Chose the Wrong Guy, Gave Him the Wrong Finger (24 page)

All at once I hated this conversation. This relationship was no longer up to me. It hadn’t been since I’d nixed it ten years ago. I’d blathered on and on to Glenn about it as if it were
my
choice and
I
didn’t know what to do.… How arrogant of me.

This was more evidence of how out of touch I had become. My rut expanded to include memory as well, in that I had
forgotten
that someone who had been out of my life for ten years might have moved on in ways that left zero room for me.

I’d
forgotten
that people who weren’t looking at the same old scenery day after day might not be living in the same old past-is-present-is-future day after day.

I had
forgotten
that someone whom I remembered so well might have all but forgotten me.

In fact, in this me-me-me pool I’d been swimming in, it hadn’t even occurred to me—until this very moment—that maybe Burke had not only had other relationships in the ensuing years since our breakup (having slept with his brother, I couldn’t criticize him for that!), but maybe he had one right now.

That was probably it. He had a girlfriend. Or someone he was interested in. Or something that made this more “complicated” for him than it was for me.

Or—please, no—maybe he knew about Frank and me. It had only been the two nights, but that didn’t make it go away. Worse, there was still
tension
between Frank and me, maybe Burke felt that. And how could I argue with it if he did?

Then again, maybe he hadn’t noticed anything. Maybe this was all about him just wanting to get away from me and from the mistake of an impulsive kiss.

I wanted to ask, but couldn’t bring myself to. I knew that leaping to conclusions was always Bad Policy, but there was no sense in cranking open a few cans of worms.

And I knew this feeling, this disconcerted things-aren’t-quite-right feeling that, so many times, had preceded an unwinnable argument between us. Granted, it had been a long time, but I knew this feeling as well as if I’d had it yesterday. I’d get pouty, wishing for reassurance, but there was an armor of self-protection that would prevent any progress from being made, no matter what anyone said.

In short, if we talked about this now, he couldn’t say anything to make me feel better, but I could say a lot of things to make myself feel worse. It was preferable for me to sleep on it, give it some time, figure out exactly what I wanted and then how to say it, and then—
maybe
—he and I could have a discussion.

“We definitely don’t want to find ourselves under a house of cards,” I said, hoping to sound agreeable. Mature, even. “Look, Burke, we’re both adults now. We don’t need to talk this to death. We have a history, we can’t deny it, but we’ve both moved on. Nothing more to it than that, really, is there?”

“Nope. Doesn’t need to be anything more to it than that.” Was it my imagination, or did he look relieved?

Fortified by the fear that he did, I went on. “We’re bound to run into each other more in the time leading up to, and including, the wedding—”

He scoffed. “If there is one.”

“What do you mean? Of course there’s going to be a wedding. Why wouldn’t there be? They’re so happy!”

“Just because two people are happily anticipating a wedding, that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily going to happen.” He looked at me significantly for a moment, but before I could say anything—and what could I say?—he went on. “There’s something about that guy I don’t trust. We’ll see if he’s really in this to marry Gran.”

I was flummoxed. “I can’t believe you even wonder that. He adores her.”

“I hope so. But I’m afraid he adores her money even more.”

Of course my first thoughts, when Dottie had shown me Lyle’s picture, were along the same lines. He was younger than she was and pretty good-looking by any standards. That was the kind of guy who always came out of central casting as
opportunist
for just about any Sherwood Schwartz show. But I didn’t want to admit that to Burke and add fuel to his fire.

Instead I just said, “I think you could hand that guy a hundred-dollar bill and he wouldn’t know what to do with the change from McDonald’s.”

“Meaning…?”

“He doesn’t have grandiose tastes. And I don’t mean that in the insulting way it’s coming out. I think he’s just simple. Happy. He likes to have fun and Dottie is such a spitfire they have fun together. I don’t think there’s more to the story than that.”

“There’s
always
more to the story. And it always comes out in the end.”

I appreciated that he was being protective of his grandmother, but at the same time I didn’t recognize this cynical person as Burke. When had that happened? Was his divorce more bitter than I had been led to believe?

“
Anyway
,” I said pointedly. “You and I are bound to run into each other some more, so let’s just agree right here and now that we don’t need to feel weird about it, okay? Dottie may be trying to matchmake—or shit-stir, I don’t know—but we have our own lives. Right?” I got too brisk at the end there. Sounded like I was protesting too much.

“Right.”

I couldn’t tell from his response if he thought I was being as weird as I felt or not, so, possibly making things worse, I added, “Sorry, I don’t mean to sound impatient, I’m just in kind of a hurry. I’ve got…” What? What?
What?
“A … thing.” I gestured like it was just too complicated to try and explain right now.

“Yeah, okay, sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you from anything. I just thought, you know, we should talk this over before it got weird or anything.” He started walking toward the door.

“I appreciate that.”

He paused at the door and turned back. “So I’ll see you around.”

I smiled. “Probably more than either of us expects, if Dottie has anything to say about it.”

He laughed. “Right.” Then he nodded to himself and, with a final glance toward me that could have melted my heart right then and there, he walked out into the night.

I watched him go, glad I had abbreviated what would surely have otherwise been a long and pointlessly circular conversation that made us both feel worse.

What I’d done was mature.

Maybe I was making progress after all.

*   *   *

The next day at lunch, I was walking over to Mom’s Apple Pie—where they actually have a really good light turkey sandwich with cranberry jelly instead of mayo—when I spotted Burke on the corner of East Market and Newley.

That itself wouldn’t have been so noticeably weird if he hadn’t been peering around the corner like a bad actor on
Get Smart
.

“What are you doing, Burke?” I asked.

“I was on my way into the courthouse to get copies of some documents, and”—he frowned—“I’m pretty sure I just saw Lyle with some woman.”

“Lyle?” I echoed, then looked in the direction he’d been looking and saw nothing but a strip of shops and the post office. “Where?”

“They went in Calloway’s.”

“Oh.” I narrowed my eyes and tried to see inside the windows of the jewelry store but couldn’t. And even if I could, what would I have seen?

“Why does that matter?”

“Hopefully it doesn’t, but … why would he be going to a jewelry store with some other woman?”

Interesting that Burke’s mind went straight to cheating. “I don’t know, why don’t you just go in and ask him?”

“Because if he
is
up to something, he’ll have some quick, pat excuse and dismiss it, and then he’ll be warned I’m onto him and he’ll be that much more careful.” He shook his head. “I’m really afraid he’s using my grandmother.”

This again.

“Look, Burke, this doesn’t ring true to me. Does she really have that much gold to dig?”

He looked at me like I’d just kicked him in the shins. “Do you have any idea what that property is worth?”

“She hasn’t sold it, so at the moment it’s not worth much to a gold digger. It’s a hypothetical asset. In a terrible real estate market, to boot. That’s really not worth chasing down, is it? Surely there are more certain things out there.”

“Quinn.” He leveled his gaze on me. “If she sold that property for
half
what it’s worth, his efforts would be well remunerated.”

I crinkled my nose. “I don’t want to believe that. He really didn’t strike me that way.”

He looked in the direction of the jewelry store. “I don’t either.…” In the silence hung the question of why he’d be with another woman in a jewelry store, though.

And I didn’t have the answer to that.

“Did he strike you as being in love with my grandmother?”

I thought about it. “There’s
something
there. Definitely affection. Maybe it’s more of a”—I searched for the word—“
Svengali
kind of relationship, but I think it’s genuine.”

He gave a short laugh. “You see Dottie as a Svengali?”

That wasn’t quite right. “Not as much as I see Lyle as a kind of … protégé. I don’t want to say she’s
maternal
toward him, because that isn’t it and that sounds oogie, but, honestly, I think she kind of likes taking care of him.”

Burke nodded. “I’m not sure it’s so great if he likes
being taken care of.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. I think it’s more like he’s a pet she adores.” Wow, that sounded even worse. But more accurate. “And he’s kind of looking at her from that point of view too. He’s not trying to
take
her, he wants to be taken.”

I thought I’d nailed it perfectly, but Burke looked at me like I was crazy.

“He has almost nothing in his bank account,” he said. “It’s not even interest-bearing. His IRA has eight hundred and fifty-eight dollars in it, from an initial deposit of twelve hundred that he made
eighteen years ago
. He has one credit card, I’ll give him that, with a limit of seven thousand bucks, but it’s practically maxed. Other than that, he’s got nothing.”

“Doesn’t he have a job?”

“He sells furniture at Rolfe’s.”

“Actually, I’ve heard those guys can make a lot of money.” I didn’t add that I’d dated a guy who sold furniture at Macy’s Home Store and who had enough to take me to nicer dinners and dates than, I don’t know,
Burke
had, for instance.

“Negligible.”

“Define
negligible
.”

He laughed. “You’re impossible. Okay, I don’t know
exactly
what he makes, it’s based on commission and his taxes have varied pretty wildly over the past few years.”

I was aghast. “You checked his
taxes
?”

He looked at me. Silent.

“Isn’t that illegal?”

“You’re missing the point.”

“Or
you
are.”

“We’re talking about
character
here.”

“What kind of character does it take to dig into someone else’s private business to try to get dirt on them that may or may not be an accurate picture?”

He shook his head, rejecting my argument. “The kind that would do anything to protect someone he loved,” he said, with genuine emotion. “And I will do anything to protect her.”

Something in me softened. There was something noble in that, for sure. “Okay, I get that.”

“I’m not condemning him. Not calling the police or the hit men. Just keeping an eye on the situation. What kind of person would I be if I didn’t?”

More like me, maybe. Maybe
too
cautious. Too afraid what people thought. “I don’t know” was all I could say.

He looked at me for a hard moment, then said, “I’ve got to get back to work here.” He glanced over my shoulder in the direction of the jewelry store. “I’m not going to have a pointless confrontation with the guy here and now. But…” He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to.

We said our good-byes and I stood there for a moment, trying to remember what I had been doing and trying to figure out why I felt so weird about the conversation we’d just had.

Then I turned and saw Lyle walking right toward me.

I smiled.

He smiled back. Then he said, “Excuse me, do you know where—” He stopped, and I watched his face morph into surprise, like watching a stop-motion film of a flower blooming. “Quinn!”

“Hey, Lyle! What are you doing here?”

“I’m just coming from—” He gestured, and I wondered if he was going to lie. That’s how quickly paranoia like Burke’s can get to you. “That jewelry store,” he concluded.

“Calloway’s?”

He snapped and pointed at me. “
That’s
it. Calloway’s.”

“What were you doing there? Looking for something pretty to get for Dottie?”

“Actually, I was looking at watches.”

“For
Dottie
?” She didn’t seem like a watch kind of person.

“Nah, for me.”

Oh, dear. Red flags were being raised on their staffs in my mind. “For you.”

He nodded. “Dottie is
insisting
on getting me a watch.”

“Okay…?”

“And she wants to spend an absolute
fortune.
”

At this point, what he’d said could have gone either way, but it was beginning to seem likely it was going in Burke’s “user” column.

“I’ve never really understood the point of expensive watches,” I said carefully, watching him for signs of cunning. Perhaps a sharp glance, a momentary look in the eye that told me all of this was calculated. But instead he just looked as guileless as ever.

“Me neither,” he said. “So when I ran into the salesgirl from there in the coffee shop I asked if she’d take me in and help me figure out which watch was the least expensive without being so cheap that she’d have me figured out.”

“You wanted the
cheapest
watch?” I clarified. This was
not
what I’d been expecting to hear.

He nodded enthusiastically. “The cheapest one I could get her to believe I want. I don’t really want a watch at all. I hardly ever wonder what time it is.”

“You need to know when it’s time to get off work, don’t you?” I said it like I was joking, but, again, Burke had gotten to me and I found myself testing poor Lyle.