“He thinks so,” I said not addressing the phone comment. I stroked T-T’s head and he began to purr. “May I present Tony-the-Tiger.”
“Come to check out the competition, I guess. Well Mr. T,” Luke addressed the cat. “Now that I’ve penetrated your tower fortress I intend to give you a run for your money.”
To be the man of my house? Yeah, right, I thought. While the lovely Christina awaited him. Even if he had left her for me today, twenty years ago he had left me for her. In either case, it was always Luke doing the leaving. Luke calling the shots regardless of the height of the rim.
“Before,” I began. “What did you mean, that was how the lie started?”
Luke sighed. Perhaps I really should let the past go, but I obviously wasn’t good at doing that, so I petted T-T, and watched Luke, and I waited. I was after all very good at holding on.
“Do you recall the last time you told me to keep my speeches?” Luke asked when he spoke again.
“No,” I answered dishonestly, shaking my head.
A small wry smile flitted across Luke’s lips.
“Well I do,” he said. “You were telling me that men are all the same. Selfish. Irresponsible. Not to be trusted. How a man’s mistake is a woman’s problem.”
“Are you talking about when I thought I was pregnant?” I asked.
“Give that lady a prize,” replied Luke sardonically, pointing at me.
For remembering? Or for telling the truth?
“But I wasn’t pregnant,” I said defensively. “So what’s that go to do with anything?”
“You remember asking me if I ever get angry?”
“‘Ninety-two times a day’, you said. And then you move on.”
“Because I learned my lesson, Rachel. Being right can still get you the wrong results.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That time,” he explained. “When you thought you were pregnant, and you completely cut me out of it, I was so angry with you. You hurt me. I mean you really hurt me.”
“Because I said don’t make speeches?” I returned sharply. “I was just saying that I didn’t expect anything from you.”
“No. You were saying more than that. You were saying you didn’t trust me. That I would just walk out on you and our baby. The way your father did. I couldn’t believe it. You were my best friend. You knew me. How could you think that about me? But all right, since you did, I’d show you. I’d be that kind of man, and Christina just happened to be conveniently located at the time.
“It didn’t mean anything. I was using her to get back at you. It was the perfect set-up,” Luke smiled darkly. “She was so willing and you were so friggin’ jealous. You couldn’t see how crazy I was about you. Everybody else did, Christina too, and she jumped at her chance. But I was going to teach you a lesson. I’d let you find out about it. You’d cry. I’d confess to a moment of weakness. Then we’d both say we were sorry and have the best make-up sex since Adam and Eve. And man, did I have a speech for you. MLK material. You would have married me over it.”
I shivered again. The central heat clicked on and the warm air touched the back of my neck.
“Except Christina really did get pregnant,” Luke continued, absently rubbing his left thigh. “You know me, I have never liked condoms.”
So it had been a shotgun wedding? Christina’s father demanding what Big Daddy had not. I supposed that was the way rich people resolved this kind of situation, assuming they were pro-life. At the time Mr. Sterling had been a state senator. Family honor was everything.
“So she made you marry her?” I asked.
“No. Christina didn’t,” he answered. “She couldn’t make me give you up.”
Then it definitely had been Betty Sterling. She must have been so relieved if Luke was right about her suspecting that we were lovers. I could imagine her arguments. The Sterling name. Mr. Sterling’s political career. Her social status with her friends. The way Mommy and I were incapable of fitting in at their Christmas parties. Christina would have been the right girl even if it was for the wrong reasons.
“So it was your mother then,” I concluded. “She made—”
“It was you, Rachel,” Luke said. “You made me marry Christina.”
I stared at him, my hand still on T-T’s smooth coat. Because I had hurt his feelings? No! That was stupid, and Luke wasn’t a stupid man. He was not going to blame me. I had spent two decades doing that.
“I couldn’t let you be right about me being that kind of man,” he continued. “Ever since I’ve known you, there’s been this thing you’ve carried around about your father, about him abandoning you and your mother. It’s like a part of you that won’t heal. It’s always sore and tender. You blame him, and you blame your mother, but what’s worse, I think, is that you blame yourself. I didn’t want that for my own kid. But Rachel,” he sighed. “What I really couldn’t be was that kind of man to you. That’s why I had no choice. I had to marry Christina and be there to raise my kid. I did it because of you.”
I was frozen, my mouth dry and wordless again. I was only able to stare into Luke’s dark eyes. Ignored T-T jumped out of my lap. It really was my fault? But I hadn’t done anything wrong and would probably do the same thing again. The trend line made no sense. The trajectory was weird. Peter, Mommy, Christina, Luke Jr. The formula didn’t work.
“For awhile, at first,” he continued. “I figured Christina would leave me. She knew I wasn’t in love with her. If we broke up then I still would have done the right thing. It just didn’t work out. Luke Jr. would know that. You too. I’d be able to come back to you with a clean conscience. And I wouldn’t have let you down. But Christina liked our situation. Turns out, I’m not a bad husband and a pretty good father. She didn’t leave. Before I knew it we had four kids. And in the meantime you had married Robert. So that was it. I’d never see you again.”
So did that make Christina the consolation prize? He might as well be telling me that two plus two equaled seven.
“You should have told me the truth, Luke,” I finally said.
“Everything happened so fast, Rachel,” he replied.
“You made me be your bridesmaid.”
“Nobody put a gun to your head. You had to know that Christina knew about us. And she’s okay, but she’s not that noble. Nobody is. Except maybe you. She wasn’t asking you as a peace-offering. She was rubbing your face in it. Mine too, I guess. Maybe Mother had a hand in it. I used to wonder why you did it. If maybe you knew what had happened and you were punishing me. You smiled through the whole thing. I kept thinking, does she really hate me that much? Why did you go along with it, Rachel? Why’d you put us through that?”
“Me?” I demanded.
“Yes, you. I screwed up. I was stuck. But you, you had a choice.”
“I thought it was what you wanted. Christina said—”
“How could you think that? I wanted you.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me that, Luke?”
“I did. For years. You just refused to believe it.”
“But I loved you, Luke. You knew that. You could have told me the truth. I would have understood.”
“And given me a pass? And then never looked at me the same again? I wasn’t taking that chance.”
“I had a right to know, Luke. All these years, I thought it was something I had done. Or maybe it was because I wasn’t pretty, or from the right kind of family, that I embarrassed you somehow.”
“Hindsight’s twenty-twenty. But come on, Rachel, what was I? Twenty-four, twenty-five? I was a kid myself. Okay a stupid kid. But I wasn’t the one with a counseling degree. So I screwed up. Big time. Just about all the way around, except for being with Luke Jr. I pissed in my Post Toasties but I was man enough to eat them. I made it right. Everybody said so. Hell, you would have said so too if you’d known. In fact, you’re thinking I did the right thing right now, aren’t you?”
Yes.
I lowered my head to not look at him
because I wasn’t ready to admit it. He had pissed on both our lives with his badly conceived life-lesson. I was the counselor. He was an engineer. People were not numbers behaving predictably according to a mathematical equation or a computer program. It just wasn’t that simple.
But I was glad—thankful—that Luke had chosen his child, even over me. I was kind of proud of him. If I had known Peter, maybe I would have been the better for it too. Mommy had done her best but how many times had I wished that I had had a father? Luke Jr. had both his parents. Luke Sr. had made sure of that.
“It’s okay, Rachel,” he said.
I met his eyes again. He was actually wearing his crooked smile. Must he know me so well?
“It’s one of the things I love about you,” he added. “The way you think, and what you think about me.” The wry expression remained. “You still think I walk on water, don’t you?”
Yes. To me he always would. But I was still refusing to admit it.
“I’m glad you were there for Lucas, Luke,” I said instead. “You have a wonderful family. You and Christina together. Marrying her probably was the right thing to do. And I know you were happy. Just look at your kids. I don’t begrudge you that. But you should have also been man enough to tell me the truth that’s all. So since you weren’t protecting me, who were you really protecting?”
“Myself,” he answered. “I was afraid to tell you, Rachel, afraid you’d let me do something less than what you would have done. I had something to prove, remember?”
“Pride?” I asked.
“You can call it that.”
“Well that’s why I was your bridesmaid. I did it to show you. I have my pride too.”
Luke laughed a dry little chuckle.
“Well aren’t we something,” he said.
I supposed we were. Something. All those endless hours of conversation during which we had laid out plans to save the world, yet when we had really needed to talk to save ourselves—nothing. Silence generating secrets, sustaining self-doubts. Lethal, I thought, but life. I might have been my own client. I almost wanted to laugh too.
“We turned out okay,” I eventually said.
“You think?” asked Luke.
“Sure,” I shrugged. “There are some outliers, but our trend lines are pretty good.”
Suddenly a fresh tear was rolling down my face. What was the source of it? Sadness for then? Happiness for now?
“Any chance of those lines merging?” Luke asked, studying me.
“Does that ever really happen?” I asked back trying to keep my voice light. “I mean, they can be parallel, and so close that they look like one line, but there’s probably always gotta be a little difference, don’t you think?” I smiled. “To keep it interesting, so nobody gets bored.”
Luke smiled again. It was warmer this time.
“Good point,” he said.
“I had a good tutor.”
I moved over and sat next to him, stretching my denim-clad legs out alongside his. Corporate and casual. High Society and Section-8. I nearly laughed again. He liked these jeans.
“So we’re good then?” asked Luke.
“We’re certainly not bored,” I replied, and we chuckled together. I laid my head on his shoulder. “You know I’m not some kind of moral compass, right?”
“You’re not the gold standard by which we measure ourselves?” asked Luke glibly as he slipped his arm around my waist.
“Silver maybe,” I sighed. “But not telling me the truth was wrong, Luke. Really. Not your finest hour by any standard.”
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” he recited.
“Yes. You could have reached out to me. A letter, a note. A Christmas card. Something.”
Walk on Water “It was all or nothing, Rachel. I was trying to keep my family together. You might think I’m some kind of playboy, but the whole time we were married, I never cheated on Christina once.”
“Get with the times, Luke Sterling,” I gently rebuked him as I put my arm around his waist to cuddle more closely. “Nobody says playboy anymore.”
“Whatever,” he dismissed my correction. “I knew I’d end up begging you to do something we’d both regret. That’s one of your big Thou-Shalt-Nots. Maybe I really was finally trying to protect you. By the time Christina gave me a divorce,” he paused. “I had this body. It felt a little too chicken-shit to come crawling back to you, so to speak,” his voice caught again. “Today notwithstanding of course.”
“Thank God for Juniper Breeze,” I whispered taking his other hand into mine. “‘Course your mother’s gonna hate it. I never stopped loving you, Lucas Sterling.”
“I know,” he replied. “That first night we met for dinner I saw it in your eyes. I was the same man to you. The man I want to be.”
“The man you are.”
“A little worse for the wear,” he kissed the top of my head.
“A grown woman with a college co-ed crush. How hopeless is that? Really? Twenty years, Luke.”
Chuckling softly, he raised my hand to his lips, then he followed that by kissing me hungrily, the way I had been intending for our Friday fun-day—in the first place.
“I’m not much better,” he said afterwards. “The minute you recited Keats to me I was hooked. How goofy is that?”
“Keats will definitely lose you some cool points with your basketball friends,” I replied. “But it makes you a saint to me.”
“What? Not a god?” Luke teased.
“Okay, maybe a minor deity,” I consented.
We were quiet again. T-T returned with Agatha in tow. They set about investigating Luke’s shoes, working their way up his legs. We watched Agatha rub her head on his left knee.
“I think they’re marking you,” I explained.
“I like that,” Luke said. “I always considered myself a dog person, but I like these critters. But now do you think you could help a minor deity get into his wheelchair? I’m still a little shaky and might need a spotter.”
It was slower than I had seen him move before, and his left leg threatened to rebel again, but Luke did manage to get back into his chair on his own.
“I don’t know how you did it,” I said once Luke was settled with both his feet resting quietly on the footplate.
“Adrenaline, I guess,” he replied. “You’ll have to help me back down since the moment’s passed. I’m not scared to death of losing you anymore.”
“You were frightened about that? Really?”
“Let’s leave it for now. Why don’t you show me around your place?”
After the tour I offered to make us some lunch.
“I don’t really have much,” I said. “I haven’t gone grocery shopping, but I have an unopened carton of egg whites and some cheese. Would an omelet be okay?”
“You haven’t gone shopping yet?” asked Luke with a sly grin. “You used something to turn my house into an obstacle course. Nothing like a roast to jam-up a wheel.”
“I was having a moment, okay?” I chided him, going into the kitchen. “Don’t be mean.”
“Well Christina cleaned everything up. She said it looks like you were planning on some kind of feast. I still get to have that, don’t I?”
“We’ll see. Will I be cooking for two or three?”
I was taking things out of the fridge for the omelets.
“What do you think?” Luke asked, rolling into the kitchen.
It was a tight fit, but I loved having him here.
“I don’t know. You’re full of surprises, Lucas James.”
“And you’re just full of it, Rachel Marie,” he replied stroking my butt when I bent down to get a skillet from the cupboard.
The stroking soon turned into him pulling me backwards to sit in his lap.
“I’m trying to cook here,” I fussed with the skillet in my hand.
“From now on,” he murmured against the back of my neck. “Promise me you’ll always answer your phone.”
“Luke—”
&
nbsp; “I’m serious, Rachel. Promise me.”
“Okay, okay. If it means that much to you.”
“It does.”
“Then I guess I should probably plug them back in.”
“What?” he asked incredulously as he pushed me off his lap. “Your phone’s not plugged in? No wonder—”
“I was having a moment, okay?” I giggled a little sheepishly.
“Where the hell is your cell? Is it charged?”
“It’s in the car.”
“The car?! For God’s sake, Rachel. Make us some lunch. I’m gonna use your bathroom.”
I waited until I heard Luke come out of the bathroom before I started the egg whites. While I was coating a pan with Pam he rolled back into the kitchen.
“With cheese, right?” I asked about the eggs whites.
“Cheese is good,” he replied.
I smiled at him and began to mix the egg whites and the reduced-fat cheddar cheese in a bowl.
“I think you must have dropped this,” Luke said as I was sprinkling in black pepper.
“What?” I turned to look at him.
He was holding the Rachel’s Favorites cassette tape. Our eyes met.
“I almost ran over it,” he added. “I tried to rewind the tape. Hope it works. I suppose I could always make you another one to replace it.” He slipped the cassette into his shirt pocket. “’Course most of the world has gone digital. Guess you can find just about anything on eBay.”
“Just about,” I agreed a new tiny knot of joy in my throat. “But my Sony Walkman still works great.”
EPILOGUE
“Would you like something to drink?” the flight attendant asked us.
Luke, turning to me, waited for my response. He could be so charmingly old-school sometimes, speaking to waiters for the both of us, keeping to the outside when we walked down the street together. He must have learned it from Mr. Sterling—who was Thomas to me now. In any case, it was possessive and protective, and a little archaic, but being madly in love with him, I delighted in it.
“No, thanks,” I said. “I’m fine.”
“You sure, sweetheart?” asked Luke. “We’ve got lots of time. How ‘bout a sparkling water?”
Walk on Water Page 27
