One Mountain Away (15 page)

Ethan is starting his architecture internship with a local firm, and he and my professor know each other from the lacrosse team at the University of Virginia. Ethan is twenty-six to my twenty-three, with warm brown eyes, longish brown hair with just a hint of curl and a lanky, athlete’s body. The best thing about him, the thing that sets him above the ordinary, is his smile, eyes crinkling, lips turning up naturally, a smile that says everything about who he is. He clearly loves his subject, and transforms us from students marking time to participants with opinions. Ethan is mesmerizing.

I remember everything. I’m wearing a brand-new sundress I found in a consignment shop, a peachy floral with a short green jacket and green sandals. My hair is long and layered, and I wear most of it pinned on top of my head with tendrils curling around my face. It’s a style I favor because it’s easy.

During class Ethan focuses on me. Since there’s no harm, I flirt shamelessly. At the end I’m sorry Ethan’s tenure as guest lecturer is over, because I have never been this intrigued. The young professionals I meet are either on the prowl or taken. I’m never sure what to talk about with them. My present life is boring, and I don’t want to share stories of my childhood. I don’t know anybody who wants to talk about the things I’m learning or my hunt for a path that will bring me wealth, respect and security.

Afterward I gather my purse and notebook, and when I look up, Ethan is right there. I see his gaze drift to the ring finger on my left hand. “Not,” I tell him, in answer to the unspoken question, “and don’t want to be. How about you?”

Up close, his smile is even better. My heart, which has remained firmly in my chest all the years of my life, plunges to my toes. He asks me to go out for coffee. Instead, we settle on a casual breakfast the next morning.

The next morning is anything but casual, and we’re in bed before noon, where Ethan introduces me to all the amazing pleasures of sex with a considerate man. I tell myself I deserve this interlude in a life filled with work and determination. As he slowly removes my clothes, piece by piece, and desire replaces honesty, I invent the lies I’ll tell myself over and over in all the years that follow.

Ethan doesn’t fit into my plans. He is an architect, but he wants to make a difference more than he wants to get ahead. Even then, at the fledgling beginnings of sustainable design, Ethan wants to plan and build in ways that don’t harm the environment. The firm where he has just begun his internship is cutting edge. His goal is to leave behind structures that won’t harm the earth, and train and encourage others to do the same.

For the first time since leaving home, I’m sidetracked. I tell myself I deserve a little happiness, and that when the differences between us become truly evident, Ethan and I will be relieved to end whatever we found together.

One thing I’ve learned about myself in the past months. I have always been deaf to the throbbing of the human heart. Never more than I was then.

Chapter Thirteen

SINCE THURSDAY AFTERNOON Ethan had debated what to do about Charlotte. His first inclination had been to do nothing. He certainly hadn’t wanted to report her presence at the park to Taylor. As mature as his daughter was, and as responsible, she became a child again whenever Charlotte was mentioned.

Maybe Charlotte had simply been in the neighborhood and taken a seat on a park bench to make phone calls or page through email. Wasn’t it possible she had been sitting there unaware that one of the children playing on the jungle gym was her own granddaughter?

Unfortunately, there were many things he could say about his ex-wife, but never that she was clueless.

He was left with two options. Ignore what he’d seen, or gird himself for a confrontation.

By the time he woke up on Sunday morning, he had chosen the latter. If Charlotte frequently visited the park, eventually she would run into Taylor. Ethan needed to warn his ex that their daughter would react badly if she thought Charlotte was trying to establish a relationship with Maddie. He doubted Charlotte really understood the depth of Taylor’s anger.

After his shower he fortified himself with a second cup of coffee and pulled on a comfortable shirt, khakis and scuffed loafers. He looked more like a workman hired to fix a sink or a roof leak than the ex-husband of one of Biltmore Forest’s finest, but he wasn’t trying to impress Charlotte’s neighbors. Clearly he’d already proven he couldn’t impress
her
.

The drive to Charlotte’s house took just minutes, and he parked in front and sat for a moment, remembering.

The last time he’d been here, Charlotte had been intent on convincing him the house would solve all their problems. By then their marriage had been on the skids, their daughter verging on uncontrollable. Charlotte had been sure that buying a house in Biltmore Forest,
this
house in particular, would change their lives. She would be so much happier living in a grander home, and together they could join the country club, where they could establish even more professional contacts. Taylor would be exposed to better role models, girls with important prospects and connections.

Ethan had hated the house on sight. In his opinion it sat on the lot like a cancerous mole on the curve of a beautiful woman’s hip. If he had designed a house for this lovely rolling landscape, he would have sited it for views, passive solar design and practical sustainability. He would have designed hallways and doorways to serve as part of the ventilation system. Simplicity would have been his watchword, and the result would have been elegant but not austere.

As he had silently followed her through rooms that seemed to have little purpose, he had realized, step after step, that their chance of a future together was bleak.

Finally they had stood together gazing over the swimming pool that Charlotte believed would catapult their daughter into the popular crowd at Covenant Academy, and she had turned to him. “It’s our dream home, Ethan,” she had said with complete sincerity.

He had gazed into her eyes and realized that at last they had reached crisis point. “I thought our dream house was supposed to be one I designed,” he’d said. He had, in fact, begun designing a house in the country as a birthday surprise, although lately he hadn’t been particularly inspired.

She’d had the grace to look chagrined. “I mean dream house for
now,
” she amended. “Until the day we can build up in the mountains.”

In that moment he had known what he hadn’t wanted to admit to himself for far too long: that he and Charlotte had never shared the same dreams and were never likely to.

They had not bought this house together. He had refused to sign papers, citing multiple factors, including its ridiculous size, and Charlotte had been crushed. After their divorce the “dream” house had come back on the market, and she had snapped it up. The house that had been too large for three was now inhabited by one.

This morning he didn’t bother to look for changes. He was sure Charlotte had made them. After all, she was a woman who put her stamp on everything she touched. For all he knew she’d added a wing so she could have more empty rooms to rattle around in, or a second pool so she could choose where to swim during those rare moments when she had time.

He got out and slammed the door of his SUV with unnecessary force. He still wasn’t sure how he was going to broach what he had to say. Asheville was a small enough city that he and Charlotte had been in the same room more than once since he’d walked away from their marriage. They had been cordial, perfectly aware that others were watching, and he’d even introduced her to his second wife, Judy.

Afterward Judy had said she understood Ethan’s attraction to Charlotte but, even more so, their divorce. He still missed Judy’s casually blunt opinions. She lived in Chicago these days, and they talked occasionally, but as befit their altered status, her honesty was tempered.

At the pansy-flanked door he rang the bell and waited. The welcome mat had script initials, with the
H
curlicued almost beyond recognition in the middle. These were Charlotte’s court-amended initials, not the ones she’d been born with, which was no surprise. Too, although they had been married for seventeen years and she’d built her reputation in Asheville real estate as Charlotte Martin, she had changed her surname back to Hale immediately after their divorce, as if sharing even that much with Ethan and Taylor was an unwelcome reminder of a careless mistake.

A young woman answered the door, dressed in denim shorts and a tank top that revealed a tattooed fairy with gossamer wings. She had a gold hoop in her nose and wheat-colored hair that fell to the bottom of her rib cage, some strands braided, most not. Her smile was lovely, refreshingly imperfect and genuine.

“What can I do for you?” she asked.

“I was hoping to see Charlotte. Is she home?”

“I’d better tell her who’s asking.”

“Please tell her Ethan’s here to see her.”

She left the door cracked, as if certain he was trustworthy, and returned a few minutes later. He figured it had taken that long just to walk to wherever Charlotte had installed herself.

“I’m sorry you had to wait,” she said. “Charlotte’s cutting flowers out in the garden. Do you know your way back there? It’s just beyond the pool.”

Ethan had thought he might have a fifty percent chance of finding Charlotte at home, but he would never have expected to find her gardening. During their marriage she’d made a point of not working outside, citing years of doing just that as a child. Instead, she had landscaped with rocks, mulch and evergreens, and twice a year professionals had come in to spray and trim.

“I can find my way,” he said.

“I’d guide you, but I’ve got to shop for groceries….” She squinted up at the sun. “I’m probably not going to beat the after-church crowd, am I?”

“You might if you hurry.”

She smiled and waved, squeezing past him to head in the direction of the garage. He gave up wondering who she was well before he managed to find his way outside to the pool and around it. He’d made a point of not investigating as he went, but one thing was clear. When she moved to this house Charlotte had started a brand-new life. He didn’t recognize one painting or piece of furniture, not even a dish, from their marriage.

* * *

The Brits used
garden
for
yard,
and Charlotte imagined that Ethan expected to find her on an expanse of green grass, trimming a few tulips or daffodils planted around a tree trunk. He wouldn’t expect a real garden, but once he navigated the route through her house, that was where he would find her. Four raised beds sat at one side of the yard, so they weren’t part of the view from the back, but they had been built here at her request, to grow flowers for cutting. She was sure Ethan would find that odd, since she hadn’t pulled a weed or planted a flower in all their years together.

Had she known he was coming, she would have tried to make a better impression, although she wasn’t sure why. Ethan had seen her at her worst. When she had the flu. When she had been up all night with their colicky infant daughter. Even during childbirth—although he’d had to fight her for that privilege. The sight of her in jeans, a bright butterscotch camp shirt and a wide-brimmed hat, with clippers in one hand and a straw basket in the other, wouldn’t send him away.

She wondered if he would also see how terrified she was. It was more than just confronting an ex-husband. If she handled this encounter the wrong way, it might permanently destroy any chance she had to reconcile with Taylor.

She was bending to reach the bottom of a parrot tulip so dark a purple it appeared to be black when she heard footsteps behind her. She straightened slowly, flower in hand, and turned.

“I’m not sure how these got here, but Harmony just saw them and fell in love. I’m making her a bouquet.”

“Harmony?”

“The young woman who let you in.”

She imagined he wasn’t here to ferret out details about her life, but Ethan did look curious. Curious was better than furious, and she built on it.

“She has unusual tastes,” Charlotte said with a smile she dredged up from deep inside her. “Which is good, since I don’t know what I’d do with these otherwise. I’m almost sure the package said the bulbs were early doubles, pink and white. Life’s full of surprises.”

“
You
planted them?”

“A couple of years ago I got tired of paying exorbitant prices for fresh flowers. Gran always said if you can’t grow something yourself you should do without. Which meant I never tasted an artichoke or an avocado until I married you.”

She clipped another tulip to join the ones in her basket. Then she slipped the clippers into a holster at her waist, with hands that weren’t quite steady. “But you didn’t come here to talk about my garden, Ethan. How are you?”

He didn’t seem to know. He seemed more interested in examining her.

She was ten years older than the woman he’d divorced, and yes, she looked every year of it. Her skin was no longer as smooth as the petals of one of the tulips in her basket. There were lines around her fatigued blue-gray eyes, she was too thin and her neck was no longer tight and perfect. But considering everything she’d been through, Charlotte thought she still passed muster for a woman of fifty-two.

“This feels odd,” he said. “Being here at this house so many years later.”

Although the morning air was cool, she knew perspiration was beading on her forehead and her hair was growing damp. The slightest exercise tired her, and she knew better than to let it.

“Let’s sit. I’ve been out in the sun too long.”

Ethan followed her to a bench set beneath an expansive maple. Charlotte lowered herself to the cushion and leaned against the slatted wooden back, removing the hat and using it as a fan.

“You must have known you were taking a chance, showing up here without calling,” she said as she fanned.

“If I’d called, would you have invited me over?”

“Absolutely.”