Grady's Wedding

by Patricia McLinn

  “I’d like it to be different.” The wistfulness in her voice had Grady swallowing hard. “I’d like my dad to still be alive, and for him and Mom to stay in one place together so we could be a real family.”

  He sighed. “I know, April. I used to wish the same thing. I wanted a little house with a white picket fence, instead of the hotels and grand houses. But it doesn’t work that way. I couldn’t change my parents, you can’t change your mother. But you might be able to change other things. To do that, first you have to think about what you’d like to do. What do you want?”

  “I want to stay in one place.” The answer was heartfelt and immediate. “I want to go to one school all year long and never have to walk in as the new kid ever again in my whole life.”

  “Where would you like to stay?”

  “Well . . .” Contemplating what she might like to do instead of resisting what other people had planned for her transformed April. “Charlottesville’s not bad,” she said judiciously. “There’s a couple of kids I like to hang out with and the teachers weren’t too prison guardish.”

  “Okay. What else?”

  She looked at him a little shyly. “I kinda like Leslie. I mean, visiting her in Washington and everything.”

  Progress came slowly, he supposed. If she wanted to mask her feelings for Leslie under the guise that she liked the city, who was he to criticize?

  “Have you told her that?”

  “No.” He said nothing. After a moment, she added, “You think I should?”

  “You think Leslie’s more likely or less likely to invite you back if she knows you enjoy visiting her? And if you were Leslie, would you like to hear somebody enjoyed visiting you or would you rather they kept it a secret?”

  “All right, all right, I’ll tell her.”

  Her mock surrender was the closest thing to humor he’d heard from April. It set the mood for their return trip. She even showed interest in sailing, and he was happy to teach her.

  She grew quiet as they neared the dock.

  “Guess you and Leslie won’t be seeing each other any more after this trip, so I probably won’t see you, either.”

  He forgave her the stab of pain her first words caused because he thought he understood how she might be feeling about the second part. April Gareaux had connected with so few people in her young life that she felt the impending loss of one keenly.

  As Mrs. M. had said, this helping other people had its dangers.

  “What happens with Leslie and me doesn’t mean I can’t keep in touch with you. I could write, if you’ll promise to write back.”

  “Write?” Hope and wariness blended in the word.

  “Sure. It’s good for you.” Her doleful look at that dreaded phrase drew a further offer. “And if you do that, I could call now and then, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Okay.” He raised an eyebrow, and she added more enthusiastically. “That would be great.”

  He would keep his promise to April no matter how much the reminder of Leslie hurt.

  * * * *

  Grady insisted on driving them to the airport. He’d decided to stay on in Chicago a few days “to clear up business,” and Leslie had suggested they take a taxi. But Grady wouldn’t budge; he was driving them to the airport.

  Paul, Bette and Anna had come up to the Monroes’ for breakfast. The goodbyes and thank-yous masked the tension. But in the car it rose through the silence.

  A block from the Monroes’, Grady turned north instead of continuing west toward the airport. He gave no explanation, and no one asked, though Leslie caught the look Tris and Michael exchanged.

  In less than five minutes, he stopped in front of a house just visible through an iron fence.

  “You wanted to see it” was all he said.

  But she’d already known.

  Like the Monroes’ it backed on Lake Michigan, but that was where the similarities ended. This was a solid, gray mass, designed to impose, not to welcome. The grounds were perfectly kept, but lacked imagination. The windows and doors gave the impression of seldom being opened. With no sign of neglect, it had an air of desertion.

  Without another word, he pulled away, and the rest of the drive was accomplished in silence.

  While Michael and Grady checked the baggage curbside, Tris took Leslie aside. “Look, we’ll get April to the gate and get all the boarding passes.”

  "No, I—”

  “Leslie. I’ve never known you to be a coward. You have to say something to each other. You have to.”

  Leslie didn’t agree, but she didn’t protest when Tris and Michael led April away after a round of hugs with Grady.

  Inside the terminal, April said, “I have to use the rest room.” Tris started to protest, but heard a snuffle the girl tried to hide and understood.

  “I won’t run away,” April added with new dignity.

  “I know you won’t. We’ll wait for you right here.” From their spot, they could see the back of Grady’s blond head through the glass walls of the terminal.

  “He was very sweet to me when he brought me to the airport last year,” Tris told Michael, fighting her own snuffle. “You’d said you were sorry after we’d made love for the first time, and I was so miserable.”

  His mouth twisted. “I remember. And it wasn’t much fun on my end, either.”

  She touched his cheek, and he covered her hand. “I didn’t think a drive to the airport could ever be more miserable than that one, but this came close.” Grimly she added, “If he’s really broken her heart, I will tear him limb from limb.”

  “What if she’s really broken his heart?”

  Tris looked up at Michael, totally secure in his love yet still able to remember the pain of thinking she’d never have it. “It would break my heart, too.”

  Michael put his arm around her and drew her close.

  * * * *

  “Leslie—”

  She wouldn’t have turned if he hadn’t put his hand on her arm. Even then, she didn’t look at him.

  “Leslie, give me some time. Give me a chance to—”

  She was shaking her head. “That’s just it, Grady. Time isn’t going to change this. Nothing is. I want to thank you—for this trip, for being so kind to April, for all those wonderful trips around Washington, for—” Her voice faltered, and he took a step closer to her. But she backed away. “For everything.”

  Then she did look at him. “Goodbye, Grady.” And she was gone.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The thing that kept hitting him in the face when he thought he was concentrating on something else was that he’d been certain he knew Leslie so well, and yet here was this aspect of her, this event, that had such an impact on her life, that turned it upside down and turned her inside out, and he’d had no inkling of it.

  Did he know her? Had he been fooling himself? Was he capable of knowing someone well?

  The thought, and the questions that invariably followed, became a constant itch.

  Still, he surprised himself four days after Leslie left when he heard his voice saying, “The thing that keeps hitting me in the face . . .”

  The Chicago office was running so well he didn’t have much to do and he was too smart—at least in business—to interfere. So he’d taken to long walks. This afternoon’s walk took him to Paul’s office. Paul might be out consulting with a client ranging from the Smithsonian to a neighborhood collector, but it was as good a destination as anywhere else. When Grady walked in, Jan Robson, Paul’s longtime secretary, waved him into the inner office.

  He’d been sitting on the leather couch under the windows talking about nothing in particular for several minutes when the words came out. “The thing that keeps hitting me in the face . . .”

  “You’re looking at it all wrong, Roberts.”

  Grady almost grinned for the first time in five days. It’s a good thing he hadn’t expected sympathy; Paul’s words of wisdom ran more to bracing than sympathetic.

  “When yo
u like someone, really care for them—” Grady absorbed Paul’s sharp look, but didn’t dispute or confirm that description. “Continuing to get to know them better all the time is one of the pleasures. If you’re lucky, that never ends. Because the other person’s changing and growing all the time, too. And that makes for some very interesting surprises.” His smile grew distracted for a moment. “It’s really the same thing with friends. Hey, look at the way you’ve surprised all of us in the past few months.”

  “I suppose I have. I’ve surprised myself some, too.”

  Paul nodded, at the same time studying him speculatively. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if you keep on surprising us—and yourself—now that you’ve started. The first thing is, you’ve got to decide what you want.”

  Too bad it was the first thing, because that seemed to be where he got stuck. What did he want?

  Abruptly Paul swiveled his chair and started digging in a desk drawer. “I know I had that business card here somewhere,” he muttered. Then he shouted. “Jan! Have you seen Alicia Carpenter’s business card around?”

  The office door opened and Jan walked in with a slip of paper. “No, because you insisted you wanted to keep it in your, uh, file. But I did enter her information in my records. Here.”

  “Thanks, Jan. What would I do without you?”

  “Disintegrate,” she said, deadpan.

  Paul was already dialing the telephone. “I have somebody I want you to see, Grady. You go and talk to her and— Alicia? It’s Paul Monroe. How soon can you arrange to talk to a friend of mine?”

  * * * *

  Leslie smiled serenely through the rest of the week, though she thought her face might crack.

  She listened to Janey’s plans to pursue a long-delayed college degree. She bolstered Barry’s confidence before his first visit to his in-laws-to-be. She untangled a dispute that had started with a hard slide into second in a softball game and had escalated into a wrangle over the flow of information from the foundation to a preservation magazine. She spent every possible moment with a subdued April. She avoided confidential talks with Tris. She wondered if the time would come when Grady’s voice, touch, face and scent didn’t accompany her every second.

  Melly had been scheduled to pick April up that weekend, but to no one’s surprise “something came up.” Grandma Beatrice was coming instead. To avoid a grandmotherly third degree, Leslie planned to exploit the rule that Craigs did not discuss private matters in public.

  They had lunch out. Went shopping. Had high tea at a hotel. Attended a Kennedy Center concert, then went out for a late supper.

  “Well, Leslie Aurelia, you have succeeded,” announced Grandma Beatrice upon their return to Leslie’s apartment. “I am too exhausted to probe the reasons for the decidedly pinched look around your eyes. You do not look at all well, and I do expect an explanation. Though not tonight. I am going to bed. Good night, girls.”

  Another time being classified with a thirteen-year-old as a “girl” would have amused Leslie. This night, she meekly said good-night, then sank down on the couch, where she would sleep.

  April stood in front of her, eyes on the floor, hands pleating the sides of her skirt. “I, uh, I . . . thank you for having me stay with you.”

  She smiled, valuing the formal and stilted words for the effort it took to produce them. “You’re very welcome, April. I’ve enjoyed having you here, and I hope you can come back.”

  April’s head jerked up. “You want me back?”

  “Of course.”

  “But I ran away and caused all that trouble.”

  Leslie leveled a look at her. “Yes. You did. You also apologized to me and the Monroes and to the policeman, and you promised never to do that again.”

  “I won’t.” Leslie believed her. “But there’s still . . .”

  April’s voice trailed off, a tide of painful color swept up her cheeks and she looked away.

  “There’s still what?”

  “The, uh, other trouble I caused.”

  “What other trouble?”

  April glanced at her suspiciously, but seemed to accept Leslie’s puzzlement as sincere. Paying her penance, she blurted out, “With you and Grady. Breaking you up.”

  “Oh, April.” Leslie drew her down to the couch beside her. April didn’t resist. “Bless your heart, you didn’t break us up.”

  “But everything was fine until I left. I saw how you looked at each other, sort of like Melly looks at a guy when she’s going to take off, when she doesn’t want me around. But when Grady brought me back, you two weren’t—” She gestured. “You know, together anymore.”

  Leslie took her by the shoulders and looked directly into her eyes. “That wasn’t your fault, April. I swear to you, it wasn’t your fault.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  April accepted the reassurance but her brows knitted. “But you love him, don’t you?”

  Leslie started to brush off the question, then stopped.

  Meeting April’s look, she said, “Yes. But my loving him isn’t enough.. My loving him isn’t the problem.”

  “But I think he loves you,” April offered eagerly.

  Leslie’s lungs burned as if she’d breathed in fire. “Maybe he—” She started to say “does,” but “did” was more honest. She couldn’t bring herself to say that. “Maybe he started to, a little. But there were other things involved, other problems. So we have gone our separate ways.”

  “But—”

  “That’s all, April,” she overrode the girl firmly. “It’s time for bed. We’ve had a long day and we have a lot to do in the morning. We need some sleep.”

  She hoped April got more sleep than she did. Staring at the living room ceiling, she lay in the dark, missing Grady, wishing things could have been different and reminding herself they weren’t.

  At least, with all the things that needed doing in the morning, Grandma Beatrice couldn’t focus her interrogation.

  They packed April’s belongings in the car, Grandma Beatrice promised a long telephone call to “get to the bottom of this,” they hugged and Leslie stood on the curb waving them off. Alone.

  * * * *

  A week after taking Leslie to the airport, Grady walked down granite steps in Evanston. At the bottom, he turned and surveyed the turn-of-the-century building, its limestone bulk softened by pots of flowers and an understated sign.

  The sign might be oblique, but the activity inside wasn’t. This was a haven for women who for many reasons would not keep the child they carried. It directed them to medical care, provided them counseling and companionship. And it promised good families for the babies.

  So why had Paul sent him to an adoption agency?

  Of course, Paul would say he hadn’t; he’d simply sent him to talk to Alicia Carpenter. The fact that she worked as a counselor at this adoption agency was beside the point. Or was it?

  Either way, Grady acknowledged that Alicia Carpenter was a good person to talk to. With no-nonsense compassion, she’d made him order the thoughts that had been flying around in his head like debris in a tornado.

  He found himself quoting Leslie a lot, telling Alicia how Leslie had described him as a man accustomed to getting whatever he wanted. But that this time he had to face that he couldn’t. This barrier he couldn’t push aside. This situation he couldn’t fix, or change. No matter how determined or how resourceful.

  He could have the family he long envisioned. Or he could have a life with Leslie. But not both.

  Under Alicia’s guidance, the huge question of what did he want separated into smaller questions—no more easily answered, but at least comprehensible.

  Could he accept never having a child he helped create?

  Could he accept not having his ideal family? Could he accept that the dream born of a lonely childhood to “change” history by raising his own child in a totally different way wouldn’t ever happen?

  Could Grady Roberts, after a lifetime successfully ma
nipulating his world so he didn’t have to accept things he didn’t like, accept all this?

  Could he imagine not having Leslie in his life?

  Looking up at the building, he acknowledged that he didn’t know the answers. He just didn’t know.

  * * * *

  Two days later and still not knowing, Grady watched a dark-curled girl in a ruffled yellow sundress and tiny white sandals meet her baby brother for the first time.

  Alicia Carpenter had suggested he think about what they’d talked about and come back to see her in a couple days, after it had had time to settle.

  Forty-eight hours had passed and he’d thought of virtually nothing else. But settling? No.

  When he arrived for his appointment, the receptionist asked him to take a seat on the bench in the vestibule.

  He watched a woman holding a baby and a man with his arm around her shoulders come down the stairs and cross to a living-room-like area off the vestibule.

  “They’re here!” an adult voice proclaimed from deeper in the room, then the couple and the baby were surrounded by a gray-haired couple, two younger women, another man and the little girl. The woman holding the baby crouched down to the little girl’s level, and the babble quieted.

  “Andrea, this is your new brother, Benjamin.”

  The little girl, dark eyes wide, nestled against her mother’s side and ventured a tentative hand over the side of the blankets to improve her view.

  “Did I look like that?” Her tone hinted at disapproval.

  “Yes,” said the woman. “When you first came to us, you looked very much like this.”

  “Oh.” She digested that, then looked around at the faces above her. “This is my brother. His name is Benjamin. He’s in our family now, too.”

  Not an eye remained dry, including Grady’s.

  He’d just seen a miracle. As amazing and magical in its way as childbirth. A miracle of love.

  And Grady had found his answers.

  How simple it all seemed now. Flesh and blood hadn’t made a family of him and his parents. It wouldn’t prevent him and Leslie from making a family, whether that family was the two of them or—through adoption-—three or four. The only thing he couldn’t accept would be not having Leslie in his life. He loved her, loved her in a way he never thought he’d be capable of.