a while and I didn’t think he was coming back into my life, ever. That’s why I held off on things with you for so long. But then I went ahead and tried to convince myself I didn’t love someone else.”
Michael just sat there staring through the windshield. “This really sucks, Marla,” he finally said. “I thought we were going somewhere with this.”
“I’m sorry. I feel terrible that I’ve hurt you. But I would have done this whether he came back or not. I would have had to do it in fairness to you.”
“Me? That’s funny.”
Marla looked out the car window and saw Sean walking back toward the door. Dammit, why did he have to walk up right now? Michael looked over too.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Isn’t that your sister’s husband? He looks different but I remember how tall he was. That’s him,” he said decisively.
This was going very badly.
“You mean you’re in love with your dead sister’s husband?” he asked incredulously. “I’m sorry, but that seems kind of sick to me.”
“Michael, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” She opened the door. Sean, who was opening the door to the building, turned at the sound. She got out of the car and Sean started walking over. “I’m sorry, Michael. You’ve been a good friend to me and I’ll never forget it.” She closed the door and Sean was standing beside her. Michael pulled his car out so fast it fishtailed around. Sean looked at Marla and they both looked back at Michael. He rolled his window down and said, “That’s just weird,” and he sped off.
“He was parked down here when he called. He saw you come out with Cody. It didn’t take him long to put two and two together.”
“I’m sorry,” Sean said.
“It’s not your fault,” she said. “It’s my fault. My instinct told me not to get involved with him but I ignored it. The worst thing is that he recognized you.”
“I remember him,” Sean said. “You were still dating him when Meredith and I got together.”
Back inside, Sean put his arms around Marla. He pushed her hair away from her eyes and kissed her. “It’s going to be all right,” he said.
“This day isn’t going well,” she said. “Michael is only the tip of the iceberg of what we have to deal with.”
“And we’ll deal with it,” Sean said.
They stood another minute. “It must be a hundred degrees outside,” Sean said. “I got pretty sweaty just taking Cody out for a few minutes. Let me take a shower and then we’ll talk about everything, okay?”
Marla sat on the couch, wondering why everything had to be so complicated. It was a simple matter, really, two people who love each other. Very simple.
A phone started ringing but it wasn’t hers. It was Sean’s, which sat on the coffee table. She picked it up and looked at the screen. Crystal. Who was Crystal? As she sat there, Marla began to realize that she knew nothing about what Sean had been doing in the seven months he’d been gone.
When Sean came out of the shower, he had a towel wrapped around his waist. Before he could say anything, Marla said, “Who’s Crystal?”
Oh, shit. His heart dropped to his stomach where it formed a lead weight of dread. This day not only wasn’t going well, it had taken a detour straight to hell.
“She’s a bartender up there.”
“Up where?” Marla said, her eyes never leaving Sean’s face.
“In the mountains. Where I was. She worked at the bar.”
“Why is her name in your phone?” Marla asked.
“I don’t know,” Sean said. And he didn’t know. He had never even gotten Crystal’s phone number. He didn’t need to. They always hooked up on Saturday night after she got off of work. It didn’t require phone calls.
“You don’t know?” Marla said, unbelieving. She hated to hear that sound in her voice. She needed to get steady.
Sean’s mind was whirling and it was hard to think. How did Crystal’s number get in his phone? Was it some kind of joke? Then he remembered that he always left his phone on the counter of the bar, even if he got up for any reason. Crystal must’ve put it in there while he was in the restroom or something. That’s the only thing that made sense.
“Were you with her?” Marla blurted out. She really did hate the way she was sounding. She’d like to be a little cooler about this.
“We were friends,” he said coming to sit on the couch beside Marla. He tried to take her hand but she jerked it back.
“What kind of friends? Friends with benefits?” She glared at him.
“I guess you’d call it that. But it’s not what you think. I didn’t love her just like you didn’t love Michael.”
“You let me sit here and bare my soul about Michael,” she said, her voice getting higher. She wished she didn’t sound like such a shrew, but there it was.
“Marla, I didn’t have a chance to tell you about it. You were still talking about Michael when he called and then you went to deal with that. I didn’t have the opportunity to tell you, but I was totally going to tell you after I got out of the shower.”
She got up from the couch. “You should have told me before you took a shower. Now, I’m going to take a shower myself. I’d like for you and Cody to be gone when I get out.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Marla went into the bathroom and turned the shower on. When she got in she started crying. How could everything have been so perfect yesterday and so horrible today?
Sean sat on the couch with Cody at his feet and Lucy in his lap. He waited. It seemed like a long time before Marla came out of the bathroom.
“I thought you were leaving,” she said when she saw Sean in the living room.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Sean said. If he had learned anything on the trail, in the mountains, it was to face life head-on. He was through running away. He was going to fight for Marla.
“I’m not going anywhere until we talk this all out. We love each other and I’m not going to throw that away.”
Marla went into the bedroom and came back a few minutes later dressed in jeans and a blue halter top that tied around her neck. She was beautiful, Sean thought. He loved her.
She sat in a chair facing the couch. “Okay, talk,” she said.
“You can be as mad as you want to be, say anything you want to, but when you get all of that out, I hope you’ll listen to me.”
She sat staring at him.
“I’m sorry I was so out of touch with you while I was gone. I wanted to hear your voice every day. I wanted to see you every minute. I missed you so bad. And that’s why I was out of touch.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” she said.
“It doesn’t sound like it makes any sense, but it does. To me, anyway. Every time I heard your voice or got a text from you it made me want
to run back to you. But I knew I couldn’t do that. Not if there was going to be any hope for us. I had to work through a lot of feelings. I wanted to be sure of what I was doing. That I wasn’t mixing things up in my mind about you.”
She still stared at him, but it seemed like she was getting more relaxed. She sat back in the chair she was sitting in, still looking at him, unsmiling.
“When I left, I thought it would be good for both of us to work through our grief and not confuse our feelings for each other. Be sure. Unencumbered.”
Marla nodded. “I understand that. I had to work through a lot of stuff too. The same kind of stuff.”
“I know. I think we needed to do that separately.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But it left the door open for other people to come into our lives.”
“Maybe they needed to come into our lives,” Sean said gently. “To show us that we couldn’t love anyone else.”
“If you loved me, then why did you sleep with her?”
“When that happened, I had been gone for a while. I had texted you and you never texted me back. I thought you were through with me.”
“You hadn’t contacted me for weeks when you sent that text!” Marla said indignantly. “Weeks!”
“That was wrong. I should have told you I might be out of contact for a while.”
“You sure as hell should have,” she said. “Do you have any idea how much I worried about you? Out in the woods cutting down trees? I envisioned trees falling on you and killing you!”
“I’m sorry for that. I thought you knew why I was out of touch, but I should never have assumed that. I should have known.”
“Damn right you should have.”
She got up and went to the kitchen. When she came back, she had two cups of coffee. Maybe she was beginning to soften up, Sean thought. Hoped. Prayed. His happiness now depended on if Marla was able to forgive him. If they were able to work through this.
“Thanks,” he said, taking the cup from her.
“Did you ask her out?” Marla asked, afraid of the answer. If he had asked her out, it was going to kill her.
“No, it wasn’t like that. I went to the bar like I always did on Saturday. She was new and we talked for weeks. She had a good listening ear.”
“Did you tell her about me in those talks?”
“No, not then. It was too personal. I never even told Pete.”
“Who’s Pete?” Sean had lived a whole new life in a world Marla knew nothing about while she had stayed in Bay Point, living her regular life.
“He was this old guy I met at the bar the second day I was in McGinley’s Gap. He got me the job. I used to talk to him a lot. I told him everything about my life, except for you.”
“That doesn’t make me feel very important.”
“That’s just it. It was because you were—are—too important to discuss in a bar.”
She laughed softly then. Were things turning around here, Sean wondered.
“So if you didn’t ask her out then how did you get to be with her?”
Sean really didn’t want to tell Marla about it but he supposed he was going to have to. Truth was the only way to go by that point.
“She asked me to go for a ride with her after she got off work one night.”
“Where did you go?”
“We went out in the middle of nowhere, out in the woods to this spot she used to go to with her old boyfriend. Their initials were carved in a tree out there.”
“Now that I think about it,” he continued. “She may have been working through some stuff about that boyfriend. I don’t know.”
“So, then what?” Marla asked.
“Do you really want to hear about this?”
“Yes. Keep talking.”
Against Sean’s better judgment, he kept talking.
“So, she said she knew I was sad or something like that and that she wanted to ease my pain.”
“You’re kidding? That’s a good line.”
Sean laughed. “Yeah, I was a real sucker, I guess.”
“At that point, I thought I had probably lost you forever. And I was lonely and hurting. So I let it happen. I’m sorry about it now.”
“How many times did you “let” it happen?”
“A few.”
“How many?”
“I guess about six.” His life was an open book now.
Marla frowned and she looked like she was going to cry.
“But then everything came together for me. And I think being with Crystal helped it come together. Because I realized that I didn’t love her—never thought I did—but I knew for certain that I loved you. I loved you from a clear place in my heart. A place only for you, Marla.”
Marla was crying now, softly. “I feel so jealous,” she said.
“I know. I had hoped to spare you from this, but I see now that was wrong. I feel jealous too, about Michael.”
Marla got up from the chair and moved to the couch. Sean took her in his arms and held her. “So did we have to be with other people before we could be with each other again?” she asked in a muffled tone against his chest.
“It sounds crazy, but maybe so. Maybe it was all part of the knowing for sure how we feel about each other.”
“Then I guess I’ll have to accept it.”
They started kissing, and like the first time on that couch, they undressed each other. She climbed onto his lap, straddling him and they moved together rhythmically. She arched her back and rolled her head back as he thrust into her. She ground her hips against him as he gently rolled her nipples between his thumbs and fingers. Then she moved forward, close to him as they climaxed. “I love you,” she said.
Chapter Thirty
“We’re going to have to tell my parents,” Marla said later that night over a supper of grilled cheese and soup. “If Michael’s reaction is any indication, it’s not going to go well.”
“We’ll do it together,” Sean said. “If you want to.” Sean was strong. He could face Marla’s parents. Meredith’s parents. They were, after all, still his in-laws.
“I guess that would be best.”
“We’re in this together now. I don’t plan to ever be without you again, so everybody’s just going to have to get used to it.” He grabbed her hand across the table.
“Before we do that, there’s something that I need to show you.”
He lifted his eyebrow. “What?”
Marla got up and went to the hall closet where she had put Meredith’s diary. As she was picking it up, she noticed the urn with Meredith’s ashes inside. They would need to do that, she thought. Scatter her ashes as she requested. But for now, she needed to show the diary to Sean.
She carried the green book to the kitchen and sat back down.
“What’s that?”
“It’s Meredith’s diary. I found it in the storeroom.”
Sean didn’t know Meredith had a diary. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to read what was in there right now, but he would read whatever Marla wanted him to read.
“I’m not suggesting you sit here and read the whole thing right now,” she said. “It will make you sad. But that’s your choice. What I really want you to read is this entry,” she said, handing him the diary, open to the last entry.
Sean took the book from her and started reading. When he was finished, he looked at Marla. “She knew us better than we knew ourselves,” he said. “I had already made peace with the fact that I loved you, outside of our connection to Meredith, but this makes it better.”
“I know. When I read that I was so blown away that I had to go see Diane.”
“Diane?”
“The grief counselor. I told her everything about us and then I let her read this part of the diary.”
“What did she think?”
“She was so moved by it that she started crying. We talked about it and that was when I said out loud to her that I love you. She brought me to that. And that’s when I knew I had to break it off with Mic
hael, whether you ever came back or not.”
“I’m grateful to Meredith for putting this in her diary,” Sean said. “It gives us a clear go-ahead, not that we don’t already have that. I think we need to take this with us when we talk to your parents.”
“I think I’ll copy that page. For now, at least. I’m not sure if they really want to read the rest.”
“Why? What’s in there?”
“She talks about when she met you and stuff like that. Personal stuff that parents really don’t want to read about their children.”
“Oh,” he said. “Yeah, I guess you’d better copy that page.”
When they had finished eating, Sean said, “I hate to say this, but I feel I need to call Crystal back.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I don’t know why she’s calling. I’ll do it with you right here. You can hear every word I say to her.”
“Okay.”
Sean hit the Call button on the missed call.
“Crystal, I saw you called me,” he said.
“Hey, Sean,” she said. “I was calling to let you know that Pete died Friday night. I knew you’d want to know.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I wish I were kidding.”
“What happened?” Sean couldn’t believe that old guy was gone.
“He had a heart attack. He called the ambulance but he was dead by the time they got there. Poor old Pete.”
Sean didn’t know what to say. He was speechless, thinking about Pete.
“How old was he?”
“He was eighty-eight.”
“I had no idea he was that old,” Sean said. “No idea.”
“He had a good life and I’m sure he had no regrets.”
“I’m sure about that,” Sean said, remembering the conversations he’d had with Pete, the tales he had told about his youth, his wife, his old age.
“I know you just got back there and everything so no one would expect you to come back up. We’re having a little service for him at the bar tomorrow night.”
“Please let everyone know how sorry I am and wish I could be there,”
“Okay. Are you doing all right?”
“I’m doing good.”
Hand-Me-Down Love Page 16
