Bliss and the Art of Forever (A Hope Springs Novel) (37 page)

In the end she didn’t want to deal with Lindsay, or assumed pairings, or anything more than getting through the day. But she couldn’t do it by herself, a lesson she’d learned last year when she’d tried; with the date falling on Memorial Day, she’d found herself in Austin for the opening weekend of summer blockbusters, staying at the cineplex for hours.

She’d wound up inviting just Callum and Addy. And she’d been a basket case since they’d arrived. All she could think about was Artie preparing this very same meal for her, and how stupid she’d been to think serving it to Callum would make anything easier.

She should’ve suggested they go out, or cook hot dogs at his place. Being a Tuesday made it more difficult than if it had been the holiday again; he’d had to work, too, then pick up Addy from the school, then go home and change. She’d told him, when she’d invited him, just to bring extra clothes; he could shower then change in her bedroom, but he’d declined. She didn’t know why. Unless it was the idea of undressing in her house . . .

“That was amazing,” he said, bringing a stack of plates to the counter beside the sink where she was rinsing out the salad bowls they’d used.

She watched pieces of romaine and radicchio and Addy’s uneaten cherry tomato halves slide into the disposal. “Thank you.”

“And no doubt it was a lot of work. Which you didn’t have to do.”

She shrugged, fearing the response came off as indifference when she was doing her best to flirt. Or at least not to break into tears. “You fed me hamburgers on Saturday. I figured it was my turn to feed you.”

“Crap. I never did pay you back for all that food,” he said, reaching for his wallet. “I got so caught up with Addy and her foot—”

“Callum, don’t,” she said, lifting a hand toward him. “I don’t want your money. I just . . . the house is feeling kinda empty. With all my packing. Tonight especially,” she added without thinking, then wishing she hadn’t.

“Yeah? What’s going on tonight?” he asked, but she shook her head.

“How
is
Addy’s foot?” It seemed a much safer conversation to have than the one she feared they were heading toward.

“Nothing that ten Olaf bandages didn’t fix,” he said with a snort, leaning back and curling his hands over the counter’s edge at his hips. He cocked his head sideways to look at her. “Brooklyn, not that I mind keeping you company, but you want to tell me what’s up? Because a twenty-piece box of Bliss candies says something’s wrong.”

He’d probably mind if he knew the truth. She stopped with the dishes, looked out the window over the sink, but it was dark outside, and all she could see was her own ghostlike reflection. That’s what she felt like tonight. Transparent. Insubstantial. Lost and caught between worlds.

“Artie and I would’ve been married fourteen years today.”

“Say again.”

She turned to face him, reaching for a towel to dry her hands, twisting it in front of her as she said, “Today would’ve been Artie and my fourteenth wedding anniversary.”

Callum’s jaw tightened. “And you invited me and Addy to dinner, what? To celebrate?”

“No. No. It’s not celebrating.” It wasn’t even commemorating. It was simply getting through. “It’s just . . . a hard day for me. It’s only the second time he hasn’t been here.” Her throat swelled. Tears filled her eyes. “I needed not to be alone. I needed to be with you.”

It was a tough admission to make. Not because of how she felt about Callum, but because she didn’t want him to think she was conflating that emotion with what Artie had meant to her. And there was no possible way to prove that she wasn’t; her heart and her head were both so confused.

Callum hung his head, his gaze on the floor, frowning. “Brooklyn, do you understand what you mean to me? How much I care for you? It’s driving me nuts that you’re taking off for Italy in a matter of days—”

“I’m not leaving for a week. Almost two.” And why was correcting the timing more important than what he’d just said?

“Tomorrow . . . six months from now . . . it doesn’t matter when you go.” He looked up, looked at her, the emotion in his eyes cutting into her like daggers, like needles, like the tiniest pinpoints of pain. “What matters is that you’re going for him, instead of staying here for me.”

“I don’t have a choice.” She sobbed out the words. “I promised him—”

“You can ship the Bible,” he said, gesturing with one arm. “Ship the vase, whatever else you’re taking—”

“But I can’t ship him,” she nearly whispered, the words breaking into pieces as she spoke.

“What?” The question was a gasp of disbelief, of needing to understand, of fearing the answer.

“His ashes,” she said slowly. “He wanted them scattered on the second anniversary of his death. In his family’s olive groves, or in the Gulf or the Guadalupe. The Mediterranean. The vineyards his grandfather owned.”

“Why?” he asked as he reached up and rubbed at his forehead. “I don’t mean why there, but why the two years? Why not before now?”

“Out of respect for the older members of the family. Some still follow antiquated mourning customs.”

“And waiting to scatter his ashes is part of that?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask. I don’t really care,” she said, retrieving her wineglass from the table and emptying the bottle they’d opened with dinner into it. “And it doesn’t matter. All I know is that it’s what he wanted, so it’s what I’m doing.”

“And then?” he asked, watching as she swallowed half the contents.

She swallowed the rest before asking, “Then what?”

His eyes grew dark, his frown deep, his emotions sharp and hurting. “Is that when you let him go?”

She thought everything inside of her might explode. Her chest, her head, the core of who she was. “Excuse me?”

“Are you going to let him go?” he asked, walking toward her, his steps heavy in his big leather boots. “Move on with your life? You’ve told me more than once that’s what he wanted—”

The sound of glass shattering in the living room kept Callum from saying more, and kept Brooklyn from losing her mind over the echo of his words in her head. How dared he.
How dared he!
He had no idea what it was to love someone the way she’d loved Artie, then to lose that someone to a nightmare.

Except, she realized as she looked at the remnants of their meal on the table, that wasn’t fair of her, was it? If Addy’s mother did indeed come after her and decide to challenge his custody, he could lose his daughter to a horror of another sort. Spousal love and parental love were different emotions: Both were powerful; both consumed. Both created heartache in the event of loss.

But for him to be so demanding—

“Adrianne Michelle! What did I tell you about visiting Ms. Harvey’s house? What are the rules?”

Uh-oh.
Dread slipping down her spine, Brooklyn found herself holding her breath as she finally followed Callum to the living room, stopping in the doorway with a gasp. The slivers of colored glass on the floor could have come from only one thing: the mouth-blown and hand-painted glass ball owls that Artie had given her their first Christmas.

She’d never hung them on any of their trees for fear they’d fall and shatter. Instead she’d lined them up on the bottom shelf of the living room bookcase. The only time they were handled was when she dusted them maybe once a month. Or when Addy Drake decided they looked like toys. Which, Brooklyn mused, to a six-year-old they probably did.

Callum scooped his daughter off the floor and deposited her in the closest chair. “Sit here. I’m going to clean this up, and I don’t want you getting cut on the glass. Do not even think about moving.”

Addy was sniffling, wiping her nose on her sleeve, rubbing at her eyes. She was tired, and probably more upset over her father’s anger than what she’d actually done—which proved yet again the incredible bond the two shared. The respect Addy had for her father meant his being anything but happy with her was more punishment than a time-out chair could ever be.

“No. No. It’s okay,” she said to Callum as he stopped beside her on his way to find a broom. The little girl crying her eyes out was so much more important than the broken glass; she didn’t need the ornaments to remember her first Christmas with Artie. “It really is. They’re just owls.”

Malina’s Diner, a Hope Springs institution the locals knew closed at ten after breakfast and opened for supper at four, had recently added a dining room that seated three times the number of customers as their counter, tables, and red Naugahyde booths. Since it was a
private
dining room, it was used for large groups needing a meeting space and good food.

Folks booked it for birthday parties and baby showers, for committee meetings, for wedding receptions—anything and everything under the sun. Today, four days after Tuesday’s wreck of an anniversary dinner, it was the site of Brooklyn’s going-away party, and not an inch of ceiling was visible for the dozens of helium-filled balloons bobbing against it, their ribbon tails dangling in a rainbow of Crayola crayon colors.

Brooklyn had been teaching at Hope Springs Elementary for over a decade. It was the only teaching job she’d had. She’d seen other teachers retire, like Jean Dial, who today wore earrings that looked like fresh-cut red roses—the color, the shape,
and
the size—and she’d seen new hires, both seasoned professionals and new college grads, join the faculty’s ranks.

She wasn’t the only one who’d been at the school for so long, meaning she had a lot of friends, some close, some less so, but all wanting to wish her a bon voyage as she started this new chapter of her life. The room was packed, the noise level deafening, the aroma of Max Malina’s chicken parmesan cutlets and garlic bread strong enough to seep into the fabric of her dress.

It was hard to decide if she was happy or sad. Such a wealth of love and memories and friendship. Standing at the front of the room with a small group chatting about vacation plans, she let her mind drift and glanced from face to face: at those mingling, at those huddled over plates of cake at the tables, at those checking out the pile of gifts waiting for her to unwrap.

Gifts. What was she going to do with more
things
when she’d just unburdened herself of all that she owned? Well, most of what she owned. What was left was with Callum. Meaning whatever happened during her year away, at least she’d have seeing him again to look forward to.

Because no matter the ridiculous friction between them Tuesday night—and it was ridiculous, both of them on edge, both fearful, neither knowing what to do with this thing between them—nothing about her feelings for him had changed. All she could hope was that they had a chance to set things right before she left. The idea of leaving without doing so . . .

“Excuse me a minute,” she said, taking her leave from the group, who had moved on to talking about summer camps for their kids, and making her way through the room to where Jean Dial sat with Dolly Pepper at the end of one long table. Jean huddled over a plate of Italian cream cake, while Dolly cradled a cup of coffee. Both were frowning, heads down.

Frowning or not, their familiar faces were just what she needed right now. “Is this a private party, or is there room for one more?”

Both women looked up. Both smiled. Jean was the one to push out the chair to her side, while Dolly said, “Of course.”

Brooklyn hesitated. The tone of Dolly’s voice didn’t sound as welcoming as her invitation, and Jean was back to frowning again. “Are you sure?” she asked, tentative as she sat. “I didn’t mean to interrupt, but you both looked like you might need a little cheering up.”

“We’re not the ones needing the cheering,” Jean said, digging a fork into her cake. “That would be Vaughn Drake, though more than likely he’s just fine. We’re the ones
doing
the cheering.”

“Vaughn Drake? Callum’s father?” Brooklyn looked from Jean to Dolly, only to find the second woman with her face buried in her hands, mostly likely due to Jean’s outspokenness, which had Brooklyn wondering why her neighbor was cheering. And what it had to do with Vaughn. “Jean?”

“Shirley Drake left her husband.” Another bite of cake, Jean’s earrings swinging against her neck as she chewed. “Packed up her clothes and flew to Connecticut to stay with her sister, who I gather from what Shirley has said over the years is just as miserable a woman as she is.”

“To Connecticut.” Why hadn’t Callum said anything? “For a vacation?”

Dolly was shaking her head. “She told him she wants a divorce.”

Now Brooklyn was really confused. “I don’t understand. I saw them several times together. They seemed to have a good marriage.” And in all his complaining about his mother, Callum had never hinted otherwise.

“I think Vaughn thought the same thing, though I understand he’s not terribly broken up over it. So obviously I don’t know what I’m talking about,” Jean said, sliding her fork through her cake for a bite of nothing but icing.

Brooklyn looked from Jean to Dolly and back. “Why would she just leave like that? What about Callum and Addy?”

When the two older women exchanged a quick glance, then Dolly went back to staring into her coffee and Jean at her cake, a frisson of dread crept its way up Brooklyn’s spine. “This has something to do with me, doesn’t it?”