Ex’s and Oh’s (8 page)

Caroline was too new to this group to have formed an
educated opinion about Elaine’s husband, but she knew firsthand how it felt to discover that the man she’d been seeing was cheating on her. Her heart went out to Elaine.

“Those photographs aren’t the worst of it.” Elaine’s voice sounded hollow.

“What could be worse?” Pattie asked, then rubbed her arm where Tori had jabbed it with her elbow.

“The day those photographs were taken, he kissed me goodbye. I remember that morning clearly. He knew he would be screwing her, but he still kissed me as if he didn’t want to leave. It was a long, dreamy, lingering kiss, because the night before, we’d made love.”

“You had sex even though you suspected he was cheating on you?” Tori asked as gently as possible.

“I hoped I was wrong.”

Wishing there was something she could do, Caroline said, “Why don’t I brew some tea? Do you have chamomile?”

Elaine rose shakily. “I think I’ll go to bed.”

“We just got here,” Tori said.

“It’s only four in the afternoon,” Pattie insisted.

“I appreciate you three coming, but I want to be alone right now. I need to cry, and I don’t cry well in front of people.”

“We’re not people,” Pattie insisted. “We’re your best friends.”

In the end, Elaine wouldn’t be swayed. After promising to call her later, Tori, Pattie and Caroline let themselves out.

“Do you think she’ll leave him this time?” Pattie asked, on her way to her car.

This time?
Caroline thought.

“Who knows,” Tori said. “She hired a private investigator. She never did that before. Maybe she’ll finally do something about his cheating ways.”

Pattie said, “I can’t believe Justin kissed her when he had every intention of meeting his mistress a few hours later. That’s low. I always thought a man’s kiss meant something.”

“Life would be so much easier if all women were lesbians,” Tori said.

“Whoa. What did your ex do now?” Pattie asked.

“The usual. He comes out smelling like a rose, and Andy treats me like Attila the Hun.”

Another Andy, Caroline thought, recalling the name of Shane’s son.

“If I were Elaine, I’d find Justin’s stash of condoms and inject them with pepper spray. Assuming he uses them.”

Pattie glanced at Caroline. “I’m not a man hater, but certain offenses call for just punishments.”

“Castration comes to mind,” Tori said.

Not a good day for men or exes, Caroline thought. Once again, she thought these women would have made excellent prosecuting attorneys. Obviously they weren’t the type to forgive and forget.

“I have to pick up the kids at day care,” Pattie said. “I’ll call you both later.”

As Pattie drove away, Tori turned to Caroline. “I have an hour before I have to show a house. Care to grab a cup of coffee?”

She followed Tori to a little coffee shop on Mason Street. Hurrying to the shade of a sky-blue awning, Caroline looked in both directions. This was her first venture into Charlevoix beyond Tori’s house where they met on Thursdays for girls’ night. The sidewalks were crowded, and the storefronts in view held a certain charm. “I’ve been toying with the idea of opening a law practice in Michigan.”

“In Charlevoix?” Tori asked, holding the door for her.

While they waited in line to place their orders, Tori told Caroline about the town. It had more than twenty thousand year-round residents—twice as many as Harbor Woods. Tori had been born and raised here. According to her, before the upscale shops, restaurants and yachts lined the valley, the business district had been referred to as the Mason-Dixon line because most of the land on the north side of the road had belonged to a farmer named John
Dixon, and the south side to one named Seth Mason. The land had long since been subdivided, but Dixon Avenue and Mason Street still marked the north and south ends of the downtown district.

“The city’s old, but it’s changing with the times. We could use a few more good attorneys,” Tori said, being careful not to slosh latte over the rim of her foam cup.

Caroline placed her decaf on the narrow table and slid onto the bench opposite Tori. “It would be a completely different world than I’m used to. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve wished I could talk it over with my grandfather.”

“Was he your mentor?” Tori asked.

“Yes. I always knew his advice was going to be good if he took off his glasses and cleaned them first. This afternoon, I dialed his number without thinking.”

“He was your only family for a long time.”

Caroline nodded. “And now I have no one, except my baby.”

“And don’t forget your friends.” Tori took out her compact and checked her makeup. “Are you serious about starting a law practice here? Because I don’t care if Elaine did sign a prenup, and everything is in Justin’s name. She helped him build that business, and she deserves her fair
share, and there are probably a lot of other women just like her who could use good counsel.”

“I
have
found loopholes in prenuptial agreements before,” Caroline said. “But Elaine has to want to leave him. Any idea why she stays?”

“She thinks she deserves his infidelity.”

Caroline sat back. “Ah. She knows how it feels to be the other woman.”

“I remember when Elaine started seeing him. It was Justin this and Justin that. He told her his wife didn’t understand him, that they’d grown apart, that they never should have gotten married in the first place. He said she didn’t give him the time of day. He probably tells his lays the same thing about Elaine.”

“So you think it’s guilt that keeps her in the marriage?”

Tori ran the tip of one fingernail around the rim of her cup. “Guilt is a powerful emotion.” Meeting Caroline’s eyes, she said, “It haunts you. You probably don’t know what that’s like.”

Keeping her voice very quiet, Caroline said, “My child’s father doesn’t know I’m pregnant.”

Taking a moment to digest that, Tori said, “Are you going to tell him?”

“I tried to tell him after my grandfather died, but all Steven could talk about was how happy his two sons were because
he and their mother were reconciling. He was already seeing her by then, and sleeping with both of us. I think it’s too late to tell him. Am I cheating my baby? Or is it better this way?”

Tori sighed heavily. “Welcome to the club. I mean that. Where would women be without each other?” Glancing at her watch, she said, “I still have forty-five minutes before I’m meeting my clients. My office is right around the corner. I’d be happy to do an Internet search to see what office space is available.”

“You’d do that?”

“I work on commission.” Tori winked. “But I give friends a discount.”

With a shake of her head, Caroline said, “Lead the way.”

Five minutes later Tori was pressing buttons on the computer in her office and Caroline was sitting in a comfortable armchair on the other side of the desk. Tori’s office was sleek and tailored. A ficus tree was thriving in front of the room’s only window.

Leaving Tori to her Internet search, Caroline went to the bookcase where she saw three framed photos. One was a picture of Tori accepting an award. The other two were of a boy, one when he was five or six, the other more recent. “Is this your son?”

Tori looked over her shoulder. “That’s my Andy.”

“Do people say he looks like you?”

“He has my old nose.”

The boy’s nose didn’t look bad to Caroline. She wondered what drove women to change their appearances so drastically. She especially wondered what drove Tori.

“He’s an only child?”

“His dad and I had to get married. I knew early on that it wasn’t going to last and I didn’t see any reason to bring another child into it.”

“You never remarried?”

“I’m still looking for the perfect man. I’ve kissed a few toads, believe me.”

Caroline thought about that, and about something Pattie had said earlier. “Do you think a kiss always means something?”

“Are you thinking about kissing somebody?”

Returning to the chair and her coffee, she said, “Someone kissed me the other day.”

“Are you seeing someone?”

“No.”

The computer made a series of clicking sounds. “Don’t do this to me,” Tori told it. Glancing at Caroline again, she said, “Some guy off the street just up and kissed you?”

“Of course not. It turns out there’s another branch on
my family tree.” Caroline rested her elbows on the arms of the chair, her coffee cup held loosely in both hands. “Recently I learned that I have a grandfather I never knew about. The two men know each other.”

“So this guy who kissed you is old?”

Leave it to Tori to ask that.

“He’s, I don’t know, fortyish.”

“So how was it?”

Touching the tip of her tongue to her lower lip, Caroline was sorry she’d brought this up. “It wasn’t really even a kiss.”

“What was it then?”

“It was barely more than a brush of his beard against my chin.”

“What is it with guys and beards? Does this guy who kissed you know you’re pregnant?”

“Yes.”

“No offense, but that’s usually a pretty solid reason for a man
not
to kiss a woman he’s just met. So, do you like him?”

Caroline wasn’t certain how she felt about Shane. “He isn’t like the men I knew in Chicago. I doubt his closet contains more than one suit, and I’m not sure he even owns a pair of socks. But then, Steven had a closet full of both, and look how that turned out.”

“You’re saying you
do
like him?” Tori had a knack for getting to the heart of a situation.

“It’s not as if he’s trying to get me into bed. It was just a kiss.”

“Trust me, it’s never just a kiss.”

“As you said, I’m pregnant.” Caroline adjusted the lid on her cup.

“I was three-and-a-half months along on my honeymoon, and let me tell you, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other.”

“You must have loved him in the beginning,” Caroline said, taking a sip of her decaf.

“I wanted to love him. I wanted to be in love, you know? I was twenty-two. Shane was twenty-four.”

The coffee almost made it down Caroline’s throat before her throat closed up. She coughed, choked, sputtered and coughed some more.

“Are you okay?” Tori asked, hovering over her.

Eventually, Caroline could breathe. It took even longer before she could think. She distinctly remembered Nell referring to Tori’s ex as Grady. She’d assumed that was his first name. And the names drawn on the wall in the lighthouse were Shane and Vickie.

Shane Grady.

And Vickie. Victoria. Tori. One and the same.

She knew a total of six people in upper Michigan, and two of them had been married to each other. That was some coincidence.

“He has you thinking about him,” Tori said. “Chances are that was his intention.”

Bit by bit Caroline’s mind was clearing, but she put her coffee down just to be safe. She didn’t think that kiss had been planned. Besides, it barely constituted a kiss.

She thought about Shane’s situation and the problems he was facing with his son. Andy was Tori’s son, too.

Caroline didn’t know how a man would feel about seeing a friend of his ex-wife’s, but it would matter to a woman. Her fledgling friendships were important. The situation with Elaine drove home just how important. Bad things happened to everyone, but if women were lucky, they had each other to turn to when things fell apart.

Tori’s intercom buzzed. “Your clients are here,” the receptionist said.

“I’ll be right out.” Tori straightened her skirt and fluffed her hair. Rising to her feet, she said, “There aren’t any vacant office spaces on the main street in Charlevoix, but there are three on adjacent side streets. I’ll do a more thorough search and call you tomorrow. Do you think you’ll be seeing him again?”

“Not the way you’re thinking.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I mean it.” They fell into step in the hall. “Besides, it would only be a problem if I allowed it to be.”

“Oh, honey,” Tori said just before she turned the corner and entered the lobby where her clients were waiting. “Those are famous last words. Just ask Elaine.”

Shane’s
car was parked in her driveway when Caroline returned from Charlevoix. She saw him near the water, leaning on the iron railing that ran the entire length of the channel. His back to her, he was talking to two men in a covered wooden boat that looked as if it had been wind-tossed in stormy seas for decades.

She’d seen the old boat several times, usually about midday. Its approach was always heralded by the squawking and screeching of seagulls. Tonight it was heading away from Oval Lake instead of toward it. The man at the helm must have alerted Shane to Caroline’s presence, because Shane glanced over his shoulder at her. The boat chugged away, and Shane ambled up the sloping lawn, stopping near her.

She was coming to recognize that stance, his hands resting casually on his hips, shoulders squared, head tilted slightly, and yet if he’d been in a police lineup, and she’d had to point to the one she thought was Tori’s ex-husband,
Shane would have been her last choice. Regardless, they’d been married, to each other. Okay, they were divorced. Steven had been divorced, too. Caroline remembered how Shane had stared at two young lovers’ names on the lighthouse wall.

Forewarned was forearmed.

“That was James Pride,” he said. “The Pride Fishery is a landmark in Harbor Woods.”

Something was different about him tonight. His hair was still brown. His jeans were still threadbare. And he still wasn’t wearing any socks. She wished it wasn’t so good to see him.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“Everything fine, thanks.” One awkward moment followed another before she said, “Did you need something?”

“Need’s a funny thing.”

Caroline felt a gentling in the pit of her stomach. She really
needed
to put some distance between them, figuratively and literally. How could she have gone her entire life without developing such fundamental skills?

“I have some things I need to do. So, um.” Oh for the love of—she sucked at this.

He wasn’t especially good at certain things, either, such as taking hints, because he didn’t budge. “You were right
about me, about the reason I dive. I’d never examined it, but you nailed it. And then, today, you listened.”

He wasn’t making it easy for her to erect barriers and set boundaries. “You’re welcome, Shane. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

“Caroline, what’s going on?”

He followed her inside and removed the ball cap. He was more refined than she’d wanted to believe. He could be charming when he wanted to be. It sent up another red flag.

She’d told herself she wanted to feel young. She should have been more specific, because this felt like junior high.

“I’m taking your advice,” he said. “I found my old bike. Andy and I are going riding tonight.”

“He agreed to go?” she asked before she could stop herself.

“He wasn’t excited about it, but he agreed to go, yes.”

Had he moved closer? Or had she?

She held up one hand, only to lower it again. “Don’t.”

“Don’t,” he repeated.

“That’s right. Don’t try to charm me.”

“You think I’m charming?”

She finally realized what was different about him. He’d trimmed his beard. It transformed his features from harsh to handsome. Another red flag went up.

“Don’t look at me like that, either, as if you’re trying to
figure me out, as if you want to
understand
me. I’m not your type, Shane. So just don’t, all right?”

It didn’t take him long to react, and yet there was simple dignity in the way he took a sheet of paper from his back pocket and placed it on her table. “Have it your way, Caroline.”

He left without saying another word, and closed the door just short of a slam.

Caroline didn’t move until she heard him start his car and drive away. She was known throughout Chicago for keeping a level head. She didn’t overreact in court or out of it. And yet she’d handled things badly today. She was terrible at relationships, but the truth was, she preferred not to get involved with Tori’s ex-husband. Wondering what else she should have said or done, she strode to the table and picked up the yellowed paper Shane had left there.

It was a letter addressed to Sergeant Karl Peterson, c/o U.S. Army General Post. The outside was stamped in several places, the last of which was in French. It was from Anna.

After all this time, Caroline held in her hand a piece of her history, and something both Anna and Karl had touched. Carefully unfolding the old stationery, she sat in the straight-backed chair at the table and began to read.

Caroline must have read the letter twenty times. In fact, she spent the next two hours doing nothing but reading it, thinking about it, and studying the photograph she’d discovered in her grandfather’s attic two months ago. She could imagine each of them as they’d been then: One girl loved by two men, a war, a different era, an impossible situation, and three lives changed forever. In reality, it wasn’t only three lives that had been changed. Caroline’s life had been affected, too. And now, it would affect her child.

Life was never simple. She used to believe it was, but she’d been wrong. It felt as if her life had been divided into three parts. There was the whimsical first eight years when her parents had been alive, her focused and goal-oriented existence in Chicago, and this new, uncertain, learn-as-she-was-going entity she was experiencing now.

Putting the letter and photograph aside, she asked herself what was important. The answer was crystal clear. Her baby. She’d known it since that wand had turned blue. The emotion, the sentiment, the sheer power of her love was something she’d never felt before. The fact that she’d
failed the Life Skills night from hell was immaterial. She was going to do everything in her power to be a good mother.

Voices carried from the channel. Following those sounds to the open window, she saw a large boat floating by on the channel. In the back, a man and woman sat on either side of three little girls. One of the children pointed at something. Whatever she said must have been funny, because they all laughed. As the boat lumbered out of sight, Caroline thought about families.

She was an excellent lawyer. She would learn to be a good mother. But her relationship skills left a lot to be desired. She needed to keep trying, because the riches in life weren’t measured by cases won. It seemed to her that the richest lives were those with deep, lasting friendships and family history passed on from generation to generation.

Shane had given her a gift in the form of Anna’s letter. And what had she done? Insulted him and practically slammed the door in his face. She owed him something.

Before she talked herself out of it, she reached for her keys.

Shane’s was one of the few boats in its slip this evening. He sat on deck, his head bowed as he worked on something in a large plastic case on his lap. The setting sun was
a ball of orange beyond him, tingeing the sky pink and lavender, fading to gray.

The cork soles of Caroline’s sandals muffled her approach on the wooden pier, and yet something must have alerted him to her presence. He looked up and didn’t look away.

“Where did you get the letter?” she asked, stopping where his boat was fastened to the pier.

“Beneath a loose floorboard in the lighthouse cottage.”

“When?”

“Twenty-five minutes before your little
don’t
speech.”

Despite the fact that she deserved that, she cringed. “I owe you an apology.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

He wasn’t going to make this easy for her. Ironically, it put her on more even footing. “You trimmed your beard, showed up unannounced, and I jumped to conclusions,” she said.

There was something deliberate about the way he closed the tackle box and placed it at his feet, something just as deliberate in the way he smoothed a hand over his short beard. “What conclusions?”

He seemed to take perverse satisfaction in making her say it. Fine. “You surprised me when you kissed me.”

“I’m listening.”

“Why did you?” she asked.

“You insinuated you felt old.”

“Then it was a pity kiss?” How lovely.

Waves pressed against the cement pilings of the pier, splashing on the boat’s hull, only to be dragged slowly, rhythmically away again. All around them boats were starting to come in.

“What difference does it make?” he asked. “I’m not your type, remember?”

“I didn’t say you’re not my type. I said I’m not yours. There’s a big difference. I’m not good at relationships. In fact, I can count my friends on one hand. I’m figuring this out as I go, but this is my flaw, not yours.”

“What kind of flaw?”

“It would take all night to explain.”

She caught him looking at her mouth. “Would you care to come aboard, Caroline?”

She shook her head, thinking she should have expected that. Covering a yawn, she said, “All I seem to want to do lately is sleep.”

“I was only suggesting you come aboard to talk. Andy’s below deck.”

Ah, yes, Andy. Shane’s and Tori’s troubled son.

“Normally he stays at his mother’s during the week, but I think he took pity on me after riding my butt into the ground tonight. It’s hell getting old. For the record, that
wasn’t a pity kiss. I talked. You listened. You talked. I kissed you. That’s just the way it happened to work out.”

And men claimed women were illogical.

Shane wasn’t like the men she’d known in Chicago. There was a vein of the uncivilized in him. Something about him brought out the worst in her, and the best.

She wasn’t sure how it had happened, but there seemed to be an understanding, a kind of camaraderie between them. It was almost as if they were becoming friends. It began with Karl, and spread in ways she couldn’t explain even to herself. Shane didn’t seem to think she was bad at relationships. Or perhaps he just didn’t think it was so unusual to be bad at them. Why on earth that made her feel better, she didn’t know. But as she walked away, she was fairly certain she’d set something right by coming here. She just wasn’t altogether sure what, exactly.

By the time Tori unlocked the door of the third vacant office space, she and Caroline were both wilting. Switching on lights as she went, Tori said, “They need to keep the air-conditioning on if they want to lease these spaces. What do you think? Can you imagine yourself seeing clients here, providing it isn’t a hundred and ten stifling degrees?”

Caroline took some time to consider that. The first two offices had been renovated twenty years ago, this one
within the past five. The drop ceilings were probably good for acoustics, as was the commercial-grade carpeting beneath her feet. She supposed she could have set up an office here, but the space could have housed an insurance office or a Baby Gap just as easily. “It seems awfully generic,” Caroline said.

“I thought you’d say that.”

The last door Tori opened led to a narrow back alley paved in old bricks. The buildings lining the alley were covered in vines stirring on a marvelous breeze. Tori and Caroline were silent for a moment, appreciating the relief from the oppressive heat.

“That must have special meaning,” Tori said.

Caroline hadn’t realized she was tracing the edges of her charm. “It was my mother’s.”

“What is it?” Tori asked, taking it between her thumb and index finger.

“It’s whatever you want it to be. My mother found it in the dirt on a narrow little street in Seville on her honeymoon. It’s a dollop of pewter she thought looked like an abstract heart. My father had it made into a charm for her. My grandfather said she never took it off. I’ve always wondered why she wasn’t wearing it when the plane crashed.”

“You said she died when you were small?”

She nodded. “I found it in the bottom of a large box my grandfather brought to my room my first summer with him.”

The bangles on Tori’s wrists jangled slightly as she released the charm. Inhaling something sweet on the warm air, Caroline spied a honeysuckle vine growing up the side of the building. The pale yellow flowers were a perfect match for the blond streaks in Tori’s hair, and the scent was synonymous with her bold sweetness. On that day when Caroline’s grandfather had placed the box of her parents’ things on her bed, it had been raining outside, and the air had been heavy with the scent of rain-drenched wild roses on the trellis outside her bedroom window. Until this moment, Caroline hadn’t realized she associated scents with particular events and experiences in her life.

“It must have been hard on your grandfather, losing his daughter that way, and suddenly finding himself parenting again. What did he say?”

“He didn’t say anything. He removed his glasses, took an old-fashioned handkerchief from his pocket and dried his eyes.”

Caroline remembered it so clearly. For the first eight years of her life, she’d been a carefree little girl who took for granted that she was the center of the universe. Her parents had been young. Her grandfather was old. She recalled making the distinction. She’d loved him with her
whole heart, and she was so thankful to have him, to have somebody. Watching him dry his eyes that day, she’d vowed to cause him as little worry and grief as possible.