by Nicki Elson
“Wait a minute,” Liam said. “Did you really have a nose ring?”
Carl and Maggie both laughed. “No, sweetie,” Maggie answered. Perhaps, she thought, if not for her own sake, for the kids she could muster her courage and bare her soul to Carl.
When they left Emilio’s, Carl held the door for his family, allowing Liam and Kirsten to race out first. As Maggie stepped past him, his hand found her waist, causing her to pause. “That was fun,” he said.
“Yeah.” She looked up at him and paused in the doorway. He was so close, and his almost possessive touch at her waist felt too natural, too good. She decided their talk better be long distance or she might end up in the same position she’d landed in the other night.
“Will you be up for a while?” she asked.
He raised a flirtatious eyebrow. “What did you have in mind?”
“A phone call,” she said firmly, hoping to put any naughty thoughts out of his head.
“That works too.” His smile was dirty, and Maggie shoved him lightly in the chest before joining the kids at her car.
“So what’s on your mind?” Carl asked after the kids were in bed and Maggie had called him.
“I think you probably know.”
“Yeah, probably.” He sounded less than enthusiastic, but Maggie forced herself to stop analyzing his every intonation and pressed forward.
“I want to continue the conversation we started the other night. About us. I understand everything you were saying, and I agree with it, but…” She hesitated.
When the silence had gone on too long, Carl asked, “But what?”
She clamped her eyes shut. “But I want to try again. I’m ready for it. I want it.”
Dead silence screamed between their phones.
“I know it’s taken me far too long to get here,” she rushed on, “but I’m here now and we love each other, so…” She again paused, needing him to pick up what she’d just dropped.
“You know I wanted it to work. I fought for us, Maggie.”
She didn’t miss the past tense, nor did she respond.
“Look,” he eventually continued, “I just…I think you were right to be so stubborn. I never made you happy.”
“That’s not true! You did make me happy. You do make me happy. Even now. I know things have been strange, but Sunday night…it all felt so natural. Didn’t you think so? We came together without effort. You made me happy.”
“Until the end, when I apparently said the wrong thing. Why didn’t you tell me how you were feeling then?”
Maggie shrugged in answer even though he couldn’t see it and stayed silent. She didn’t want to risk her voice cracking and showing her weakness.
“It’s always been like this,” Carl said. “We get along for a while, then I do the wrong thing and mess it all up. I can’t read your mind, and I can’t keep up with what you expect from me. I fail every time. It gets demoralizing after a while.”
Tears broke loose and relieved the pressure that had been building in Maggie’s throat. She was able to speak again. “Then why did you fight for us? Why didn’t you run for the hills at your first opportunity?”
“Because I love you. And I thought we could work things out, and maybe we could’ve at the time. But since we’ve gone our separate ways, I guess I just see that we’re better apart. And think about the kids. What if we got back together but it didn’t work out? How hard do you think it would be on them to have to go through it all again?”
“Did Melissa demoralize you?” She hadn’t registered half of what he’d just said, and her voice had taken on a hardness.
Carl exhaled roughly into the phone. “Melissa and I had a different kind of relationship. Not that I feel obligated to share this with you, but if anything, she was too accommodating, never seemed to get irritated with me enough.” He let out a bitter grunt. “Guess I was so conditioned to think of myself as a failure, that when she didn’t berate me, I thought there must be something wrong with her.”
“Unbelievable.” Maggie enunciated each syllable separately, her anger building.
“There it is,” he said, baiting her.
“You know what? Thank you, Carl. Thank you for reminding me of all the reasons we didn’t work. You’re absolutely right—we’re so much better apart. Because you never ever did anything wrong. Ever. It was just mean old Maggie telling you things were wrong. I just made it up in my crazy, little mind, but really, you were perfect in every way. I should’ve been more like wittle Missy Wissy, apparently. But wait—you ended up breaking her heart and running straight to your ex-wife’s bed, didn’t you? So I guess it doesn’t matter. No matter how a girl acts, Carl Brock will screw her over!”
“Gee, glad we had this chat,” he said flatly.
“Me too, actually.” She took a deep breath and reclaimed her sanity. “It really has given me clarity. I’m sorry I was such a bitch throughout our entire marriage.”
“You weren’t—”
“Save it. It’s okay. I know; I’m being dramatic. Just…you do get that this means we won’t be sleeping with each other again, right?”
“Clear as crystal.”
She rubbed her temple and closed her eyes, feeling a headache coming on for real this time. “Now that we’ve gotten that straightened out, can we please, please, please move forward as if this conversation never took place?”
“Sure thing.” Most of the stiffness had melted from his voice, and Maggie heard that twinge of concern she so hated. She could tell he was about to ask if she was okay.
“My head’s starting to throb, so I’d better go. Thanks for dinner tonight. Talk to you next week.” She hung up before he had a chance to respond.
She wanted to rewind and go back to Sunday night. After he’d finished his first glass of wine, she should’ve sent him on his merry way. Or even tonight, she could’ve happily gone on the rest of her life telling herself Carl would’ve come around had she just been honest with him. But then she had to go and prove that theory wrong.
She needed a temporary escape, so as soon as she got upstairs, she turned on the shower. Shedding her clothes, she stepped in and let the warm water run over her. How could she have been so stupid? Why had she let herself want him again? At the back of her mind she’d always assumed she could reel Carl back in if she ever chose to. It gave her a sense of peace to think so. Stability. Control. But she’d given him enough time to realize he didn’t want her. Her tears burned hotter than what was coming from the pipes, and she let them flow. It was the first time she fully acknowledged the finality of her loss.
Her tears eventually subsided, and only the tepid, saltless stream of the shower ran down her face. It was time for Maggie to get out and move on. She brushed her hair straight back, lotioned, and pulled on her fuzzy robe. Stepping out of the bathroom, the first place her eyes fell was the bed. The scene of the debacle. She couldn’t make herself go there. She went instead to the chaise in the corner of the room, kicking up her legs and leaning back to stare at the quarter moon outside her window. An owl hooted. Maggie found his mournful call into the lonely night comforting—she had a comrade in her misery.
The silver glow of the moon was mimicked just to the side of Maggie. She recognized the shimmer and turned toward Evan. “Hey.” She gave him a small nod and then turned back to the window. When the angel had come by earlier that week, she hadn’t even brought up the incident with Carl, preferring at the time to ignore it.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I thought you were supposed to keep me from getting hurt.” She only meant it as a joke, but there was bitterness in her tone.
“I didn’t detect any danger.”
“Not tonight. Sunday.”
“Sunday? You seemed to be rather pleased with the situation. Did he hurt you?” Quiet anger resounded deep in his voice, grabbing Maggie’s attention.
She peered at him, noting a subtle tension in his balled fists and the flickering shards in his gray eyes. For
the first time, she sensed the great power residing beneath his peaceful demeanor. “No, he didn’t hurt me. Not the way you mean.”
The flash retreated from his eyes, but he continued studying Maggie’s face, and she felt the bite of tears again. He lowered himself to the chaise, sitting beside her hip. “In what way did he hurt you?”
After releasing a sigh to loosen her tightening throat, Maggie answered in a husky whisper, “My heart. He hurt my heart.”
She pressed back harder into the chaise and bit at her lip, trying to stem the fresh tears, but it didn’t work. Bringing her hand to her chest, she held it there, as if clenching at her robe would somehow take the pain away. She didn’t understand where these tears were coming from. She’d already let herself cry in the shower and should be dry by now. But her body wouldn’t be controlled by her mind. Her release escalated into small gasps. She’d worked so hard to get her life traveling along a nice, straight path again. Then Carl showed up, said a few pretty words, and she lost control. She lost control of everything. She didn’t know how to stop crying.
Evan’s warm, watery-feeling hand wrapped around hers and pulled it from her chest, leaning his head there instead. Since they weren’t flesh to flesh, he didn’t sink into her, but the side of his face had a penetrating warmth to it, and as he lay there, still, his sweet, soothing vibe filtered into her chest. She brought her hand up to clutch his hair and held him close, her crying softening more and more until she was hardly weeping at all. She fell asleep caressing her angel’s silky hair while he silently rested his beautiful head on her chest and did his very best to heal her heart.
Chapter 8
OVER THE NEXT TWO WEEKS, Maggie attempted to recalibrate her mind to where it had been before her escapade with Carl. Talking with Evan helped, but when the angel wasn’t present, it seemed she no longer clung to his influence very well. She considered pursuing the annulment, thinking that might help improve her emotional state, but gave up on the idea. Her marriage had happened. They’d both gone into it foolishly thinking it would last forever, and she wouldn’t negate that, couldn’t erase her mistakes with a piece of paper.
The end of the school year was busy for Maggie and the kids, with projects and tests and a hundred and one social activities surrounding eighth grade graduation. In between all of that, Maggie made several phone calls to her parents in Colorado. Her father had had knee surgery the day after Liam’s school sing, and she could tell it comforted her mother to be able to give daily reports on the progress of his recovery. The distractions kept Maggie from dwelling too much on her melancholy state, yet when Sharon called about getting together for lunch one more time before school was out, Maggie made up an excuse and declined, not feeling ready to sit under her friend’s microscope just yet.
A visit from her less invasive sister was exactly what she needed, so it was a blessing that Nancy had already planned to drive up from St. Louis to attend Kirsten’s graduation. She arrived on Friday night, and on Saturday morning, Maggie’s parents got adventurous on the computer and had a video chat with their granddaughter, apologizing profusely for having to miss the big day. Immediately after the call, Nancy and Kirsten disappeared into the bathroom where Nancy pulled her niece’s hair up into a twist and helped her put on a light layer of makeup.
“Is this my baby girl?” Maggie exclaimed when her daughter stepped into the kitchen.
“Hey, hey, don’t tear up—you’ll mess up your makeup!” Nancy scolded.
It was difficult for Maggie not to smear her eyeliner just a little bit in the church parking lot when she saw all the graduates looking suddenly more grown up, the girls in their high heels and strapless dresses, and the boys in their button-down shirts and ties, slapping each other high five as they made their way into church for the Mass.
“There’s Dad…and Missy!” Kirsten squealed and dashed across the bumpy asphalt as fast as she could in her dress shoes.
“Who’s Missy?” Nancy asked.
“Carl’s girlfriend.” Were they back together, or had he merely invited her to the graduation for Kirsten’s sake, Maggie wondered. She threw on her sunglasses to cover the only betrayal of her reaction—the tortured glint deep in her irises—and walked her sister over. Carl gave Nancy a warm, if somewhat awkward, hug and introduced Melissa. While they made polite small talk, Carl briefly locked eyes with Maggie, quirking his eyebrows in a way that told her he’d explain later.
The ceremony, led by Monsignor Sarto, gave Maggie time to quiet her tumultuous thoughts and ask for the grace she needed to get through the rest of the day without having a meltdown. She knew everything was over between her and Carl, so logically it shouldn’t matter if he was back together with Melissa. But that didn’t stop her from hoping there was some other explanation. All the insecurities she’d felt after he’d cheated swarmed around her, poking to get in.
After the formalities, the families were invited to a nearby golf club where one of the parents had generously reserved a banquet room. The bright space filled with a happy buzz and loud chatter as the graduates and their families arrived, and Maggie had a genuinely good time introducing her sister around while keeping an eye out for Liam, who’d found a posse to run around with. A highlight of the party was when Father Dominic stopped by to make a toast. This was the first graduating class since he’d come to the parish, and being youthful himself, he’d naturally been a favorite among the students.
While Nancy was engaged in a conversation about a reality show Maggie didn’t watch, Carl came over—without Melissa. “Can I talk to you for a moment?” he asked.
“Yeah, sure. Nance, I’ll be right back.”
She followed Carl to the outside deck that surrounded the large room on three sides, overlooking the golf course. Placing his hand at the small of her back, he guided her to an unoccupied corner. “Missy and I are going to take off soon, but I couldn’t leave without apologizing. This isn’t how I would’ve liked for you to find out.”
Maggie held her breath in an attempt to absorb the sting of knowing for certain that sleeping with her had driven Carl straight back to another woman.
“It only just happened,” he continued, “so I didn’t have time to warn you, but I couldn’t exactly tell her not to come to the graduation.”
“She doesn’t know, then?”
“About us? No.”
Maggie nodded slowly. “Okay. Well, I appreciate you realizing this might come as a bit of a surprise to me, but there’s really nothing more to say about it, so…I’m going to go in before anything starts to look wonky.” She kept nodding, and Carl watched her, nodding back as if it was infectious. Not knowing what else to do, Maggie gave him an absent-minded pat on the cheek before walking away. They were only emotions. All she had to do was keep them in check for a while.
Nancy was six years older than Maggie, just enough separation to put the sisters perpetually into different stages of life. The differences were magnified when Nancy married her high school sweetheart at the age of twenty and then got pregnant with her first child almost immediately after the wedding. The sisters found they had more in common when Maggie also became a mother, but by then Carl’s job had moved his family away from Missouri, and the geographic distance plus the business of life kept the sisters from being as close as Maggie sometimes would’ve liked. Having her sister in town for the weekend was a treat, and Maggie wasn’t going to spoil it by whining.
After dropping Kirsten off at a pool party on Sunday afternoon, Nancy suggested going to Somme Park, where her younger sister had taken her on previous visits.
Liam groaned in the back seat. “Is that the place with all the flowers?”
“Yep,” Maggie answered. “And the place with a lemon ice cart right before the trails. I’ll bet Aunt Cici will buy you one if you ask real nice.”
“Will you, Aunt Cici?”
“Sure, pumpkin.”
Within minutes of arriving, Liam took off between the rows of elms that led from the parking
lot to the ice cart while the women lagged behind, strolling at a leisurely pace. A new set of blooms had emerged since Maggie had last been to the park. Her plan was to stay clear of the Greek tholos because of the “pocket of malice” or whatever Evan had called it. He said such pockets often occurred in random places, but she wasn’t sure whether they clung to the same areas or moved around. She’d have to ask him.
“It was weird seeing Carl with another woman yesterday,” Nancy said.
Maggie shrugged. “You get used to it.”
“How long have they been dating?”
“Since the fall.”
“What do the kids think?” Nancy asked, nodding toward Liam.
“They like her.” Maggie noted the slight downturn at the corners of her sister’s mouth, accentuated by thin lines that Maggie hadn’t noticed last time she’d seen her. “Really, Nance, everything’s hunky dory in Splitsville. You can see the kids are adjusted and so am I, so can we talk about something else? Like…you’re going to have a college graduate this time next year. How does that feel?”
Nancy gave a slight groan. “It’ll be nice to write out one less tuition check, but having him back home full time again…I don’t know.”
The conversation moved on as they caught up to Liam and bought their lemon ices. They proceeded to the formal garden with its geometric hedges bordering jewel-colored beds of early-blooming annuals, and then the Japanese gardens, where Liam seemed to forget his boredom when he discovered live koi flitting in the small pond. Maggie and her sister sauntered onto the arched bridge and watched him.
“It’s been great having you here,” Maggie said.
“It’s been great being here.” Nancy turned her back to the railing, leaning on both elbows as she took Maggie in with a long gaze. “You sure everything’s okay in Splitsville?”
Maggie looked at her sideways. “Does it not seem okay?”
“Mmm, no, it seems fine. You just…in quiet moments you seem a little sad. And I could see that Carl inviting his girlfriend to the graduation shook you up more than you wanted to admit.”
