Divine Temptation (11 page)

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.”

Maggie sighed. While her sister wasn’t invasive, she was sometimes inconveniently discerning. “The truth is, Carl and Melissa broke up a few weeks ago, and he hadn’t told me they’d gotten back together—not that he has to report to me. I was just caught off guard, that’s all.”

“That’s all? Really?”

Maggie stayed silent and stared hard at the water.

“Look, you don’t need to talk about it,” Nancy said. “But just because I’m leaving tomorrow morning doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind and give me a call.”

“Thanks.” For a second Maggie considered confiding completely, but Liam was starting to pluck flower heads and toss them into the water. “Liam!”

They whisked him out of the Japanese garden and decided his attention span for the day was exhausted so they stuck to the main gravel path. As they rounded the pool and the pillared
tholos
came into view across the vast lawn, Maggie was surprised to see a small group of people gathered near it. “Wonder what’s going on there.”

A spray of pebbles pelted the grass, and Nancy tugged Maggie’s arm, alerting her that the rock shower had originated from her son.

“Liam!”

Maggie would be forever grateful her sister had been in town that particular weekend. She had no idea how she would’ve reacted to Carl and Melissa getting back together if she hadn’t been trying so very hard to pretend everything was okay. And with the passage of a few days, everything felt like it actually was okay. Nancy left for home late Monday morning, and on Tuesday evening, Maggie drove the kids to their father’s.

Just as she was about to make a clean getaway, Carl followed her into the hallway outside his condo’s front door. “I’ve got to ask you something,” he said. “Do you have any particular plans with the kids this summer?”

“They’ve got some sports camps and vacation Bible school in July. And then in August we’re going to see my parents—I gave you the dates for all that.”

“So nothing next month?”

Maggie shook her head slowly back and forth.

“Great. Melissa’s got an opportunity to borrow a colleague’s camper for a couple weeks, but it has to be in June. We were thinking about trekking out West—Yellowstone. Maybe Utah too if we’re up for it. So would that be okay? Last part of June? Two weeks?”

“Well…just like that? Have you been planning this?” She always gave Carl plenty of notice where the kids were concerned and didn’t like being blindsided. And she was suddenly suspicious about whether he’d ever even broken up with Melissa.

“What? No, no plans. The guy just offered it up and we thought it would be a lot of fun. The kids know nothing about it, so if you want to say no, it’s not a problem. I wanted to check with you first.”

“You never used to be able to just walk away from work for so long.”

“I never used to be so tech savvy—I’ll stay in touch with the office. Plus I’ve got a lot of vacation days to use up before the end of the fiscal year.”

“I suppose the timing’s fine. But will you be able to get campsite reservations this late?”

“Wyoming and Utah are pretty big states. I’m sure we’ll find something.” He looked like he wanted to wink, but refrained.

Maggie scrunched her face into a tight scowl. “Do you mind waiting to tell the kids until after you’ve got the reservations?”

He groaned. “Fine. I guess that makes sense. I can hold off until the weekend. Actually, that’ll be even better—Melissa will be here to share the news.”

“Fabulous.” Maggie couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her tone.

Carl frowned and reached out to grasp her elbow, which she promptly yanked away from his touch. She stepped around him to the door and pushed it open.

“Okay, babies, kisses. I gotta go.”

Back at home, Maggie plopped her purse onto the kitchen counter. She intended to find something to eat, but alone and with no one to pretend for, she instead spread her hands flat on the counter and slumped her shoulders. Yellowstone had been an intended stop on the aborted family trip out West. Now her children were going to have that amazing experience with a substitute mommy. They were going to make memories with a stranger. Memories that Maggie would never be a part of.

The pain sliced through all the shoddy fortifications she’d been throwing up during the last few weeks. Inhaling deeply, she slammed her fist into the solid surface, gritting her teeth as tiny blood vessels burst in the heel of her hand. Preferring physical agony to emotional, she slammed her fist again. She wanted to hurt herself, wanted something to take the ache away from her heart. Before she could strike again, another hand covered hers, sending warm, watery sensations of comfort.

“Evan,” she whispered. “What are you doing down here? Oh, never mind—you can go wherever you want.”

“Wherever
he
wants.”

She nodded and stared at her throbbing hand under his. “I’m sorry. I know I’m not handling anything with much grace these days. It’s just…every time I think I’ve pulled myself up, something slams me back down. So why bother feeling better? It only seems to invite some kind of new misery.” She flicked her eyes to him and a tear glided down her cheek.

He lifted his hand from hers and seemed to absorb the wet trail into his fingertip. “It’s part of being human.”

“Yeah, well, I’m tired of being human.” She pushed herself away from the counter. “I’m tired of everything. I think I’m going to skip dinner tonight and just go to bed. Thanks for stopping by, but I suggest you find someone a little less morose to haunt.”

As she turned, a flash of orange caught her eye and she looked toward the opposite counter to see a vase of fresh flowers that she hadn’t put there. Her gaze slid back to Evan. “From you?”

He nodded. “I don’t like to see you sad, Maggie.”

She glanced back at the flowers. “They’re lovely. Too bad they’ll be dead in a few days.” She brushed past Evan to go upstairs and collapse into bed.