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“Believe what, Michael?”
“Already I’m falling in love with you.”
My voice is hushed, full of wonder. “How do you know it’s love?”
That smile again, warmly seductive, intoxicating, breaking through my defenses. “It doesn’t get any better than this, Julie—my jewel. You feel it, too. I know you do. I can see it in your eyes. It’s like everything in our lives has led up to this moment.”
Yes, Michael. You were right.
And everything since has led away from that moment.
From that night, seventeen years ago.
The night Katie Lynn was conceived.
Remember, Michael?
Chapter One (#ulink_8f8a49cb-abb7-5b55-82ac-30c934d64153)
Today: the reality.
I’m sitting here.
Sitting here watching Oprah Winfrey on TV.
Thinking how great she looks since she lost all that weight
Watching Oprah interview an elderly couple who were high school sweethearts and are getting married fifty years later after outliving a wife and two husbands. They’re holding hands and looking at each other like there’s nobody else in the world.
I’m sitting here eating the expensive candy Michael got me for my birthday—my thirty-fifth, heaven help me!—and I’m squeezing the round ones to find the chocolate cremes. Feeling guilty that I’m sitting here stuffing myself when I should be at work doing something productive. I would have been at work, if it weren’t for this head cold—persistent little bugaboo.
Julie had taken all the decongestants and antihistamines she dared. And she still felt lousy.
Wish I’d gone to work, she thought. Wish I’d never found that note. Dying inside over that note.
The words of the note reeled through her mind like one of her mother’s old-fashioned vinyl records with the needle stuck in a groove, playing the same refrain over and over:
“Michael,
Sorry about last night.
How about tonight?
My place.
Love, Beth.”
Julie couldn’t get the words out of her mind. Nor the questions. What does a woman do when she finds that kind of note in her husband’s shirt pocket? Written in a feminine hand on faded blue paper. Smelling faintly of perfume. With a phone number at the bottom in her husband’s scrawled hand.
What am I supposed to think?
Julie tried hard not to think about the implications of that note. The idea that Michael was meeting a woman named Beth. Tonight At her place. That he had planned to see her last night, but…something happened. What happened? He was home last night, irritable, distracted. But home.
Julie wrapped her robe around her as if it would ward off the chill numbing her senses. I feel like one of those children who has slipped through the ice and is hanging suspended in frozen waters waiting for someone to fetch him out and thaw him back to life. I am frozen with disbelief. I am too stunned to feel pain. But even through the numbness I already know I am dying inside.
Michael, how could you do this to me? To us?
Oprah was signing off now, smiling that wonderful smile of hers. Julie mused, No matter what issues or ordeals she offers us, the world always rights itself again in her smile.
Julie could imagine Michael on Oprah’s show—a poised, successful real-estate executive with his own office—sitting there on stage in his smooth, professional way, his sturdy hands gesturing expansively as he tells Oprah, “I can explain everything. Julie and I were only kids when we got married, nineteen and twenty. She was pregnant, so what can I say? I did the right thing by her.”
“And how has the marriage turned out?” Oprah might ask.
“It’s been an okay marriage,” Michael would reply. “We’ve got a beautiful daughter named Katie, sweet sixteen and already strong-willed like her mother. I’ve got to admit, when it comes to wedded bliss, the romance department’s nothing to write home about. The fireworks stopped years ago, but Julie and I are comfortable together. What more can you ask for these days?”
“But what about Beth?” Oprah’s asking.
What about Beth?
I’m waiting, too, Michael. How do you explain Beth?
Michael, who in blazes is Beth!
Julie flicked off the TV and headed for the kitchen where she quickly put on the kettle. A cup of hot tea was what she needed now. It would calm her nerves and melt the cold dread gripping her heart.
When she was a child, her mother always gave her hot tea when she was sick. With a dash of cream and a spoonful of sugar. Then her mother would sit beside her and talk about her childhood, about the days when she ate vegetables from her own garden and picked apples from the tree next door, and milk still came in glass bottles with cream at the top. Sometimes in the winter the milk on the porch froze, popping the solid cream right through the cardboard cap. And sometimes her mother would suck on that icy mound of cream until her lips grew numb.
Even now, remembering the tale, Julie could almost feel her own lips turn cold. How she had loved hearing her mother’s wonderful stories!
But now those days were gone.
“They don’t make milk that way anymore, Mama, with cream so rich it’s a delicacy,” Julie said aloud. She found herself talking to her mother more and more these days, as if she were still alive and sitting across from her, carrying on an ordinary conversation. Julie couldn’t seem to break the habit of pretending her mother was there, but what was the harm, if it made her feel better?
“Now everything I buy is low fat or nonfat,” she went on, speaking with the casual, intimate tone she always reserved for her mother. “The stuff today tastes like the watered-down milk you poured on my cereal back when Daddy was out of work, Mama. Such long ago days. Strange. I remember nothing of those days except that watery milk. Now I pay a mint for milk like that, Mama.”
Julie poured her tea, wishing her mother was still around to share it with her. But they had buried her mother—the lovely, charming, devoted Ruth Currey—nearly a year ago. That was another truth still frozen inside Julie waiting to thaw.
I say the words in my head every day, but they never take root. They never seem real. I expect to drive through the canyon and past the lake and around the bend to the house in Crescent City where I grew up, the house just two hours away where my father lives in solitary silence, never opening his door or his heart to the likes of his only child, his wayward daughter, Julie Ryan.
Maybe he never forgave me for getting pregnant at eighteen, marrying a man he didn’t know, giving up my chance for a career to put my young husband through school. Maybe he never forgave me for not dying instead of Mama Or maybe he never forgave me for being born.
Julie took her steaming teacup upstairs to her bedroom and settled back on the sofa in her cozy retreat. As she set her tea beside her on a TV tray, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the TV screen.
I’m wearing an old nightgown and my scuzzy robe that’s soft as fleece but clouds out, adding twenty pounds to my girth. I haven’t dressed all day. I tell myself it’s because I’m sick. I have a cold. I have a right to lounge around and be sloppy and comfortable. Every other day I have to shimmy and wiggle into garments that make me look attractive, that befit my position as administrative assistant to the vice president of Leland-Myer Tool Company. But it’s a glorified title with a beggar’s pay.
I’m a glorified secretary, nothing more. But it’s a life. Not like painting, of course. Nothing matches that. But it’s something. At least my job gives me a satisfaction Michael doesn’t offer these days.
Michael.
Oh, yes. Michael.
Julie had found the note in his shirt pocket this afternoon—she wasn’t snooping, she was sorting the laundry. She sat on the sofa now and stared at it, studied it as if by memorizing every word she could somehow decipher its meaning.
Suddenly she knew what she had to do. Call that number. Like the TV commercial says, “Reach out and touch someone.” She had to reach out and touch this Beth. Make sense of her words. Perhaps it was all a silly, horrible mistake. Maybe Beth was a colleague of Michael’s. Maybe she was sixty and wore geriatric shoes. Maybe Beth was a man’s last name. George Beth. John Beth. Andrew Beth.
No. The note said, “Love, Beth.”
She wasn’t a colleague or an old woman or a man She was someone beautiful and desirable, someone Michael wanted to be with, would have been with, if…
“Sorry about last night. How about tonight?”
That was it. She knew she had to do it Had to know.
She set down her teacup, got up and went over to the kingsize bed she and Michael shared. She sat down on the fluffy comforter, reached for the cordless phone on the nightstand and dialed the number. Fingers trembling. Mouth like cotton. Heart pounding like congo drums. Two rings, then the answering machine came on. A soft female voice crooned, “Hello, this is Beth. I can’t come to the phone right now, but leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
Julie racked her brain for an appropriate response: Hello, Beth, this is your lover’s wife. Sorry, he won’t be there tonight. He already has plans.
Without uttering a sound, Julie slammed the receiver down and covered her mouth with her hands. She was afraid she would vomit.
She returned to the sofa, sat down and sipped her tea, thinking, All I can do is wait. What time will Michael be home tonight? Will he come home at all? Is it already too late?
Julie looked over at the clock on the nightstand. Nearly three. Katie would be home soon, running up the stairs to her bedroom. Her child, her fanciful daughter, her dreamer of impossible dreams. She carries the image of my youth, Julie mused, the likeness of my mother, the steely aloofness of my father. And Michael’s charm. And yet she is so totally her own person I do not know her. Behind the familiar face hides a stranger, a person of such complexity and surprise, I marvel that she came from my body, that she could possibly have been any part of me.
She denies me at every turn, Julie acknowledged darkly, her tea tepid now, tasting bitter on her tongue. In fact, if Katie could manage it she would print a disclaimer for all the world to see: “Any resemblance between my mother and myself is purely coincidental!”
Julie stirred, pushed her teacup away, ran her fingers through her uncombed hair. When Katie walks in the door and sees me still in my robe, she will accuse me of watching soaps and eating bonbons all day She will give me her petulant, condescending look, and she will look exactly like my father. And I will hate her for that. We will argue and exchange heated words. Sling verbal arrows back and forth, aiming for the heart.
And I will lose.
Because I am already frozen inside. I am hanging in dark waters with ice in my veins waiting to be rescued.
Will anyone come in time?
Will anyone come at all?
Chapter Two (#ulink_4531ad44-4ea8-57fb-9b1c-acaaacc1e30a)
Julie was heading for the kitchen for more tea when she heard voices outside the carved oak front door. Not loud voices: one-lilting, almost singsong, punctuated by that familiar squeal of laughter that wasn’t quite spontaneous Surely it was her daughter’s deliberate, girlish laugh. But the other voice was deeper, a stranger’s, with a teasingly combative, seductive edge Julie couldn’t distinguish their words, only the muffled rhythm of the sounds, a light, playful cat-and-mouse quality that reminded her of the flirtatious banter of her own youth.
It must be a boy Katie likes, Julie mused, for her to be lingering on the porch with him for so long. But then she has so many friends, boys and girls, always changing, faceless, interchangeable, like strangers coming and going through a revolving door. Which one is it this time?
There was a sudden click of the doorknob. The door opened before Julie could register the fact that she was standing in the white marble foyer in her bathrobe with her honey blond hair a tangled mess, her face devoid of makeup, and her nose puffy and red from sneezing.
Still laughing, Katie sauntered in the door with a tall, strapping young man in T-shirt and jeans, his russet hair hanging down to his shoulders, a gold ring in one ear, and his bronzed arm draped over Katie’s shoulder. He was laughing, too, casually, with a pleased, satisfied smirk, as if they had shared a private, even intimate, joke. When they saw Julie standing in the hallway, they stopped in their tracks, frozen momentarily. The boy dropped his arm from Katie’s shoulder and flashed an apologetic half smile. Katie’s eyes widened with surprise. “Mom, what are you doing home?” she asked, her tone startled, accusing.
“I live here,” Julie flung back, realizing it was a dumb thing to say, the sort of answer Katie would have given her.
“But why aren’t you at work?” Katie persisted, arching one feathery, finely plucked brow. Her pale pink complexion had reddened, giving her high cheekbones a rosy, self-conscious glow.
“I took the day off, Katie. I’m sick. Can’t you tell?”
Katie nodded, her pouty, cranberry red lips drooping slightly. “Yeah, you look totally awful, Mom!”
“Thanks,” said Julie. She could have turned the remark back on her daughter. You look totally awful, too! Katie stood there in a skimpy tank top and baggy jeans with gaping holes in the knees, one of her typical “ugly” outfits Julie complained about constantly, to no avail. Her long, auburn brown hair was clipped back artlessly and free-falling around her shoulders. Katie’s icy blue eyes cut into Julie’s soul with a single glance. She had her father’s eyes—shrewd, cunning at times, unreadable, defensive; eyes containing such pure, luminous color they could steal one’s breath.
“You look like you don’t feel good, Mom,” Katie was saying. “Did you call the doctor?”
“No. It’s just a cold. Nothing to worry about.” Julie could have added, I have worse things to fret over, Katie, like your father’s mysterious note from some hussy named Beth and this strange boy walking into my house with his hormones raging and his octopus arms hanging all over you!
Julie fixed her gaze expectantly on the young man until his face reddened and Katie said hastily, “Oh, I forgot. Mom, this is Jesse.”
“Jesse Dawson,” said the tall, broad-shouldered youth. He tentatively offered Julie his hand, then quickly withdrew it when she made no move to acknowledge the gesture. His tanned, chiseled features could have been carved from granite. His jaw was set like flint, as if daring anyone to mess with him. Dark brows crouched over his smoky gray eyes. Julie had sudden visions of smoldering anger and raw passion in his gaze, but whatever secrets lurked behind his eyes, Julie already knew she wanted Katie to have nothing to do with him
She turned to Katie and said, “Young lady, you know the rule. No boys in the house unless I’m here—or your dad.”
“You are here, Mom. Besides, it’s not what you think.”
“Isn’t it? But you brought Jesse here thinking I was still at work.”
Katie’s tone turned as icy as her eyes. “I swear it’s not like that, Mom. Jes just dropped me off so I could change. He’s taking me to youth group tonight, and I knew you wouldn’t want me wearing these torn jeans to church.”
“I wish you wouldn’t wear those raggedy jeans anywhere! They belong in the rag bag.”
“Everybody wears jeans like these,” Katie protested.
Julie folded her arms and rocked back slightly on her heels. “What are you two planning to do for the next few hours until youth group starts?”
Katie shrugged. “I don’t know. Just hang out. Grab a burger Why the third degree, Mom?”
Julie might have said, Because I’m already upset. I’m afraid your father has betrayed me, and I won’t risk losing you, too! Instead she ignored Katie’s question and addressed Jesse. “I don’t recall seeing you around church, Jesse. Are your parents members?”
“No, ma’am. My parents don’t go to church,” he drawled matter-of-factly. “They’re dead,”
Julie uncrossed her arms, feeling suddenly unnerved. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It happened a long time ago.”
Julie groped for words. “Then where do you—I mean, who do you—?”
“I live with my grandma and little brother. Right here in Long Beach. Just off Pine.”
Julie nodded stiffly. She knew the area. It was an old, deteriorating, gang-infested neighborhood of tiny rundown houses on postage-stamp-size lots—an area Michael warned her never to drive through alone, especially at night. God forbid that Katie would ever venture into such a neighborhood.
Katie pulled Jesse toward the door, as if to deliver him from Julie’s obvious interrogation. “Jes, I’m going to run to my room and change. You can wait out in the car if you want.”
He shrugged. “No, that’s okay. Go on. I’ll wait here.”
“Would you like a soft drink or something?” Julie asked offhandedly. She had to admit to a certain grudging admiration of the boy; he hadn’t turned tail and run.
