Bliss and the Art of Forever (A Hope Springs Novel) (10 page)

What she found inside was a bookmark. The label read “Arte Legno,” whose products, she knew, were made in Italy of olive wood. The top of the bookmark was carved into an owl with big eyes, big ears, a tiny beak, and feathers that could’ve served as flat toothpicks.

“Oh, Artie,” she said, pressing her fingers to her lips. “I love it. It’s adorable.”

“And me?” he asked. “Am I adorable?”

“Absolutely. And I love you, too.”

“Good,” he said, leaning across the table to kiss her quickly, then sitting back and sobering. “Because I need you to promise me something.”

He rarely asked her for a promise, and when he did, it was almost always morbid and something she didn’t want to give.

“It’s our anniversary. Can the promise wait? I don’t want to spoil the mood.” Though his request had very nearly done so already.

He held up two fingers. “Two years. If I go up in flames—”

“Artie!” She hated how he talked about the dangers of his job. He tossed off the words so callously, when the picture he painted was her worst nightmare.

“No keepsakes,” he said. “No mementos. I don’t want to think about you making this house into a shrine. Get rid of my clothes, any books of mine you won’t read, any of the crap in the garage you won’t use. Don’t leave pictures of me on the bookcase—”

Why was he saying this? What could have prompted him to be so grim on today of all days? “They’re pictures of us. Artie, what’s going on?”

But he ignored her. “You know what you look like. You know what I look like. If you have to keep them, put them in an album. Or scan them and store them on a flash drive.”

She couldn’t bear the thought of losing him, or of his wanting her to put him away. She loved him. He was her life. Emotion rose to choke her, and she put down her foot. “I’m not getting rid of the owls.”

He glanced down at his plate, his forearms on the table’s edge. A smile played over his face, and he laughed. “The owls you can keep. But two years is more than enough time to get on with living. Even rigorous Catholic customs no longer require a lengthy mourning period. You’re not Queen Victoria, and we’re not living in the old country. Promise me.”

“I can’t—”

“Brooklyn. This is important to me.” He reached for his wine and drank. “I want you to scatter my ashes someplace meaningful. Pops’s olive grove and vineyard, or the Guadalupe or the Gulf. Wherever you want.”

“Oh, my God, Artie.” She fought down a sob, her throat burning, her eyes aching, her chest feeling as if it would burst. “Why are you asking me this now?”

“Why not now? We’re celebrating our marriage, our love. This . . . magic we have together.” He took hold of her hand, and closed her fingers in his, holding her gaze, his eyes solemn and red. “This is something I need from you because of that. You know I’m not sentimental—”

“You are the most sentimental person I know.” She picked up the bookmark, ran her thumb over the tiny sticks carved to resemble feathers. “If this isn’t you showing sentiment, I don’t know what it is.”

“I can show you even more,” he said, his voice growing husky. “But we’ll have to go to the bedroom.”

“Why?” she asked, because he had her feeling out of sorts, and she was struck with the urge to prove them both so alive that death wouldn’t dare visit. “Why can’t you show me right here?”

He was leaning back in his chair, his legs spread, and he drained his wine. Then he returned his glass to the table, and scooted his chair from beneath. His hand went to his belt. Just the one hand, and he freed the buckle, then the button of his navy Dockers, then he opened his zipper. And he was hard when his fly parted.

She went to him, straddled him, wrapped her arms around his neck. Then he said “Promise me,” and her heart froze, then jolted, and she said “I promise,” pushing out of his lap and leaving the kitchen, leaving behind the lasagna and the wine and the bread.

Leaving behind the man she loved more than life itself with the very thing he’d wanted from her: her word that she’d let him go.

After Brooklyn’s Saturday night visit to Bliss, Callum became obsessed with Italy and Cinque Terre. He’d never been. He’d never planned to go. Hell, he’d never even heard of the place until Brooklyn had mentioned it, then he’d taken to Google the next time he’d had some free time, wanting to see exactly where it was she was going.

And now, well, her reasons were her own, but he couldn’t stop thinking about walking the Sentiero Azzurro between the villages, eating gelato, drinking wine, looking down into the sea. Carrying Addy on his shoulders so she could see the vineyards and the terraced hills and the olive trees. Piggybacking her when her little legs got too tired to climb.

The idea of showing his daughter the world, being able to give her every advantage in life, every chance in life, every possible thing she might need to live the most amazing life . . . As much as he’d loved California, he’d had no choice but to move her out of that volatile environment. Coming to Hope Springs had made the best sense at the time.

Having his parents near allowed him to work the hours he needed. Their generosity, their availability, their delight in having a granddaughter . . . he’d be nowhere without them, or at least traveling a much harder road. As often as he and his mother clashed, and as aggravated as he got with her ignoring his instructions for Addy’s care—giving her cookies she didn’t need to eat, playing TV news she didn’t need to hear—he owed her and his father a magnificent debt.

But his obsession with Cinque Terre was all such crap, because he was not taking Addy to the Italian Riviera. And even if he did, Brooklyn was going now, not later when he’d be able to, and the trip wouldn’t be half as much fun without her. Though why he was jumping to that conclusion when he’d known her a whole four days . . .

Four days. And he’d only seen her on two of them: Thursday and Saturday. Friday he’d been elbow deep in chocolates and too busy to think, but Sunday he’d done nothing but crash on the futon and dream of Italy—and Brooklyn—while Addy curled up beside him and watched
Reading Rainbow
.

He was totally preoccupied by a woman he wasn’t dating, a woman he hadn’t slept with, a woman he’d done nothing but talk to. They’d talked a lot. And about a lot of things. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d opened his mouth and let so many words spill out. He much preferred no one know where he’d been, what he’d done . . .

But he couldn’t get Brooklyn Harvey out of his mind.

On one hand, he liked that she was there, tucking her hair behind her ear, smiling, making sure he was taking care of his girl. On the other . . . it was as if he hadn’t learned a damn thing from his past. Jumping into situations because doing so made him feel good instead of making the best choice.

Right. Since life was all about feeling good. The years he’d lived with that attitude had messed up so many people’s lives he’d lost count. And created one that left him breathless, that hitched at his heart anytime his thoughts drifted to her. Or when he first heard her voice in the mornings.

Speaking of which . . . “Adrianne Michelle! Breakfast is getting cold!”

“You don’t have to yell, Daddy,” she said, skipping her way around the kitchen bar to her stool. “I’m right here with my ears.”

And there went his heart.
Thump, bomp. Thump, bomp.

She’d slipped her feet into bright pink Crocs, no socks, of course, and pulled on pink leggings to match. Her top was long sleeved and long waisted, purple and black striped with whatever that flippy skirtlike thing attached was called. In the center of the top was a black giraffe with purple spots, its neck wound around that of a purple giraffe with black spots.

His mother bought a lot of Addy’s clothes, even though he continually reminded her that he was perfectly capable, at which she always rolled her eyes before telling him not to be silly and to allow her to be a grandmother, please, since she’d missed so much of Addy’s life already.

An exaggeration: Addy had turned six last month. He’d brought her to Hope Springs not long after her first birthday. So, yes. His mother had missed swaddling an infant, but she had years of grandmothering left.

What he wasn’t perfectly capable of, and didn’t mind admitting because it wasn’t his thing, was dealing with his daughter’s corkscrew hair. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to cut it. The waves were his, unruly and with a mind of their own. Addy got a kick out of them both wearing theirs long.

The blond hair and blue eyes, and the lashes that brought to mind the thick bristles on a pastry brush, well, he shouldn’t be thinking it, but they were a lot like Brooklyn’s. It was just easier to think of Brooklyn than the truth of where his daughter’s coloring had come from.

“Well, you and your ears need to eat your eggs,” he said, scooping the scrambled mess from the skillet into a bowl, putting a slice of jam-smeared toast on a saucer to match. “We’ve got places to go and people to see.”

“Silly Daddy,” she said, clambering up to sit and setting her plush Olaf on the stool beside hers. “Ears can’t eat eggs.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, scraping the rest of the eggs onto his plate and tossing the skillet into the sink. “I’ve seen food in your hair many times. I thought your ears might have vomited.”

“That is just yucky,” she said, reaching for her toast with both hands and taking a bite before saying, mouth full, “You forgot my milk.”

“So I did,” he said, turning to the fridge for the carton and the cabinet for a cup.

“What people and places are we going and seeing?”

He smiled. “I have to pick up some supplies for Bliss in Austin.”

“It takes hours and weeks to get to Austin,” she said as she dug into her eggs, her brows drawn together as if she were calculating drive times. “You should just go shop at HEB. Grammy gets everything at HEB.”

He chuckled. Little girls. “HEB doesn’t sell what I need. They don’t even sell everything Grammy needs. You know she has to go to Austin sometimes.” Though often it was only so she could drop the name of the specialty store she’d visited and the item she’d purchased that she might use but once in a dish she’d seen Nigella Lawson cook.

“But you said we could go to the park and to the bookstore and to get ice cream. It will take forever to go to Austin,” she whined. Then whined again. “You might be too tired and forget when we get back.”

“How can I forget when I have you to remind me?”

“Sometimes Grammy forgets.”

“Tell you what,” he said, opening drawers until he found a pencil and a notepad and a roll of Scotch tape. He tore out one sheet and licked the pencil’s lead. “I’m going to write a note this minute, and you can tape it on the dash of the truck. That way we’ll both remember everything we need to do today. Both in Austin and in Hope Springs.”

She seemed to like that idea, nodding as she picked up her milk. “Most important is ice cream.”

“Ice cream. Got it,” he said, biting into his toast and holding it with his teeth as he anchored the notepad in place with one hand and wrote with the other. “Do you know what flavor you want?”

“I want ten scoops of peppermint bubble gum.”

“I’m not sure Cow Bells has peppermint bubble gum.”

“Do so. Kelly Webber told me.”

“Well, if Kelly Webber told you, then it must be true. But only one scoop. Not ten.”

She gave him a huge huff, as if she were making the ultimate sacrifice. “And going to the park. Write that down.”

“The park,” he said, having returned his toast to his plate. “It’s on the list.”

“Write down the slide and the swings so I don’t play too much on the monkey bars and forget.”

“I won’t let you forget.”

“You might, so write it. And write down books. I want ten books.”

Slide.
Swings.
Monkey bars.
He wrote them all. Then he wrote
books
, but not ten. “How about three books?”

She took a moment to frown, then said, “But ten is more.”

Good for her. “Ten
is
more but your bookshelves are too crowded already.”

“I like ten.”

So he’d noticed. “Tell you what. You can pick out three today,” he said, writing the number beneath the rest of the items on the list, “then choose three from your shelf to give to someone who might need them.”

“Kelly Webber might need them,” she said matter-of-factly before leaning close to her bowl to scoop another bite of eggs into her mouth. “She doesn’t have enough and Ms. Harvey says we need to read books every day.”

And there went his heart again, though this time the thump came with a tightening of his gut. “Well if Ms. Harvey said it, it must be true.”

“Everything Ms. Harvey says is true.”

“Oh, really,” he said, biting off half a piece of bacon.

“Duh. She’s a teacher.”

He’d have fun reminding Addy of that in fifteen years when she was deep into her cultural anthropology studies or whatever. Setting the list aside with the roll of tape, he tossed the pencil back into the drawer. “What’s the best thing you’ve ever learned from Ms. Harvey?”

Addy set down her milk, her mouth twisted to one side. “About the moon. And the sun. And the shadows on the world. Like clips. With a lamp.”

“
E
-clipse. And how the earth rotates on its axis around the sun, making day and night?”

She nodded as she shoved a whole strip of bacon into her mouth and chewed. “She had a soccer ball and a corn of pepper and then she had a lime with a stixis through it because the pepper was too small to twirl around.”

He took a minute to translate her six-year-old speak. A lime on a stick representing the earth on its axis. A soccer-ball sun and a peppercorn Earth. Lego bricks for fractions. Portraits of presidents instead of conversation hearts.

Clever Brooklyn Harvey, using familiar objects to demonstrate the foreign—though for all he knew, having attended absolutely zero school functions, her props were standard in kindergarten instruction.

He wanted to kick himself for not paying more attention to what Addy was learning in school; blaming his mother for going through the notes from his daughter’s teacher was just lame. He knew better.