Hello, It's Me

by Wendy Markham

  Patting the ring in his pocket, he grabs another cookie and heads inside for the phone.

  “One love, one lifetime.”

  The words slam into Annie like a hurtled barbell.

  “Say you’ll share with me one love, one lifetime . . .”

  The lyrics are from “All I Ask of You,” sung by Merlin at her wedding . . . and permanently engraved into her wedding ring.

  A ring that is currently missing from her finger.

  She didn’t even notice.

  How could she not have noticed?

  “Yes,” she tells Merlin, clutching the phone hard against her ear in her disconcertingly bare hand. “Of course it’s my ring. Do you have it?”

  “No.”

  “I thought you said—”

  “Thom Brannock has it. His maid found it. He’s going to drop by with it this afternoon.”

  “He is? Or his maid is?”

  “He said he would.”

  What is there to say other than “Oh”?

  But Annie has plenty to think about. Which is why, upon hanging up the telephone, she remains rooted to the kitchen floor, brain careening.

  That she could have lost her wedding ring and not realized it is disconcerting.

  That she’s about to come face to face with Thom Brannock again is even more so.

  “Mommy? I want more toast.”

  She looks up to see Milo standing on a kitchen chair, trying to reach the open loaf of bread beside the toaster on the crumb-covered counter.

  “Sit down, Milo,” Annie says sharply, hurrying over to steady the chair.

  “But I want more toast.”

  “Is that how you ask?”

  “Please.”

  She shakes her head and automatically says, “Start over,” as she runs the tip of her left thumb over the vacant base of her left ring finger.

  “May I please have more toast?” Milo intones.

  “Yes.”

  Annie deposits the heels of the loaf into the toaster, pushes the lever, and wonders how much a jeweler will charge to resize a ring.

  Too much.

  She’ll have to run out and buy a ring guard . . .

  How much do those cost?

  Well, she can always wind yarn around the inside on the bottom, the way she did in high school when Colin Albertson gave her his class ring to wear.

  The toast pops up, and Annie spreads it with the last of the butter.

  “Thank you, Mommy,” Milo says politely as she places it in front of him.

  “You’re welcome.” She plants a kiss on his head. “So you really had fun last night with Carly?”

  “Yup. Except she wouldn’t let me practice crash landings. She said it was too dangerous and I might break my head or a vase or something.”

  Score one for Carly.

  “When is she coming again, Mommy?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe sometime.”

  “When?” Milo presses.

  “Next time I need a sitter.”

  “When will that be?”

  “I don’t know, Milo. Soon.”

  It isn’t a lie, exactly. Everything is relative. Next winter could be considered soon. It all depends on how you look at it.

  “How soon?”

  Annie clenches her teeth, wishing desperately that Andre were here to come to her rescue.

  Back in the old days, he would swoop in to expertly divert Milo’s line of questioning. He’d say something like, “Look out the window! Is that a swarm of locusts heading in our direction?” Or the Green Goblin? Or a runaway train . . .?

  Then, after Milo had searched long enough for Annie to extract herself, Andre would say, “Oh, wait . . . I guess it’s just a mosquito.” Or a plant. Or a Matchbox car.

  The little everyday things. That’s what she misses most.

  Oh, who is she kidding? She misses the little everyday things, and the medium-sized things, and the big things. She misses every damned thing about having a husband, about having a daddy for her children.

  “How soon, Mommy?” Milo asks again.

  “Just . . . soon,” she snaps. “Okay?”

  She can tell by her son’s expression that it isn’t okay, but mercifully, Milo falls silent, at least for the time being.

  On her way back to the counter, Annie reaches over to pick up a stray crust that somehow landed three feet from the table, and notices that the wooden floor could be cleaner. In fact, it’s downright grungy.

  She should mop.

  Straightening and glancing around the kitchen, she tries to see it the way a visitor might. Say, Thom Brannock.

  Dirty dishes are piled in the sink; clean ones are heaped in the drying rack beside it. The counters are littered with breakfast makings, yesterday’s newspaper, unclipped coupon fliers, and a scattering of unpaid bills. Small fingerprints smudge the windows, the lower section of screen on the backdoor has been pushed out again, her vintage apron collection is spilling out of a half-opened drawer, and several pieces of curling crayon artwork have dropped off the front of the refrigerator.

  Good Lord. Annie should do more than mop.

  She should move.

  Milo announces, “Mommy, I can’t eat this toast.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s the ends. I don’t like the ends.”

  “That was all that was left of the loaf, sweetie,” she says guiltily. “We’ll go shopping later and get more bread.”

  Butter, too.

  And milk, and eggs, and cereal, and everything else they’ve run out of again.

  “Can we get ice cream, too?”

  No, she thinks. There isn’t money in the budget for ice cream.

  “Yes,” she says. She’ll have to scrimp somewhere else. Her little boy wants ice cream.

  “Yummy! Can we get chocolate chip?”

  “Sure.”

  “Can we go now?”

  “No.”

  “When?”

  “Soon, sweetie.”

  “When is soon?”

  Lord help her. Lord help them all.

  Somehow, Annie swallows her frustration. This time. “Milo, go pick up the Legos that are all over the floor by the front door, will you?”

  “But—”

  “Milo, I need your help. Please.”

  Perhaps sensing the weary despair in her tone, he scuttles out of the room.

  “Thank you,” Annie whispers to the ceiling, or God, or Andre.

  Then she turns on the water and reaches for the detergent, prepared to tackle the dirty dishes.

  She isn’t going anywhere until the house is presentable . . . and her wedding ring is back on her finger where it belongs, courtesy of Thom Brannock.

  Driving along Montauk Highway with an old Bruce Springsteen CD blasting, the top of his BMW convertible down, golden sunshine and warm wind in his face, Thom feels almost carefree.

  Never mind that he should be heading west, toward Joyce’s summer home, instead of east, toward Anne’s . . . well, presumably year-round home.

  Thom could easily have instructed a member of the household staff to deliver the ring to its owner . . . or he could have left its retrieval up to her.

  Instead, here he is, playing messenger . . . and procrastinating what he’s supposed to be doing today. Namely, breaking up with Joyce.

  If only he could extract himself from their relationship as easily as he fell into it.

  If only the wedding ring he found belonged to somebody other than Anne.

  Annie, he corrects himself with a grin, remembering the caterer’s response when he read the ring’s inscription over the telephone. Merlin was distracted when he called, busy with a client on the other line, but he paused long enough to say, “Oh, that’s Annie’s ring.”

  Right. Thom just knew it.

  Not that the wedding ring belonged to the green-eyed brunette he met last night, but that her name couldn’t possibly be simply Anne.

  Annie.

  Funny how one letter can ma
ke such a huge difference.

  Annie suits her.

  Anne does not.

  It’s a damned shame she’s married, Thom thinks, braking for a traffic light in the heart of bustling Montauk. Married and, according to the rushed Merlin, so anxious to have her ring back that she wouldn’t want to wait for an overnight delivery. According to Merlin, nothing would do but that Thom arrange to get the ring back to her immediately.

  It was a presumptuous and hurried request.

  So why didn’t Thom refuse? Why did he assure the presumptuous and hurried Merlin that he would personally bring the ring back to its owner?

  It was almost as though his vocal chords were momentarily taken over by a stranger. An oddly agreeable stranger.

  Thom doesn’t have time for this.

  He doesn’t have time for much of anything these days.

  Yet here he is, miles from home and work and Joyce, to whom he’s supposed to be saying farewell forever.

  Foot on the brake, he watches a T-shirt-clad family of five strolling leisurely across the road in front of his car. The mother is pushing a chubby baby in an umbrella stroller; the dad has one child on his shoulders and another clinging tightly to his hand.

  They’re laughing. All five of them.

  For some unearthly reason, Thom wonders what it would be like to be that laughing dad. He supposes he’ll never know. He can’t remember his own father ever wearing a T-shirt, holding his hand, or strolling anywhere, not even on a Sunday afternoon in summertime.

  He wonders wistfully if Annie and her husband have children; if they spend Sunday afternoons together; if they laugh together.

  Yes, too bad she’s married.

  Or perhaps, too bad he isn’t.

  The light changes.

  Thom drives on.

  If Annie weren’t married . . .

  You wouldn’t be here, he reminds himself. You wouldn’t be seeing her again.

  Irony of ironies, the only reason he’s seeing her again is that she is married.

  Really, it’s a shame. Because on a day like today, Thom might just be tempted to kiss a pretty waitress.

  What the hell are you thinking? he asks himself promptly. What the hell are you doing?

  It must be all those dangerous cookies. The spike in his blood sugar is making him feel irresponsible. Reckless, even.

  The shops, restaurants and hotels of Montauk quickly fall away as Thom drives east, along the highway’s increasingly sandy shoulder, past thickening clusters of trees and brush and scattered homes set back from the road.

  He has never had occasion to travel this far out on the island—not by car, anyway. He’s sailed around the tip and up toward the coastal islands off New England in the past, although he hasn’t had the time or ambition to do even that in a long, long while.

  But today, of all days, for whatever reason, venturing into uncharted territory seems to suit Thomas Brannock IV just fine.

  Chapter 5

  Mommy! A guy is here!” Trixie yells from the living room.

  Oh, no. Already?

  “I’m coming,” Annie calls, straightening from a futile attempt to vanquish a sticky spill from the kitchen floor with a damp sponge.

  She should have mopped.

  She would have mopped . . . if she weren’t so busy decluttering and vacuuming and dusting and washing and drying and putting away and folding and scrubbing and—

  Why doesn’t the house look clean? She’s just spent an exhausting hour and a half trying to make it presentable. Now Thom Brannock is here and all he’ll see is dirt and cobwebs and clutter.

  Oh, well.

  Who cares what he thinks?

  What matters is that he’s returned her wedding ring.

  Dropping the sponge into the empty sink, Annie juts out her lower lip in an attempt to instantly blow-dry and style the bangs that are plastered with sweat to her forehead. She must look like a wreck. She had planned to change out of the ancient denim cutoffs and circa 1994 cropped white tank top she threw on after her shower this morning.

  This skimpy outfit may have been suitable for today’s designated project—gluing beach glass to painted wooden frames—and it may have been suitable for the cleaning marathon she just completed, but it’s hardly suitable for a tête-à-tête with a good-looking Southamptonite.

  Not that it matters. Thom Brannock is here to hand over her lost ring, which will take all of two seconds. He’s not here to take note of what Annie is—or isn’t—wearing.

  “Mommy!” Trixie calls. “The guy is knocking on the door!”

  Annie scurries into the living room, stepping over a laundry basket heaped with clean laundry she took out of the dryer. Or is it dirty laundry she meant to put into the washer?

  “Hello?”

  The male voice coming through the screen isn’t quite as deep and intimidating as she recalls. Or maybe it just seems that way because the sound has less room to reverberate in her hovel the way it did in his granite and marble palace.

  In any case, Annie finds herself relaxing just a bit as she sidesteps the Legos Milo was supposed to pick up and gets a first glimpse of the visitor—a.k.a., The Guy—on her porch.

  Thom Brannock is wearing khaki slacks, loafers that are identical to Merlin’s Gucci ones, and a coral-colored shirt with a familiar miniature polo rider logo below his left shoulder. His dark hair, so neatly combed to one side last night, looks a little spiky today, and his cheeks appear to be sunburnt.

  He looks almost like a regular person.

  He is a regular person, Annie reminds herself. A regular person who’s hotter than hot and worth more than a small Caribbean nation, with eyes the same hue of the Caribbean at dusk . . .

  But a regular person nonetheless.

  “Hi.” She opens the screen door, which squeaks loudly.

  Andre. WD-40.

  Memories.

  Dammit.

  “Hi.” Thom Brannock smiles.

  “Did you have any trouble finding us? Sometimes Merlin doesn’t give the best directions.”

  “He didn’t. I plugged your address into the Internet and came up with the specifics.”

  “That was smart,” says Annie, who is certain she’s the only person on the planet who has never been on-line. She and Andre could never afford a computer. But she isn’t about to admit that to Mr. Ralph Gucci Lauren.

  His hands are in his pockets, his legs casually straddled. He doesn’t appear to be in any hurry to hand over the ring and be on his way.

  “Um . . . do you want to come in?” she asks, certain he’ll say that he doesn’t.

  Praying he’ll say that he doesn’t.

  “Sure.”

  Terrific.

  Annie takes a step back, kicking a hunk of Lego out of the way as she does so.

  “Watch your step,” she tells her visitor as he steps over the threshold, bringing with him the misty citrus scent of expensive cologne. “My son has the place booby-trapped.”

  “How old is your son?”

  “He’s six,” Trixie pipes up, materializing at Annie’s elbow. “I’m four. I’m going to kindergarten in September. Mommy is thirty.”

  “Is that so.” Thom grins at Annie. “You might want to break her of that habit in the next few years.”

  “What habit?” Trixie asks.

  Annie watches Thom crouch beside her daughter and gently push her dark hair back from her ear to whisper into it, “A woman never admits her age . . . or another woman’s age.”

  “Yeah, only I’m not a woman,” Trixie informs him. “I’m a girl. And my brother is a boy.”

  Thom laughs.

  “And Mommy is a woman,” Trixie continues. “And Daddy was a guy.”

  Thom’s smile fades.

  “Was?” He straightens to his full height, which is considerable, and looks down at Annie.

  She nods, unable to speak. These days, she never knows when an unexpected wave of emotion is going to render her mute.

  “Daddy died a
long time ago,” Trixie tells Thom.

  “How long ago?”

  The question is directed at Annie, but she can’t seem to force sound past the lump in her throat.

  She thinks she’d be used to it by now. It’s been a year since she became a widow. Most of the time, she’s acutely aware that she’s a widow.

  But the thing is, she’s used to being around people who are also acutely aware that she’s a widow. People who respectfully sidestep questions and comments and painful reminders.

  In any case, Annie seems to have taken a giant step backward in the grieving process upon hearing her daughter utter the words “Daddy died.”

  “I’m sorry.” Thom shakes his head. “I didn’t know.”

  She nods mutely, wanting to tell him that it’s all right. Not that it is; nothing is all right, nothing will ever be all right again.

  She can’t speak, anyway. It’s all she can do to contain the tears that are pooling in her eyes.

  “Who are you?” Trixie asks.

  “I’m . . .” Thom falters, looking to Annie for an explanation.

  It takes her a moment to find one, and another to find her voice.

  “He’s dropping something off for me,” she tells her daughter.

  “What is it?”

  “Just something that I lost.”

  “What is it?” Trixie persists.

  “Jewelry.”

  “Which kind of jewelry?”

  “Trixie—”

  “Where did you lose it?”

  “Go find Milo,” Annie orders her daughter, having had her fill of Trixie for the moment. “He was supposed to pick up his Legos.”

  “But—”

  “Go.”

  Trixie goes. But not without casting a curious backward glance at Thom Brannock, who smiles at her and gives a little wave.

  “Cute kid,” he tells Annie, cutting off the apology she was about to offer.

  She isn’t certain what, exactly, she was going to apologize about. But she’s pretty sure that men like Thom Brannock aren’t accustomed to playing Twenty Questions with four-year-olds.

  “Thank you,” she says, for lack of anything else.

  “She looks like you.”

  Annie nods. It’s true. Trixie does resemble her. So does Milo. That neither of the kids looks anything like their father is a cruel twist of fate, as far as Annie is concerned.

  Then again, maybe it would be harder to see Andre every time she glances at her children. It’s bad enough to occasionally glimpse his personality in them, or spot one of his many quirks, or hear a distinct vocal inflection she thought was his alone.