by Dianne Dixon
“You better go to the ladies’ room and take care of that,” Erin told her. “I’ll dash across the street to the shoe sale and meet you back at the car.”
A few minutes later, Morgan had managed to get her shirt clean and was coming out of the restaurant. Two women were on their way in. Thinking about a report she needed to finish at work, Morgan absentmindedly held the door open. The taller woman, a blond, was pushing twins in a double stroller. The stroller pushed by the other woman contained a beautiful little girl who looked to be about eighteen months old.
The woman with the little girl told Morgan, “Thank you…for holding the door.”
At the sound of the woman’s voice, Morgan gasped and looked up, realizing it was Ali.
The rush of emotion in Morgan was overwhelming, complicated.
Relief that her exile was over.
Gladness that Ali was within reach again.
Hurt and bitter resentment that in all the months they’d been apart, Ali had never come looking for her.
Then there was confusion—Morgan’s eyes darting from Ali’s face to the child in the stroller.
And, above all, there was elation. Morgan was with her sister again. The first words out of her mouth were, “I’ve missed you so much!”
Ali was holding her tight. “Oh, Morgan. I started to call you a million times…”
“Me, too. Me, too.” Morgan’s grip on Ali was as fierce as if she had been lost at sea and Ali had just rescued her.
When Morgan stepped away, Ali gave her a look that said she noticed a difference, something she couldn’t put her finger on. And Morgan thought, I have so much to tell you. I’ve changed… I’m changing. And I want you to know all the reasons why.
“Stay,” Ali said. “Stay and have lunch with us. With Jess and me.”
Morgan realized then that the blond with the twins was Jessica. She stared at Jessica and then at Ali, unable to process what she was seeing. It didn’t make sense that all of this could have happened in the time she’d been away from Ali. “You have babies? You both have children?”
“You would have known if you’d talked to Mom,” Ali said. “She’s been worried about you. I guess I understand why you stopped talking to me, but why did you stop talking to Mom, too?”
“I’ve been going through a lot… I wasn’t ready to deal with Mom.” Morgan’s attention was on the child in Ali’s arms and the twins in the stroller. “How old are they?” she asked.
“My guys are five and a half months old today,” Jessica said. “I can’t believe I had twins. Maybe it rubbed off from hanging around with you and Ali.” She reached down and tousled her boys’ sandy-brown hair. “Ed and Joe.” She laughed. “We decided to go retro on the names.”
Ali lifted the little girl out of her stroller. “You two have met before. Say hello to your Aunt Morgan, Sofie.”
Morgan was baffled. “Sofie? Ava’s Sofie?”
Tears immediately appeared in Ali’s eyes. “Ava died. Months ago. Right after Christmas.” Ali looked as if she was trying to anticipate Morgan’s next question.
Morgan didn’t have any questions. She could see how Sofie was fitted against Ali’s side, and the loving, protective way Ali was cradling her. Sofie is Ali’s little girl now, Morgan thought, and that makes her family.
Morgan held her arms out to Sofie. Sofie came into them willingly. Instantaneous warmth flowed through Morgan—she was gazing at Sofie in amazement.
Suddenly, Morgan understood the full meaning of this miracle, and she waved to a group of strangers on their way out of the restaurant. “This is Sofie,” she told them. “She’s my niece!”
The first thing Morgan did after she was in her car on her way back to work was call Sam, to give him the news. “It’s a miracle. I have a child in my life. Somebody who doesn’t have any preconceived ideas about me. Sofie is my new beginning, Sam. I want to be fun and interesting…the perfect aunt. I want Sofie to see me as spectacular!”
“Then be spectacular,” Sam told Morgan. “Live with your arms wide open to the world.”
Matt
A strange connection had taken root between Matt and Danielle. Matt suspected he should put a stop to it, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t ready. Not yet.
On the afternoon when Matt had lost his job and had agreed to meet Danielle at her apartment, he’d assumed he was on his way to something weak, and seedy, and completely wrong.
As it turned out, there was weakness in it. But Matt still couldn’t decide how much of it was wrong. The one thing he was sure of was that it wasn’t seedy. It was astonishing.
On Matt’s first visit—when he discovered that Danielle lived in the French Normandy gatehouse of an old limestone mansion in the Hollywood Hills—she had been in the gatehouse’s arched entryway, waiting for him. Wearing a floor-length kimono of aquamarine silk. Silk so thin and fine it was transparent.
Danielle’s feet had been bare. As Matt came closer, he noticed how perfectly shaped they were—beautifully pedicured, each toenail polished in a sensuous cocoa brown.
After he’d come to a stop in front of her, Danielle bent down and removed his shoes and socks without saying a word. Then she took his cell phone and shut it off.
When she led Matt inside and closed the heavy wooden door, he had the sensation of being abruptly and completely removed from the world, as if he’d stepped into a cloister or a castle in a dream, where the air was still. The sound muffled. And the light was perpetual twilight.
The plaster walls were at least eighteen inches thick. All of the wood floors were dark, almost black. The same dark wood was in the massive exposed beams of the ceiling. The windows were narrow and arched, all of them crosshatched, lead paned. The thick glass in each pane was dull and watery. The furniture seemed made for the room, weighty, opulent. Looking as if it had been undisturbed for a hundred years.
“I’ve got weed and wine,” Danielle said to Matt. “I think you should go with the wine.”
Her voice was low, and he felt like this dreamlike place already had him drifting into a trance.
There were stemmed glasses and an open wine bottle on a table near the sofa, where Matt was. Danielle filled one of the glasses and handed it to him. The wine was ruby red. The same color as the satin pillows lining the back of the sofa, the same color as the thick Turkish towels and large pebble-glass bowl that were on the floor in front of it.
Danielle eased Matt back against the satin pillows. When she was satisfied he was comfortable, she sat cross-legged in front of him on the floor. She reached out and neatly rolled the cuffs of his pants up to his knees. Then she took one of the Turkish towels and laid it across her lap. After that, she picked up the glass bowl, which was filled with water, and nested it in the towel. Danielle lifted Matt’s feet and lowered them into the bowl. The water was warm. The pleasure of it made Matt slowly inhale and discover that the warmth was scented with sandalwood.
Danielle bent her head over her work, carefully washing Matt’s left foot, then his right. The waves and curls of her hair parted to reveal the back of her neck, which was indescribably lovely.
Matt lifted his hand ever so slightly, then dropped it, letting it stay where it was. He was weak. With pleasure? With desire? He wasn’t sure.
After Danielle dried his feet and rubbed them with a lightly perfumed oil, she put away the bowl and the towels and climbed in beside Matt. She slid around behind him, cradling him against her chest.
“Where are we going with this?” Something was stirring in Matt, something hot and carnal.
“We’re going someplace good,” she said. “Someplace safe.”
“Someplace safe?” His chuckle was bitter. “Where would that be?”
“Shhh,” Danielle whispered. “No talking. No thinking. Just be still.”
She slowly slipped her fingers through his hair.
&nbs
p; There was honesty in her touch. Danielle was making it clear that in this moment, she had no expectation of sex—no expectation that he would dishonor Ali. It flooded Matt with relief. Even in the midst of his weakness, the part of him that was still strong wanted to stay true to Ali.
The brush of Danielle’s lips across the back of his neck brought Matt a sense of being able to let go, relax.
He was in a place he’d never been before—in the arms of a woman who was demanding nothing from him. A woman who wasn’t trying to know his secrets or peer into his soul. A woman whose only expectation was that he would close his eyes and sleep.
• • •
Matt’s relationship with Danielle lasted the entire time he was unemployed.
After his final day in the television industry, Matt never said a word to Ali about having lost his job. He continued to leave home every morning as if he were going work, and went to Danielle instead.
It was a futile attempt to shelter Ali from how bleak things were. But even before he lost his job, they’d been living paycheck to paycheck, and the paychecks had stopped two months ago. Matt was barely keeping up with the minimum payments on the credit cards. Soon he wouldn’t able to cover the mortgage. He and Ali were in trouble.
And now here he was, coming downstairs at two in the morning, discovering Ali at the kitchen table. Surrounded by printouts of every overdue bill, every red-lined bank statement—heartbroken tears streaming down her face.
It brought Matt to his knees.
“Where did our money go? Why haven’t you been paying the bills?” Ali’s voice was flat and dead as if, without even hearing the answer to her question, she was already destroyed.
“The show was canceled. I lost my job.” Still on his knees, Matt didn’t look up; he couldn’t face her.
“How long have you been out of work?”
“Eight weeks, almost nine.”
“And you never said a word to me.”
The sense of betrayal in Ali’s voice was crushing Matt.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Ali slapped him so hard he saw stars.
And he stayed kneeling beside her chair—expecting her to slap him again.
The look on Ali’s face was awful. Fury. Fear. And a kind of glassy-eyed craziness.
She suddenly turned away from Matt, grabbing a calculator, frantically entering a flow of numbers. Matt reached out to slow the rapid movement of her hand—the same way he’d reached out to slow the movement of her pencil when they’d been at BerryBlue Farm. When she was sketching the plans for her restaurant. When he’d told her he wanted to make all her dreams come true.
I’m sorry for the danger I landed you in, he was thinking, the danger every woman is in when she puts her trust in me.
Ali’s fingers continued to fly, adding up the debts, exposing the bottomless hole Matt had dragged them into.
“I’ve got résumés out. All over the place.” He was clammy with shame. “I’ll take the first thing I find. Writing, teaching, whatever. Whatever makes sense.”
Ali moved her attention from the calculator to Matt. Her focus seemed uncannily clear, as if she were seeing all his secrets. His odd, intimately sexless relationship with Danielle. And the awful things he had done when he’d vanished from Rhode Island for those three days. And trespasses he’d committed long before that.
“I don’t know how much more I can take,” she said.
Matt held his breath, waiting to find out if his secrets were safe, and realizing they were. Ali was talking about herself, not about him.
“My life is in pieces,” she was saying. “I was attacked, and whoever did it is still out there. Ava is dead. And my sister’s morphed into someone new that I don’t quite recognize. My whole world is upside down.”
Ali rummaged through the piles of papers on the tabletop, her voice suddenly thin and frightened. “What’s going to happen to us? We’re completely out of money.”
“That’s not true.” Matt reached to clear away the bills.
Ali snatched them back while he told her, “I bought us a few more months.”
She wasn’t paying attention. She was busily rearranging the bills, fastening them with rubber bands. As if by shoving them into tight, banded stacks she could corral the threat they represented.
Matt had never been more worried about her—had never seen her this close to the edge. “Ali, did you hear what I said? I got us some breathing room.”
“How?” She continued to arrange and rearrange the unpaid bills.
The taste in Matt’s mouth was acid, like biting down on metal. “I borrowed money.”
“From who?”
“Aidan.”
“Aidan?” There was a startled, haunted look in Ali’s eyes. “I wish you hadn’t done that…borrowing money…from him.”
“I didn’t know what else to do.”
Ali put her hands over her face and moaned.
Matt had made them beggars. He understood why Ali couldn’t stand the sight of him.
There was bitter irony in Ali’s voice as she said, “One of my waitresses quit. She got a better job…where she’s going to make a lot more money.”
It was deathly quiet in the room. Matt could hear intermittent pulses of water moving through the ice maker inside the refrigerator.
It was killing him as he asked, “Have you hired anybody to take her place?”
“I’ve interviewed a couple of people but—”
“I’ll do it. I’ll wait tables. It’ll give you one less check to write every month.”
And he thought, I’m a man with a PhD, and I’ll put on an apron every day and ask, “Do you want fries with that?” I’ll clean away other people’s dirty dishes and scoop up tips, and still not make enough money to keep a roof over my wife’s head, or my child’s. This is my punishment for all the wrong I’ve done.
Matt was helplessly watching what he loved most—his marriage, and Ali—slip away.
Ali
“I don’t know. I have no idea how to describe what’s going on with my life right now.” Ali stopped to shake water droplets out of her hair. A few feet away, Sofie was running through the sprinklers, splashing Ali with each pass and giggling uncontrollably.
Ali scooted closer to the trunk of an old oak tree, to keep her phone dry, while she told Jessica, “I’m glad you called. I’ve missed you.”
“What are you doing at home, playing in the yard? It’s the middle of the day. How come you’re not at the restaurant?”
Ali smiled, enjoying the calm of the backyard. The sun-dappled grass. The tree branches moving lazily on the breeze. Sophie waltzing away from the sprinklers to dance among the flowers. “I just needed a break,” Ali said. “I’m a little overwhelmed.”
“Why? Has something happened?”
“Jess, remember when we ran into Morgan at that Italian restaurant the other day? Did she seem different to you?”
“I guess. A little. Wait, now that I think about it, she looked different. She actually looked kind of pretty. And she didn’t seem as lame and clueless as she usually is.”
“The Sensitivity Awards called. I forgot to give you the message. You didn’t win.”
Jessica laughed. “Well, there’s always next year.”
Ali leaned back against the tree, trying to sort out what she was thinking. “It’s weird, Jess. I mean it’s great having my sister back…and from the minute she laid eyes on Sofie, she fell in love with her, which is wonderful. I’m really looking forward to having Morgan around again, but…”
“What’s the problem?”
“There’s something different about her. And it’s not just the way she looks. It’s something about the way she is. Morgan’s still my twin. I can still feel her. There’s something in her that’s confused, unresolved.”
“Rel
ax. Morgan’s made a career of being the confused kitten. That’s not going to change. It’s what works for her. Speaking of work, has Matt had any luck getting a job?”
“No. He’s still waiting tables at the restaurant. Jess, it’s awful. He hates being there. And I hate that he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.” Ali waited until she was sure she wouldn’t cry. “Every morning, when I see him putting on that waiter’s apron instead of going to a job with a serious paycheck, it’s like this gut-kick reminder. We’re another day closer to the end.”
Ali looked across the yard toward the home she loved, her eyes swimming with tears. “Matt had us living on the edge, and now there isn’t even an edge. We’re about to lose everything…the house…the restaurant. Everything.”
“You’re not making a profit with the restaurant yet?”
“Nope. It’s barely breaking even.”
“Is Matt looking? Is he really trying to find work?”
Ali sighed. “He’s doing everything he can. I know he’ll find something eventually. It just doesn’t look like he’s going to find it in time.”
“Where are you with him right now? Do you love him? Hate him?”
“I don’t have a clue.” Uneasiness was rolling through Ali in waves. “I’ve got this suspicion that I still don’t know everything…that he’s keeping some huge secret…and till I know what it is, I won’t be able to make up my mind how I feel about him.”
Ali didn’t want to talk anymore. She just wanted to be in the garden with Sofie, quiet and alone. “I’ve got to go, Jess. Love you.”
Ali ended the call as Sofie skipped past with a fistful of flowers in her hand and a halo of sunlight on her hair. Ali waved her phone, snapping a picture.
But Sofie was moving too fast and Ali’s aim had been off.
The image on the screen was eerie, almost sinister—an area at the corner of the house, deep in shadow. And low to the ground, staring out from the heart of the darkness, was a pair of eyes. Close-set and glittering.
Ali lowered the phone, looked toward the shadow. A black cat was there, crouched beside the house, its eyes slitted and unblinking.
