Among those
not
attending the service was Trish Quinn, who’d volunteered to care for her ailing mother instead. Trish had another reason for lying low, it turned out. Earlier that week she’d found out about Gary and Amanda, caught him, in fact, with his hand in the cookie jar, so to speak. She was handling it with as much dignity as a single woman in her forties could muster, but anyone who looked closely could see how fragile she was. She’d even gone so far as to seek spiritual solace from Joe Wilcox, pastor of the Unitarian Church of Divine Apostles.
The absence of two other people was noted as well. Wade Jewett, who’d been brought up on a raft of charges, primarily obstruction of justice. And Noelle’s former neighbor Judy Patterson, who was rumored to be too grief-stricken. It seemed Noelle had been wrong about Judy’s lover being her son’s karate instructor. Gossip had it that the day the terrible news about Robert broke, Blake Patterson had arrived home late from a business trip to find his wife huddled on the floor of their bedroom, weeping hysterically. After some prodding, she’d confessed that Robert and she had been lovers. The following day Blake moved out, taking their two sons with him.
The second week in September Mary quietly packed up and moved back to New York. Though she continued to drive up on weekends and was often spotted out and about with her daughter and granddaughter or on the arm of that handsome ex-husband of hers, the visits became fewer over time.
In the beginning it had nonetheless seemed as though they just might pull it off. They were in love, after all. And, just like the first time, desperate to believe that love conquers all. If neither liked the idea of spending so much time apart, what could be done about it? Even Charlie agreed—albeit, reluctantly—that there was no way around it. Then, in November, Mary came down with a bad case of flu, from which she spent three weeks recuperating, one in bed and the other two catching up at work. Shortly after, Noelle and Emma came down with it, too, and Hank moved in temporarily to keep an eye on them, as well as on Doris, who’d grown quite frail. Somehow he never moved out. Noelle protested often and vehemently—perhaps
too
vehemently—that it didn’t change a thing as far as Mary was concerned. The house had more than enough room, and this way Hank and she could really get to know each other. But Mary stayed away for the most part, murmuring the usual polite excuses. Noelle and Hank needed time on their own, with Emma. Doris would be enough of a handful.
Certainly she could have stayed with Charlie. It was no secret that they were sleeping together. But on the two memorable occasions that she’d spent the night, somehow it hadn’t felt right. For one thing, there was Bronwyn. Though Charlie’s young daughter never came right out and said so, it was clear she didn’t want Mary around. There was Charlie, too: the wistful expression on his face as he watched her go about her morning rituals—brushing her teeth, drying off after her shower, rooting about in the cupboard for a coffee mug—as if at the same time he were viewing the scenario in some future projected tense. A future in which every morning, not just here and there, they woke up and made love and had coffee and got dressed. The problem was,
she
could see it, too. So clearly at times, so maddeningly within reach, it became a permanent ache.
After a while it became easier to stay away.
Instead, she made weekend plans with friends, plans that would keep her in the city, keep her from weakening at the last minute. When Charlie made plans of his own, she was quick to hear about it. From Bronwyn, of course, who oh-so-innocently happened to drop that her father had taken a lady out to dinner. Mary didn’t ask for an explanation, but Charlie gave it anyway. Paula Kent, that sharp new realtor who’d come up with the bright idea of applying for a federal grant to turn the Sandy Creek Development project (voted down ten to one in the referendum) into an official bird sanctuary, had asked
him
to dinner to discuss a series of ads she wanted to run. He hadn’t elaborated beyond that, nor had Mary grilled him about any future dates he might have planned. She had no right, though she’d long since broken off with Simon Trager. If she’d wanted Charlie, he would have been hers for the taking. But to keep him dangling this way, no, it wasn’t fair. She’d broken his heart once already. To do so twice would be worse than cruel. It would be—the thought of Doris had popped into her head just then—
un-Christian.
Naturally the one weekend Charlie had chosen to visit her it had rained nonstop, the phone never stopped ringing, and the restaurant to which she’d taken him for dinner, usually reliable, served terrible food at a near-glacial pace. He’d been a good sport about it, teasing that he didn’t have to come all the way to the city for bad service and an over-cooked meal; all he had to do was walk down the street to Murphy’s Diner. They’d shared a good laugh, and when it turned out the movie they’d planned to see was sold out, had rented a video at Blockbuster instead. Yes, it had been a good weekend, after all. That’s what she kept telling herself.
But for one reason or another Charlie hadn’t been back.
The last she’d seen of him was in March when her mother passed away. Doris had been going steadily downhill for some time, and it came as a shock to no one—especially her daughters and granddaughter—when she went quietly in her sleep after a long and debilitating bout with pneumonia. Noelle and Trish grieved openly, and Mary in her own fashion. At the funeral, she placed a silver-framed photo on the coffin of her parents on their wedding day—presumably the happiest day of her mother’s life—and said a little prayer that her mother, reunited with her father in heaven, would find the peace and contentment that had eluded her on earth.
Then spring arrived, melting the snow along with any lingering thoughts of what can happen even in sleepy little towns with white-steepled churches. Crocuses and grape hyacinth and snowbells appeared alongside the road, poking like lost souvenirs of some long-ago festive occasion from the dark heath of rotting leaves and fallen tree limbs. The first of the spring seed packets appeared on a wire rack in front of the Newberry five-and-dime. And swallows and nuthatches could be seen building their nests alongside the orange-crowned warblers in the wooded area just south of Sandy Creek.
The first week in May no one was particularly surprised when the Sunday edition of the
Register
announced the engagement of Noelle Van Doren (nee Jeffers) and Dr Hank Reynolds. Though she and Hank had been fairly quiet about it, everyone knew they’d been keeping company. A few of the older and more hidebound remarked that it was a bit soon for someone so recently widowed, and under such ghastly circumstances, but most were genuinely happy for the newly engaged couple, not to mention relieved for themselves. For deep in their minds and hearts, where guilty thoughts sprouted like toadstools in the dark, those who knew Noelle silently acknowledged that they could have done more to help, that perhaps they’d been a bit too quick to judge.
A quiet wedding was planned for the end of June, when the weather was expected to be nice but not too hot. Reverend Joe Wilcox, a confirmed bachelor who’d recently begun to think seriously of tying the knot himself, would officiate. These past months he and Trish Quinn had been spending a great deal of time together, enough for him to appreciate what a truly special woman she was. He’d pretty much made up his mind that by Christmas, if all went well, he’d surprise her with an engagement ring.
Mary made plans to spend the week of the wedding in Burns Lake. Business had been good lately, despite a rough patch near the end of last year, when several of the clients, feeling less than fully appreciated, departed in a huff. The firm’s bookkeeper had left as well, taking with her nearly thirty thousand in embezzled funds. But with the Rene’s Room fund-raiser, which despite its many setbacks had been a spectacular success, Quinn Communications turned a corner. Mary had taken on several new clients in the past month alone. She was even thinking of making her assistant, Brittany Meehan, a partner. There was only one problem: Charlie.
She missed him. Most of all, she missed
talking
to him. Not just on the phone but at night curled up beside him in bed or seated across from him at breakfast. She missed chatting with him in the kitchen while they fixed supper, and taking an evening stroll along the lake. She missed the life they
could
have had—and almost did. Twice.
Now she was going home for their daughter’s wedding. Driving west on Route 23, Mary felt a little shiver of anticipation. Or was it dread? The rolling patchwork of farmland and green hills reminded her of last summer. So much had changed since then. Her mother gone … Noelle getting married. An eternity seemed to have passed since she’d made this journey only a year ago.
A pulse throbbed at the base of her throat, measuring out the miles and minutes. Greedily she drank in the familiar landmarks of her childhood: cornfields and tire dealerships and Agway franchises, weathered barns leaning like old drunks, roadside eateries with names like Big Bob’s and Aunt Susie’s and Udderly Delicious (Dairy Queen and McDonald’s had yet to stake their claim in these parts), a store with an elaborate display of lawn statues out front that resembled the Land of Munchkins.
It dawned on her that over the years she’d lost, or misplaced, something vital, which now seemed to glint at her here and there amid the passing scenery like flecks of buried gold. Something of herself, or perhaps the life she might have led had she remained in Burns Lake. Would she have been the worse for it? For a long time she’d thought so, but she knew now that that wouldn’t necessarily have been the case. Her life would have been different, that’s all. Not better or worse, just slower and on a smaller scale. Also, there was Charlie to consider. Always Charlie, tugging at her like an invisible cord.
I’m not the first woman who’s ever had to choose between her career and the man she loves. But why does it have to be so hard? Why is there no such thing as a clean break?
There was another question niggling at her. Was he still seeing Paula Kent? She wondered if Paula was as pretty in person as in that photo on the real estate flyer Mary just so happened to come across the last time she was up for a visit.
Just who do you think you’re fooling? You practically scoured every store in town until you found one.
Mary imagined her to be as pert as she was blond, a perfect size six, with indestructible nails and hair that never frizzed in humid weather. While gradually infiltrating every aspect of Charlie’s life, Paula would have set out on a campaign to win Bronwyn over as well. Naturally the girl would have resisted at first, but with time and persistence she’d have come around. Because Paula Kent, aside from being perfectly positioned, had one thing Mary didn’t: all the time in the world.
Mary was so caught up in imaginary scenarios of Charlie’s love life that she missed the turnoff for Route 145 and had to double back through Middleburgh. By the time she arrived at her mother’s house, the sun was setting and the table laid for supper.
Hank fixed spaghetti and meatballs while Noelle puttered about the kitchen, looking every bit the blushing bride. Over supper he regaled them with a story about a patient at the hospital where he’d interned, an elderly Guatemalan woman with a persistent cough for whom he’d written a prescription for penicillin. The instructions had read, ‘Take three times daily with water.’ But instead of getting it filled, the ill-educated woman had soaked the prescription in water instead and faithfully downed three glasses a day from the jug—
‘And the damnedest part was, she got better,’ Hank added with a chuckle, tipping back in his chair with his hands linked over his chest. His merry brown eyes found Noelle, and the two seemed to share a secret smile of their own. He looked, Mary thought, every bit as much at home as a man about to be married ought to.
Then it was bedtime, and Emma insisted on Mary’s tucking her in and reading story after story. By the time Mary tiptoed back down to the kitchen, Noelle and Hank had gone off to bed as well. She made herself a cup of tea and headed back upstairs, stopping in the living room only long enough to pluck at random a volume of the
Reader’s Digest
condensed books that lined the bookshelves, a surefire cure for insomnia. She was asleep before she’d turned the first page.
In the room across the hall Noelle and Hank quietly made love. Following the trauma of her ordeal, Noelle had discovered that in addition to the many wonderful qualities he possessed Hank was a superb lover. He was everything she’d ever wanted without knowing she’d wanted it: a man who never hurried and never seemed to mind when she occasionally faltered in her self-consciousness. Over the months since they’d become intimate, she’d gradually blossomed, seeking his attention now as often as he sought hers. Opening herself to him in a way she wouldn’t have dreamed possible. They’d even talked of another child, one born of true love who would be as much a sister to Emma as she was to Bronwyn.
Mary spent the next two days with her daughter, shopping and running errands for the wedding. They drove up to Albany to buy a dress for Emma that she insisted had to be pink with sparkles and lots and lots of ruffles. They finally settled on white organdy with puff sleeves and a ruffled collar, which Emma, with a sigh of resignation, deemed acceptable. Afterward they lunched on pizza and chicken Caesar at California Kitchen before heading off to Nordstrom’s in search of a pair of shoes to go with Noelle’s gown.
Mary had never seen Noelle so content. If she fretted over Emma a tad more than necessary, her gaze anxiously tracking the little girl’s every move, it was only natural after what she’d been through. That would fade in time. In the weeks after her ordeal, Noelle had seen a therapist for several months. Now she was ready to put the whole ordeal behind her, and Mary saw no evidence to the contrary. Noelle smiled a lot these days. She’d even put on a few pounds since Mary’s last visit. It suited her. She simply glowed.
If love doesn’t heal all wounds,
Mary thought,
it sure does work wonders for the complexion.
She realized to her chagrin that she was more than a tiny bit jealous. She’d have given anything, no pun intended, to be in her daughter’s shoes.