‘Says the woman who showed up on my doorstep and then sobbed in my arms for an hour,’ he interjected, cutting me off that easily. He might as well have picked up one of his knives from the block in front of him and chopped me off at the knees. ‘I’m not going to forget reality because you poke at me, Sarah. Though you’re welcome to try, if that’s what gets you off.’
I definitely didn’t want to stand in front of Alec thinking about what got me off. There was nowhere that could go that wouldn’t make everything that much more complicated. That much worse, I corrected myself sharply.
‘I didn’t come here to fight with you,’ I said then, but it felt like a concession, and I wasn’t sure why. Or even why that mattered.
‘Okay.’ He eyed me in that infuriating way of his, all dark intent and ingrained male confidence. ‘We don’t have to talk about ancient history.’ I didn’t trust the way he looked at me then, as if he were reading all kinds of things in me I wouldn’t want to share with him or anyone if I could help it. ‘Why exactly did you come here today, with all of your fucking breadcrumbs? What did you think I could tell you? Why don’t we start with that.’
13
We stared at each other.
I hated the fact that he’d read my desire to fight with him so easily. And then undercut it. I hated that a lot. I hated that it made me face that unpleasant urge inside me, rather than prodding him into some show of temper that I could use to make myself feel better. At least I’m not so angry all the time, I’d used to think smugly when I’d managed to provoke him. As if that were a badge of honour. Or even true.
The kitchen seemed darker, closer, and I realized that whenever the sun had gone down outside, I’d missed it, too busy overturning rocks I probably should have left untouched in our shared history. But now it was already night, I was trapped in this house with Alec, and there was no one to blame for any of this but me.
He watched me as I stood there across from him, resting my hands on the countertop. There was something simmering in him, something darker and thicker than the tone of voice he’d just used suggested …
And then I understood.
‘You’re angry with me,’ I said after a moment. ‘You’re actually pissed at me. That’s what that look is.’
He didn’t deny that he had that look, whatever that was. ‘You say that like you’re surprised.’
‘Of course I am.’
‘Are you really?’ He shook his head, impatience exuding from him. ‘I don’t believe you’ve suddenly become so naïve in the past few years, Sarah. Of course I’m pissed. Not actively. It doesn’t keep me up at night these days. But you broke up with me.’ His mouth curved slightly, but it wasn’t a smile. It was too sharp for that. ‘I was in love with you. You broke my heart and it took me a long time to get over that.’
I blinked. Then again. ‘Oh.’
Of all the lame things to say. But I didn’t know how to process that. I knew he’d been unhappy when we’d broken up – we’d both been unhappy. I’d been so unhappy, according to Brooke, that I’d changed my entire life to be sure I never felt that way again. Yet even so, I wouldn’t have said he’d been that miserable. I wouldn’t have even said that he’d been broken-hearted by the decision I’d made. Nor would I ever have imagined that he would tell me so, all these years later.
Alec was the kind of man that women lined up to ruin themselves over. He was the ultimate unattainable, not the marrying kind, flight already booked to far-off Africa kind of guy. He was difficult and sardonic and entirely too serious for his own good; he had no time for games or subtleties, and that obviously meant that the ladies prostrated themselves in front of him in the hope they could be the one to change him. That we’d been together a whole year had seemed impossible at the time. It had certainly never seemed remotely likely that someone like me, in the wake of a series of Audrey-like creatures, every one of them ethereal and as unreachable as he was, could possibly affect him.
‘Yeah,’ he said softly now, with that undercurrent of steel beneath that made me shift from one foot to the other. ‘Oh.’
I didn’t seem to have anything to say to that. My ears felt as if they were buzzing slightly, or maybe I was seeking distraction from the way he was looking at me. I swallowed, and looked down at my hands instead. My wedding rings were still there: the diamond solitaire Tim had given me in those snowy woods so many Christmases ago now and the platinum band that matched it. It hadn’t occurred to me to take them off in all this time. I’d assumed Tim was coming back. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I’d been so sure of it. Until today. Staring at my rings, I realized that what I’d seen in that hospital room this morning changed everything. That was why I was here, wasn’t it? That was why I’d let Alec kiss me like that. That was why I was standing here still, talking about our long-dead relationship again, as if it still mattered.
That was why I’d finally understood the truth about Tim and me in that tiny little grocery store, as little as I wanted to admit that to myself.
‘And now here you are, marriage on the rocks, showing up on my doorstep like my very own Christmas present, wanting to know what happened back then to lead you down the path you took. The path you didn’t want to take with me.’ Alec’s mouth crooked up in the corner, and once again, I was aware it was no smile.
‘That’s me,’ I said, deciding to go with bravado, because what else did I have tonight? I’d clearly left grace and dignity by the side of the highway. ‘I’m like your personal Santa Claus. Ho ho ho.’
‘But what do you want?’ His clever face hardened then, and his voice did too. ‘I know you don’t want me, because you already left me once and let’s face it, my life isn’t any different now. I didn’t start hungering for a wedding ring while battling AIDS, poverty and the effects of a hundred endless wars over there. I didn’t decide that what I really wanted from life was a Norman Rockwell practice in some sweet little town like this one, dispensing lollipops and tugging on pigtails. I’m the same man you walked away from eight years ago.’
‘Exactly the same?’ I asked, keeping my voice cool, telling myself I’d pick through all those landmines later, when it was safe. When he wasn’t watching me and cataloguing my reaction. ‘No change at all in almost a decade? That’s a little scary, isn’t it? Maybe you need some psychological help.’
‘The general package is the same,’ he amended, a grudging sort of amusement in his gaze. ‘Same career. Same philosophy on life that you didn’t really love. Otherwise, I guess I’ve mellowed.’
‘You? Mellow?’ I laughed. ‘That’s exactly how I’d describe you, Alec. Completely relaxed and at ease. Lazy, even.’
‘Did you drive all the way up here to avoid the question?’ His voice was like a whip and I felt the lash of it on my skin. ‘To pretend? That seems like a waste of everyone’s time. And by that I mean mine.’
I blew out a breath, not feeling entirely steady. I glared at him, mostly because I knew he was right. If I’d wanted shallow, social conversation, there were any number of people in Rivermark who could accommodate me. I had no shortage of acquaintances. Great for parties and a coffee out, but certainly not worth a long drive and all of this soul-searching.
Stop being such a coward, I ordered myself.
‘I loved Tim because he was the antithesis of you,’ I said after a moment. If he wanted cards on the table, I could do that. God help us both. ‘He made plans. He wanted a future. He asked me to marry him on the third date.’
‘A paragon of virtue, indeed.’ Alec made a noise I couldn’t quite categorize, and those dark eyes were narrow on mine. ‘Tim? That’s his name?’
‘I get that you think that marriage is juvenile. That it’s unnecessary.’ I shrugged, a sharp sort of jerk of my shoulder, as if I were warding him off. ‘But it was necessary to me. I needed it. And you knew that, and you not only refused to accept that it was perfectly reasonable to want that kind of thing, you refused to even think about any kind of compromise.’
>
‘What compromise was there?’ he asked, his gaze hot though his tone stayed almost smooth. Almost. ‘I couldn’t marry you. And not because it was you – I can’t marry. Or I guess I won’t. But you insisted it was that or nothing. I begged you to reconsider and come with me—’
‘I wanted to save the world myself, Alec,’ I interrupted him. ‘I didn’t want to be your sidekick while you did it.’
He made an abortive gesture with one hand. ‘Why couldn’t we have done it together?’
‘You always could have stayed,’ I said, already sick, again, of the endless cycle this conversation looped into. It was just like way back when. There was no winning it and no ending it. There was only how much it hurt, and the scars it left in its wake. No wonder I’d gone out of my way to forget all of these details. ‘For some reason, that was never a reasonable option.’
‘Because I’d already made a commitment to the clinic,’ he said impatiently, temper in his voice, gleaming like heat in his eyes. He shook his head. ‘You came out of nowhere, Sarah. I never expected to meet someone like you while I was doing my fellowship. I’d been planning to work in Africa since halfway through medical school. I applied for the job before I even met you!’
‘I know all of this,’ I said, exhausted. It was a very old exhaustion mixed with the new, and it made me want to crawl back into my car, drive anywhere, and try to sleep it away. Hibernate until it disappeared, maybe. ‘I get it. Your commitment to a clinic was more important than your commitment to me. On some level I honestly admire that, Alec. I do. But I didn’t want to spend my entire life being an afterthought.’
He didn’t like that. His whole body tensed, though he didn’t otherwise move.
‘I keep my promises,’ he gritted out. ‘Always. I thought you understood that. If you’d just trusted me enough to come with me—’
‘Trust had nothing to do with it!’ I exclaimed.
‘It had everything to do with it.’ There was an odd, final note in his voice then, as if this were something he’d given a great deal of thought to over the years: ‘I was the one who fell in love, who owned that, who tried to figure out a solution. You were the one who threw down ultimatums and walked away.’
‘You told me from the beginning that anything that happened between us was temporary,’ I retorted, fighting to keep my voice even. Why was I getting upset now? This was a different life we were talking about. This was an academic exercise. A deposition, nothing more. There was no need to feel it like this. ‘You’d already walked away, before we even started. What was there to trust or not trust? I simply took you at your word.’
‘Bullshit.’ His gaze was hard on mine. ‘That’s a convenient story to tell yourself, isn’t it? But it’s not what actually happened.’
I was considering throwing something at his head when the oven timer buzzed. I’d forgotten all about the meal we’d planned to eat. It took me a moment to remember where we were. Not in that tiny studio of his in Chelsea all those years ago, but in his lovely country kitchen, the one his parents had renovated into gleaming, cosy perfection years before. Not in those painful final days of our relationship, but all these years later, with whole other lives under our belts.
It made me feel slightly better that Alec looked as thrown out of time and place as I felt.
‘Dinner’s ready,’ he said unnecessarily. He smiled then, a bit ruefully. ‘Go sit at the table.’ His voice was gruff. ‘I’ll bring it.’
I walked over to the rough-hewn wooden table and the great window that dominated the wall of the kitchen. It looked out over the frozen pond and the rest of the valley, reduced to only a distant twinkle of lights against the dark now, with the blaze of the moon already sinking below the far swell of hills. It would be much too easy to pretend this was a life I could sink into, I thought as I heard Alec clanking around behind me, setting out the dinner he’d cooked and the utensils to go with it. Much too easy to tell myself that this pretty little country life was what we were arguing about. Or for.
But I remembered what he’d said earlier, when he’d urged me not to kill myself in a fit of humiliation after weeping all over him. That he’d be back in Africa before the spring thaw. And he’d made sure to reiterate that just now, lest there be any misconceptions: he was the same man, with the same career and the same life that entailed, and I’d already proved I couldn’t handle it once before. I already knew I didn’t want that, didn’t I? I’d wanted what Tim had given me. What he’d promised me. I’d wanted that kind of security, that kind of safety.
Alec was temporary. He was always and ever on loan. He wasn’t something anyone could keep, not for long. Lots of things might change, but never that.
I accepted the part of me that wanted to fit myself into his life, the way I’d tried to reinsert myself into Brooke’s. I was trying so hard to Goldilocks my way into a solution. I was trying to see if some external force could save me from the sad fact that whatever else had happened, whatever Tim and Carolyn had done, I’d already given up on myself in a hundred ways. I’d walked away from Alec. And then from Brooke. I’d let myself become a DWI lawyer when it was the last thing I’d ever wanted to do with my law degree. I’d thrown out all the dreams I’d had in my youth and pretended they’d meant nothing to me. I’d lost myself. Alec couldn’t find me. Only I could. All these trips through the past, and all the way to Vermont, were making that abundantly clear.
I didn’t want to fight Carolyn for Tim. Nor did I want to sit around, frozen in my inaction and martyrdom, like some tossed-aside puppet waiting for the puppeteer to come to his senses and bring me to life again. If Carolyn was what Tim wanted, she could have him. I’d have to investigate the legalities involved in divorcing someone who was incapacitated, but I was sure I could do it. After Christmas, I thought. It would be my New Year’s present to myself. I would stop holding onto things I’d already lost. And I would stop looking for myself in other people’s lives. I would make my own. And whatever else it was, it would be mine.
The truth was, I wanted it all. I wanted all the things I’d always wanted, and all the things I’d set aside. I wanted to keep my memories of Tim, of all the reasons I’d married him and loved him. It didn’t matter what had happened afterwards. It didn’t matter how it had ended. I could hold on to the beginning, to the life we’d planned and shared, however briefly. I could hold on to my newly resuscitated friendship with Brooke. I didn’t need to live with her, or even in New York, but we could still be as close as it felt like we should be now. I wanted that back. I wanted her in my life, where she belonged.
And I could let myself remember Alec the way it had been, not the sanitized version I’d allowed myself these past years. I could let myself really remember all of his dangerous passion, his challenging forthrightness, and how much I’d loved him before I’d lost him to his own dreams. I didn’t have to hide that away just because he was the man I could only have in tiny snippets here and there. The man I could never really have the way I wanted him. That didn’t invalidate how I felt when I was with him. Or it shouldn’t.
I didn’t want to give parts of myself away any more. To anyone. No matter what. I didn’t want to choose between diminishing options, the lesser of two evils. I had to figure out how to go about holding onto what mattered to me. And I figured that like most things, that meant letting go of the rest. Of the things that didn’t fit, and maybe never had. I stared down at my left hand, at those rings that symbolized something I understood, finally, was irreparably damaged. There was no putting it back together. These trips through my old lives, these Goldilocks attempts, had taught me that, if nothing else. I swallowed, and then I tugged both of the rings off my hand and slipped them into my pocket.
There was no going back. And that was okay.
I really believed that, for the first time.
‘Let’s eat,’ Alec said from behind me, and when I turned to face him, I felt entirely new. At last.
And so we ate. The night seemed to ease out a
round us, holding us, smoothing all our history away and making it into magic. The tension from before changed into something brighter, warmer. Familiar. It didn’t so much disappear as grow into something else, something with roots and different possibilities. I decided to stop thinking about it. I let myself fall instead.
‘I can’t help but think that wild, detailed fantasies about being tapped to join some secret occult sect can’t lead anywhere good,’ Alec argued at one point. ‘What kind of person will that make you? Why not learn about the real world? About responsibilities and consequences?’
‘Because, first of all, that’s boring,’ I retorted. We’d long since finished our meal and were still sitting at the comfortable kitchen table, our chairs pushed back, debating our way through a bottle of wine. Thus far we had covered the Kardashians (Alec believed they were a harbinger of the End Times; I agreed but had argued otherwise for the pleasure of watching his disbelief) and what he called the tattered remains of the American education system. ‘No one would want to read that book. You sound like a pompous after-school special.’
‘I think life is complicated enough without resorting to flying around on broomsticks in your head,’ he said. As usual, his face was so very serious while his dark eyes laughed.
I laughed back at him. ‘I think you’re jealous because Harry Potter has a magic wand and you don’t.’
He actually smiled then, and it didn’t fade away immediately.
‘Probably true,’ he conceded. ‘I could do a lot of good with a wand.’
‘So does Harry Potter.’ I raised my eyebrows at him. ‘This argument might have more weight if you’d actually read the books.’
‘So it would.’ He looked entirely too pleased with himself, as ever. And not in the least bit shamed by his own ignorance. ‘But what would be the fun in that?’
We moved into the family room again, and the conversation kept going as we settled into the worn and comfortable couches. He propped his feet up on the coffee table. He told me about his years in Africa: the heartbreak, the struggle, the slender hope that the small bit of good he was doing might somehow balance out what sometimes seemed like far too much bad, like a kind of avalanche there was no hope of stopping.