Torchlight (25 page)

“As I remember, you begrudgingly saved my life. You told me not to think you’d always be around.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“That’s what I heard. How much time have you ever spent in one place? Have you lasted longer than a year anywhere? Two? You say you would never leave a woman like me alone, but why? How could I trust a man who never stays? How do I know that that old wanderlust won’t come knocking and you’ll be off? I want a home, Trevor. And I want a man who stays.”

“Julia, what are you talking about?” Miles sputtered angrily. “You’re not actually entertaining thoughts of the two of you
together
, are you?”

“It’s different, Julia!” Trevor ignored him. “I was led here. I think God
wants
us together. We’ve come too far from two totally different places. We’ve come through too much.” His face begged her for a chance. “I don’t have any intention of leaving.”

“Not now, but maybe next year—”

“No. Not without you.”

“You say that now …,” she said, shaking her head sadly.

She looked at Miles, suddenly remembering he was present, and then to Trevor. “Trevor, can we talk about this tomorrow?”

“No,” Trevor said angrily, furious that she could not admit to a love so obvious. “I can’t live like this any longer. We all need a decision.”

“I need … I need some time. I’m so confused!”

“A
decision
, Julia.”

“Well, fine then, you force me to a decision! I’ll keep my wedding date with Miles.”

The following week would have been agony for Julia had she not had the wedding to distract her from Trevor. There were so many details, and she had, after all, made her decision. Seven days before the wedding, Julia awoke with a pounding headache and thought,
Today he’ll leave.

Trevor is leaving. Will I ever see him again? Oh, who needs him? I need a steady man who will always be there for me, not a rogue who is off and running at the drop of a hat.

Later, Julia stood in the library, cleaning the leather-bound volumes, when she heard the rumble of his motorcycle, the pause of its engine, the slam of the front door, his steady footsteps into the room where she worked, and his heavy silence at the door.

Julia allowed him to watch her for several moments, pretending she did not know he was there.

“I have to leave,” he said, watching her miserably. In the soft golden light that filtered through the high windows, she looked angelic.

She paused, book in hand, but did not turn. “I know.”

“I think it’s best,” he said awkwardly.

“I know,” she repeated. “Will you leave a forwarding address?” Julia asked, fighting to keep hope from her tone. “I need to send you your final paycheck. Your things too, I assume.”

“I’ll write,” he said.

She nodded and resumed her work.

He turned and did not look back.

“Come on, darling, we’re late already,” Miles said, as Julia paused to straighten her red cocktail dress. After months at Torchlight, she had grown unaccustomed to dresses and high heels, but Miles had wheedled her into wearing the outfit. “You look lovely,” he said, brushing her cheek with his lips. “I’ll be the envy of every man in the room.”

They entered the private dining hall of a swanky San Francisco nightclub, where a roomful of Miles’s associates hailed them with the clink of champagne flutes and cocktail glasses. Miles called the evening an “obligatory social gathering,” a function that served to honor their impending nuptials and help him gain greater stature by throwing the party of parties.

Miles had outdone himself. Waitresses passed by continuously, carrying trays laden with Chinese pot stickers, salmon and cream cheese with capers and thinly sliced onion on tiny French baguette slices, shrimp on Belgian endive leaves sprinkled with fresh dill, melted brie on pastry, and three kinds of caviar. At the same time, waiters generously provided glasses of champagne and cocktails as fast as the guests could consume them.

By the time Julia and Miles arrived, the party was in full swing. Before long, he was off to talk with one of the senior partners at his former law firm, and Julia realized he would not return anytime soon. A friend of Miles made a subtle pass at her, and she looked over to where her fiancé stood. He was oblivious, concentrating only on the older man who was patting him on the shoulder and calling colleagues over to join them.

“Come on, honey,” the man slurred. “Let’s dance.” He pulled her onto the dance floor. Julia knew Miles expected her to handle herself
in these situations. This wasn’t the first celebration in which she had been forced to take care of herself. It certainly would not be her last.

Three hours later Julia’s feet were aching, and her back was screaming for her to go home and lie down. How quickly she had grown used to the slow and melodic pace of Oak Harbor! Julia longed to get undressed, pull on her old blue bathrobe, and snuggle into one of the high-backed chairs for a good read of Anna’s journals.

Julia plastered a smile on her face for the cake cutting, a preliminary wedding festivity to compensate for the fact that few of Miles’s coworkers would journey to the East Coast for his wedding. She was glad for any distraction from the drunken man who kept hanging around her as well as around her mother, Eleanor, who had just arrived and wanted to run through every detail of the wedding.

They sliced through the white frosting, but her eyes saw only the tiny bride and groom atop the layers. For the first time, she visualized joining Miles at the altar, and the image terrified her.

“Julia?” Miles paused with a bite of cake in front of her mouth, looking nervously to the crowd watching them. “Open wide, darling.”

She managed to open her mouth and accept the morsel. Why do people getting married feed each other cake? What does it mean anyway? She felt cross and belligerent but smiled sweetly as she fed Miles his portion. His teeth loomed large, and she noticed how thin his lips were. Not like Trevor’s.
How will I like a lifetime of kissing those lips?

Julia fought a wave of dizziness as the people cheered and Miles smiled. Bits of frosting clung to the corners of his mouth as he dipped her low in a fancy dance move and kissed her again. She fought the revulsion.
What is happening here?

“Mother,” she said. “I need to go to the rest room. Come join
me.” They made their way through the huge group to the women’s rest room. Julia gripped Eleanor’s arm as soon as they were inside.

“Mother, I think I’ve made a huge mistake! I got dizzy thinking of kissing Miles, and the sight of him almost repulses me!” She sat down heavily in a plush couch. Cigarettes overflowed from a table ashtray beside her.

“Oh, nonsense, Julia! Haven’t you ever heard of prewedding jitters? I had them myself. I didn’t think I’d make it down the aisle. But look what I would’ve passed up! Your father is a prince, and so is Miles. You two were made for each other,” she purred, sitting beside her daughter. “You just wait. Next week you’ll be a different person. Be glad you’re going through it now rather than during the ceremony.”

“You wondered if Dad was the right man for you during the ceremony?”

“Well, yes. I had numerous suitors at the time, you see. I chose Jacob because he was my best choice. And I was right. You adore your father, as do I. To think I could’ve married that Jack Stanford … You should hear the tales I’ve heard! And I came so close to saying yes to his proposal! Just last week I heard—”

“Mother, did you love Daddy?”

“Of course I loved him!”

“I mean, were you totally gone, never coming back, hopelessly and forever in love with Daddy?”

“That’s the love of schoolgirls! My love for your father was much more quiet, peaceful, reassuring.”

Julia acknowledged the news without comment. Her folks had developed a pleasant union. But what had been sacrificed to get to that point? Had Eleanor denied a love that should have lived? Was Julia about to head down the same path?

“Listen, sweetheart. Everything’s in place. You’ve known Miles for years. You’ll have a happy marriage and all the things you deserve. Come now, we mustn’t keep the guests waiting any longer. Your groom will think we’ve up and run off on him.”

Trevor waited for his cousin Bryn to return. It was eleven, and he had been on the hot cement stairs of her brownstone apartment for hours. It was sweltering hot, and his clothes were sticking to every inch of him. Several of the other tenants had looked at him askance as they made their way into the brownstone. If he stayed much longer, the landlord would probably call the cops. He had meant to explain his presence, but lacked the energy.

Maybe Bryn was out of town. It was summer; she had talked about going to Alaska. Or maybe she had a shift at the hospital. He hoped that was it. He needed to talk to her. And a couch to sleep on.

At eleven-thirty, a taxi pulled up and Bryn hopped out, still dressed in scrubs. “Trevor!” she greeted him in surprise. He stood, wearily, to hug her. “What’s wrong?”

He smiled ruefully. “Never could pass anything by you, cousin.”

“Nope. Come in. You have your bag? I take it you’re spending the night.”

“That okay?”

“Fine, fine. Let’s grab an iced tea and sit out on the fire escape. Try and grab some semblance of a breeze. It’s hot, isn’t it?”

“It’s so hot I could fry eggs on the sidewalk.”

“Come on,” she gestured with a nod of her head. “You can tell me all about it.” They trudged upstairs to her third-story apartment.

On the dining room table, her tapered candles had melted to sad droops. “It’s gotta be a thousand degrees,” Bryn moaned, pouring them both tall glasses of tea. “No sane people live in Boston during the summer without air conditioning.”

“Only the insane and residents at the hospital, right?”

“Not next summer. If I’m still here, I’ll be making the big bucks. I’m going to be sitting back in my high-design chair, listening to my stereo, with the air conditioner set at sixty. Cool as a cucumber,” she said, raising her sweating glass of tea to her sweating brow. She looked him over, from head to toe. “So. Why are you here, unannounced?”

“I’ve blown it, Bryn.”

“Well, that’s nothin’ new,” she wisecracked. “Come on. Out to the fire escape with you.”

He followed her out, and they settled onto the wrought ironwork. Bryn threw him a big, grungy pillow. “Not the first time you’ve retired out here?”

“Nope.”

“Bryn, it’s not safe.”

“Trevor, you’re here to talk about you, not me. Why aren’t you at Torchlight?”

“I finished my work there.”

“What about Julia?”

“She’s marrying Miles Beckley.”

“Ah. I see. You told her how you feel?”

“In a way.”

“In a way?” Bryn asked, narrowing her eyes. “Didn’t we talk about this? You were going to find a time, a place with her, away.”

“It was never the right time, the right place,” he responded irritably. “I tried! I told her, right in front of Miles—”

“In front of her fiancé? What was she supposed to say?”

He sighed, pulling another pillow to his chest as if it could lend him some comfort, shield off his cousin’s attack. “If she really loved me, Bryn, she could have said so. I saw her later, when I said goodbye.”

“When you said good-bye? What is she supposed to do then, beg you to stay?”

“Well, yes! If she loved me.”

A man leaned out of his window below them. “Bryn? That you?”

“It’s me, Phil.”

“Can you keep it down? I gotta work tomorrow.”

“Will do. Sorry, Phil. Good night.”

The man left the window sill, muttering. Bryn and Trevor stared at each other in the shadows. “You gotta go back, Trevor,” she urged in a hushed voice. “You have to tell her, once and for all, that you love her. Make it absolutely clear.”

“I can’t. You didn’t hear … You didn’t see me try. I gave her a chance.”

“Did you? Really? Did you try every which way possible? What’s she afraid of?”

“That I’ll get tired of Torchlight and leave. She’s freaked out over my traveling, as if that proves that I’ll never settle down.”

“So you left Oak Harbor.” She let the words sit between them like an unwelcome visitor. “Trevor, she’s thirty. She wants a home, probably a family. And you’re the handyman who seems to be just passing through. What was she supposed to believe?”