Apart at the Seams (28 page)

He shoved his hands in his pockets, sighed, and looked around, taking in the trees and grass and gardens. “And I thought maybe they'd send us someplace more rural, maybe even someplace like this, where you could have a garden. I thought you'd like that. I thought I might like it too.”

“Well, yes,” I said quickly. “I'd have to do something about my clients, but I could figure out a way to work remotely, maybe just go to New York once or twice a month for meetings. Or I could start over someplace else. It might take a while to build up my client list, but sure. If they want to move you out of state, I'm willing to do that.”

“Except they're not,” Brian said grimly. “Barrows told me there was no other position and that, even if there were, he wouldn't give it to me. He said that my work had slipped, that I'd missed the conference in Las Vegas and that the Fordham deal was looking shaky because I hadn't been paying attention. I told him that if the Fordham deal was looking shaky, it was because the company was shaky, that we shouldn't be buying it and I'd told him so from the first.

“And then he reminded me of what he'd told me three years ago, that at Ellison-Farley, you're either moving up or getting out. There were no other options. And then he fired me. So I got on a plane, flew back to New York, and came out here.”

“He fired you! After all these years? Oh, sweetheart.”

I started to come down the steps to comfort him, but Brian lifted his hands to stop me.

“Don't! Just don't. I've had about all the drama I can take for one day, Gayla. I really have.”

He gave a wry little laugh and shoved his hands back in his pockets, shaking his head. He started to pace back and forth across a little patch of grass, heedlessly stepping on the roses, crushing them beneath his shoes, looking down, but clearly not seeing anything. It was as if I wasn't even there and he was talking to himself.

“Do you know what's really funny about this? I was so mad after Barrows fired me. I was well and truly ticked. But by the time I got to the airport, I felt better. I hated working for Mike. He's a wanker, always was. And I hadn't been happy at Ellison-Farley for years, not since the merger. It wasn't the same company after that. During the flight, I started to think that maybe things weren't so bad after all, that maybe this was a blessing in disguise. Yes, it was probably going to strain us financially, but we'd figure it out. They gave me a year's severance—they sort of had to considering how long I'd worked there. That should be enough to help us get by until I found another job. Or, I thought, maybe it'd be enough so I could start over, do something new, something I actually enjoyed.”

He stopped and lifted his head to look at me.

“By the time I got to New York, I had decided that getting fired was probably the best thing that had happened to me in a long time. I thought about sending Barrows flowers, but instead, I bought some for you and drove out here as fast as I could. Because I thought that, together, we'd figure it all out.”

“And we will,” I said quietly. “We still can.”

Brian pressed his lips into a line, standing perfectly still for a long, long moment before speaking.

“I have bent over backward trying to make up for what I did to you, Gayla. I've done absolutely everything I could think of to earn your forgiveness and regain your trust. And I thought I had. But I was wrong. This entire exercise was completely pointless.”

“That's not true, Brian. I have forgiven you. If you had just—”

“No, you haven't. Because if you had,” he said, his voice rising again, “then you would have talked to me, given me the benefit of the doubt. Instead, you got a lawyer!”

He shook his head again, frowning. “I shouldn't have lied to you,” he said, sounding almost as angry with himself as he was with me, “but I was honestly trying to protect you. And you lied to me, too, you know. You promised me that you wouldn't make any further moves toward a divorce until the end of the summer and that if you
did
start having doubts, you'd talk to me about them first. You said you were capable of forgiving me and making a fresh start, Gayla. But it wasn't true. It was never true.”

He turned away and started walking to the car.

“Where are you going?” I asked, following behind him.

“Back to New York,” he said, opening the car door.

“Don't go, Brian. Please don't. I'm sorry. Come inside. Let's talk about this.”

“I can't do this right now, Gayla. I've had enough.”

He turned on the ignition, backed the car up, and started heading down the driveway. I ran after him; I couldn't stop myself.

But it was too late. By the time I got to the road, he was gone.

B
ethany plucked a grape from the fruit bowl and popped it into her mouth. “Well?” she said, propping her elbow up on the coffee table and resting her chin in her hand. “Are you making a guess or not?”

“Hang on a minute. I'm thinking. Okay,” I said after a moment, “I've got it now.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely. Miss Scarlet in the drawing room with the candlestick.”

Bethany opened one end of a miniature manila envelope and peeped inside. “It was the rope.”

“Darn it!” I said, and smacked my knee. “I hate this game.”

“Well, you're better at Clue than Candy Land. But you kind of suck at that too.”

“I do not!”

I grabbed a pillow from the sofa and tossed it at Bethany's head. Giggling, she ducked, and it sailed right past her.

“Okay, maybe I do,” I admitted and took a sip from a glass of iced tea. “Do you want to play again?”

I really hoped the answer was no. I've never been very good at board games, but the kids love them. And since Bobby was out bowling with Dan, giving Bethany and me a rare “girls only” night, I'd said she could pick any game she wanted. I am better at Clue than Candy Land, but not a lot.

“I don't feel like it right now,” she said. “Can we quilt instead?”

“Sure,” I replied as I got up from the sofa. “That's something I never say no to.”

We each went to our rooms to retrieve our project bags, then met back in the living room, putting our needles and notions on the coffee table and then settling in on the sofa.

Bethany had finished sewing her “crazy” pillow top on the machine but was adding embroidery and embellishments by hand. I was nearly finished with my crazy quilt wall hanging; at least I thought I was. I'd actually been saying that for a couple of weeks, but then I'd discover another embroidery stitch that I thought might look neat to add to one particular seam or find a scrap of ribbon that would look pretty made into a flower. That's the thing about crazy quilting; you almost can't overdo it. Almost. But I thought I might be getting close.

The last thing I'd decided to add to my quilt was a button tree. In my very first attempt at needle-turn appliqué, I appliquéd a tree trunk on the lower left quarter of the quilt. It turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. One of the things I like about taking my time and quilting by hand is that I tend to catch my mistakes early on, so if I don't like the way something looks, I just pull out a few stitches and try again.

Once the tree trunk was appliquéd onto the quilt top, I took some of the dark-brown yarn I'd unraveled from Bobby's old bear hat and couched it along the length of the trunk, stitching it to the lighter brown fabric to give it a bark-like look. Then I got out my button box and started sewing on buttons of all different colors and sizes above the trunk where the leaves should be. Of course, those buttons look nothing like real leaves. They were more like children's drawings of leaves, cheerful and whimsical.

For a while, we just sewed without speaking, enjoying each other's company and the breeze coming from the fan that I'd placed in front of the open screen door. The temperatures had been up in the midnineties all day, so I'd opened the front and back doors to let the air circulate through the house.

Bethany finished stitching a pink daisy onto her pillow top and then reached for another color thread. “Mom, do you
want
to move to Delaware?”

Ah. I'd been wondering when she'd bring that up. I knew she'd been thinking about it ever since the night of Abigail's play, but she hadn't said anything and neither had I, even though I'd been thinking about it too. One thing I know about my daughter is that there's no point in trying to make her talk about something until she's good and ready.

I tied off my thread, snipped it, and laid the quilt on my lap to give her my full attention.

“It's not that I want to move to Delaware or anywhere else. But I want to make a good life for us, and it'll be easier to do that if I finish my degree.”

“But we already have a good life. I like living in New Bern. We don't know anybody in Delaware.”

“I know. I like living here too. We've made good friends here.”

“Wouldn't you miss them? And what about Dan? Wouldn't you miss him? I think he'd miss you.”

Her question, as well as her observation, took me by surprise. I reached for another button and threaded my needle again, giving myself time to figure out how to answer. “Dan and I are friends—good friends, I think—but that—”

“I really like him,” she interrupted. “So does Bobby. We think he'd be a good husband.”

We? Had she and Bobby talked about this?

“Dan is a nice man,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “I like him a lot. And I think he likes me too. But we haven't known each other very long, Bethy. And I just think that . . .”

I hesitated, not sure how to explain to her that time wasn't the only thing that made me hesitant about developing a deeper relationship with Dan.

At that moment, the whole concept of marriage was a question mark in my mind. I had my children, friends, and a fulfilling life. What did I need to get married for? Yes, I was lonely sometimes. And yes, sometimes I felt a great void in my life, but who didn't? Who goes through life completely fulfilled? And really, considering the risks and the potential for pain, was marriage worth it?

I put a knot in the end of my thread and started sewing on another button. “Well, I just think it's better not to rush. These things take time.”

“But,” she said, spreading her hands, “how are you going to get the time if we go to Delaware? Don't you
want
to be in love?”

Wow. I didn't see that one coming. Kids really have a way of cutting to the chase, don't they?

Did I want to be in love?

When I was younger, I'd have said yes without a moment of hesitation. But I wasn't younger now, and love had turned out to be a lot more complicated than I'd thought it would be. And it wasn't always easy to know when you'd found it.

Look at Gayla. Even after her husband cheated on her, she'd agreed to try again, to work out their problems. When I saw the two of them together at the play, I truly believed they had.

I hadn't talked to Brian much that night, but I'd watched him. He'd seemed so devoted to Gayla. He held her hand during the play, brought her a glass of soda during the intermission, helped her get into her sweater when it was time to go. And when he looked at her, it was with such . . . I don't know how to describe it exactly, but he had the same expression in his eyes that Dan did that night at the bowling alley, the look that took my breath away and scared me so much that I'd made myself pull back from him, frightened of where a look like that might be leading. Until a few days ago, I might have described it as love, but now, I wasn't so sure. If the expression on Brian Oliver's face had been the look of true love, how could he have cheated on her again?

Did I want to be in love? Even after all I've been through, the answer is still yes. But only if I could be sure that the person I'd fallen in love with shared my feelings and could be trusted absolutely. But, honestly, I'm not sure if that's possible.

“I think everyone wants to be in love, Bethy. But it's not the only thing I want,” I said truthfully. “I want to do something meaningful with my life, to make the world a little bit better.”

She frowned a bit, as if she was trying to make sense of my words. “You've made the world better being our mom,” she said, so simply that I had to swallow to keep my eyes from tears. “And you've made the world better for a lot of people in New Bern, too—Vesta and all those people who come to work with you in the quilt shop. And your friends, too—Aunt Abigail and Evelyn and Margot and Virginia. You've helped them a lot. Why can't you just keep doing that? You don't need a college degree to know how to help people. You're already pretty smart.”

“Thanks, honey. I do think I've helped people at the quilt shop, but if I had more education, I could help even more people and do it in ways that I can't right now.”

She still looked unconvinced, so I tried another tack.

“Bethy, remember how Uncle Franklin was able to help you with the judge? He was able to do that because he went to school to learn how to be a good lawyer. He was always a smart man, but he had to get the right kind of training to be able to do the kind of work he really loved and to be able to help people like you. If I can get my degree, I'll be able to help women who are in trouble, some who might even be in terrible danger, the way that Donna Walsh and the people she works with helped me when I was in danger. I think that's very important, and I think I'd be good at it.”

Bethany lifted her thumb to her mouth and chewed on her nail, thinking. “And that's what you want more than anything?” she asked after a moment's consideration.

“No,” I said. “The thing I want more than anything is for you and Bobby to be happy, so if leaving New Bern, even for just a couple of years, would make you unhappy, then we won't go. And, hey, I might not even get the scholarship. That's all right too. I can always keep on taking one class at a time, the way I have been.”

“But then it would take you a long time to graduate, right?”

“About nine or ten years. Hey! I've got an idea,” I said in a teasing voice. “Maybe you and I could have our graduation parties at the same time!”

Bethany rolled her eyes and laughed. “That's a terrible idea,” she said, and then, after a pause, became serious.

“Mom, if you get that scholarship, I think you ought to go for it.”

“Yeah? Even if it meant leaving New Bern for a while?”

She nodded.

“But,” she said, adding a caveat, “
only
if we can come back during the summers. I love summer in New Bern.”

“So do I. Come here, punkin,” I said, lifting up one of my arms. She smiled and scooted across the sofa for a hug. “You're an amazing kid—do you know that?”

I kissed her on top of her head. “It's so hot. You know what I think we should do? I think we should go outside and run through the sprinkler.”

Bethany's head popped up, her eyes wide. “Really? Even though it's getting dark?”

“Really. Come on. Last one to get on their swimsuit is a rotten egg!”

 

Five minutes later, we were outside, running across the wet grass in our bare feet, having a great time. It was dusk rather than dark; the August sun was taking its time slipping over the horizon, and clouds of fireflies flickered in the sultry summer air.

At first, we simply ran through the water, hopping across the sprinkler head, enjoying the feeling of the cool spray on our hot skin. But then Bethany started to get silly, picked up the sprinkler and chased me with it. Laughing, I grabbed it away from her, unscrewed the sprinkler from the hose, and sprayed it right at her in retaliation. Her screeches of protest blended with waves of giggling; she was literally doubled over with laughter.

“Mom, stop it! I'm serious. Quit! You're making me laugh so hard I'm going to pee my pants! Mom!” she hooted as she straightened up, holding her hands up to stave off the spray of water.

But then her expression changed, her smile disintegrated, and her eyes went wide. Her voice changed, too, becoming suddenly concerned, then alarmed. “Mom? Mommy!”

I turned around to see what was scaring her and saw Hodge, standing not fifteen feet from us with that expression I remembered so well, the smoldering glare that came just before the explosion. But he didn't explode. He just stood there.

I could feel Bethany shift to her left, moving behind me. For a moment, I considered telling her to run inside and call the police, but Hodge was standing between us and the door, and though he looked furious, he still hadn't made a move toward us. I wanted to keep it that way.

I let the hose drop from my hand and felt the cold water start pooling into the indentations of the wet sod. “You can't be here. I have a restraining order,” I said, trying to keep my voice strong.

His lip curled. “Yeah? Well, you know what you can do with your restraining order?” he asked, and then gave a vivid answer. “I'm here to see my daughter. I have a
right
to see my daughter. But
you've
poisoned her against me!” he shouted. “You told her a bunch of lies about me and—”

“I didn't tell her anything about you. She
knows
about you, and she's scared of you. Look at her! She's scared of you, Hodge! And it's because of crap like this!”

“I want to see my daughter,” he growled. “I have a right.”

“She has rights too. You need to leave, Hodge. You need to go now.”

Twin beams of light swept across the lawn: the headlights from Dan's truck. I felt an enormous sense of relief, but it was fleeting.

If Dan jumped out of the truck to rescue me, pounding across the grass to save the day by beating the stuffing out of Hodge, it would be putting a lit match next to a keg of gunpowder. Hodge had always been incredibly jealous. It wasn't the natural jealousy that comes with love and affection, the desire to stand first in the heart of someone you truly care about, but the jealousy born of the need to possess and control another human being. When we were married, if any man got within fifty miles of me, no matter who he might be, or if I so much as looked sideways at another man, Hodge would fly into a murderous rage.

I closed my eyes for a moment, praying that Dan had more sense than my former husband, that he'd keep his head cool and his testosterone in check.

The truck door opened. Dan climbed out and ambled toward us. Bobby stayed where he was, staring through the window with big eyes.