Never Too Late

  When he came back to the blanket, kneeling, she could see that his eyes were moist and it tore at her heart. “Are you absolutely sure, Clare? Because I think you know—I’m falling in love with you.”

  “I suspected that, and it frightens me. This is hard enough, Sam. I don’t want it to get any harder.”

  “But if I can respect your space and give you the time you need—?”

  “You would become more invested and I, less. I know what I feel, Sam. And what I don’t.”

  He shook his head and gave a huff of rueful laughter, then tossed the rest of his wine on the grass. He put the glass in the basket and looked at her, his hands in fists on his thighs. “It was going to be today, you know. Right here, under this beautiful old tree. I was going to give you a glass of wine and make love to you. I was going to do things for you that no one has ever done. Make you beg for more. I wanted to tell you, finally, that the worst day of your life was the best day of mine. The day I found you and almost lost you, all in just a few minutes. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way about a woman before.”

  She felt the tears on her cheeks and wiped them away. “You are entitled to so much more, Sam. A younger woman, for one thing. Someone who’s as passionate as you are. A woman who could add to your family, if you wanted that.”

  “I don’t need that,” he protested. “You’ve had that cheating husband all those years—and I would have given you love you could trust. One that would be true.”

  “I never doubted that. But you know I have to share that desire for it to work.”

  He swallowed, glanced away, looked back at her. “Tell me one thing, and please don’t lie to me. Is it Pete? Pete Rayburn?”

  “What?” she said, confused.

  “There was something going on yesterday, when I found you with him at the park. I could sense it.”

  “Oh,” she said, letting out her breath. “Yes, there was something going on. We were talking about old times, just as he said. One of the old times was his brother’s death. Mike was Pete’s older brother. We shared a devastating loss.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Of course not. It never occurred to me to mention it, but then I didn’t know you two knew each other.” Sam stared at the ground. “I never meant to hurt you, Sam. You must believe that.”

  He raised his eyes. “I never meant to fall in love with you. Some things, it seems, are beyond our control.” He stood. “We better get out of here. I don’t think there’s going to be a picnic.” He held out his hand to help her to her feet.

  “Will you be all right?” she asked.

  “I’ll live,” he said, giving her a wan smile. “Kiss me, Clare. Kiss me goodbye.”

  “I don’t think that’s such a good—”

  “It’s all I’m asking. When I think about this day, I want to remember one nice thing.” He pulled her into his arms and covered her mouth with his. At that moment she knew she had done absolutely the right thing. She felt his lips, as skilled and passionate as ever; she felt that familiar temptation. But nothing else. Then she felt his tears on her cheeks and her heart was ripped to pieces.

  He pulled away and ducked his head, so that she wouldn’t see. He stooped to collect the basket and blanket and as he walked to the car, he swiped impatiently at his eyes. “Let’s go,” he called. “No point in making this any harder.”

  She caught up with him and before he could get in the car, she grabbed the sleeve of his shirt and turned him toward her. “Sam, there’s someone out there for you. Someone wonderful and devoted whose passion for you will match yours for her. I promise you.”

  He gave a dubious little laugh. “That’s the last thing on my mind.”

  Clare didn’t know where to go. She was in no shape for work and rather than go into the store and tell her dad she was taking off for the day, she just retrieved her car and called him from there. Finally, at a loss for what to do, she went to Maggie’s office, hoping her sister would be there alone.

  The minute she got into Maggie’s plush office and closed the door, she burst into tears. “What in the world…?”

  “Maggie, it was horrible. I broke his heart.”

  For a small, trim woman, Maggie exuded power. It was probably a lawyer thing. She was a rock, and seemed fearless. “Stop crying!” she demanded. But that only made Clare cry harder. Maggie tossed the box of tissue at her and said, “Stop crying and tell me what happened.”

  “He took me on a picnic in a deserted little park. He had big ideas of what would happen on that blanket—and instead I told him that I couldn’t see him anymore, that I just don’t have those kind of feelings for him.”

  Maggie was almost knocked back in her chair and she said, “I don’t know how you could not.”

  “Well, what can I say?” Clare sniffed. “It’s true—I responded to him. I had plenty of lust. I just didn’t have love in my heart.”

  “Hell, I responded to him. I don’t think that proves anything.”

  “He was planning to tell me that the day he met me was the best day of his life.”

  “And you couldn’t just…? You didn’t have to make a commitment to him, did you?” Maggie shook her head. “Women. Couldn’t you have enjoyed him for a time? While you’re getting back on your emotional feet?”

  “And then, after using him for a while, tell him to hit the road? Oh, Maggie—”

  “All right, all right.” Maggie relented. “It was a kind thing you did for him, Clare. He’s twenty-nine. He has lots of time for meaningful relationships.”

  “I should have been kinder faster,” she said, and blew her nose heartily.

  Maggie got out of her chair and walked around to Clare, leaning a hip on the desk. One of her least favorite things was weeping women. She, herself, never cried. She couldn’t remember the last time. But being a lawyer and handling the occasional divorce put her in the company of tearful women fairly often. “I’m going to say something to you, and you’d better hear me. You did nothing wrong. Women date men. They flirt, respond to flirting, experiment with their emotions to determine whether they have the chemistry to go further. Women and men have sex, often before they know whether there’s enough substance for the relationship to go the distance. There’s no possible way to find the right person without exploring these things. If you don’t take the risk, you chance the other extreme, which is closing yourself off, and that makes less sense than a good old-fashioned cry, when and if it has to be ended. I’m proud of you for doing what you know to be the right thing. So don’t beat yourself up for not doing it sooner.”

  “He was shattered. It was the most painful thing I’ve ever seen. Done.”

  “Well, who knew? It might’ve worked. It was worth giving it a shot. But generally we say at least six months of autonomy between relationships. That whole rebound thing is not fiction.”

  “I just wish there was something I could do to make this easier on him,” Clare said.

  “As it happens, there probably is,” Maggie said. “If you’ve made up your mind, which apparently you have, make it a clean break. Don’t play around with this. If he calls or drops by, be kind but firm—it’s time to move on. He’ll be better off. And so will you.”

  “He asked me to kiss him goodbye. I could feel the dampness on his cheeks,” she added with a miserable hiccup.

  “God, he is such a hunk,” Maggie said. “Not only the big, tough, good-looking guy, but sensitive. How is he single? There must be something wrong with him!”

  “It might have to do with being a single father. And living with his mother.”

  “He lives with his mother?”

  “His mother helps him raise his daughter. It’s probably just a practical thing.”

  “Still, that must impact his sex life in a very negative way.”

  “You’re sure this wasn’t my fault?”

  “Absolutely not. If it doesn’t fly, it doesn’t fly. You can’t force these things.”

  “Is it what you woul
d have done?”

  “Me?” Maggie asked. “Oh hell no! I would have had tons of meaningless sex!”

  Maggie called Sarah. “We might have a bit of a problem here. She did it. Clare broke it off with Sam.”

  “She did?” Sarah asked, trying to keep the hopefulness from her voice. “Is she okay?”

  “She’s pretty messed up, actually. But not because she has regrets. Because she said he was very upset. And last Saturday, none the wiser, I called him and invited him to her surprise birthday party in two weeks.”

  “You didn’t tell me you were doing that.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t think of it. I asked Jason for some names of friends he thought she’d like to have come and he came up with a few, including Sam. Should I call him, tell him not to come?”

  “Well, that would be pretty rude,” she said.

  “I advised Clare to make a clean break. This is no way to do that.”

  “Maggie, if he’s upset and doesn’t want to see her, he won’t come.”

  “And if he does?” Maggie asked.

  “Well,” Sarah said, “I trust him to be polite.”

  And I want him there, Sarah thought. I want to see how he is, how he looks at Clare. At me. Let’s see what he’s got.

  Throughout the week, Clare was often caught completely lost in thought. She missed things said to her at the store and at home in the evenings she would find that while she stared at the TV, she couldn’t remember much of the program she’d been watching.

  She had kept her eye on the front door of the hardware store, expecting Sam to walk in for sprinkler heads, but he didn’t. She checked her cell phone for messages, afraid there might be one and all those painful feelings visited on Monday might come rushing back. He didn’t call.

  Clare was glad of this, of course. Except that she was worried about him. It was possible he’d shrugged it off and already found himself some young babe, more his type. More likely, he was suffering and hurt. That whole thing about the clean break was hard to commit to—faced with his pain, she would be tempted to take him in her arms, hold him, tell him it would be all right. That it was better this way.

  She prayed he wouldn’t put her to the test.

  Sam wasn’t the only man who occupied her thoughts. In a far different way, she thought a lot about what Pete had told her. She tried to remember the past in a new way, looking back through the years for a time she might’ve known her buddy, her pal, was harboring this secret crush. She just couldn’t see it.

  When Mike had graduated and began taking classes in Reno, Pete and Clare were together constantly. It was like Pete was protecting Mike’s interests. For the first time she wondered why he hadn’t had a girlfriend. He had dates, but nothing seemed to click for him. Why had she never noticed? They talked about everything—why hadn’t they talked about that?

  When Mike wasn’t away at school, it was very often the three of them. In fact, the only time Pete wasn’t included was at their make-out sessions. They’d go to ball games, movies, parties, skiing, beaching and hangouts together, then drop Pete off at home and park, steaming up the windows. How that must have tortured Pete, just knowing.

  She spent a lot of time wondering how things might have been different. If that night hadn’t happened, Pete and Clare would have remained close in the aftermath of Mike’s death. They might’ve ended up together; Clare had loved him like a brother. That love could have easily been transformed, as she had learned that night in her apartment.

  What if Pete had told her while he was making love to her? That he had always loved her, wanted her? Would that have shocked her out of the act like a cold shower? Or would it have made the whole thing seem less sinful?

  But probably the most profound question was this—what if Pete had been stronger and smarter than she and had confronted her about their guilty tryst before she met and married Roger?

  For the first time since it happened, she realized that Pete’s pain must have exceeded hers. His actions had been both deliberate and wrong. The burden must have been immense. Clare couldn’t decide if she was glad Pete had come clean about that childhood crush, or not. He certainly hadn’t had to—they had worked through the event and got their friendship back on track. Except that the other person who didn’t walk into the store door or call was Pete.

  And, inevitably, Roger crossed her mind. She couldn’t help but wonder how he was holding up, now that it was official—she was divorcing him. But even he hadn’t called. It was a long and empty week, full of many questions and no answers.

  Friday morning when Clare entered the hardware store, she found George at the back counter wearing a very troubled frown. “Something’s going on with your sister and I want you to find out what it is,” he said.

  “Maggie?”

  “No, Sarah. She’s changing. At first I didn’t notice—I don’t notice things like that.”

  “Things like what?”

  “Like hair and clothes. Everything is changing.”

  “What? I just saw her on Sunday. Nothing was different.”

  “It is now,” he said, and then he went back to his office, brooding.

  Clare got a sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach. She would never forget Sarah’s transformation.

  When they buried their mother, Sarah had cried the hardest. But then she seemed to almost sink out of sight. She couldn’t get out of bed, barely ate. When Dotty came on board, she forced the girl up, shoved her into the shower, nearly spoon-fed her, but her morose mood was a terrible thing.

  Maggie and Clare were not in the best shape to be objective, for their grief was terrible, as well, and they had small children who needed them. Ironically it was Roger who came to the fore. “She’s sick, Clare. We have to get her to a doctor. This isn’t just normal grief. She needs help. And fast.”

  Indeed, that was confirmed immediately and Sarah was hospitalized. It was very fortunate for her that medication eased the darkness quickly and she was only in the hospital for two weeks. But change was not over for their family. While Sarah got great comfort from her counselor and her new hobbies of painting and weaving, she stopped caring about her appearance. It would have been obvious it was some sort of defiance if it hadn’t been so gradual. As she slowly replaced her clothing, she chose the plain and dull clothes that hid rather than accentuated her figure and she stopped wearing makeup altogether. Next, the contacts disappeared and the old glasses came out. Her hair, which she used to spend countless hours grooming and teasing into a high hussy mound was left thin and flat. There was a time you wouldn’t know what hair color Sarah would show up with—black, red, white-blond, or some combination. Her natural color, which was not a particularly fetching kind of dirty blond, became her new preference. It was as though she wanted to become invisible.

  She would spend hours and hours in front of an easel or at her loom and could barely be coaxed away. But then she decided to go back to school and relief flooded the McCarthy family. From that point on, this new Sarah was what they were going to have. “I only wish I had made a few sensible changes before Mama died,” she said when her sisters voiced their worry over the way she looked.

  “Mama wouldn’t want you to stop paying attention to your appearance completely,” they assured her.

  To which Sarah said, “I bet she’d prefer this look to the previous one.” And she’d go back to her painting or weaving or art studies.

  Well, if those were the only two choices, they’d rather have Sarah at least doing something productive, as long as she was healthy, which her doctor assured them she was. All that loose and wild behavior has a heavy price. A far heavier price than looking plain.

  Clare didn’t waste any time in getting over to Sarah’s art shop. Sheer dread accompanied her. She just couldn’t imagine what image Sarah would present next. Had she gone to sackcloth and ashes? Was she sick again? When she opened the door and the little bell tinkled, a young woman she barely recognized came out of the studio in the back. Clare gasp
ed and took a step backward. “Sarah?”

  Sarah just smiled, giving her head a little tilt. “Hiya,” she said.

  Her hair was highlighted and shaped in a bouncy cut that framed her face and curled at her shoulders, her eyes were an almost mystical green, and she was wearing slimming jeans with a crisp white blouse, tucked in and unbuttoned to almost—but not quite—her cleavage. On her feet—boots! Stylish boots with slim, high heels!

  “Sarah!” Clare gasped. “Oh, God!”

  “What do you think?”

  “What do I think? I think you scared ten years off Dad’s life!”

  “Well that’s certainly not what I intended.”

  Clare came closer. “What in the world happened to you? Have you been hypnotized or something?”

  “No,” she laughed. “It’s actually your doing, Clare.”

  “Me? I haven’t said a word!”

  “You did something much more significant. When I saw you last Friday night at the restaurant, you looked incredible. Unbelievable. I mean, you always look great, but you usually look great in your jeans. I don’t know where I’ve been—but I haven’t paid much attention to how striking you are all dressed up. That dress…”

  “I’ve had that dress for three years!”

  “Okay—it was a combination of things. That dress, which by the way is very sexy, but in a very elegant and chic way. Your boobs weren’t hanging out or anything. And you had that good-looking man drooling. And it got me thinking—here is my big sister, not even divorced yet, having a life.”

  “Oh, Sarah,” she said, feeling the threat of tears come to her eyes. “Please tell me this is totally sane! You’re not, like, going through some manic thing…?”

  “God, I hate that you all think I’m crazy. I had a very bad time when Mom died, but I got help and I’ve been happy since then. I know it seems boring to you—my pieces, my little shop. But this is my world! I just decided I’m going to expand that world. I can sculpt and weave in clothes I don’t look so homely in.”

  Clare walked to her sister and touched her pretty hair.