What would it be like to be so relentlessly optimistic? I couldn’t remember ever having the same lighthearted faith that Willa felt. Not since I was about five, anyway.
I took a hard look at myself in the mirror, almost expecting to see some middle-aged harbinger of doom, Ebenezer Scrooge in drag. Instead, it was just me, the face deemed striking by just about everyone. I stuck my tongue out at my reflection. A few wisps of hair had escaped my clip and were curling, not unattractively, around my face.
My hair was probably my best feature, certainly the one that garnered the most attention. Rich auburn hair shot with coppery highlights from the sun, curling without frizzing, one-in-a-million, pre-Raphaelite hair of an angel which I straightened every day for work. I subdued it once more, secured the clip more tightly and made sure that not one curl escaped.
“Harper, baby doll? You comin’?” BeverLee opened the door. “Oh, sweetie, here. You need a little spray?” She fumbled in her huge vinyl purse for her industrial-sized can of Jhirmack. “Want me to puff you up?”
“I’m good, Bev. Thanks anyway.” With my stepmother chattering away, we went back to join the others.
An eternity later, dinner was over. Dad and BeverLee headed upstairs where, please God, they would have sex and thus relieve me of hearing about their marital woes. The rest of the gang drifted toward the bar. Dennis approached me. “Hey, I’m kinda whipped,” he said. “I’m gonna go upstairs and ice my back, take a few Motrin. We’re going horseback riding tomorrow, I don’t want to miss that.”
“Horseback riding?”
“That’s what they said.”
My stony heart sank a bit more. I was actually a little scared of horses. So dang big, you know? “Well. Do you need anything, Den? Want me to come up, get you settled?”
“Nah, I’m fine. Oh, hey, how you doing?”
I turned to look at the party he was addressing. Great. Some pretty woman giving him the eye.
“Harp, this is Bonnie, she’s a waitress here.”
“Hi, Dennis,” she sighed, practically melting on the spot.
I rolled my eyes. “Lovely to meet you.” I turned back to Dennis. “Feel better, snooky-bear,” I said. “I’ll be up in a little while.”
Dennis grinned. “’Night, Harp.”
“Er. Harp-er. You can say it. It’s only two syllables.”
To my surprise, he gave me a rather lovely kiss. “Good night, Harper,” he said. Then he winked at Bonnie and headed up the stairs. I turned around and bumped right into my ex-husband.
CHAPTER SIX
NICK SMILED. “WANT TO get that drink now, snooky-bear?” he asked.
I took a deep breath. “You bet, poopyhead.”
“You still like those sickening cosmos?”
“Sue me. I came of age during Sex and the City.”
“There are tables out there,” Nick said, indicating the patio. “Back in a flash.”
I went outside. The sun was setting behind the mountains, and the shadows hung long and blue over the lake, turning the water almost black. The wind had died down, and the flagstones held the moderate warmth of the day. I picked a table—the patio was mostly deserted—wrapped my pashmina a little more tightly around me and stared off at the mountains.
It was so beautiful here, so remote. The quiet was like a palpable force, and I felt my soul unfurl a little. Surely Martha’s Vineyard was one of the loveliest places on earth, but it wasn’t like this—majestic, endless and harsh, a place where you could be killed by nature in a hundred different ways at any given moment. For some reason, the thought was oddly soothing. Out here, you were just part of a bigger plan, one you didn’t get to control. Be eaten by a grizzly, have a glacier fall on your head, drown in an icy river—it wasn’t up to you.
“Makes you feel a little…irrelevant, doesn’t it?” Nick asked, indicating the view as he set down my pink drink. “In a nice way.”
“Speak for yourself,” I said, a little disturbed that he’d just about read my mind.
“So you found out Willa’s working for me.” He took a sip of his beer.
“Yes, I did.”
“She asked me not to tell you.”
“And when would you tell me? During our weekly chats? Don’t worry, I’m not mad.”
“Sure you are.” He flashed his lightning smile.
I looked away. “So Jason’s here, huh? I didn’t picture that.”
“Yeah. Me neither.”
“How about your father and Lila? Coming in tomorrow?”
Nick’s dark gaze dropped to the table. “No. Dad’s got early onset dementia. He’s pretty out of it.” He began folding the corners of his cocktail napkin.
“Oh, Nick. I’m sorry to hear it.” Without thinking, I reached over and put my hand over his.
“Thanks.” He didn’t look up.
“What about Lila? I can’t imagine she’d want to miss her son’s wedding.”
“Actually, she planned a cruise a while back and didn’t want to cancel.”
That summed up the memory I had of her pretty well. I didn’t know the woman, but I always had the impression there wasn’t a lot to discover.
“So does your dad live near you?”
Nick nodded. “I got him into this pretty nice assisted-living place on the East Side. I can check on him that way.”
“That’s…that’s good.”
I’d met Ted only three times. He was a consultant to large corporations and Republican politicians, though what exactly he consulted on was never fully explained. Very successful, very smug, very oily. After rescheduling four times, he took Nick and me out to dinner when we were engaged. “Harper, call me Ted. You are stunning! I can see my son inherited his old man’s taste in women.” (I know. Nasty.) The next time I saw him was at our wedding, where I was too busy panicking to pay him much attention. The last time was at a Labor Day picnic at his sprawling, soulless McMansion in Westchester County, where Ted invited me to come riding with him sometime. Apparently he was once an alternate on the Olympic equestrian team and said he could tell I had a beautiful seat. (And again…nasty.)
I’d hated the guy, his easy affability with his stepson and younger child, either ignoring Nick altogether or asking him awkward questions that revealed just how little he knew his firstborn. He’d reminisce fondly about Nick’s soccer days when Nick had in fact played baseball. He referred to Nick’s days at UConn when Nick had gone to UMass. Once he mentioned their fishing trip to Maine, as if he’d ever taken Nick anywhere…Jason had been the son on that trip.
Inexplicably, Nick held no rancor toward him; instead, he’d watched his father with hopeful eyes, waiting for something more than a slap on the back and a “Hey, sport, how you doing?” Whatever Nick had waited for never came. At least, not in the time we were together.
I guessed now it never would.
Nick was staring at me.
Oh. I was holding his hand with both of mine, my thumbs stroking his knuckles. I jerked my hands back, then gave his an awkward pat. Took a sip of my cosmo. Note to self: don’t touch Nick. The buzz was quite unsettling, and it wasn’t caused by alcohol.
“So. A divorce attorney.” His hands busied themselves with the napkin. A structure was appearing, Nick’s own brand of origami. Sugar packets, toothpicks, asparagus spears—whatever was at hand, Nick would turn into a building, incapable of keeping his hands still.
“That’s right,” I said coolly. God knows I’d heard every joke in the book.
“Why that field?” he asked.
“Well, as you may remember, Nick, divorcing someone you once loved can be difficult, and it’s easy to make a mistake. So I help people get the best result. Hold their hands and shepherd them through a sad time.”
Nick raised an eyebrow.
“What?”
“I just find it…fitting.”
“I know you’re hoping to insult me, but you’re not. I help people accept in their hearts what their heads already know.” For some reason, my motto sounded hollow tonight.
“Wow. That’s some line.” The napkin had become a tiny house, complete with roof and folded door. Nick set it aside, then angled it to face the lake, ensuring that it had a water view.
“It’s not a line, Nick,” I sighed. “If we’d done that, we might’ve stood a chance or avoided a disaster.”
“That’s how you think of us? A disaster?” The gypsy eyes flashed.
“Well,” I answered thoughtfully, “sitting here with you in this beautiful place, all these years having passed, talking with you again…yes. Disaster covers it pretty well.”
“And here I still think of you as the woman I loved more than I’ve ever loved anyone.”
The words had the intended wallop, and my heart shuddered. Don’t be such a weenie, I told said organ. He’s not trying to soften you up…it’s an accusation. Leaning back in my chair, I gave a half nod. “The past tense is duly noted, Your Honor, as is the soap-opera melodrama. That being said, a simple recounting of the facts would show that you were practically invisible during our brief and unhappy marriage.”
“You certainly made me that way, didn’t you?” His voice was mild.
This was going nowhere. This was, in fact, where negotiations tended to break down. “Okay, Nick, let’s drop it. Ancient history, right?”
“It doesn’t feel that ancient, Harper.”
I took another sip of cosmo to cover my shiver, but he noticed anyway. “Cold?” he asked, instantly shrugging out of his jacket and offering it to me. “I mean, I know your heart is cold, but how about the rest of you?”
“No, I’m fine,” I said. We looked at each other for a minute, twelve years churning between us. I was the first to blink.
“Nick, look. Let’s not fight. We’re here to talk about our siblings, yes?” He nodded, and I continued. “You and I…we were both obviously hurt by our own bad decisions. We were too young and foolish, we didn’t know what to expect, yadda yadda ad infinitum.” His eyes were unreadable. “But this is exactly my point. While Willa and Christopher are in fact older than we were, they’re still basically kids. Well, certainly Willa is. What does Christopher do for work, by the way?”
“He’s…” Nick paused. “He works for me on and off. Well, for my subcontractors, mostly. Finish carpentry, trim, stuff like that.”
My lawyerly instinct told me there was more. “And on the off times, what does he do, Nick?”
Nick gave a little wince. Here it comes, I thought. “He’s…he’s an inventor.”
I nodded sagely. “An inventor. Anything good? And by good, I’m envisioning Google, just as an example.”
Nick sighed. “Well, he does have a patent on a couple things.” He hesitated. “The Thumbie.”
“And what is the Thumbie?” I asked. My cosmo was gone. Too bad, since it appeared I’d be needing another.
“The Thumbie is a plastic tip you put over your thumb.”
“To what end?” I asked.
“To scrape gunk that you can’t get up with a sponge.”
I paused. “You’re not really serious, are you, Nick?”
He sighed. “Chris says you always end up using your thumbnail to—okay, so it’s stupid. But maybe no more stupid than the ShamWow.”
“The Sham-what?”
“Never mind. At least he’s trying.”
I took a slow, steadying breath. “And Willa, having quit beauty school, a paralegal course and a stonemasonry apprenticeship, is going to be the breadwinner in this family?”
Nick rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know, Harper. It’s not for us to decide. Can’t you just have some faith in the two of them? Let them make their own mistakes, find their own way, trust that they actually love each other?”
I snorted. “Right. Or maybe—just thinking out loud here—we can actually consider the facts and apply a little loving pressure so our siblings don’t end up in the same miserable stew you and I were in.”
“There’s more to a marriage than the facts.”
“Ignoring the facts of a relationship is the reason I have a job, Nick.”
“Well, you know what?” he said, an edge in his voice. “I think they’ll be really happy together.”
“Ah. So I can count on you to pick up the tab for Christopher’s divorce attorney?”
He squinted at me, almost smiling. “Wow. I forgot how stunted you are when it comes to matters of the heart.”
“Stop, I’m blushing.” My voice was calm, though I could feel my heart armoring itself for battle. “I’m not stunted, Nicky dear. I’m a realist.”
“A realist, huh. Or we could call it…stunted. Yep, that works.” He winked at me and leaned back in his chair.
“Well, I’ll tell you this, babe,” I said softly, leaning forward with a little smile and lowering my voice. His eyes dropped to my cl**vage (gotcha, you dopey man, you), then came instantly back to my face. “At least I haven’t had my heart stomped on since you and I broke up.”
Nick tipped his head and smiled. “I wasn’t aware you had a heart, sweetums.”
Oh, he was such a pain in the ass. My expression may have been—hopefully was—pleasant, but my heart was racing in white-hot fury. That’s how it always had been with Nick—zero to sixty in a nanosecond. Before I did something rash like, I don’t know, kick him in the nuts, I stood up to leave.