“Ashley loves animals.”
I smile. “Well, I love Rhett anyway. He's a great dog, and we're working on sitting. Rhett, sit!” I say, and my puppy jumps on my lat-est pair of nylons. I feel them unravel up my shin. I smile again. “Sit!” Rhett just looks at me, his puppy dog eyes not connecting. “Well, like I said, we're working on it.”
“Let's go eat,” Seth announces. “This is a late dinner for my parents.”
Just help me out here.
“Yes, I'm so sorry,” I say again.
I see Mrs. Greenwood jab Seth in the back for being rude. Our ride in their rented Taurus is fairly quiet, but I'm sitting in the back with Seth's mother, and she's smiling at me. Finally she speaks. “So Seth tells me you spend time in Taiwan.”
“I do. I'm not really supposed to, since most of my work is American law, but seeing the product firsthand helps me in the patent process, so I tend to spend time there.”
“Do you like Taiwan?”
Hmm. How do I answer this tactfully?
“I'm not really a fish person, so the eating is difficult. But I love the people.” Which is true.
Mrs. Greenwood laughs. “When Cal and I first went to China, I'll never forget our first meals. I didn't know how to cook, and I'd burn the rice. I didn't know you could burn anything by boiling it, but apparently, if there's not enough water, you can burn anything. Cal didn't think going out to eat was a good example to set, so he hired an older Chinese woman who taught me everything I know. I think in those early days, the Chinese woman laughed at me.”
“Now she cooks like a professional, of course,” Dr. Greenwood says. “And she taught our daughter when she was still toddling, so when Sara came home for college, she fed some poor seminary student and now I have a son-in-law. They're based in Hawaii with the mission.”
“You never told me you had a sister, Seth.”
“You never asked.”
Again, Mrs. Greenwood whacks the back of the driver's seat, and I have to stifle my laughter. “We always planned to leave China when our kids were grown, but now it's home. With Sara in Hawaii and Seth going to India, I suppose there is no place we really call home. We're a bunch of gypsies, this family.”
I honestly think Seth's mother has the gentlest nature I've ever encountered. You just feel God's presence when you're around her, and his father, while stodgy and old-fashioned, still has that look in his eye when watching his wife. That John/Brea thing where you hold something very valuable. For all intents and purposes, Seth should covet marriage. He should be dying to get the same deal his dad has, but he's not. I long to tell Seth's mother how we breezed right through the Jeopardy phase and went straight into cut bait. I'm floating away as we speak.
“How long are you visiting for?” I ask.
“We'll be here a month. Dr. Greenwood has a heart doctor and we visit once every two years for medical care.”
I look at Seth's dad who has the build of an old Marine, and I can't imagine him letting a heart issue get to him.
“We came to see Seth, too, Mother,” Cal says.
“We did,” Mrs. Greenwood says, “But of course, now that he'll be in India, it should be easier. Will you miss him?” she asks me. Seth looks at me in the rearview mirror. His intense blue eyes are lit by the headlights behind us.
“I will miss him, but Seth has to do what he has to do.”
“I want Ashley to go with me, Mother,” Seth explains.
“You don't want to marry Seth? You two seem so right for each other,” Evelyn Greenwood says. And I feel the tears starting to sting. How do I explain he hasn't asked without making him look like a total loser?
“The subject hasn't come up,” I finally say with a smile, and Mrs. Greenwood takes my hand.
She speaks again. “It's been so long since I had a pie from Marie Callendar's. I've been dreaming of it. I'm considering not ordering dinner and just getting pies to try. What do you think, Ashley?”
“I think if you came all the way from China, you should get whatever your heart desires.”
“We've only been seeing each other for nine months,” Seth blurts. I guess it's his late response to the question about commitment, but I'm just embarrassed for him.
“Your father and I knew each other six weeks.” She turns back to me. “Lemon meringue and strawberry-rhubarb. That's where I'll start. What about you, Ashley? Will you join me?”
“German chocolate,” I say, trying to ignore the fact that Seth has just announced we're not getting married, and that all this had been decided before this fiasco called dinner.
The rest of “supper” as Evelyn called it, is a wash. Seth's mother and I bond and eat pie, while he talks to his dad about ministry possibilities in India. Mrs. Greenwood is so entirely normal. I wasn't expecting that. I think of people who spend their lives in the ministry on a higher plane, but she's probably the most down-to-earth woman I ever met.
At Seth's doorstep, I grab up Rhett and his water dish. “Evelyn, it was such a pleasure to meet you. You too, Cal. I hope you have a wonderful visit, and a safe trip home. If you need anything while you're here after Seth leaves, just call me.” And I hand them each a business card. “Even if you just need more pie, you call me.”
Seth walks me down to my car. “My mother likes you.”
“I like her.”
“She's a great lady.”
Enough of the elephant in the room already. I didn't graduate with honors for this. “Look Seth, I know things are strained between us, but I do wish you the best with your future. With India and whatever else it holds.”
“But you won't agree to go.”
Not without a ring, no
.
I don't think I'd even go with a ring at this point.
I'm failing to see what I ever saw in Seth Greenwood. He stands before me with a warm look in his perfectly incredible tanzanite eyes, and I feel nothing.
“If I went to a foreign country with a man who's not my husband, what would that say about my faith?”
Okay, besides my boss
. “I'm old-fashioned, I guess.” I meet his gaze. “I'm not the one, Seth. If I was, it wouldn't be this hard.”
Personally, I think you ought to look into a marble statue, but that's another day's conversation
.
He grabs my hands. Rhett whimpers. “I can't see myself marrying anyone else. I just don't think marriage is right for me, yet.”
Suddenly, I don't see his strong moral convictions, or his piercing blue eyes. I see a wimp. A man who is so afraid of losing that he can't take a risk, and I'm momentarily disgusted by the sight of him: by his bald head, by his simpering expression, by his complete lack of guts. He's right. Marriage isn't right for him. And it's all about him. It always has been.
I pick up the Indian silk scarf that's in my car and hang it around his neck. “Good luck to you.”
“I'm sorry, Ashley.” His eyes carry the weight of the world in them. He hates to hurt me, but what can he do? He can't commit either.
You are sorry
, I think to myself.
Sorrier than you know
. “Seth, I'm going back to the office. I didn't get anything done, and now I have Rhett to protect me.”
“Will you come to the airport to see me off?”
I shake my head. “I don't think so.”
“So this is it.” He cups my cheeks in his hands. I pull away. Whatever I felt, it's like God just said, enough!
“Stay safe,” I whisper.
“I'll miss you.” He kisses me again on the lips, and there's nothing. No sweeping emotion, nothing. It's probably like kissing my brother, but Lord forbid I ever find out what that
really
feels like.
Rhett and I get into the car, and I watch Seth in my rearview mirror through the veiled view of the evening fog. Nine months and a heart full of love, wasted on a tin man.
I
can't work. I go home and cuddle with Rhett on the sofa. I eat ice cream. Not that lowcarb stuff, but full-on, bring-on-the-sugar-high Breyers. And I put it on top of a homemade apple pie that Kay made. I am on carb overload and I'm loving the endorphin response. Exercise helps endorphins. So what? Sugar is so much easier and
sans
the pain. Unless you count that thigh issue. And when you're in man-hating mode, does the thigh issue even come up?
I'm sitting in the kitchen, in the one little area that is still free of the combat construction zone. It's like I'm living in a campground. Our kitchen cabinet contents are strewn on one counter and covered with plastic in preparation for the contractor. Who of course, will arrive when he pleases. I'm letting Rhett lick my pie plate when Kay walks in from work at ten p.m. She's too tired to notice that I'm distraught, but hones right in on my food choice.
“What happened to the diet?” she asks, staring at the half-eaten pie in front of the dog.
“What diet?”
Kay lifts her eyebrows and plops down at the table. “Can I have a piece?”
I get a plate and serve her a heaping helping of starch and sugar. “So any word on when the construction will start?”
“I'm going to do it myself if I don't hear from them this week. The demolition was a lot easier than I thought.” Kay shakes her head. “You know, I think I'd really be good as a general contractor. Engineers and laborers seem to have the same issues with management. Not to mention actual work.”
“You make more as an engineering director,” I remind her. “And you can always reward a good job with a trip to Laser Quest. I think working men are brighter than that.”
“Well, you're in a mood.”
“Yeah. Seth's leaving for India for good tomorrow.”
“Can't say I'm surprised. So what's going on with the dog? Are you keeping him?”
Rhett whimpers and lifts his head off the floor as though he knows who we're talking about. “Yeah, I'm keeping him.” The dog relaxes again. “I know it's a hassle and I really have no place for him, but he's my baby now, and after watching Miles, maybe the only kind I can handle. Besides, I can't just get rid of him. He's the only male who understands me.”
“How are you holding up?” Is a tear forming in Kay's eye? I'm beginning to see that she feels everything a woman should feel, but you think she doesn't, because she's so capable, so above common emotions. She must have had her heart broken at least once. I can see it in her eyes now.
“I'm okay.” I shrug. “I think when he said âIndia,' I started to brace for this. When you love someone, you want so badly to make it work, to be the person he wants, and then one day he says the name of a foreign country, and it strikes you
. . . I
don't want this. I don't think I want
him.”
As a woman, it's easy to forget your own dreams. And it's so very dangerous.
“You do seem to be taking it well. I guess that has me a little nervous. You aren't known as the drama queen for nothing. Did you call Brea?”
“Brea's got enough to worry about.” I pick up the plate off the floor and head to the sink, moving plastic sheeting as I go. I put the plate in the sink with a clunk. “I just wish I hadn't wasted so much time, you know? And so much of my heart.” I turn around and face Kay. “When he didn't want to marry me, why did I think I could change that? Arin, Kevin, the dog . . . why didn't I read any of those clues, Kay?”
“Because, quite simply, the clues stink. Who wants to think your fears are realized? That you're ticking away your biological clock on a man who doesn't care about the impending explosion.” Kay's got tears running down her cheeks now, and she shoves a heaping spoonful of pie in her mouth.
“If it had been a patent, I would have reworked everything immediately.” I drop my head. “I waited around thinking I could control my destiny. I can't even control my dog.”
“When it happened to me, it shook my faith to its foundation,” Kay admits, and suddenly I see that she is not made of stone. She loved a man once, and he didn't love her back.
“I believe that's because the Bible says beauty is fleeting, and Christian men used to understand this. The truth is, Christian or not, today's men live in a Victoria's Secret state of mind, Ashley.”
I shake my head while I rinse the plate off methodically. “I'm sorry, Kay.”
She waves a hand. “It's ancient history.”
“Look at this gorgeous house, Kay. And think about our great jobs. I was never thankful for anything. I was always just thinking I deserved something more. I thought when Seth
rescued
me at my brother's wedding, my life was beginning. It's pathetic really.”
Kay is sniffling now as she nods in agreement. I feel like I'm in an earthquake. Kay is a rock. She's always a solid foundation beneath me, and seeing her so shaken up rattles me to the core. It's like a 7.2 on the Richter. “I'll be in my room,” she says. “God has something better, Ash.”
“Thanks. That seems to be the consensus of the day, and I think I'm going to believe it.” I pick up Rhett after Kay shuffles down the hallway.
“I'm a downer, Rhett. Are you prepared for that?” Rhett licks my face with a big, loud slurp.
It's past eight a.m. when I wake up. I have a major headache from the sugar OD last night. Still, I feel refreshed and ready to turn over a new leaf. It's like the Seth part of my life needs to be purged so I can move on to health. Maybe that's a bit dramatic, but I feel relief that he's leaving today. I'll mourn. He'll always have a piece of my heart, but I praise God that he'll have nothing else. I'm worth more than that.
I notice that Kay has fixed the back fence, and I leave Rhett in the yard with a hope and a prayer, not to mention a few chew toys. I zip up a pair of Franco Sarto boots, and I'm on my way. This is the first day of the rest of my life. Wait. I think that's for alcoholics, not emancipated girlfriends. Whatever.