The Idea of Love (19 page)

One mistake
, that's what he kept telling all his friends (the ones that remained), and his lawyer, and anyone who would listen. All it takes is one mistake. Granted, a big one.

“Amelia,” he called up the staircase. Marilee stood behind him and he turned to her. “So, how are you?”

“I was great until you walked in.”

“Sounds like a country song.”

“God.” She rolled her eyes again. “You make everything into a song or a story or some shit. Can't you just see life as life?”

“You know, darling, you've asked me that before. Sorry, I can't answer it yet. I'll still keep trying, though.”

“As long as you don't try here.”

“Who had the smooth voice on the intercom?” Blake waved his hand toward the kitchen, where he assumed the body that went with the voice resided.

“None of your business.”

“Fair enough.” He nodded toward the top of the stairs. “Will you please go wake our daughter?”

“Why don't you?”

“Okay. Will do.” He took two steps up before Marilee stopped him with her voice, that tight voice of anger.

“And Blake?”

“Yes?”

“She likes to be called Amelie now. You know, like the French movie. She wants you to pronounce her name that way.”

“Her name is Amelia.”

“I'm just telling you what she wants.”

Blake turned away from his ex and walked upstairs. Some of the art had been changed, and he wondered, only briefly, where the old photos had gone: the ones of their wedding and the family reunion, the ones at the fundraiser—he in a tux, she in a gown. These framed photos might be piled up in the attic, spiders crawling over them and wrapping their photo faces in webs, dust, and dead bugs.

“Amelie,” he called out as he knocked on her door. He would do anything to repair this brokenness with his daughter. What had Ella said? Just be with her.

Ella.

Blake closed his eyes. She needed to be
just
a character in a screenplay.

He knocked again. “Sweetie,” he called. “It's Dad. Can I come in?”

“No. I'm sleeping. Go far, far away.”

He laughed, and opened the door. Her room was pitch-black, not a hint of light to let her know that she was missing out on the day. The blackout shades were pulled tight and Blake snapped the strings, one by one, letting the California sunlight pour into the room, spill onto her bed, and across her cheeks. Amelia buried her face into the pillow. “Dad!” she said. “Stop. It's Sunday. I can sleep all day.”

“Why would you want to miss a day like this?” he asked. “It's almost perfect out. The beach. The pool. Your friends.”

“My friends?” she mumbled into her pillow. “They're all asleep and I hate them anyway.”

Blake sat on the edge of her bed and touched the back of her head, her soft bleached hair. He loved her natural auburn color, but she insisted on the platinum. “Want to go to Egg-Land for breakfast? You can get a stack of pancakes with whipped cream.”

She groaned. “God, I'm not five years old anymore.”

“No,” he said. “You're not. But that doesn't mean pancakes aren't the bomb-dot-com.”

She lifted her face and looked at him through squinty eyes. “Oh, God, Dad. Don't say that ever again. Please. At least not in public.”

“Okay, I promise I won't say it if you get up and go out to breakfast with me. Otherwise I will walk around mumbling ‘the bomb-dot-com.'”

He swore she laughed but he couldn't be certain.

eleven

Amber's name sat on Ella's phone screen, a text Ella ignored while she stacked the shoes on the shelves. A bride had tried on every shoe, every single one, to decide
for
her bridesmaids. Ella finished her job, popped another Advil for her throbbing ankle, and looked at the texts—Amber needing, oh, so desperately needing Ella to call her. A two-line string of question marks had ended the last text.

Spend time with girlfriends.
It was on the list of things to do to get over the ex. But what if that friend disappeared or if that friend's sister slept with the ex? Amber had been her go-to friend since their sophomore year in college. Hardly a day had gone by that they hadn't talked. It really didn't matter about what. It was Amber who talked Ella into moving to Watersend. It was Amber who introduced her to Sims. It was Amber who had been her maid of honor.

How many times had she picked up the phone to call Amber and tell her how she felt? How happy she was. How sad. How the world had caved in. How there was a great hole inside, so great that she felt the wind blow right through her. But that was then and this was now. And now Ella didn't want to answer Amber's texts. She wanted peace.

This melancholy mood—Ella blamed it on her work situation. But she also knew it was because Hunter had returned to California. It wasn't that she missed him. It was more that she missed who she was with him. She liked Ella, the confident woman, even if it was a false self. The new pretend Ella had laughed easily and hadn't worried about how she looked. She spoke her mind, strong and sure, even offering advice. She was a wedding dress designer. She was a widow.

When she was with Hunter, it was almost as if Sims was really dead. She rarely thought of him and his rejection. She basked in Hunter's questions, in his creative way of looking at the world. She found herself almost free, looking at everything with new eyes. Curious. Maybe even hopeful.

Now there was no escape from her bleak life, just this, these shoes, a purple ankle, and divorce proceedings. And the damn sketch—she wanted it back right now.

The boxes were stacked neatly and by category. Ella hobbled, favoring her right foot, to the back of the store and knocked on her boss's door. “Margo,” she called out.

Margo came to the door and opened it in her white sundress and white headband. “Hello, Ella. Great job today with the bride. She bought seven pairs of the Princess Grace shoe.”

“Thanks. It always feels good to make a strong sale. But I'm here about something else actually. I'd like to have my sketch back. I'd like it for my portfolio.” As if she had a portfolio.

“What sketch?”

“The wedding dress. My design. The one you were going to copy.”

“Oh, darling. I gave that back to you.”

“No, you didn't. When?”

“I put it in your paycheck envelope.”

Ella shook her head, dread washing over her like smoke slipping under the door. “No.”

“I did.”

“Well, please make a copy of the copy.”

“Oh, I didn't make a copy after all. I decided it looked too much like one of
my
designs.”

“Huh?” A buzzing began in Ella's ears and then moved further, deeper into her skull. It was the same sensation she'd had right before she ran out of the house with the box of baseball cards. If she didn't leave right this second she would do something just as irreversible. As unforgivable. As irrevocable.

“Are you okay?” Margo asked, pursing her too-red lips.

“Do you mind looking on your desk?”

“I know it's not there.”

Ella turned away, walking slowly to the exit. The store as unfamiliar as if she'd walked through it for the first time: the white wooden-planked walls with photos of cakes and flowers. Mirrors, lots of mirrors because brides liked to look at themselves. There were pink linen benches and round oak tables full of wedding paraphernalia (garters, bridesmaid T-shirts, cake toppers)—these things were blurring in Ella's sight. The buzzing in her ears grew louder until she burst out the front door and sat on a bench with her hands over her ears. She was such a fool. She gave away her drawing. She gave away her heart. All to people who didn't give a damn about the value of what she offered. The tears wanted to come; she felt them threatening like small pins stuck into the back of her throat.

No more.

She stood up. She would not give away one more piece of herself to undeserving people. Speaking of undeserving, what did Amber want so badly?

She dialed Amber's number.

“Hey!” Amber's happy voice filled the air. Ella pulled the phone away.

“What's up?” Ella asked.

“Well, I think it's what you want to tell me,” Amber said.

“Huh?”

“You acted so sad and broken up about Sims, but I heard that you were with some guy the other night at Sunset. That you were…”

“Drunk,” Ella filled in the blank.

“Yes,” Amber said. “So tell me, who was the guy? Our favorite cabbie, Billy, said he was cute. That he seemed really into you.”

“As if he could tell from inside the car at night?” Ella said. “Please.”

“Well, I also heard it from a couple of people who were on the roof that night.”

“Seriously?”

“Yep. So … spill the beans, my friend. What is going on?”

“Nothing really. It was a writer in town gathering information. I drank too much. End of story. Nothing interesting here, Amber. Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Well, Sims asked me questions. He heard about it, too. And he said it sounds like the same guy he saw you with at the Patio.”

Ella could practically hear the exclamation point on the end of Amber's sentence. “His name is Hunter Adderman and he had a million questions about the town and the history and all that.”

“Questions he couldn't go to the historical society for?”

“I asked the same thing. He said he went there.”

“Well, Sims wants to know if you have some new guy.”

“Sims? What does he care?” The buzzing in Ella's ears stopped then and a hope rose, or something close to hope. Anticipation?

“Well, he must care because he asked me about him.”

“Well, you can tell him that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Or whatever, because that was dumb.”

Amber laughed and for a minute it felt like they were friends again. Why was Amber calling about Hunter now? That had happened days ago. But if Sims had just heard about it …

“Wait,” Ella said. “I thought they were still in Napa.”

“They got home yesterday.”

Ella calculated. God, she'd missed him by only hours. Had she cleaned the house well enough so he wouldn't notice she'd been there, eating Chinese food? Kissing a man? Sleeping there until her ankle felt better? He must have noticed she took some clothes and dishes.

“Listen, I have to go.” Ella looked back toward Swept Away. Her heart still beat erratically with Margo's lie. Of course Margo had the drawing. This, for the first time in a long time, was something that mattered more to Ella than Sims.

“Don't hang up,” Amber said.

“I need to work,” Ella said. “I'll call you later.”

“You're still mad at me.”

“No. I'm not.” Ella paused as she watched Margo exit the front of the store. This was the time Margo went to get her afternoon coffee: double shot of espresso.

“Please don't be mad,” Amber begged again.

“Gotta go, Amber. I promise I'll call you later.” Ella hung up and bolted back to the store.

The tiny wedding bell tinkled as she entered the store and ran straight back to Margo's office. Ella yanked on the doorknob but it was locked. She looked frantically around and found Nadine, the assistant. She hollered. “Nadine, where's the key?”

Nadine walked to Ella and held it out. “What do you need?”

“I left my paycheck in there.”

“Well, she'll be back in a second. She's just…”

“Getting her coffee. I know. But I'm running to the bank now.”

Nadine unlocked the office and then looked to Ella. “Are you sure?”

“What a weird question.” Ella smiled at Nadine and entered the office under Nadine's watchful eye. She glanced around Margo's workspace, also done in all white and beige. God, did the woman ever get tired of white? If Ella ever married again, she'd get married in red, or maybe black.

“Where is it?” Nadine asked.

“I thought I left it right here on the desk.” Ella leafed through a pile of invoices.
Think quick. Where would she put sketches
?

A scrap of paper poked out of a file folder labeled
TO DO.
There was the water stain on the lower right corner. Silently she thanked herself for the clumsy spill at the caf
é
. With a quick move, she grabbed the paper from the file and stuck it into her back pocket. “Got it,” she said, and turned to smile at Nadine, although her lips shook with the effort.

“Oh, good.”

Nadine locked the door to the office and Ella returned to Sole Mates, slowly, slowly.…

It must be a good design if Margo wanted it, lied about it. Ella reached for her phone and before she knew what she'd done, she dialed Hunter's number. By the second ring, she'd hung up. What was she thinking? If she ever called him or talked to him again, she was going to have to tell him the truth. All it would take is one quick Google search to find out she was a liar. Maybe he'd already found out, which was why she hadn't heard a word from him since he left two days ago.

She wanted to tell someone about the design. Not Amber. Not Sims. Not her dad, who was on a trip.

Ella smiled as she thought of Mimi. Yes. Just knock on the door and tell her that she stole back the sketch from her boss, that she'd stood up for herself in a way that she'd never done before.

*   *   *

Small shuffles and a “shush” to the dog came from behind the door. Mimi's left eye and her nose appeared from the crack of the door. The chain, latched from the inside, ran across the space. “Oh, Ella, what a lovely surprise.” She shut the door and there was the sound of chain dropping before the door flung open.

“Hi, Mimi.” Embarrassment overcame Ella. In her impetuous need to tell someone about her petty crime she hadn't weighed the situation, she hadn't really thought it all through. The thrill of it was already gone.