Bombshell (24 page)

The first one I picked up was, of course, the wedding photo. Brushing away the film that coated it, I found myself staring into those eyes I had grown to know so well in so short a time. Except they seemed different. Younger, yes. And lighter. Happier, I supposed, finally moving my gaze to his bride.

Caroline Somerfield gazed radiantly out at me, and as I studied her straight nose and squarish face, I realized she looked a bit like a granola girl who'd gotten gussied up for her big day. But she was pretty, I had to admit, with straight brown hair that had been garlanded with a crown of flowers, and smiling brown eyes. She looked every inch the wife. The kind of woman you might see in a station wagon at a soccer game, ever ready to take home as many team members as would fit.

Someone you could rely on.

But she was gone, I remembered next, my heart filled with sudden sadness for Jonathan.

I put the picture down quickly, grabbing up the next, and this time the granola girl was in full earthy form, hair
in two long braids as she laughed at whoever held the camera. Jonathan probably, I thought, this time feeling a stab of envy before I leaned down to peer at the final photo, which featured them both seated at a formal dinner, beaming at the camera like the loving couple they clearly were while a table of distinguished-looking people surrounded them.

I cringed when I found myself judging Caroline by her attire—as if I could reduce the impact she had had on Jonathan's life by reducing her to a fashion report card—when suddenly my eye caught sight of a scrawled note tucked into the corner of the blotter. And though the tattered page had gone a bit yellow with age, the words on it were from a woman who had seemingly been here moments before.

My throat thickened and my eyes blurred, and suddenly I felt like a voyeur, peering into Jonathan's cozy, intimate world of scrawled words of affection and family; a world he had lost forever. The kind of world I longed for; one I feared I would never be a true part of.

 

If the morning didn't bring me peace, it brought clarity. I knew what I had to do. I had to go home. To surround myself in the familiar if only to protect myself from the unknown.

So I dressed quickly, gathered up my things, and when I discovered Jonathan awake and regarding me warily from the bed, I quickly explained that I had to do some “catch-up” before work on Monday morning.

He made no argument, which only pierced me more. He only slid out of bed and probably out of that ingrained politeness I was beginning to abhor, he walked me to the door.

“S
o how was your big date with the big doc?” Lori asked when I walked into the office on Monday morning.

I paused before the coat closet. “It was…fine.” As I turned away to hang my coat, I felt myself mustering up a dismissal of the most important relationship I had had in a long time. I knew it had been a mistake to allow my burst of romantic hope to infect Lori, who already suffered from a bit too much optimism. And since some part of me sensed there was little left to wish for when it came to Jonathan, I began the time-worn process of weaning myself—and Lori—from hope.

Closing the closet, I made my face a mask as I turned toward her. “I'm not so sure he's my type.” Then, with a shrug
designed to show my indifference, I headed for the safety of my office.

“Not your
type?
” Lori said, stopping me in my path. “Grace, you were practically
ga-ga
over him last week.”

“Ga-ga?” I said with a frown. “I wouldn't say
ga-ga.
”

Claudia stormed in at that moment. “Who's ga-ga?” she demanded, shrugging out of her coat and regarding us both with interest.

“Grace,” Lori said before I could stop her. “Over the professor.”

Claudia paused, raised an eyebrow at me. “Ga-ga, are we?”

“Far from it,” I replied, feeling myself go on the defensive. “Please,” I continued, suddenly unable to control myself in the face of Claudia's questioning glance. “Do you really think I'd go ga-ga over a guy who doesn't know enough to separate his herringbones from his pinstripes?” Even as I said the words, I regretted them, especially since they conjured up an image of Jonathan looking adorably rumpled and irresistible in the hideous sweater he had donned on Saturday night.

Claudia sputtered out a laugh, meeting my gaze. “Well, that didn't take very long, now did it?” she said, referring to my seemingly quick reversal on Jonathan. Of course, she didn't know how far things had gone, didn't know that I had all but picked out his new wardrobe for the next forty or fifty years.

And wouldn't know, I decided. “Yes, well, you know me,” I replied, with another shrug. “Easy come, easy go…”

 

The going was anything but easy. By two o'clock I had heard not so much as a peep out of Jonathan. No warm Monday morning hello. No tender words to tell me how much he enjoyed the evening we had spent. Nothing.

Of course, I could have called him. But by now I had turned this into some sort of test of his feelings for me. A test he had failed miserably when, come five o'clock, my only phone calls had been business-related and Angie, of course, barking out the inevitable “How's everything going with Jonathan?”

“I don't know, Ange, I don't see this one going anywhere,” I said lightly, hoping to douse the excitement I had heard in her voice.

“Grace!” she said, clearly exasperated. “What happened
now?
”

I felt a pinch at her words, as if I had reinforced, once again, my image as the queen of the pre-emptive breakup. And maybe it was a desire to kill that image once and for all that had me confessing at least a few of my fears.

I told Angie about the shrine to Caroline I had found in the second bedroom, leaving out the note that had nearly brought me to tears.

“So what!” she said dismissively. “Guys are like that—they never throw away
anything.
Justin used to wear these bumble bee pattern boxers his last girlfriend bought him for, like, weeks after we got together. I didn't realize at first, until I discovered that the bumble bee over his crotch had a little ‘mine' stitched beneath it.”

“So what did you do?”

“I threw them out, of course. Not that
he
knew that,” she added. “He still thinks the little Asian lady who did our laundry made off with them somehow. We had to change Laundromats after that. He instituted a boycott, all on account of those boxers. ‘They were the softest pair I owned!' he whined. I nearly clubbed him.”

I smiled, but my humor was short-lived. “It's not the same,
Ange. This isn't an ex-girlfriend we're talking about. She was his wife.”

Angie blew out a sigh. “I don't mean to sound crass, Grace, but she is, uh, dead.”

“Well, look at your mother,” I argued. “She never remarried after your father passed away.”

“My mother was in her fifties when my dad died, Grace. Not that that's so old, but in my mother's lunatic mind, her life ended with my father's. Her romantic life anyway. That's the way some people are, I guess. They just bury themselves with their dead.”

Her words cut me to the quick, and a memory of that shadowed sadness I had seen in Jonathan's eyes in the early days of our relationship rose before me. Yes, that was what I'd seen: the resignation of a man who had let go of the living. I remembered seeing it in Chevalier's eyes as well.

And my own, I thought, suddenly realizing that a part of me had died the moment I had learned Kristina Morova was gone.

 

“So we're off,” my mother said when I answered the phone that night, hoping for Jonathan. Hoping so much, apparently, that I had forgotten my parents were leaving for their two-week extravaganza in Paris.

“What time's your flight?”

“Ten o'clock,” my father chimed in. “We'll be in Paris in the morning.”

“How are you getting to the airport?” I asked, and followed up with a dozen other questions. Like, where were they staying? Had they packed enough warm clothes. Suddenly I felt a pressing need to know that they would be okay.

Which only made my mother start to wonder if
I
was okay.

“I'm fine,” I insisted, feeling less so by the minute.

“How did your date with Jonathan go?” she asked next.

“Fine,” I said again. “We had a nice time.”

“I'm glad,” my mother replied. “Makes me feel a bit better about leaving you alone on the holidays.”

“I'm spending the holiday with the DiFrancos,” I said, a bit defensively.

“I know, I know,” my mother said hurriedly. “I just meant the season, you know. It's the perfect time for romance. Especially in New York City.”

“Yes,” I said, feeling depression threatening. “It is.”

 

But I barely registered the lights that twinkled from the trees when I headed to Shelley's on Wednesday evening. Probably because I still hadn't heard from Jonathan. Or because I was practically running to her office to make it on time. I was positively anxious about getting my full forty-five minutes. Which was really weird for me.

Weirder still was the expression on Shelley's face when I handed her a jar of Youth Elixir, which I had grabbed on impulse on my way out the door from the supply of samples I kept in my office.

“What's this?” she asked, looking curiously at me.

And no wonder. I wasn't even sure why I had brought the gift now. As a thank-you for listening to me whine all these months? I was paying her so I could whine. Now I realized she might be taking my silly little gesture as an insult, judging by the way she was squinting at the label, which promised to dramatically take years away from the face.

“It's, uh, Youth Elixir. You know, that product I'm working on the campaign for? I thought…well, I thought you might like to try it. Not that I think you need it or anything….”

“Well, I appreciate this, Grace. It's very kind of you,” she said in that same emotionless voice, “but not necessary.”

I let out the breath I'd been holding. “I just thought…that is, I'm sorry. I guess I meant it as…as an apology for the way I treated you in the past.” I realized it was true. I hadn't, after all, been very nice to her for all these months. And when I wasn't venting my anger, I was canceling appointments on the spur of the moment.

“Did you feel as if you'd hurt my feelings, Grace?”

I sighed, wishing I had not brought that stupid little jar with me. “Well, I did cancel a few appointments on short notice,” I said by way of explanation. Then, hoping to move onto more even terrain, I joked, “Hell, the price of that stuff ought to cover at least half a session. Maybe I should have just brought you a case.”

She looked at me. “As I said, this is a very nice gesture but not necessary. However, if you do plan to cancel in the future, I'd hope we could discuss it in advance if possible. I do keep a schedule, and I'm only in this office during my hours of appointment.”

Suddenly the thought of her seated here alone, waiting fruitlessly for me to show up, filled me with unutterable guilt.

“I'm sorry,” I said, feeling my throat thicken. Determined not to give into emotion again, I changed the subject, which was a mistake, too, because the next one was even more painful.

“Jonathan and I are over.” I realized as I uttered the words that I had already made that decision when I didn't hear from him today. It was over.
Over.

Now I really wanted to cry.

Shelley looked a bit down, too. Well, as much as she looked anything. “I don't understand.”

So I explained how I had spent the night at Jonathan's place. How romantic it had been—up until the moment I realized that I had gotten behind the closed door of his life, only to discover there were no vacancies left at the inn.

“You're making an assumption, Grace, based on your own fears—”

“I'm not!” I practically yelled. Then, in a softer voice, I confessed to that room I had pried open, the photos I had found, the answers to all the questions I had had about why he held so much back….

“I know I'm right,” I insisted. “He hasn't called yet—”

“Call him.”

I shook my head. “No,” I said firmly. “Not this time. You see, I can't change the past or how he feels about it. Just as I can't change my own past,” I finished in a firmer voice, though I think this was the first time I truly understood that. “I can only change how I feel about it,” I continued, my voice soft with wonder at this next realization.

Then I looked her in the eye. “You, of all people, should know that. Isn't that why I'm here? There's nothing I can do about my past—about Kristina, right? She's dead. The only thing to do is to accept that. And move on.”

I could see Shelley was proud of me, since I had brought up Kristina without her usual prodding. I suddenly knew why I had come wielding that jar of Youth Elixir tonight. I had been scared of losing Shelley, too, now that we had formed a tentative bond. Maybe I had hoped to somehow secure her affections with that silly little gift.

I also understood now that I really hadn't needed to. Shelley
did
care about me. At least she cared what happened to me, I realized as she returned to the question of Jonathan as if he still could hold some key to my future happiness.

“How could you possibly know what he's feeling unless you ask, Grace?”

She had a very good point. “Because I know,” I protested, somewhat weakly. “I saw…that study. I know what it's like to lose someone. Sometimes you never recover.”

She stared at me. “Most of the time you do.”

I felt a bit a relief at that, mostly because I knew now I
would
recover from whatever pain I was feeling about the woman I would never know. But I could not predict what Jonathan's future held. Or what place I had in it. And that was what scared me the most.

Because Shelley had managed to make me feel like a bit of a coward, I did call Jonathan the next day.

“Dr. Somerfield, please,” I said coolly to the now-familiar assistant's voice, and once she put me on hold, I began to wonder if I was just as familiar to her. Did she see me as a regular part of Jonathan's life—or was I just another lady caller? Because now that I had come out of the paralysis of mind that accompanies the beginning of every new romance, it occurred to me that a man with such healthy desires like Jonathan's couldn't have lived like a monk during the years since his wife died.

“Hello?” came Jonathan's voice and the sound of it immediately unwound the coil of tension that had built in me as I had worked up my case against him.

“Hello,” I began, surprised at how I practically whispered the word.

“Grace,” he said. “How are you?”

“I'm good, good,” I said. “How are
you?
”

“I'm fine. I…I'm sorry I haven't called,” he said, making me aware that
he
was aware that he'd been remiss. “I've been so busy preparing for an upcoming lecture, and then
the department had their annual Christmas party last night.”

I felt my defenses rise, realizing that things
had
changed for him. During the last affair his department had held, I had been the woman on his arm. Now it seemed I was the woman he chose to leave home. I bit back on commenting as he went on to say it had been a smallish event. Maybe he hadn't been allowed to bring a date. It was this thought that gave me the strength to ask him what he was doing over the weekend. I knew now that what I needed most was to see Jonathan, to confirm that all the feelings that had sprung up so suddenly and so strongly between us were not imaginary.

“God, Grace, I would love to get together with you,” he said. “But my brother and his wife are coming into the city this weekend with the kids.” Then, as he went on to describe how they were going to see the tree in Rockefeller Center and do a little shopping in Herald Square, I felt once again like the girl pressed up against the glass of a world she would never truly be part of. And though I knew it was too soon to expect too much, I also felt like it was too late for me to accept so little. I cared about him too much. Too much to risk that hurt I felt sure would come. He wasn't ready to let me in. And I sensed he never would be.

“Hey, maybe we could have a little sleepover on Monday once they've gone,” he offered.