Devlin didn’t stay with Helen the entire way around the lake, but Alec did notice that he kept coming back to check on her.
It got so when she saw him approach, she’d smile impudently and shout, “Ankles!”
Unaware his father was watching, Devlin actually grinned at her.
“Don’t take up ice-skating.”
Clomping stiffly along, she said with a certain grim note, “I promise you, the thought never crossed my mind.”
Noting Helen’s exhaustion, Alec kept pace with her for about the last mile, where the trail followed the shoreline and only a scattering of shrubs separated it from the speeding cars on Aurora Avenue, one of Seattle’s busiest roads.
The minute they reached their starting point, she flung herself to the grass and flopped onto her back, arms and legs outstretched.
“I made it.” She moaned. “I didn’t think I’d make it.”
“We didn’t, either,” her daughter confessed.
“You did fine,” Alec said stoutly.
She rolled her eyes toward him. Amusement lurked in them along with perfect knowledge of how inept she’d been.
“That’s the end of my in-line skating career. Devlin,” she turned her head to look at him, “thank you. You’re a lifesaver.”
His cheeks turned crimson and he cast a hasty glance at his father before mumbling, “It’s okay.”
“Girls.” Helen fastened her gaze on them. “I will make you pay someday for all those giggles.”
The threat was met with renewed hilarity. Alec shook his head and for a moment met his son’s eyes in complete agreement.
“I need lunch,” Helen announced, sitting up. “Once I get these off.”
“Our shoes are in the car,” Lily said.
“Don’t care.” It took Helen only a minute to strip to bare feet. She stood with her skates in one hand and her socks in the other.
The others took a paved path; she walked across grass with a blissful expression on her face. Every time Alec looked her way, she was wriggling her toes or bouncing on tiptoe.
“See?” she said when they met up at the car. She stood on one foot. “I have balance. I do.”
The kids all gave her pitying looks. Alec smiled in reassurance. “Of course you do.”
She glared at him. “Hand me my sandals.”
“Can we have fish and chips again?” Lily asked. “I love Spud’s.”
“Me, too,” Ginny agreed, as if they ate there all the time.
“Dev?” Alec asked.
Standing a good ten feet away from the rest of them, he shrugged.
“Helen?”
“Why not?”
Instead of sitting at an outdoor table, they then carried their lunch back across the street to the park, finding a stretch of grass in the shade. There they spread out and ate in contented silence.
Passing cars, the shrieks from the beach and the murmur of conversation and distant laughter melded into the background. Alec noticed that Helen’s nose was pink again, although her daughter had become quite brown over the summer.
The eight days since they’d made love for the first time had been good. Only twice had they managed enough privacy to do more than kiss. Once, just yesterday, she’d called and said, “I talked my way out of the fair in Whatcom County. Everybody else has gone except Logan, who’s doing a job on Vashon Island.” In other words, a ferry ride away. “Want to come over?”
“On my way.” He’d dropped the phone, called up the stairs, “Be back in a couple of hours,” and hadn’t waited for a reply.
Helen’s bedroom was airy and relatively spartan; none of the lace and clutter so many women seemed to like. She had a handsome, wide dresser, a small, unusual secretary desk with a dozen or more small drawers, and a simple full bed with no headboard. The wood floors upstairs hadn’t yet been refinished and were scratched and scuffed, but she’d spread a kind of shag rug that looked sinfully deep and was made of… He peered down at it.
“Men’s T-shirts,” she said helpfully. “You know, those white ones our fathers wore. It’s really soft.”
Her closet door was decorated with Ginny’s artwork, all labeled with dates. Some of it was damn good. Above Helen’s bed was a complex, embroidered wool wall hanging, South American he thought, that described a world: small figures carried burdens on their back, built houses, pushed boats with long poles, herded llamas. Two Seattle Art Museum posters decorated other walls. A simple bookcase was filled to overflowing with a stereo, CDs in wicker baskets, and books.
They made love on her bed, shaking it, finally banging it against the wall. They did it a second time sprawled on the T-shirt rug, Helen astride him, glorious with her milky pale skin and fiery hair tangled and spilling over her shoulders and breasts.
Now, replete with fish and chips, Alec lay back on the grass and watched her talking to the girls and Devlin, who did no more than grunt in return.
She would win him over. She was too nice for him to resist. Alec indulged in a brief fantasy in which his son, under her gentling influence, became again the laughing, curious, outgoing kid he’d once been.
A little sleepy, Alec let himself soak in euphoria as if it were a hot tub, bubbling and steaming around him.
It felt unbelievably good to be happy again. A grin tugged at his mouth at the inanity of the thought. Of course being happy felt good; that’s what happiness was.
The last time he’d been happy, though, he hadn’t fully appreciated it. He’d fallen in love in his early twenties, married a terrific woman, had great kids, a satisfying career with enough variety to keep him interested. Everything had come easily. Sometimes that had frightened him, but on the whole he took it all for granted.
In one way, Alec still believed you ought to be able to take a relationship for granted. That’s what trust was all about, wasn’t it? You shouldn’t have to live day to day thinking, This could end.
But he guessed he never again would live without that awareness hovering, somewhere in the back of his mind. Maybe it sharpened happiness, made him more aware of it. Maybe he would appreciate the good things in life more, now that he knew how easily they could be snatched away.
But he’d like to think he could get to the point where he had some faith that life would continue on an even keel, that he could safely feel happy.
Maybe that’s what today was about, he thought sleepily. He sensed Helen’s wariness was collapsing like the Berlin Wall, and he was starting to believe she would marry him eventually. She’d overcome her own fears enough to let them be together.
Of course, she hadn’t yet told him why she’d come to hate herself by the time Ben had died. Alec guessed it was some form of guilt, which so often became tangled with grief.
I could have made that one loving gesture.
I should have said…
I didn’t tell him…
You could go on and on forever, regretting. Or you could forgive yourself as part of the healing and let it all go.
Helen, he hoped, was doing that now. She laughed more easily. She didn’t shy away so much from his casual mentions of the future. She was more willing to get involved with his kids.
Wondering if anyone would notice if he closed his eyes, Alec had one last coherent thought.
Yeah, it’ll be all right.
HELEN KISSED ALEC goodbye right in front of all of their children with a reckless abandon that was foreign to her.
What are we hiding? she thought defiantly.
The girls looked disinterested. Devlin turned his head away so quickly she couldn’t tell what he thought. He hadn’t been so bad today. In a burst of optimism, she decided that Alec had been overreacting to typical teenage sullenness. She couldn’t be sure, of course, until she spent more time with them, but the fourteen-year-old had been nice to her. Maybe he’d be okay with…
Well, Helen didn’t know what she wanted him to be okay with, except in a hazy sense of future possibilities. But she didn’t want him to actively dislike
her, she knew that much.
“Call you later,” Alec murmured in her ear, before hopping back into the car.
Helen took Ginny’s hand and climbed the steps. “Wow, it was nice taking the whole weekend off. Although I do feel guilty.” She’d done the setup on Friday for the craft fair in Lynden, but begged off first Saturday and now Sunday.
“Logan said it would be fun to go today.”
“Logan was lying. He was being nice.”
Ginny looked perplexed at the idea of kindness masquerading as deceit. “Was Raoul being nice, too?”
“No, I think Raoul really did want to go.” Helen unlocked the front door. “He’s never done it. He probably thought it sounded cool.” They stepped into the empty house. “Logan, on the other hand, spent too many weekends working fairs last year. Remember?”
Ginny put her skates in the closet. “I don’t think he’s very good at selling stuff.”
Helen laughed. “I don’t think he is, either.”
After Ginny was in bed that night, she thanked Logan again and told him what the eight-year-old had said.
He was having a rare beer, his feet up on a second chair in the kitchen. He gave a grunt of amusement. “She’s right. I suck. Do you know what a dive I took to build the cabinets in here when Kathleen first called me?”
Smiling, Helen pulled up a chair. “No, did you lose a lot?”
“Big time.” He shook his head. “I knew she couldn’t afford what they really cost.”
“And you were in love.”
His eyes had a way of smiling even when his mouth didn’t. “Something like that.”
She poked his foot. “It better be love!”
“What about you?” he asked. “Ditching us this weekend. Is it love?”
Helen opened her mouth to say something like Don’t be silly. What came out instead was, “I don’t know.”
His brows rose. “You don’t know? Or you don’t want to know?”
“I…” Panic wriggled in her stomach. “I think…” Her voice shrank to near a whisper. “I don’t want to know.”
Logan let it go when she made it plain she didn’t want to answer any more questions.
But Helen found she couldn’t let it go. Was she in love? If so, her vow had crumbled the minute she met a nice man.
Maybe, a small voice whispered, the minute she met the right man.
“My Monty,” she thought, remembering the day she met Alec, when Lucinda told Helen about her tragic first marriage and the wonderful man she married later. How funny that she’d heard the story the very day she met a man she now suspected was her Monty.
She was almost glad to have planned a four-day trip to Portland that week. Clearly she needed to think.
The next morning, Kathleen and Ginny drove her to the airport and hugged her goodbye. As Helen went through security her last sight of Ginny was of a forlorn small figure waving.
With no companion on this trip, Helen had plenty of time for thinking. Days were full; she’d scheduled several appointments, and she dropped into as many shops as she could squeeze into business hours. But evenings in her hotel room were lonely despite brief conversations with Ginny and Alec. Ginny came first. Right after dinner every day, Helen called her daughter, who appeared to be doing fine. Still, her voice always trembled when she said, “Night, Mom. I wish you were coming home tomorrow.”
Then it was TV or one of the several novels Helen had brought. More often than not, she found herself rereading the page over and over, or realizing she’d lost the thread of Friends or the movie of the week.
Maybe, Helen thought, she wasn’t the same woman she’d been when Ben became ill. After his death, she’d decided her love had been selfish. Now, she suspected it had been fearful. She hadn’t been able to envision a future without him, one in which she had to take care of herself and their small daughter. She wondered if he’d understood that. She almost hoped not. Knowing she was afraid, without job skills, their savings depleted, would have eaten at him as ruthlessly as the cancer did.
What if she told Alec why she felt so guilty? Would he understand, or be repulsed? Helen thought she owed him the chance to decide. She certainly couldn’t marry him, assuming he asked, without baring her darkest secret.
Her resolve grew over the week. She had never admitted to anyone that she believed Ben had wanted to die long before she was willing to let him go. Grief disguised self-loathing, and nobody asked too many questions after the funeral.
But, thanks to Kathleen and Jo, she had survived, made a living, helped her daughter through the sadness. Once in a while lately, she’d see herself in a mirror and think, Is that me? She’d changed. She had confidence now. Once upon a time, she hadn’t been able to believe that Ben Schaefer was in love with her, that he had actually asked her to marry him. She’d thought of herself as a mouse, ready to squeak and run. But years of happy marriage, the creation of Kathleen’s Soaps and her own success as a business partner and saleswoman had had their effect.
She didn’t think the idea of being left alone would scare her now.
Besides, how likely was it that lightning would strike twice? To refuse to love because the unlikely and unthinkable might happen again was ridiculous.
Wasn’t it?
Emma, Raoul and Ginny were waiting at baggage claim when Helen landed in Seattle. Ginny raced to throw herself into her mother’s arms.
Emma grinned. “Mom’s making soap, and she didn’t finish in time, so she deputized us.”
“You’re just as good,” Helen assured her. “In fact,” she decided, when Emma’s tall boyfriend heaved her suitcase from the conveyor belt and picked up her carry-on, too, “you might be better!”
Ginny clung to her the rest of the day, chattering at first and then quiet, as if she hoped her mom wouldn’t notice how close she was sticking. At bedtime, when Helen tucked her in, her hand gripped her mother’s fiercely.
“Don’t go!”
Helen, who had been starting to stand, sat back on the edge of the bed. “I wasn’t going far.”
“I know, but…” Ginny still didn’t let her go. “I missed you.”
“I missed you, too, sweetie.” She kissed her daughter again.
“Will you stay for a few minutes?” the eight-year-old begged.
“Of course I will! If,” she added, “I can turn out the light.”
“You won’t go?”
“I promise.”
After she turned off the lamp, Ginny snuggled under the covers and they talked quietly about the start of school and which friends would be in Ginny’s class.
“I wish Mrs. Karol wasn’t new,” Ginny said sleepily. “I’d rather have someone I’ve seen.”
“If she’s awful, I’ll go in swinging and demand you be moved to another class.”
Ginny giggled, as if the idea was unimaginable, but Helen, filled with a new belief in herself, thought she could do just that. Well, not swinging, just forcefully demanding that her daughter get the best education. She could do that.
Helen sat even after Ginny had fallen asleep, watching her breathe, a small frown flickering then smoothing away. Her heart inexplicably ached as she wondered what worries filled her child’s dreams. Were they echoes of her own?
At last she stood and eased from the room, leaving the door open a couple of inches, so that if Ginny woke up it wouldn’t be completely dark.
Helen went downstairs and claimed the telephone, taking it up to her bedroom.
Alec answered on the first ring.
“I called earlier.”
“Kathleen told me. I was saying good-night to Ginny.”
“This was the first time you’ve left her, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, and she did just fine.”
“But I’ll bet she missed you.” His voice roughened. “I know I did.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere.”
“Will it?” She heard his smile. “But probably not tonight.”
“Probably not,�
� Helen agreed, wishing she could see him.
“Tomorrow?”
“I don’t want to go out and leave Ginny. Any chance you’d like to bring the kids over here for dinner?” She’d lost track of whose turn it was to cook, but even if it wasn’t hers, she’d offer.
“I doubt Dev would come. But, sure. Lily and I will.”
“Tell him how cute Emma is.”
Alec laughed. “Yeah. I’ll do that.”
Helen didn’t really have any hope that the two of them would have enough privacy to talk, but she looked forward to his coming anyway.
It turned out that Emma wasn’t there. She and Raoul had gone to a lecture at Seattle U. Kathleen and Logan were home for dinner, but were going to a movie afterward.
“Alec won’t think we’re rude, will he?” asked Kathleen.
Her husband snorted. “He isn’t coming over here to see us.”
Talk at the dinner table was lively as the adults discussed politics and recent education cuts made by the governor, then moved on to the new school year, Helen’s trip to Portland and Logan’s colorful tales of his day spent selling soap.
“It was damn hot.” He grinned. “I think customers thought I needed to use the soap. I kept seeing quivering nostrils as they backed away from me.”
At last they left, Kathleen apologizing for not helping clean up. Ginny took Lily to her bedroom.
Helen rinsed dishes and put them in the dish-washer—a new addition the previous year—while Alec cleared the table.
Washing a pan, Helen blew a soap bubble at him. “What a romantic date.”
He lifted a hand and let the bubble rest for a shimmering moment on the tip of his finger before it popped. “I enjoyed myself. I like Logan and Kathleen. And I got to see you.”
The warmth in Alec’s eyes made hers sting. She couldn’t keep enjoying his company and not tell him. She had to do it now, before her quaking resolve failed.
Helen took a deep breath. “There’s, um, something I want to talk to you about.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
AT HER WORDS, Alec’s gaze locked onto her face. He set a plate on the counter. “All right.”
The New Man Page 16
