Alice made every effort to take this second breakup in stride. To convince herself she’d been wrong, that Gabe, with his fear of intimacy and abandonment issues, was right.
This was better. Really. It was better being alone in that bed, for the past three nights.
But these few weeks with him back in her arms had scattered the previous five years like birds, as if they’d never happened. His empty side of the bed was a gaping wound all over again.
And despite her efforts, she wasn’t convinced that it was better feeling as if she couldn’t breathe every time they were in the same room. Or that it was better waiting with pounding heart and cold hands for him to enter the room so she could pretend he wasn’t there.
“Hey,” Cameron said over her shoulder, while she worked mindlessly on a bowl of egg whites. “Is that supposed to be meringue?”
She looked down to see egg whites the consistency of library glue around her fork.
Disgusted with herself, she threw the bowl down on the counter.
“You…okay?” Cameron asked just as Gabe walked in the door, crossed the corner of the kitchen as if no one was there and slammed the door of his office shut.
She and Cameron watched and flinched at the noise.
“What’s with him?” Cameron asked and Alice, sad and sick of being sad, swore. Like a sailor. A sailor who only knew swearwords.
Cameron’s eyebrows skyrocketed.
“Sorry,” she muttered. “I’m just…frustrated.”
“Is it the wedding?” he asked. “I mean, because we’re behind on the prep or something?” He was so worried that he might have something to do with what was wrong that her heart went out to him.
Six weeks ago this faith, this pressure he put on her—to be at least a participant in this relationship, to give him the smallest crumbs of affection and loyalty—would have sent her running for the door. Right now she wanted to hug him. She wanted to promise that nothing else would hurt him.
As much as that was a lie.
“Not at all,” she assured him. “We’re ahead of schedule. The families arrive in five days and all we need to do is figure out what to serve them the first night they’re here.”
He nodded, fidgeting slightly with the tie on his apron.
“Did you have an idea?”
“Well, I’ve been looking at your books, you know…” He pointed to her shelf of cookbooks and grabbed her old family one, grease spattered and dirty. “I like this one.” He flipped to the grilled rabbit stuffed with parma ham and herbs.
“Rabbit?”
“Max said it tastes like chicken. We could serve it with this.” He turned the page to the delicious springtime risotto.
“Yeah, but rabbit?”
“It’s probably a dumb idea.” Defeated, he shut the book and started to put it back on the shelf.
It might very well be the least appropriate meal to greet them with, she thought. Time intensive and hard work for just the two of them. Heavy and oddly paired and—
What did it matter? she wondered suddenly. In the long run the Crimpsons would forget that meal, but Cameron would never forget the chance to put this meal together.
Sometimes the greater good, the real payoff was hidden behind compromise, lost among the wrong priorities.
Alice braced herself against the counter as the new reality of her life settled in around her.
Look at me, she thought. Look at me with this boy. Before I came here I never would have sacrificed something for his feelings. Oh my God, three nights ago I told Gabe I would adopt.
She put her hand to her forehead. When did this happen?
She’d been focused so hard on Gabe, on making them work, that she’d missed what was truly important. She was over the past. Well, maybe not over, but getting over it. Those children didn’t haunt her. Adoption sounded like a good idea, it still did, with or without Gabe. She wanted a family and was ready to get it, find it. Beg, borrow and steal it.
She was sober. Working.
She was happy.
“Rabbit it is.” She nodded, grabbing the cookbook. “I’m going to need you to call our butcher and get this set up for fourteen people. And we’re going to need a lesson in risotto.”
He looked at her, slack jawed. “You sure? I mean, I could screw it up—”
“Yep, but that’s how you learn.”
Cameron took a deep breath and took the book. “Can I work the grill?”
“Not on your life.”
Gabe opened the office door and stormed out into the dining room, again pretending the two of them weren’t there.
She saw him with new eyes, and while it hurt, while her whole body hurt from the force with which she wished they could work it out, she knew they wouldn’t, not until he got where she was.
Pretending the past never happened didn’t make it go away. His mother leaving, the babies dying, the marriage falling apart, they all ate away at him and he’d never let anyone close again until he figured it out.
She watched him go and felt her heart strain after him.
“You know what my dad taught me?” Cameron asked.
“I can’t even imagine,” she said, trying to pull herself together.
“You can’t make someone love you,” he said. His eyes were far too old, too all seeing for a boy his age. “I tried and tried,” he said, and shrugged.
I love Gabe, she realized. I always will, but there’s nothing more I can do.
Alice sighed and before Cameron could flinch or run away she hugged him. Hard.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. “I’m glad I met you.”
Awkwardly, carefully, Cameron hugged her back.
Alice loaded the herbs and vegetables needed for Cameron’s meal into the backseat of her car. She’d come here, to Athens Organics, on a two-part mission. Get veggies. Apologize to Daphne.
But it wasn’t as easy as she’d thought it would be.
It wasn’t as though there was a Hallmark card dedicated to this kind of thing.
Sorry my ex-husband dumped you to date me, only to dump me, too.
Too bad we fell for the same intimacy-phobe, wanna chat?
“How are the wedding plans going?” Daphne asked, brushing the dirt off her hands onto the seat of her jeans.
“So far so good.” Alice shielded her eyes with her hand so she could better see Daphne, gauging if the woman was furious or not. So far it didn’t seem so. “But that usually means we’re missing something.”
“Wedding?” Helen asked, looking up from what seemed to be an intricate sketch she was drawing in the dirt with her shoe. “What wedding?”
“At the inn,” Alice said, smiling at the little girl. Maybe coming here had a three-part goal. Apologize. Get food. Test acceptance of the past, by standing in the company of this little girl who would be the age of her own daughter.
And so far, judging by how badly she wanted to straighten Helen’s ponytail and squeeze her, she was doing okay.
“Can we go?” Helen asked her mom.
“Sorry, sweetie, but—”
“Of course,” Alice interjected, surprising everyone, most of all herself. She had no business inviting people to the wedding. But she wasn’t really going to let that stop her. She could handle the Fish-Stick Princess on behalf of this little girl.
“Are you sure that’s okay?” Daphne asked.
“Why not,” Alice said, tapping into this new attitude of hers. She felt breezy and fluid, expansive and loving. Toward everyone.
“I’ve never been to a wedding!” Helen cried. “Will we dance?”
“Absolutely!”
“Will there be flowers?”
“They’re being delivered and planted right now.”
“Mommy! Mommy! Can we go? Can we?” She grabbed her mother’s hand and nearly knocked her off balance with her hopping and leaping.
“We can stop by,” she said in a stern voice. “We can see how the inn looks and then we’ll leave.”
“We can dance?”
“One dance.”
It was enough for Helen, who went spinning off into the backyard.
Daphne eyed her sideways, and Alice smiled. “It will be fine. There are other kids invited and I’ll double-check with the bride.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Daphne said. “You’re a different woman today than you were the last time I saw you. I take it things with you and Gabe worked out?”
Alice’s heart spasmed and gushed hot blood, proving she wasn’t as okay with their breakup as she wanted to pretend. She swallowed back the sudden pain and shook her head. “Nope,” she said. “We crashed and burned, like we always do.”
“So? What’s with this happy version of the bitter chef?”
She smiled at the description and was glad the bitterness was gone.
“I realized I can’t change him. He’s got to do it himself. So, I took the energy I was throwing his way and used it to make myself happy.”
“And it’s working?”
“Most of the time.” Alice was again blindsided by a swell of feelings for Gabe. “I wish things were different, but—” She took a shaky breath and Daphne touched her arm, forestalling her.
“Good for you.”
Alice laughed. “Well, we’ll see about that. But I’m serious about you two coming to the wedding. I swear, they won’t even notice.”
“Well.” Daphne looked out after her daughter who was showing one of the farm employees a spectacular twirl. “I don’t think I could keep her away.” They both laughed and it felt so good to do it that Alice nearly wept.
Jeez, I’m emotional, she thought, and got into her car before she cried like a baby in front of Daphne.
Gabe was mad. He was mad at the landscapers who had showed up late and were taking their time planting the flowers around the property and managed to destroy the grass in front of cottage four.
But mostly he was mad at Max.
“Go away,” he said for perhaps the twentieth time.
“Gabe, I’m telling you, we’ve got to talk about this.”
“We already did.” Gabe stepped away and bent to reposition the orange, yellow and red daylilies that were going to be planted around the gazebo.
“Jesus, you’re stubborn.”
Gabe swung incredulous eyes up at his brother. “Hello, pot,” he muttered.
“Dad is acting different. Something has happened.”
“Dad has been acting different all spring. We figured it out—Mom contacted him. That’s it.”
“Yeah, but have you noticed that he stopped talking about her? And he’s walking around whistling—”
“He realized we were right and that it’s better to just leave it alone.” He decided to go see how the flower beds around the entrance to the lodge were doing, hoping his brother would give up and head back to his cave in the woods, or wherever he’d been spending most of his time.
But Max grabbed him and the anger that was simmering in Gabe’s bloodstream boiled over.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Gabe snapped, knocking Max’s hands loose. “Dad’s better, he’s not moping around like some teenager. Leave it alone.”
Max blinked at him. “You’re like one of those birds that keeps his head in the sand all the time. Don’t you wonder why he’s acting better? Do you think it just magically happened? And what about Alice? Why’s she—”
Gabe took off again, he didn’t want to listen to this. He didn’t have to. It was his inn. “You’re fired,” he said. “Go bother someone else.”
Max stepped out in front of him and Gabe, who knew he’d never win a fistfight with Max—hadn’t since he was seven—decided he didn’t care.
He punched his brother right in the face. Max staggered back and Gabe, his hand on fire and his anger only growing, stalked past him.
Max tackled him from behind. Gabe landed on the ground with an “ufff!” and possibly a cracked rib. Max rolled him over and sat on him, using his knees to hold Gabe’s hands down.
“Dirty trick!” Gabe hollered, bucking up only to be shoved back down by his bigger former-cop brother.
“Yeah, well, you deserve it.”
“Get the hell off me.”
“No.”
Gabe bucked and twisted and managed to get one solid punch to his brother’s stomach, knocked him off balance and rolled over him, digging his elbows into Max’s sides, rubbing his face in the dirt. But victory was short and soon Max had him pinned.
“Mom left on a Tuesday,” he said and Gabe scrambled to get free, but Max grabbed his leg and pulled him back. “She kissed us good-night, remember? She sat on your bed and told us a joke about a penguin and a chicken.”
“Shut up.”
“We went downstairs that morning and we sat in our places and we waited for what seemed like hours—”
“Max, I’m serious.” Something was cracking in his chest, that rib maybe. His stupid brother, of course, would break his ribs. He tried to rub away the pain. “You are so fired.”
“We did that every morning for two weeks. You refused to go to school, remember? You made her pancakes every day and we watched them get cold on the table. Ring any bells in that stupid head?”
“No!”
“You stopped eating and I did whatever you did. Finally Dad begged you to eat something and you said you’d only eat if Mom came back and that’s when he told us that she wasn’t going to come back. You said ‘Never?’ And Dad nodded, crying his eyes out and I waited for you to cry. I waited, and I waited, and you just watched Dad, then finally you said, ‘Good.’”
Gabe couldn’t breathe, the earth wasn’t at his back and he was flung into empty space, a free fall into nothing.
“You said good.” Max shook his head, rolled away from Gabe but he still couldn’t stand up. All his bones were broken. The dam shattered and the past swept him up and away. “I couldn’t believe it. Dad tried to tell you not to be so angry but you wouldn’t hear it. I’ve never seen you grieve for Mom. Ever.”
Gabe lay on the grass and stared up at the sky, the memory as fresh as if she’d left him yesterday.
“I still feel that way,” he whispered. “I know he wants us to see her, but—” he shook his head “—I can’t.”
Max flopped onto his back beside Gabe and neither of them mentioned how odd this was, two grown men lying on a lawn after trying to beat the hell out of each other.
“You know, I’ve tried and tried to think of why she would leave. Were we bad? Did Dad do something wrong? Was it another man?”
“I don’t know. I remember she cried a lot.”
“You do?” Gabe asked, stunned. “I don’t remember that at all.”
Max shrugged. “We were kids, who knows if it’s real or not.”
“What do you think?” Gabe asked Max. “Do you want to see her?”
Max shrugged. “I kind of want to yell at her. Tell her what she did to us and Dad.” They were silent for a long time. “What happened with Alice?” Max asked.
Gabe felt that anger well up in him again. “Nothing.” He stood and walked away, wiping the grass off his pants as he went as if they were memories that clung so determinedly.
“You never grieved for her, either,” Max said. “Or those babies.”
“Shut up, Max.”
“You know I’m right.”
Gabe broke into a run toward the lodge.
He stepped into the kitchen from the dining room just as Alice came in the back door, her arms filled with a box of vegetables.
“Gabe!” Her brow knit with concern. “What happened to your face?”
He touched the corner of his split and bloodied lip and winced. “My brother,” he said.
“What’s wrong?” She slid the box onto the counter and crossed her arms over her chest. The kitchen swirled with tension, with everything they wanted to say and do. He wanted to fold her into his arms, have her kiss away the pain of his bruises and at the same time he wanted to bundle her up and send her home. That dichotomy was tearing him apart. Tearing apart the whole damn inn.
“Gabe.” Her face softened. She knew what he was going through and had the power to make it better. But he knew what she wanted. She wanted to repeat the past, hash it out, pull it into the present and go on from there.
“Do you have a replacement?” he asked, stone-faced and angry, and she shut down in response.
Stop caring, he wanted to say. Just give up on us. We’re not worth the pain.
“I’m looking, Gabe,” she said as calmly as she could. “Tim Munez called me back yesterday but I’ve been too busy to get in touch with him.”
“Tim would be good.”
She bit her lip and nodded, turning back to her vegetables. “I have work to do,” she said.
He watched her take the box to the fridge and start putting away her produce. He knew he needed to apologize, he wasn’t handling any of this well.
“Alice, I don’t mean to be so—”
“I get it, Gabe,” she interrupted, throwing spinach into the bottom drawer of the fridge. “Everything will be easier when I’m gone. For both of us.”
“Something like that,” he said and, with the die cast, he finally turned away, feeling worse than when he’d come in.