By the time the AA meeting started, Nick had pushed the need for a drink to a small, dark corner of his soul. He filed into the smoke-filled room behind a string of friends.
Joe was right behind him. He felt Joe’s hand on his shoulder, heard his rough, sandpapery voice, “How are you doing, Nicholas?”
Nick was able to smile. “I’m doing okay, Joe. Thanks.” He took a seat on a folding metal chair, and Joe sat down beside him.
Joe eyed him. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
Nick knew he must look pale and tired. “I’m okay, Joe,” he said, settling onto the hard plastic seat.
Joe grinned and clapped him gently on the shoulder. “I’m proud of you, Nicholas.”
Nick closed his eyes and leaned back, sighing deeply. At first, he didn’t notice the tap on his back. When he did, he snapped upright. His heart pounded with anticipation. Annie had changed her mind, she had turned around and come back. He spun around in his metal chair—
And saw Gina Piccolo standing behind him. Her unmade-up eyes looked tired against the chalky pallor of her face. He noticed that the nose ring was gone, as was the black lipstick. She looked as young and innocent as when he’d first seen her, riding her bike to the World-of-Wonders putt-putt golf course all those years ago.
He got slowly to his feet. “Gina,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“Drew died this week. O.D.” Her voice was quiet and shaky. Tears washed her eyes, slid slowly down her gaunt cheeks. “You said if I ever needed help . . . I mean . . . I couldn’t think of anybody else . . . at the station they told me you might be here. . . .”
“It’s okay, Gina. . . .”
“I don’t want to die, Mr. Delacroix.”
Before this spring, Nick would have been afraid of this moment; he would have seen another tragedy in the making, another failure nipping at his heels. But now, he felt Annie beside him, as strong and warm as sunlight. He heard her voice whispering inside him: Would you give it all up, Nick . . . the caring . . . would you give it all up because at the end there is pain?
Maybe he would fail—probably he would fail—but he wouldn’t let that stop him now. It was in the trying that he could save himself, and possibly this one desperate girl beside him.
He took her hand. “You’ve come to the right place, Gina. It’s scary and hard to give up the crutches, but I’ll be here for you. I won’t give up on you if you won’t.”
A smile broke across her face, making her look impossibly innocent and hopeful. “I’ll just get a Coke, and then I’ll sit with you.”
“Okay.” He watched her walk through the crowded room, and then he sat down.
“So, Nicholas,” said Joe. “What’s that all about?”
Nick turned to his mentor, smiling broadly. “I guess it’s just another cop trying to save another kid from ruin.”
Joe grinned. “Welcome back, Nicholas. We missed you.”
The words settled through Nick, sifting gently, finding a comfortable perch. “I missed me, too,” he said quietly. “I guess you can put me back on the schedule. Say, Monday morning?”
“Ah, Nicholas. I never took you off.”
Smiling, Nick leaned back in his seat. In a moment, Gina sat in the chair beside him.
The meeting got under way. Nick listened to the stories, and with each one, each tale that was so like his own, he felt himself grow stronger. When at last the meeting was coming to a close, he motioned to the chairman. “I’d like to speak,” he said quietly.
There was a flutter of surprise around the room. Chairs squeaked as people turned in their seats to look at Nick.
“My name is Nick,” he said into the quiet. The next part stuck in his throat, so he tried again. “My name is Nick, and I’m an alcoholic.”
“Hi, Nick,” they answered in unison, smiling proudly at him.
He saw the understanding in their eyes, in the way they nodded or looked at him or leaned forward. It’s okay, they said wordlessly, we know. “I think I was an alcoholic long before I took my first drink. But everything started getting out of control about a year ago, when my wife died. . . .”
Word by tender word, he relived it all, picked through the rubble of his life and exposed all his vulnerabilities and failures and triumphs and heartbreaks. He gave everything inside him to the nodding, understanding faces in this cheap, smoke-filled room, knowing that they would hold his pain in careful hands and transform it into something else, a new awareness that would get him through the long, lonely nights without Annie. As he spoke, he felt the weight of the past year begin to lift. It wasn’t until he spoke of Izzy, sweet Izzy, and the memory of the day she’d said, I love you, Daddy, that he finally broke down.
Part Three
God gave us memories so that we might have roses in December.
—JAMES M. BARRIE
Chapter 24
Heat rose in shimmering waves from the black ribbon of asphalt and melted into the brown, smog-filled air. Annie leaned deeper into the smelly velour upholstery of the taxicab and sighed, resting her hand on her stomach.
Already, she couldn’t stand being away from Nick and Izzy; it felt as if a vital part of her had been hacked off and left to wither in some other place.
This concrete-encrusted land didn’t hold her life anymore. It seemed to her to be an apocalyptic vision of the future in which green trees and blue skies and white clouds had been replaced by a million shades of man-made gray.
The cab veered off the Pacific Coast Highway and turned onto her road—funny, she still thought of it as her road. Beyond the Colony’s guarded gate, they drove past the carefully hidden beach houses, each cut from the same contemporary designer’s cloth; huge, multilayered homes built practically on top of each other, most with less than eight feet of ground between them. Each one a tiny kingdom that wanted to keep the rest of the world at bay.
They turned into her driveway, and the white angles of the house soared toward the blue sky. The yard was in full bloom, a riot of pink and red hibiscus and glossy green leaves. Its beauty was so . . . false. If they stopped watering, this contrived garden would shrivel and die.
The cab pulled up to the garage and stopped. The driver got out of the car and went to the trunk, popping it open.
Slowly, Annie got out. She stared down at the driveway, remembering how she had watched over the placement of the bricks, each and every one. That one’s not right, it’s crooked. Could you please do it again before the cement hardens?
“Ma’am? Is that everything?” The cabdriver was standing beside her Louis Vuitton luggage.
“Yes, thank you.” She flipped her purse open and retrieved the fare from her wallet, plus a healthy tip. “Here you go.”
He snatched the money and pocketed it. “You call me if you need to go to the airport again,” he said.
The airport.
“Thanks. I will.”
When he was gone, she turned back to the house. For a second, she thought she couldn’t do it, couldn’t walk down to the hand-carved mahogany door, push it open, and go inside. But then, she was moving, walking beneath the arched entrance that smelled of jasmine, pulling the jangle of keys from her pocketbook.
The key slid in; what had she expected? That it would no longer fit here because she didn’t? The door whooshed open, and the smell of stale air greeted her.
She walked through the house, room by room, waiting to feel something . . . sad, happy, depressed . . . something. The floor-to-ceiling windows framed the brilliant blues of the sea and sky.
She felt as if she were walking through a stranger’s house. Thoughts of Nick and Izzy crowded in on her, begging to be replayed and picked over, but she didn’t dare. Instead she focused on the little things: the grand piano she’d purchased at a Sotheby’s auction, the chandelier she’d rescued from an old San Francisco hotel, the Lladró statue collection she’d begun when Natalie started junior high.
Things.
She went up to her bedroom. T
heir bedroom.
There, certainly she would feel something. But again, there was only that odd sensation that she was viewing the remains of a long-dead civilization. This was Annie Colwater’s room, and it was all that remained of her.
Her closet was full of expensive silks and woolens and cashmeres, skirts in every color and length, shoes in boxes still marked with exorbitant price tags.
At the bedside table, she picked up the phone and listened for a long time to the dial tone. She wanted to call Nick and Izzy, but she didn’t. Instead, she carefully dialed Blake’s office number. Without waiting to speak to him, she left a message that she was home.
Then she replaced the receiver and sat heavily on the end of her bed.
Soon, she’d see Blake again. In the old days, she would have obsessed over what to wear, but now, she couldn’t have cared less. There was nothing in that vast, expensive closet that mattered to her anymore, nothing that felt like hers. It was nothing but acres and acres of another woman’s clothes.
The office was like the man, understated, expensive, and seething with power. Years before Blake could afford this corner office in Century City, with its expansive views of glass and concrete skyscrapers, he’d imagined it. He always knew it would be stark and unrelieved, that there would be nothing in the room that said, Come on in, sit down, tell me your troubles. He’d never wanted to be that kind of lawyer, and he wasn’t. It was the kind of office that made a client squirm and reminded him with every silent tick of the desk clock how much it was costing to sit here.
In truth, of course, it was Annie who’d given him this office. She’d spent hours choosing the drapes and the upholstery. She had designed and commissioned the ornate African mahogany desk and each hand-stained leather accessory.
Everywhere he looked now, he saw her.
He sighed and leaned back in his chair. The pile of paperwork on his desk blurred in front of him. He shoved the papers aside, watched as the Beaman deposition fluttered to the marble floor.
He felt odd and out of sorts, and he’d felt this way since his impromptu trip to that shithole diner in Mystic.
He’d thought he could apologize to Annie and step back into the comfortable shoes of his old life. Except that Annie wasn’t Annie anymore, and he didn’t know what to say or do to get her back.
On his desk, the intercom buzzed. He flicked the button impatiently. “Yes, Mildred?”
“Your wife called—”
“Put her through.”
“She left a message, sir. She wanted you to know that she was home.”
Blake couldn’t believe it. “Clear my schedule, Mildred. I’m gone for the rest of the day.”
He sprinted out of the building and jumped into his Ferrari, speeding out of the parking lot and onto the freeway.
At home, he raced up the front steps and jammed the key in the lock, swinging the door open. There was a pile of luggage at the base of the stairs. “Annie?”
She was standing at the edge of the archway that separated the living room from the formal dining room.
She was home again. Now, at last, everything would be all right.
He moved cautiously toward her. “Annie?”
She turned away from him and walked into the living room, standing alone at the windows. “I have something to tell you, Blake.”
It unnerved him, the way she wouldn’t look at him. The sight of her, so stiff and unyielding, was a sharp reminder that she was not the same woman he’d left only a few months before. His throat was dry. “What is it?”
“I’m pregnant.”
His first thought was no, not again. He couldn’t go through that again. Then he remembered the other man, the man Annie had slept with, and he could hardly breathe. It was as if someone had just run an ice cube down his spine. “Is it mine?”
She sighed, and it was a sad little sound that didn’t reassure him. “Yes. I’m three months along.”
He couldn’t seem to think straight. He shook his head, sighing. “A baby . . . Christ, after all these years.”
She turned and gave him a quirking smile, and there she was at last. His Annie. He realized then what he hadn’t before. It was the baby that had brought her back to him. “A baby.” This time he could smile. “Our baby . . .”
“All those years I thought God wasn’t listening. It turns out He’s got a mean sense of humor. He obviously wanted me to go through menopause and potty training at the same time.”
“We’ll make it work this time,” he said softly.
She flinched at the words, and he wondered if he should have phrased it as a question. “Blake—”
He didn’t want to hear what she was going to say. “Whatever happened in Mystic is over, Annie. This is our child you’re carrying. Our child. We have to become a family again. Please give me another chance.”
She didn’t answer, just stared for a long time at his hand on her stomach. Then, unsmiling, she looked away.
Please give me another chance.
Annie closed her eyes. God, how many nights had she lain in her lonely bed, aching to hear those words from him? Yet now they fell against her heart like stones down an empty well. Clattering, bouncing, signifying nothing.
And what had she said to him, all those months ago? I can’t believe you’d throw it all away. We’re a family, Blake, a family.
“Annie—”
“Not now, Blake,” she said in a fragile voice. “Not now.”
She heard him sigh, a tired, disappointed sound that she knew well. He was confused and more than a little angry; he didn’t know how to lose or how to be patient or how to hold his tongue.
“I’ll have to be bedridden, just like with . . . Adrian.” She gazed up at him. “It’s going to take some work on your part. I won’t be able to be good old Annie, taking care of everyone else. For once, you’ll have to put me first.”
“I can do that.”
She wished she could believe it.
“I know it won’t be easy for you to trust me again. I screwed up. . . .”
“A mammoth understatement.”
His voice dropped to a plaintive whisper. “I can’t believe you don’t love me anymore. . . .”
“Neither can I,” she said softly, and it was true. Somewhere, deep inside of her, a shadow of their love had to remain. She’d loved him for twenty years. Certainly that kind of emotion didn’t simply disappear. “I’m trying to believe in what we had, and I pray we can find our way back to love, but I’m not in love with you now. Hell, I don’t even like you much.”
“You will,” he answered with a confidence that set her teeth on edge. He leaned toward her. “Let’s go to bed.”
“Hel-lo Blake. Have you been listening to me? I’m not ready to sleep with you yet . . . besides, Dr. North said it was risky. Remember? Early contractions.”
He looked ridiculously deflated. “Oh, yeah. I just thought, if this is a reconciliation, you should—”
“No more telling me what I should and shouldn’t do, Blake. I’m not the same woman I was before. And I’m scared to death you’re the same damn man.”
“I’m not. Really, I’m not. I’ve grown, too. I know how precious our life was. I won’t make the same mistakes again.”
“I hope not.”
He moved toward her. “You always used to say that the longest journey begins with a single step.”
He was right; it used to be one of her favorite sayings. Now, that kind of optimism felt far, far away.
He was obviously waiting for her to respond, and when she didn’t, he glanced around. “Well, do you want to watch television for a while? I could make some popcorn and hot chocolate—like the old days.”
The old days.
With those simple words, she saw her whole life flash before her eyes. This spring she’d worked to unearth the real Annie, and now Blake wanted to bury her once again beneath the sand of their old patterns. Tomorrow, she knew she would have to make an effort, an honest effort to find her wa
y back to Blake, but tonight, she was too damned tired to start. “No, thanks,” she said quietly. “I think I’ll just go to bed. It’s been a long day. You can sleep in the green guest room. I put fresh sheets on the bed today.”
“Oh. I thought—”
“I know what you thought. It isn’t going to happen.”
She might have laughed at his expression—so confused and crestfallen—but it wasn’t funny. He was her husband, the father of her children, the man she’d vowed to love, honor, and cherish until death parted them, and right now, standing in the living room of the house they’d shared for so many years, she couldn’t think of a single thing to say to him.
Blake met Natalie at Customs.
She gave him a big hug, then drew back, looking around. “Where’s Mom?”
“She couldn’t make it. I’ll tell you all about it in the car on the way home.”
“Do you have the Ferrari?”
“What else?”
“Can I drive?”
Blake frowned. “Did someone tell you I’d suffered recent brain damage? I never let—”
“Oh, please, Dad. I haven’t driven in months.”
“This is hardly an argument that helps your cause.”
“Come on, Dad. Pleeeeease.”
He imagined the look on Annie’s face if she heard he’d let Natalie drive. Slowly, he pulled the keys out of his pocket and tossed them in the air. Natalie snagged them in one hand. “Come on, Dad!” She grabbed his hand and dragged him through the terminal. Within moments, they were strapped into the sports car and heading down the freeway for home.
As always, Blake was uneasy around his daughter. He tried to think of something to say to her now, something to break the uncomfortable silence that always stood between them.
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