“Well, yeah. A cereal box.”
“Why not a book?” he asked, studying my fingers as they worked. He picked up a few yellow flowers of his own, mimicking my actions.
“Because a book might be super-simple or terribly complex. A cereal box is always easy to read.” I paused, watching as he struggled. “No, no. You’re doing it too close to the bottom. The stems are going to break.” I put my hand on his, just to stop him. But then I felt my fingers wrapping around his as if I hadn’t been the one to do it. Kyle’s eyes locked on mine.
I finally pulled away, feeling myself redden, and said, “Changing the subject isn’t working on me.”
“Sometimes it does,” he almost whispered.
“Kyle,” I persisted.
“Fine,” he said, his fingers still stringing, not daring to look at me now, as if he were an ashamed child. “You may not see it this way, Emerson, but youareall alone. Mark may be chasing you, but he isn’t what Adam is to Sloane or even what James is to Caroline. Because your success is his failure, and your failure is his success.”
I gasped, tears coming to my eyes yet again. It felt so cruel, those harsh words coming from him. I started to stand, wanted to walk away, but Kyle grabbed my wrist before I could.
He stood now, too, and pulled me closer to him. Too close.
“No,” he said, softening. “Don’t be angry at me. I only say this because I have to, Em. I can’t...” He trailed off. With the flowers he’d strung dangling from his arm, he pushed my hair behind my ears, sweeping it down my back, his fingertips grazing my shoulders. He took his flower chain and placed it on my head. “You are a princess,” he said. “And you deserve to be treated like one.”
It sounded silly, ridiculous, even. But Kyle had a way of saying these really corny things that had so much truth in them that you couldn’t even roll your eyes, couldn’t even mind, couldn’t even feel embarrassed that he had said them.
“It’s not his fault that he wants you to be all his, that he wants you to give up doing what you love,” Kyle said. “And it’s not your fault that you aren’t willing to. But you have to go into this with open eyes. You have to know that what you want isn’t what you’re going to have. And if you’re OK with that, then I wish you well. And if you’re not OK with that, be the woman I know, Emerson. The strong, confident, fiery woman I met in the bar that night, the one I knew I would never forget.”
It was then that I realized that Kyle loved me, that maybe he always had. He’d had a drink named for me at his favorite bar, for God’s sake. That’s romance.
I couldn’t deny that I felt things for Kyle that I shouldn’t—at least, not as a person engaged to another man. But with Kyle, there was uncertainty. I didn’t know exactly what to expect with him, couldn’t be positive that things would work out. I put my hand up to my flower crown and smiled just thinking of the way he would light up when he saw me, of the way I could tell him anything.
But despite everything, I loved Mark. And maybe he would never be able to love me the way that I wanted him to. Maybe he would never love me the way I had imagined. But he did love me. Maybe that was enough. Maybe enough was all that some of us ever got.
TWENTY-ONE
ansley: beautiful blond giraffe
When I woke up that morning, it took a moment for it all to come back to me, as it usually did. Some mornings, it began with 9/11, the phone call that Carter had made, the one where he said he was going to be OK but then he wasn’t. Sometimes the realization that my mom was gone flooded back to me first. Today the first thought to steal my peace was that my daughters knew. Emerson storming out. Sloane’s devastated eyes. Caroline’s cold expression. It was all running through my mind now. The thing I had kept a secret for all these years. The thing I feared would absolutely wreck their lives if they found out.
Now none of them was speaking to me, which had wrecked my own. I had spent the night at Jack’s house, and I still couldn’t quite gather the courage to leave.
I took a moment now to gaze out through the double French doors on the front of the house that led out to the balcony off Jack’s room. The water looked so peaceful. It was a perfect boat day. I knew that Jack and I would take a cocktail cruise that evening. Jack. Me. I stepped outside to inhale the salt air.
As I began to turn to walk inside, I noticed a car pulling into the driveway. The gate was closed, so the black Range Rover had to stop in front of it, giving me the perfect view. A woman stepped out of the car. Probably around Caroline’s age. Even from upstairs, I could tell that she was extraordinarily tall, certainly nearly six feet if you included the snakeskin stilettos she had paired with a black sleeveless sheath that hugged her body perfectly. A single strand of baroque pearls hung around her neck, and her blond hair was long down her back.
She was striking, absolutely beautiful, the kind of girl you would expect to see on a runway, not a driveway. My interest was piqued. And then she rang the doorbell.
I looked down and instantly regretted wearing a pair of yoga pants and a top. With my hair unwashed and no makeup on, I did not look runway-ready like the girl downstairs. But for the first time in a long time, when I looked at myself, I didn’t see all the flaws. I didn’t see the wrinkles I should probably have attended to or the age spots on my forearms. I was still strong, still in great shape, and I had a man who loved me.
As I made my way downstairs, I heard the sound of muffled voices in the hallway. Jack, who’d been fixing us breakfast in the kitchen, must have beaten me to the door and the mystery woman. Maybe this was the new real estate agent who Georgia, Jack’s former Realtor-turned-girlfriend, whom he had dated during the weeks we were apart, had sent to take her place since she and Jack had called it quits. Perhaps placing this woman withmyman was her way of getting even with me. I smiled to myself.Well played, Georgia. Well played.
I tiptoed down the stairs. The way the walls were configured, I knew I could go into the entrance hall and the wall would block me from their view. It was stupid, I knew. I could have walked in. But despite how good I felt, I still didn’t really want to meet this beautiful stranger in my exercise clothes.
Biscuit, who was happily living back in her old house with Jack, found me in the corner and whined at my feet. “I’ll take you for a walk in just a minute,” I whispered to her.
“I made a huge mistake,” the woman was saying, in a voice that was at once strong and vulnerable—the voice of an opponent, I was coming to realize. “I’ve tried to move on, Jack, but nothing makes sense without you. I’d rather have you than a baby. I’d rather have you than anything else in the entire world.”
I couldn’t see them, but I could imagine her moving closer to him.
“Jack,” she said softly, “I am more convinced than ever that you are my soul mate. I love you with everything I have in me.”
I leaned against the wall, biting my lip to keep from crying, putting my hand on my heart to keep it from pounding out of my chest. I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t burst in on this private moment and reveal that I had heard it all. I couldn’t run in like a crazy woman and shout that I would fight for my man. But had he been cheating on me? I wouldn’t stand for that.
