A Glimpse of the Dream (10 page)

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Collecting their mail.” She tilted her head, surveying me like she would a lost puppy. But it wasn’t pity in her gaze—she was enjoying every second. Turning from her, I started back to the house. “I’ve already brought in the mail, so you can leave.”

Kane had found someone else. I couldn’t bear to think it, but then, where was everyone? I thought to continue on into town as planned, if for no other reason than to disprove Camille’s hateful lies, but Mrs. Marks and the others rarely socialized in town so the likelihood that someone there knew the details about their impromptu trip was unlikely. I did try calling the boatyard a few times because Mr. Miller, as Kane’s employer, would know Kane’s whereabouts, but as was my luck lately, I wasn’t able to get through to him.

I returned to Boston and stewed over the conversation with Camille for days. Kane and Doreen had been spending weekends together since September, almost three months. He was an easy guy to like, an even easier guy to love. Entertaining the possibility that Kane had moved on caused a pain so severe it was staggering, but he would have never handled the situation so callously; he was too thoughtful. The realization that something could have befallen Mrs. Marks, Mr. Clancy, or Mrs. T, because they were elderly, made me call the hospital, but none of them had been admitted.

I honestly didn’t know what to make of the situation. The state of his room bugged me. It had looked like he’d been in the middle of packing, so where the hell was he? I couldn’t deny that Kane was intrigued by Doreen. I knew him well enough to be able to tell by his tone. Remembering Camille’s comment about me having moved on, I wondered if it were possible that Kane felt that way too? Was that why he hadn’t called to tell me that he’d found someone else? Was he pissed and bitter at my believed defection? Was it a coincidence that, after spending many weekends with an adoring Doreen, they had a long weekend together, and then he suddenly stopped calling his fiancée, who rarely took his calls and couldn’t be bothered to come home for Thanksgiving? Or was he feeling guilty?

He’d told me he was jealous of Simon, that he was going crazy not seeing me. Was that true? Or was he so quick to anger during that phone call because he knew he had been too quick to propose. Had he finally realized that I’d been a convenience because he had now found the real thing with Doreen? A sob burned up my throat. As much as I wanted to deny it, when I looked at the situation logically, the facts supported Camille’s story.

I tried for that whole week following my trip home to get in touch with anyone, to no avail. And that hurt too, the freeze-out from people I thought of as my family. If Kane had moved on, shouldn’t the family be rallying behind
me
, knowing how devastated I’d be? Or were they pissed at me, believing that I had also moved on? I had always known they were more Kane’s family than they were ever mine.

It was a week and a half after I returned to Boston when I finally heard from Kane, making it nearly a month since his last call.

“Kane?” My voice shook, and my stomach twisted in knots.

“Teagan.”

He sounded funny, distant maybe. And what was up with the Teagan? He never called me that.

“Kane, where have you been? I’ve been calling you for a month.”

“Sorry,” he said, his words clipped like he was angry, like this was a conversation he didn’t want to have but had to.

“Is everything all right?”

“Teagan, I’m sorry to tell you this over the phone, but I’m not moving to Boston.”

It took a minute for those words to sink in and another for me to react. Devastation hit me first, and then I felt dead inside.
I’m not moving to Boston.
Who would have thought that so short a phrase could have such a catastrophic impact? And, even though I didn’t want to hear it, I needed to: “Why?” My voice cracked.

An uncomfortable silence fell. Never had silence been uncomfortable between us. Dread filled my belly. I knew what was coming and, even knowing that, hearing the confirmation from him shattered me. “I met someone. I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean for it to happen.”

The first time I’d ever seen him flashed into my head—the boy who offered comfort to the broken girl who had just lost her parents—and that image was followed with the one of him standing at the airport security check after having just asked me to marry him. And now his smiles and kisses, his laughter and hugs, would all be for someone else. Camille had been telling the truth.

“Doreen.”

“Yes. I’m sorry, Teagan, I can’t marry you.”

I looked down at his ring, which I hadn’t taken off since he’d put it there. The symbol of our life together, a symbol I drew strength and comfort from. The words barely passed the lump in my throat. “You don’t want to marry me?”

“I’m sorry.”

I had never understood the expression “going numb,” but now I did. At that moment, I felt absolutely nothing, not sorrow, not anger, not pain. I felt nothing except broken. My next words came out automatically, because my brain was struggling to make sense of a situation that made no sense. “Do you want your ring back?”

“No.”

“Are you happy?” That question was directed at my best friend, not my lover, because despite everything, I wanted him to be happy.

“I am. And you’ll be again too.”

“No, Kane, I won’t, not now. Be happy. I really do hope you’ll be happy.” I wasn’t going to say it, but I felt it, even if he didn’t anymore, and this would be the last time I could. “I love you, Kane.”

My thumb pressed the “End” button, the action so final. Not just the end of the call but the end of us. I sat there, staring down at my phone, the tears welling up and over my lower lids, because I didn’t know where to go from there. He had been my life; all of my happiest moments were with him, my whole world’s happiness was him. And he had found someone else.

Simon found me looking out at the Charles River, watching the sunrise. It had been two days since Kane’s call, two days since learning that the future I’d wanted so much to have with him wasn’t to be. It hadn’t really hit me yet, because there was a part of me that just didn’t believe it. Every time I thought of him moving on, the image of him on one knee on the side of the road flashed in my head. I truly believed his actions had all been genuine: his love for me, the sincerity of his proposal, and the absolute certainty in his expression that what he was asking, what we were committing to, was what he wanted.

“Teagan?”

Simon stepped up next to me, touching my chin with his fingers and forcing my gaze to his. He always had a smile on his face, but not now. Something dark moved over his expression. “What happened?”

“Kane’s found someone else.”

“What?”
That one word was snarled and filled with contempt.

“I’d convinced myself that Camille had lied to break us up. You know I don’t trust her. She’s always wanted Kane.”

“I’m sensing a ‘but.’”

“Kane called me two days ago and confirmed it.” Tears streamed down my face, but I just didn’t have the energy to wipe them away. “He stopped calling, and he isn’t at home, because he moved to be closer to her.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“Part of me, a big part of me, doesn’t believe him either, and yet why would he lie? I thought I had it all figured out, you know. We got engaged early, but it felt right in every fiber of my being. And it hurts so fucking much to know I wasn’t enough. It took him years to fall for me, and he fell for her in only months. I feared that I had just been a convenience, and then he asked me to marry him and those fears dissolved. But I really must have only been a convenience, and a rather boring one at that, if he could move on so quickly.”

“He’s an asshole.”

“That’s just it, Simon, he isn’t. I want to hunt him down, even though I haven’t a clue where he’s living now, and demand that he tell me how he could so easily move on. And yet I can’t bear the thought of seeing him again. With five words, he took away every happy memory I’ve had since my parents died.”

“Have you spoken to Mrs. Marks?”

“I haven’t been able to get through to anyone at the house. And I can’t lie, if they really are helping to get him settled, why didn’t anyone help
me
? Kane is Mrs. Marks’s adopted child, but I thought we were a family. You’re not suppose to show favoritism, right?”

His arm came around me, tucking me close to his side. “I’m sorry, Teagan. Lame-ass words, I know, but I am sorry.”

Resting my head on his shoulder, I closed my eyes, thankful that I had him, that I wasn’t completely alone.

A week after talking to Kane, I finally got through to Mrs. Marks. She sounded tired, her voice raw as if she’d been crying.

“Are you okay? You don’t sound so good.”

“Oh, Teagan, I’m sorry I haven’t called. It’s just that . . .” Whatever she was going to say, she seemed to have second thoughts. “Damn it, I hate this. I’m okay. How are you? How’s school?”

She never cursed. “Did Kane move away to be closer to Doreen?”

Her shock lined with anger could not have been faked. “Who told you that?”

“Camille said he moved away to be closer to her at school.”

“That girl should mind her own damn business.”

Another curse, but I couldn’t focus on anything but the answer to the question that hadn’t stopped pounding in my brain. “Mrs. Marks, did Kane follow Doreen?”

She sounded resigned in a way I’d never heard in her before when she replied, “Yes.”

And that was when I finally admitted to myself that Kane and I were over.

Lying very still in bed, eyes closed and taking only shallow breaths, I wondered if it were possible to just fade out of existence. When you felt dead inside, shouldn’t you just die? I felt nothing. Never in my life had I felt such an absolute sense of nothing, not even when my parents had died.

Every time I closed my eyes I saw him, his smile, those eyes sparkling with love, and I felt him like he was really next to me, holding me, touching me. Like a living torment, his proposal was always right there, the sight of him dropping to one knee.
I love you, Tea. I want my life with you. I want to wake up next to you every morning and go to sleep next to you every night. Marry me.
But he didn’t want to marry me. He’d dropped everything and moved to be closer to
her
, when he had told me he needed time before he could join me. My future, once so full of possibilities, now felt like it would only contain days alone, a constant reminder that I hadn’t been enough.

I didn’t know what I had done, what had turned him from me and so completely. The idea that it was because of me trying to adjust to college life and being overwhelmed and overworked seemed unfair. I had to have done something, though, because he wasn’t even my friend anymore. He didn’t love me, and that hurt like hell, but I could probably have survived that. But cutting me from his life completely, the most vital part of
my
life for nearly ten years, left a hole that was too big to be filled. And he had cut himself out of my life. His number had been disconnected. I knew this, because I had broken down and called him during one particularly bad night. I never got through—talk about a kick in the gut.