A Symphony of Cicadas (30 page)

“Megan said you were talking about divorce at your house,” she blurted out
.
The look on Kevin’s face was more shock than confirmation.

“Are you finding out information about me through the girls?” he asked her
.
Sara shook her head
, her eyes widening at the prospect
.

“No!  Not at all!  But she was asking me about it
.
She didn’t know what it meant when she heard you talking about it, and wanted to know what it was
.
When I explained it to her, she got mad
.
And Li
ly
wanted to know if we were getting one.”

“What did you tell her?” Kevin asked.

“I told her I didn’t know,” Sara said
.
“Because I don’t
.”

Kevin was silent after this, leaving an uncomfortable pause
ly
ing
on the table
right next to
the
fragrant
appetizers
and
bourbon drinks
.
Sara squirmed under t
he
crushing
weight of the
silence
.

“Kevin, why
did
you ask me to meet you today?” she asked,
unable to avoid the elephant in the room any longer.  Her eyes flashed,
begging him to just rip the band-aid off the unanswered questions holding their marriage together by a thread
.
He took in a deep breath
before letting it out.

“I
was
talking about divorce this weekend,” he
began
.
“I didn’t think Megan could hear me when I was on the phone
.
Did she tell you anything else?” he asked.

“No,” Sara said
.
“Were you talking to your mother?”
For just a moment, Sara was
hopeful
.
He shook his head
.
Sara held very still.
“Was it a woman?” He nodded
.
His confirmation was a punch to her gut, and she let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding
.
She wanted to leave,
picking
up her purse to get ready to flee
.
But when he reached for her hand to stop her from going, she didn’t fight him
.
“Do you love her?” she asked him.

“I bare
ly
know her,” he said
.
She could see the truth in
his face
,
and
understood
there would be no lies at this table
.
“Sara, she asked me if I was going to divorce you
.
I had just started seeing her
.
I wanted to know what it was like to be with someone else, and she wanted to know if I was serious about her.”

“What did you tell her?” Sara asked.

“I told her I didn’t know if I was going to divorce you,” he said
.
The words lingered
between the two of them.
 

“You don’t know?” Sara asked
.
He shook his head with a small smile
.
“So what about her?”

“Well, that’s about when she told me not
to
call her until I had signed divorce papers.”

Sara stared at his face, studying the emotions there.  It had been a long time since she’d known what he was thinking.
Her eyes began to fill with tears.
“Is that why
we
’re here? 
Y
ou want me to sign them so we can move on?”

“Sara
!” Kevin was incredulous.
“A
re you even listening to a word I’m saying?”
He heaved a huge sigh and threw caution to the wind.
“Honey, I miss you
.
I miss us
.
I miss us being a whole fami
ly
.
I want to come home
.
That is
…
if you’ll have me
.”
Sara
was
dumbfounded
.

“But
you said
you didn’t love me anymore
.
”

“I didn’t know what I wanted, Sara
.
My mind was so muddy from being overworked that I couldn’t see what I was throwing away
.
All this time I was blaming you for not giving me the attention I wanted that I couldn’t see
how much
you were doing already.” He chuckled
in
embarrassment
.
“Taking care of those girls is real
ly
hard work!”

“Right?  They’ll suck the life right out of you,” she
laughed
.
Sara’s heart warmed at the acknowledgement.

“But they’re so dang smart, and fun!  I realized I had been letting all the parenting fall on your shoulders, and I was actual
ly
missing out on them growing up
.
These past few months I’ve been forced to stop focusing on all my stuff when they’re around, and it’s been real
ly
eye
-
opening
.”
He took Sara’s hand in his
.
“Sara, if you’ll have me back, I pro
mise to be around more
.
And not
just physical
ly
.
When
I’m at the house, I promise to
be your partner in life, and not
just someone who lives there.”

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing
.
Of all the scenarios that had played through her head, this was one she never thought of
.
She
’d been so
sure he was going to start making arrangements for the divorce, to discuss lawyers and paperwork, to rip her heart out of her chest and crush it with the bottom of his shoe
.
And here he was, wanting her back, wanting to be a fami
ly
.
A brief glimpse of the other night with John
burst into
her
mind
.

“Oh g
od,” she said, pulling her hand away from Kevin’s grasp.

“What is it?” he asked in alarm
.
“Is it me?  Are you saying no?”

“No,” she said
.
She saw Kevin’s
face fall
, and she rushed to correct herself
.
“No, I mean I’m not saying ‘no
.
’ Oh Kevin, I did something. I did something real
ly
awful.”

“Did you sleep with someone?” he asked her, guessing on the very first try
.
She nodded, fearful tears filling her eyes.

“But it was just once, and it wasn’t planned,” she swore.

He thought for a moment.
“Do you care for him?”

“No
.
I mean, not like that
.
It was a total accident, and we decided it wasn’t ever going to happen again,” she insisted.

I caught just a flash of Kevin’s thoughts in that moment
.
John’s face appeared in his head, and he brushed it away as soon as it came
.
He knew it was him
.
He was the on
ly
man Sara was even close enough to become intimate with
.
Kevin knew she wasn’t like
him
.
She wouldn’t have been able to
sleep with just anyone –
unlike
he had with the first person who showed interest
in him
.

He took her hand back in his.

“I don’t want to know anymore
.
It doesn’t matter
.
None of it matters
.
The
on
ly
thing that’s important
is if you’ll take me back.” Sara didn’t say anything, afraid to answer, afraid of what he was asking, afraid that it
could
mean she would be trapped in a passionless marriage, afraid that he would walk out of the restaurant and never come back
.
“Sara, do I need to get on my knees and beg you?  Because I will if I have to,” he promised
.
He started to get up.

“No, stop!” she said, laughing
.
“You’ve just caught me off guard.”

“Does that mean you need time to decide?  Or is your mind already made up?” he asked her.

“I’m just afraid,” she admitted
.
“What if it doesn’t work?  What if we’re fooling ourselves into being trapped in a miserable situation?”

“Thing is, Sara, being miserable without you is way worse than being miserable with you,” he told her.

“Well, that’s reassuring,” she laughed
.
“I’m being serious.”

“I am too
.
And if things get rocky, we fix it before it gets worse
.
We go to counseling
.
We read all those self-help books by your bed
.
We talk it out
.
Hell, I’ll even go to church if I have to
.
I just don’t want to be without you,” he pleaded
.
When she still didn’t answer right away, he
slid off his chair onto one knee before she realized what he was doing
.

“Sara Marie Ashby Ferguson
.
Will you do me the immense honor of being my wife?” he said
, his voice carrying through the whole restaurant
.
Sara reddened as she felt hundreds of eyes turning to look in her direction.

“Oh my goodness, he’s proposing!” she heard a woman gush at a table behind her.

“We’re already married,” Sara said to the woman
.
“We’re already married, Kevin,” she repeated to him
.
“Get up off the ground, you’re embarrassing yourself.”

“I’m not embarrassed,” Kevin said
with a grin
.
“In fact, I’m quite enjoying this.”

“Then you’re embarrassing me,” she hissed.

“Will you?” he asked
.
“I’m not getting up until you give me an answer
.”

The rest of the restaurant was quiet as they all waited for Sara to say something, the on
ly
sound being the occasional whisper and the clink of a fork on porcelain
.
She glared down at him as he continued to hold her hand tight
.
He smiled in encouragement when
a
little
smile crep
t
onto her face
.
She thought
about
how
absurd
the situation was
, Kevin bent on one knee and both of them the center of attention
.
At last
, she nodded
.
The whole restaurant erupted in applause as he got up and
pulled
her
up
in a huge embrace.

“You won’t regret this, Sara,” he whispered in her ear
.
“I’ll spend my whole life making sure of it.”

Twenty-two

I
t had been several months since
John
had last seen Sara, and
he
still couldn’t get her out of his mind
.
He had tried, putting all of his energy into unpacking the house and making it a home, as well as diving headfirst into work
.
With the summer weather extending into fall, work had been steady enough that he was always busy
.
His
contractor had secured a pr
oject for a new subdivision in S
outh San Francisco, taking one of the rare rural areas and building high-priced homes on it. Many days he didn’t see his own home except in the glow of streetlights, spending all his daylight hours working on someone else’s house under the
October
sun
.

Days were easy, his on
ly
focus a job that demande
d all his attention
.
But at night
, when he lay within the quiet of his empty house, it was Sara’s face that haunted him in the moments it took him to fall asleep, and who greeted him when he woke from a dreamless slumber
.
It
was easier for John to focus on Sara than it had been to be so consumed by me
.
I tried to remind myself of this every time I started to get hurt that he no longer
seemed to
need me
.
It helped that he still thought of me from time to time
.
But whenever he did,
he traded my face for Sara’s, giving his attention to someone more attainable than a dead fiancé
e
.

He had on
ly
called Sara a handful of times in the past three months
.
The first time, he hung up after her voice gave instructions on how to leave a message, before the beep obligated him to say something back
.
The second time, he tried to act casual, giving an unbelievable performance of someone who was just checking in to see what was new in her world
.
By the third phone call, he was aware that she was avoiding his calls, and he called her out on it in the phone message
.
But it was the fourth call he left that he regretted the most, one that he replayed over and over in his head and wished he could take back.

“Sara, it’s John
.
You might not want to see me, but your girls might
.
After all, I was a part of their lives too
.
I was almost their uncle
.
So…  Shit
.
O
kay,
this isn’t going how I planned
.
Leave it to me to try and get you to call me back by reminding you that I was once going to be married to your sister
.
But I’m going crazy here
.
Look, will you just talk to me?  Damn, I probab
ly
should just re-record this-
”
Beep.

The phone cut him off before he could do anything, holding his jumbled up message hostage in her voicemail box until she listened to him make an ass of himself
.
He almost called back, but decided the damage was done
.
Calling her
repeatedly
wasn’t going to make any of it look less crazy
.
So he left it as it was, and never called again.

But her non-communication was eating away at him
.
And on his
next
Sunday off from work, he knew he needed to see her in person and at least plead his case.

Most flower shops in town were closed on Sundays and Mondays
.
Knowing this
in the beginning days of opening
our
shop
, Sara and I had decided we would place the odds in our favor
by
keeping limited hours on Sunday mornings to fill the needs of those in a bin
d
.
At first, staying open for four
hours on a Sunday morning didn’t make much sense
.
We on
ly
saw one or two customers
on the first dozen
Sundays, making the
expense
of staying open cost more than
closing one day a week and
losing the small amount of business
.
But soon word got out that we were available on Sundays, and we began to see
the
church
altar guild
buying replacement lilies for the ones that had wilted too
soon
, funeral directors who needed a last
-
minute
arrangement
, and apologetic husbands who had strayed into the excitement of the city, afraid to
go home empty-handed to their waiting wives
.
This was one of the reasons our shop didn’t fold when many new businesses were affected by the economy. It seemed that even in the poorest of times, people still needed flowers to say what they couldn’t with words.

With the limited time Sara would be at the shop, John knew he needed to move fast
.
His conscience told him just
to
let her go
.
Or perhaps it was my voice he heard somewhere within the thoughts that scrambled up his mind, pleading with him to forget her as I tried to protect him from breaking his heart any more than it already was
.
But he wouldn’t listen
.
He knew he wouldn’t be able to rest until he ha
d seen
her face to face, pled his case, convinced
her that he was the answer to everything she needed and she was his answer as well.

He took a quick shower, pulling on the cleanest pair of jeans he could find in a pile of laundry that had been
building up
for weeks
.
He then grabbed a granola bar for breakfast and hopped into his truck, taking the drive over the Golden Gate Bridge to reach the small shop Sara and I had set up so many years before
.
As he drove, he went over what he was going to say to her
.
In truth
, he didn’t have a clue
.
All attempts to formulate a plan
failed
, fluttering away like the leaves on his windshield.

The
re were no
customers when John
walked in the
door
.
Not even Sara was in sight,
l
eaving John alone in a room of flowers
.
He paused in his mission and looked around
.
It occurred to him that this was where he had first laid eyes on me, when he had fallen in love with me
but
wouldn’t know it for a few more months
.
The room seemed smaller than
he remembered
, encased by flowers on the walls and in buckets around the shop
.
The claustrophobia set in before he even knew what was hitting him
.
I was everywhere he turned - my eyes, my smile, the mango smell in my hair.

“What am I doing?” John said out loud, his hands shaking
.
He couldn’t breathe, the air swallowed by the fragrance of flowers, suffocating him
with
their sweet aroma.

“John?” Sara asked, emerging from the back room
.
“What are you doing here?”  She saw how pale his face was, and changed from curiosity to concern
.
“Are you
okay?
”

“I need to get out of here,” John said, rushing back through the doors he came in from
.
Sara grabbed a bottle of water from beside the register and followed him out.

“Here,” she said, handing him the bottle
.
“Drink this
.”
He took it with an embarrassed smile, and drank half of it without pausing
.
Wiping his mouth, he sank to the ground, squeezing the area between his eyes in efforts to get his mind to shut up
.
“Feel better?” Sara asked him
.
He nodded
, though his hands were still shaky
.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come here,” he said.

“Why
are
you here, John?” Sara asked
.
I could tell she
already
knew why, having listened to each of John’s messages with a guilty heart, afraid to answer the phone or even call him back
for
fear of rocking the boat with Kevin
.
Things were good at home
.
She didn’t want anything to interfere with that
.
Seeing John here, she knew it was because she had cut off all communication
.
She remembered how it had felt, months earlier, when she had been the one on the other line, searching for some kind of connection since her husband was unable to give it to her
.
But she found it easier to pretend innocence than to admit she knew what John was going through.

“You won’t talk to me, won’t even answer your phone
.
Look, I know what happened that night was sudden
.
But we were friends before that
.
And now you won’t even give me that,” John said.

“I can’t, John.”

“Why not?  I mean, I know it’s total
ly
weird
.
It will be hard to explain to everyone around us
.
But…  Shit
.
I’m not
good at this anymore
.
I haven’t dated since before your sister.” Just mentioning me flooded his brain with my face once again, and he took a deep breath in and out
.
“What the hell is wrong with me, Rachel?  Why am I having such a hard time even talking to you?” he asked.

“I’m not Rachel,” Sara
murmured
.

“What do you mean?” John asked
.
“I know you’re not Rachel. You’re Sara.”

“No, you called me Rachel.”

“I did?”  He racked his brain over the past few minutes, and realized it was a huge possibility that he had slipped up, using my name instead of hers
.
“Sara, I’m sorry
.
I know you’re not Rachel
.
I think just being here is making me think of her more than ever.”

“But don’t you see?  That’s exact
ly
why that night was a mistake
.
You don’t love me, you love the idea of me – the one that is mixed up with thoughts of my sister.”

“That’s not true,” John
protested
.
But just the mention of it made him question what was going on.

“What happened in there?” Sara asked
.
“I know that wasn’t from me
.
What were you thinking of when you entered the store and sudden
ly
needed to leave?”

“I was thinking of her,” John admitted
.
He sighed, rubbing his temples at the realization he wasn’t over me yet, that he had transferred all of his pain over losing me into obsessing over Sara
.
“This was where we first met
.
It was an accident, real
ly
.
But it was one that was meant to happen
.”
He relayed the story, telling her about how the forgetfulness of his friend brought him to this shop
.
“From the moment I
saw her, she took my breath away
.
She didn’t know it, of course
.
She was adorab
ly
flustered as she tried to help me with some last minute flower needs
.
But it gave me the in to be able to ask her out
.”
He smiled at the memory, taking in the details of the dress I wore that day, the way my hair escaped from the loose bun I wore at the nape of my neck, the rich coffee of my eyes.

“You know, you were the first guy she real
ly
let get close to her, I mean, since Joey’s dad took off
.
She had a hard time trusting anyone
.
But something about you let her believe that even she could fall in love
.
I never saw her
as
happy as she was when she was around you
.”
Sara paused, her eyes twinkling at a memory on
ly
she and I shared
.
“If she were here, she’d kill me for tell
ing
you this
.
But she called me the day that she met you
.
She actual
ly
told me she had met the man she was going to marry.”