“Look,” Bess said, “why don’t you join us for dinner tomorrow evening. We’re having a fondue feast, sort of a reprise of the one we had back in college but without the disasters.”
“Thanks, Bess,” Chris said quickly, “but it’s probably better that I don’t.”
“But what are you going to do with yourself until the wedding? You can’t sit around all on your own.”
“I’ll be fine,” Chris told her. “I’ve got my computer with me; I’m not on vacation.”
Then, before she could stop herself, Bess blurted: “Allison told us about the accident and the miscarriage. She told us everything.”
There was a long silence during which Bess wondered if she had lost her mind. Allison had specifically asked her friends not to tell Chris she had come clean. “Chris?” she asked, with a bit of trepidation. “Are you still there?”
When Chris spoke, his voice was unsteady. “She swore she wouldn’t tell anyone,” he said.
“Don’t be mad at her, Chris. She had to tell us. She’s suffering.” Bess flinched. “Sorry. That sounds like blame. Blame shouldn’t be a part of this. But you should know that Allison is terribly unhappy.”
“And you still think that my being at your wedding is a good thing?” Chris sighed. “I think I should just go back to Chicago. I’m sorry, Bess. This was a very bad idea on my part. At the very least I should have called before I left for the east coast.”
“No,” Bess said firmly. “I want you to be part of my celebration. Please say you’ll come for dinner tomorrow. Please. We need to be together again.” Why, Bess asked herself suddenly, her hand tightening on the phone. Why do we need to be together? Why do I still need this to happen, after all this time and all I’ve learned these past days about the inevitability of change, about impermanence, about loss?
“I’ll think about it,” Chris promised. “I’ll let you know by tomorrow afternoon.”
“All right,” she said. “In the meantime, I’ll tell the others you’re in town.”
“They might not be so welcoming,” Chris pointed out. “If everyone thinks it best I leave, you’ll be honest with me?”
“I will,” Bess promised.
“Thanks. Until tomorrow, then.”
Phone still in her hand, Bess leaned back against the counter. It was what she had wanted, Chris to be there with them, the whole gang together to help her celebrate the most important day of her life.
Be careful what you wish for . . . Her dour great aunt Mercy had loved to intone that grim old warning and others like it. It had driven Bess mad at times, all that doom and gloom, but now she wondered if Great Aunt Mercy hadn’t been on to something after all. Look before you leap. That was something else she used to say.
Bess put a hand to her forehead. She thought of Chuck and Dean, of Mike and Marta, of Nathan, and especially of Allison, the one who had so recently praised Bess’s sense of loyalty. What had she gotten them all into?
Chapter 74
Marta was straightening the clothes that hung in the bedroom closet. The pants and shirts and sundresses didn’t need straightening, but Marta needed something to keep her hands busy. Busy work. It was something at which women were meant to be good. She wished that Mike was not with her in the room. She wished that he would envelope her in his arms.
“Do you love me?”
Marta jumped at the sound of Mike’s voice and turned from the closet. “Of course, I love you,” she said. He was standing by the dresser, hands in the front pockets of his jeans.
“Why of course?” he said in that logical, lawyer-like way he rarely used outside of the office or courtroom.
Marta tried to smile. “Mike, nothing’s changed between us.”
“Yes, it has,” he said simply. “Of course, it has.”
“What is it that you most object to?” she asked. “Me being unhappy about having another child, or me not having told you the truth right away?”
“Both upset me,” Mike admitted, “but I can get my head around you not being thrilled to have to go through another pregnancy and childbirth. All the stuff I can’t help you with. I wish you were happy about it, but I’d be totally callous and stupid if I couldn’t understand your frustration.”
Marta swallowed hard. He was a good man. One of the best. “So,” she said, fighting tears, “it’s my not having been honest up front that really hurts.”
“Yeah.”
“I tried to tell you how I felt but—” Marta realized she didn’t know how to go on.
“But what?” Mike asked.
“But you didn’t listen! The other day, when we were at the Cove, I said I needed to talk to you about something important, but you were too busy watching a schooner to hear me! I needed help, but you . . .” Again, Marta struggled to find the right words. “You really had no suspicion that I was unhappy,” she asked, “even when I kept refusing to share the news with the others?”
“No.” Mike laughed bitterly. “Silly me, I thought it was a hormone thing. A mood that would pass.”
A mood that would pass. Was that all it had been, Marta wondered? Had her desire for a career, a fresh start, been but a passing mood?
“Dean and I are going for a drive,” Mike said, grabbing a baseball cap from the top of the dresser. “I’ll see you later.”
And then he was gone.
Marta sank onto the bed and dropped her head into her hands. She should have kept her mouth shut. She should have lived with the solitary consequences of her silence. This is what honesty had wrought, a disaster, and in spite of what Mike claimed, even if she had told him the truth about her feelings immediately upon learning about the pregnancy, he still would have been hurt. And Marta would have been to blame.
Finally, the tears came.
Chapter 75
Bess had asked them all to gather in the kitchen. Allison’s curiosity was aroused but not piqued. Everyone knew that Bess liked dramatics.
“So, why have we been summoned?” Dean asked, shifting the baby from one hip to the other. He and Mike had returned from a road trip with a box of a dozen donuts from a local bakery. They seemed very proud of the fact that they hadn’t eaten any of the dozen on the way home.
“How many did you have at the bakery?” Chuck had asked, lips twitching.
“None,” Dean said at the same time Mike was saying, “Only one.”
“Actually,” Dean added, with a hangdog expression. “We each had two.”
Allison suddenly noticed that Mike and Marta were standing at opposite ends of the group. That was unusual. They always seemed to gravitate to each other’s side. But she was more interested in what Bess had to say than what might or might not be going on between Mike and Marta after last night’s argument.
Bess looked nervously from one to the other of the group and, finally, to Nathan, who stood at her side. “I got a call from Chris earlier,” she said quickly. “He’s here, in Kennebunkport.”
Allison felt a tingling course through her arms and legs. “Did you know that he was coming?” she asked sharply.
“Gosh, no!” Bess cried. “I was totally surprised when he told me he was in town. He asked if he could still come to the wedding.”
“I hope you told him that the answer was no!” Marta’s expression, already grim, grew darker.
Nathan put an arm around Bess’s shoulders. “It’s Bess’s decision to make,” he said quietly but firmly.
“I told him that he was still invited. But—”
“But nothing,” Nathan said. “Don’t apologize.”
Mike shook his head. “I can’t believe he just showed up. What nerve.”
“Nathan is right. The decision to invite him was and still is Bess’s decision to make,” Chuck pointed out, not without a sympathetic look for Allison. “Of course, it would have been better if he had called from Chicago and asked if the invitation was still open, rather than putting her on the spot like this.”
“There’s something else,” Bess went o
n. “I told him that we know the truth about the accident and the miscarriage and about his being the one to want a divorce.”
Allison flinched and sank onto the nearest stool at the island. Chuck put a hand on her shoulder. So much for Bess’s exalted sense of loyalty, Allison thought. She had promised not to tell Chris that Allison had broken her word to him.
“I’m sorry, Allison,” Bess added quickly. “Really. But I thought it best that he know, especially as he still wants to be a part of the celebrations.”
“How did he take the news?” Dean asked.
“Fine. I mean, he wasn’t angry, just surprised.”
Marta frowned. “He has no right to be angry. It was a ridiculous thing to ask from Allison, her silence. It’s not a good idea for him to be here. At the very least things are going to be awkward.”
“Allison?” Chuck asked quietly.
“I haven’t seen him in so long,” she said, her voice low. And I’ve been doing so well these past few days, she told herself. She had been feeling calm and strong, able to think about Chris without bitterness or anger.
Chuck cleared his throat. “If Bess says it’s okay for Chris to be here for the wedding I know we’ll all welcome him with open arms. Or at the very least with an open mind. After all, it’s brave of him to stick around now that he knows we’re aware of what happened. He could have chosen to fly right back to Chicago rather than face us.”
“He might still decide to run off,” Marta said.
“There’s something else,” Bess blurted. “I asked him to come to dinner tomorrow night. For the fondue party. But we agreed that if everyone else objects he won’t come.”
A slightly hysterical laugh burst from Allison. “In for a penny, in for a pound,” she said, rising from the stool onto which she had collapsed. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said, “I need some air.”
With rapid strides, she passed through the living room, grabbing her bag from where it sat on an end table, and out to her car parked in the drive. Damn him, she thought. Just when she was on the verge of finding peace and forgiveness so that she could move on into a postmarital world . . .
Determinedly, Allison steered the car out of the drive and onto the road. She was not going to let Chris ruin everything for her, the progress she had made these past two years, the progress she had made these past days here in Kennebunkport. Sure, she was mad at Bess; Bess had betrayed a trust. But it was Chris who was responsible for the wreck her life had become.
Correction. The wreck her life might have become if she had let it.
Chapter 76
The only people left in the kitchen were Bess and Marta. Bess wasn’t sure exactly when or where the others had gone. Except for Allison. She had made it clear that being far away from Driftwood House was where she wanted to be.
“I wish this whole mess hadn’t happened!” Bess wailed.
“I’m sure Allison and Chris do, too,” Marta said dryly. She was sitting at the island, stirring a cup of tea from which she had yet to take a sip.
“I wanted Chris to be with us and now that he’s going to be I’m a wreck. I should have told him no, but I just couldn’t bring myself to say the words.” No was not a word she used with frequency, not when it came to the wishes of other people.
“You could still tell him no,” Marta pointed out. “You could call him right now and tell him you’ve reconsidered and that his being here for the wedding wouldn’t be right. Look, things are bad enough between Chris and Allison. How much worse could they get by telling Chris to go home?”
“It probably wouldn’t affect anything between Chris and Allison at this point,” Bess admitted. “But I could forfeit Chris’s friendship.”
“Do you still really consider him a friend?” Marta asked thoughtfully. “I mean, a close friend? When was the last time you had a heart-to-heart with Chris?”
Bess considered that question for a long moment. “Never, not really,” she said finally. “Chris is in my life because of Allison. I doubt we would have become friends otherwise. Chris and I never had much in common.”
“If that’s the case,” Marta said, “then do you really miss Chris as Chris or do you miss the easy, reliable way things were, with Chris as Allison’s husband and Chuck’s BFF?”
Bess sighed. “I primarily miss Chris as part of the group, I suppose. But that doesn’t mean I don’t care for him! Look, would you do it for me, Marta? Would you call and tell him not to join us tomorrow night?”
“No,” Marta said. “Absolutely not. You need to take responsibility for this, Bess.”
Bess put her hands to her head and groaned. “What have I done?”
“Nothing that requires such dramatics.”
“Did I hear someone groan?”
Bess was startled to see that Chuck, Dean, and Mike were back. She hadn’t heard them.
“Bess is agonizing over the situation,” Marta explained. “Someone talk her down. She’s not listening to me.”
“I still say we give Chris a chance,” Chuck said.
Mike nodded. “He was badly hurt, too,” he said. “Not that I’m letting him entirely off the hook, but . . . Men need compassion as well.”
Mike was right, Bess thought. Poor Chris.
“Is it fair to put Allison in this situation?” Dean asked. “I mean, she’s here because she believed Chris wouldn’t be.”
Marta nodded. “Good point.”
“Look,” Mike said. “I could call Chris, tell him it’s not a good idea that he join us tomorrow.”
“You’ll fall on your sword for the crew?” Chuck asked.
“A phone call isn’t as dramatic as all that, but yeah. Bess?”
Bess sighed. “I think I should let the invitation stand. Chris said he’ll call tomorrow to see what the consensus is. When he does, Allison can make the final decision about both dinner and the wedding and I’ll abide by it.”
“That’s putting a lot of pressure on Allison,” Mike said quietly.
“She can handle it,” Marta said sharply.
Bess looked to Chuck. “It’s a good idea,” he said. “Don’t worry, Bess. Everything will be all right.”
* * *
Bess was arranging the breakfast things for the following morning. She liked to get at least part of the meal in readiness the night before—the coffee beans ground; cereal boxes lined up on the counter; a note if there was something special to be found in the fridge. That way, if someone came down to the kitchen before she did, they wouldn’t have to start from scratch.
Usually, Bess enjoyed the task of preparation. But not that night. Dinner had been tense. Mike and Marta were clearly still at odds. Allison hadn’t said much, not after having confronted Bess upon her return from wherever it was she had gone earlier. The conversation kept playing itself in Bess’s head.
“You should have had the courtesy to check with me before telling Chris it was okay to join us,” Allison had said angrily. “Why is it so important to you that we all be one big, happy family? Why can’t you accept that sometimes life is awful and that people do stupid and hurtful things?”
Bess had felt shame rush through her. “I’ve asked myself the same question over and over,” she admitted. “I’m sorry, Allison.”
“Well,” Allison had gone on, her tone sarcastically bright, “you know what they say. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
For the first time, Bess had realized the absurdity of that remark. Stronger? No. Plenty of people lived broken lives with broken hearts. Some even died of their heartache, no matter what dry and factual explanation scientists gave to such deaths. Those people had to be accounted for. They had to be respected. And they had to be left alone at some point to live their lives the way in which they were best able to. Sugarcoating trauma didn’t help anyone. Pretending that every person was strong enough to conquer any conceivable obstacle was more than wrong. It was insulting.
Still she hadn’t been able to resist voicing the idea that had bee
n tickling at the corner of her mind since Chris’s call earlier that day. “Maybe he wants to be at the wedding because he wants to see you,” she had ventured. “Maybe—” The look on Allison’s face brought Bess to a halt.
“I won’t make a scene,” Allison had said without expression. “But don’t expect me to go out of my way to welcome him. Just don’t.”
Bess continued to lay out fresh napkins and coffee mugs. She checked that the bowls of raw and of white sugar were filled and free of alien bits of food (sometimes Mike forgot to use the spoon designated for the sugar and stuck his cereal spoon into the bowl) and peeked through the little plastic window on the pepper grinder to be sure it was filled with enough peppercorns to last another few meals. She went to the fridge. They were low on grapefruit juice. She wondered if she should buy another container; who among them was drinking it? Not Nathan. His cholesterol medicine prevented him from overdoing his consumption of grapefruit. And Dean didn’t like tart things, so that left . . .
Bess slammed the door of the fridge. Suddenly, it all seemed so stupid and futile. Why did she bother? Who really appreciated all of her efforts to be a good hostess? It was ridiculous to have put faith in a pact of friendship made by a bunch of drunk kids. Bess sank onto a stool at the island and put her head in her hands.
Maybe her compulsive need to play hostess was masking some big insecurity or character deficiency. She had always enjoyed catering to people, so much so that she had built a career around the art of caring. Why? Was it some sort of hangover from the years she had spent taking care of her baby sisters? Did she need the thanks so badly? Did she crave attention and praise, even adulation, to an unhealthy extent?
Bess dropped her hands and sighed. Why now? Why on the cusp of the most important day of her life was she plagued by these annoying and possibly darkly important questions? Her obsession that everyone around her be happy. Her compulsion to make it so.
Obsession. Compulsion. Where were these words coming from?
Suddenly, she couldn’t wait until this whole wedding business was done and dusted. She couldn’t wait until she could be alone with Nathan, living their own life, here or in Stockholm, away from . . . away from her friends, the people who looked to her for spoiling and special treatment.
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