to take Lily to the playdate that day, only I was too fuckin’ busy earning all that money to do it.”
Somewhere during the outburst, his eyes had filled with tears. With a last scathing look now, he slammed the door and stomped to the Jeep.
12
The one thing most vivid in my mind as Edward’s Jeep tore down the hill and disappeared past the trees was the tears in his eyes. He was no actor. He could barely play gin rummy without giving away his hand. Oh, he could negotiate a business deal, but when it came to anything personal, you knew where you stood.
That, as my mother would say, was a double-edged sword. Knowing where he stood meant I had believed what I saw after the accident. As far as I could see, the sight of me brought him so much pain that he couldn’t feel love, and without love, we had no future together.
I wasn’t sure what to make of his tears now, but they did soften me. He had never expressed these particular feelings before, which said something about the silence that had choked us back then. It said something about the soul-searching he must have done since. Yes, I was touched—of course I was touched that he had dug into the facts of the case. I hadn’t questioned them, and not out of naïveté. They simply didn’t matter. I had been distracted; my eyes weren’t on the road; I had run a STOP sign. End of story. I wasn’t ready—would never be ready—to share the blame of that with anyone else.
Still, Edward’s raising the issue of guilt was interesting. That he felt it, whether right or wrong, said something about sharing responsibility. It had been a long time since anyone had wanted to share responsibility for anything with me. It had been a long time since anyone had trusted me enough.
I still didn’t want him here.
But he was.
I could tell him to leave until I was blue in the face. But he wasn’t leaving.
I could threaten to leave myself. But, seriously? If you want to talk about little green buds in the forest, that was my life in Devon. I liked those buds, liked the person I was growing into here. I felt for the people I knew—like Alex, who loved teaching but would give anything for her own kids—like Joyce, whose husband had left her years ago and whose children didn’t often return.
Now I felt for Edward. In our old life, he’d had friends, but I wasn’t sure he had them here yet. Liam sure as hell wouldn’t be giving him advice on what to do here.
Considering this as I followed sanely down the road, I braked, stopped, and took out my phone. Do not use Hank Monroe, I texted. He overcharges and underdoes.
I was halfway to the Spa when he texted back. Who then?
I let him wait for a reply until I was parked in the employees’ lot, which was comfortably filled with the cars of Sunday staff, no press van or black Jeep in sight. Andrew Russ, I texted, and, as a little reminder that I had a life here, sent a second. Use my name. He loves me.
* * *
Entering the Spa, I felt absurdly better, strong enough in that moment to want to work with clay—I mean, really work in ways I hadn’t been able to do. My fingers ached to sink in, to feel its chill, tensile strength, to pound it and shape it and lose myself in creation.
But this was Sunday. The studio was closed. Where creation was concerned, the choice was between God and Grace’s hair. Given that I was still angry at the former for allowing my child to die, the latter would have to do.
Grace was game. “I am so done with this look,” she declared in her high voice, pulling on a cape over her scrubs, which were lilac and fitted. We were alone in the color room, as she knew we would be when she suggested this time. Freeing her arms from the cape, she dropped into a chair. She tugged an elastic from her hair and shook her head, freeing auburn curls to shimmer in a sea of chestnut waves.
The color was gorgeous. I couldn’t believe she wanted it changed. But it wasn’t my hair, was it?
Lighting a scented candle, I breathed it in and thought sweet, agreeable thoughts. They came with surprising ease. This, here, now, was my Devon life.