Knit in Comfort (17 page)

The neckband of Elizabeth's top was squeezing out her air. She wanted to claw at her throat and tear it off.

This was exactly how she felt when Dominique would calmly point out all the ways she was being unreasonable and stupid and above all,
wrong
. When he'd argue the sun went down before it went up, or that the ceiling was actually the floor. It seemed the more sure she was that she stood on solid ground, the calmer he'd get, the more lethal his arguments, the more easily he could shove her over into quicksand.

“What you're doing is wrong.” The lame accusation was all she could manage.

“By whose standards? Yours? Do they apply to me and my family?”

“Society's.”

“And you, living with your boyfriend without marriage? Ditching your family at age seventeen and going from one man to another?”

She wanted to sock him, then whoever had wasted no time catching him up on her moral failings. Probably Vera.

“You're breaking the law.” The quicksand was up to her lips, making it difficult to speak.

“Extramarital sex is against the law too, in many states. And it was once against the law for women to vote. It was once a law that white people could own black people. It's against the law now in most states for gays to marry, but that's changing, slowly. Laws change, people change, realities and human understanding and needs evolve.”

Tears of frustration rose in her eyes. She stood. “I can't talk to you about this anymore. You're twisting everything I say.”

“I'm stating facts.”

She strode past him, no idea where she was going, just sure
she had to get away from this man before he became like Dominique and convinced her Comfort was in Antarctica.

“Elizabeth.”

She stopped reluctantly, didn't turn around.

“This is our private matter. I'm asking you not to spread it around.”

“I have no plans to.” She fisted her hands. “For
Megan's
sake.”

“Fair enough.”

She managed to walk until she was out of his sight, then broke into a run down the driveway, cold leg muscles protesting the speed after yesterday's repeat marathon. Could she believe in nothing? Would everything she admired or treasured get smashed sooner or later? Was that real life?

She preferred fantasy. She wanted Megan alive with passion telling her Shetland story, she wanted magical and mysterious Gillian to be real, she wanted men to choose honorably, as Calum had, not install the Mrs. Calums, First and Second.

As soon as Elizabeth reached the street she knew where she needed to go.
Call me a sadist, Ms. Detlaff, but I look forward to watching you get to know Comfort
. She sprinted for David's house, banged on the door, waited, panting. He'd said he knew why Megan was unhappy. He must know.

Forever later he opened.

“Well if it isn't Ms.—” He did a double take. “What's wrong?”

“Can I come in?”

“Of course.” He moved back, gestured her in. “What happened?”

She started to cry, from her disappointment and frustration and from the kind concern in David's voice. “Something…completely unexpected.”

“You want to tell me?”

“I just promised Stanley I wouldn't.”

“Stanley.” The way he spat out the name convinced her he did know. “I saw his car come back and saw him talking to you.”

“So…you know about—” When he nodded she broke down completely. “How can he cheat on Megan like it's—”

“Shh.” David grabbed her arm, turned to look behind him.

The bathroom door in the back opened. Ella came into the front hallway, face pale and blank.

Elizabeth drew in a sharp breath. “Tell me it's not her.”

“It's not.” David led her toward the dining room table. “I'll pour you a drink.”

“Christ, David. Is alcohol your cure for everything?”

“Pretty much.” He glanced at Ella, who had followed them like an automaton. “Looks like you'll need one too.”

“Stanley's cheating? On Megan?” Ella spoke slowly, staring at Elizabeth, her dark hair and lack of color evoking Snow White.

Elizabeth looked to David in desperation. “I don't…”

“I heard you say so.” She sounded on the verge of hysteria. “Is it true?”

David nodded grimly.

Ella's mouth opened, worked impotently. A painful gasping sound evolved into a burst of laughter. She bent over the dark chunky table and gave in.

Elizabeth turned murderous. “Shut the hell up, Ella. This is not funny.”

“She doesn't think so either.” David had pulled out a bottle of bourbon from the built-in cabinet; he poured healthy slugs into two glasses. “Drink this.”

Elizabeth slapped her palm on the table. “Stop laughing, for God's sake.”

Ella held up one hand, asking them to wait, planted the other on her heaving chest. When she gained control and lifted her face, shiny tear trails glistened on her cheeks. “I'm sorry.”

“Not a problem.” David held out a second glass to her.

“Breathe.”

“I don't think I remember how.” She laughed again, a short uncomfortable burst. “They were the perfect couple, Barbie and Ken, with their dream house and perfect kids, cuddling like they were still on their Malibu honeymoon. Now it turns out he's been doing Skipper on the side?”

More guffaws, now clutching her stomach.

“David. Make her stop.”

“She has to let it out.” He pulled Elizabeth to a chair and sat her in it. “Sit and drink. She'll stop on her own.”

“I don't want to drink.”

“Fine. I do.” He downed Elizabeth's bourbon, pushed Ella's glass insistently toward her.

“I don't want mine either. God, oh God.” Ella gasped out a last giggle and dropped into the chair opposite Elizabeth, still holding her abdomen. “All those years after I married I spent
pining
for what I could have had, what I thought I
should
have had with Stanley. All that time thinking Megan got what I deserved. And all this time guess what? She got a worse hell than mine. Jesus!”

Elizabeth wanted out of there, out of David's house, out of North Carolina. She wanted to go home. To New York.

No. She didn't want to go to New York. Home to Milwaukee?

Not there either. That bridge had burned to ash. There was no place like home, and she didn't have one to go back to. All she has was Comfort, which had just imploded.

“Well now.” David sat between them, at the head of the ta
ble. “Isn't this cozy. Me and two beautiful hysterics. You sure you don't want your drink, Ella?”

“How did you find out, David?” Elizabeth asked.

“About Stanley?” He drained the second bourbon. “About a year ago I was visiting Comfort and went next door looking for Megan. I overheard Stanley talking to his other wife.”

“Other
wife
?” Ella emerged from her stupor to stare in horror. “Tell me you mean that figuratively.”

“The other marriage is illegal, but no one seems to care.”

“That is beyond twisted.” Ella cringed. “Promise me it's not someone in Comfort.”

“I promise you it's not someone in Comfort.”

“Thank God for that.” Ella fished a tissue out of her shorts pocket and blew her nose, wiped smudged mascara from under her eyes. “I thought Megan was just a cold fish, or that she hated the sight of me because of my past with Stanley. I should have recognized myself—one of the walking dead. I should have known that's who she was.”

“Don't beat yourself up. No one knew.”

“Except you.” Elizabeth's instinct kicked in at the careful look on David's face, and the way he immediately reached for the bottle. There was emotion between David and Megan. Was he the “someone” Megan had been dating when Stanley noticed her? Comfort had turned out to be a regular soap opera. Or maybe David was right, and life was life no matter where you were.

She didn't want David to be right.

“I can't believe it.” Ella shuddered. “Stanley. Some Prince Charming.”

“Give me a break.” David finished pouring, turned to Elizabeth. “Oh God, you're looking misty too.”

“He did seem pretty wonderful.” Elizabeth sighed wearily. “They seemed so happy together.”

“Ken and Barbie.” David shook his head. “Ken doesn't even have a penis!”

Ella and Elizabeth burst into giggles.

“You saw in their relationship what you wanted to see. No man is ever going to live up to your fantasies. Love can't fill the holes you've spent years digging yourselves.”

“Oh now you're the relationship expert?” Ella jabbed at his arm with her finger. “And how does it work that
we're
deluded but
you're
a noble victim?”

David's eyes narrowed; Elizabeth froze, afraid the situation was going to get ugly. She wished David would stop drinking.

He gave a brisk nod instead. “Okay. Point made. My marriage was flawed, your marriage was flawed, Stanley and Megan's marriage is screwed up beyond all comprehension. Elizabeth's relationship…?”

She shrugged. “As yet undetermined.”

“So here we sit on the island of misfit lovers. The broken, the maimed, the malformed, who still, all sensible evidence to the contrary, believe in love, crave love.”

Elizabeth fidgeted. Something was bothering her, something was rising in her, and she wished everyone would be quiet so she could figure out what it was.

“We're not at fault. Blame the poets!” He started on his third drink. “Romeo and Juliet were teenagers. They would have moved on. Madama Butterfly wasted her young life over a husband who didn't deserve her. Even pop songs: ‘can't live if living is without you.' Anyone who doesn't feel that intensity of longing thinks his or her relationship has gone stale in com
parison, because look! Over the neighbor's fence! Great Scott, what a lawn!”

Ella snorted. Elizabeth listened with half her brain, the other still searching for the source of the urgent internal signal.

“But let's look closely at that perfect lawn. The German poet Heinrich Heine wrote some of the most glorious romantic verses known to man over an unrequited passion for his cousin, Amalie, whom he barely knew. After she married, he switched to her equally uninterested sister, Therese. That's not love. That's dysfunction, that's self-isolation. These days he'd be put into therapy and medicated.”

“And we'd have lost his art.” Ella very casually took the bottle over to her side of the table, out of David's reach.

“So now what?” Elizabeth sounded as cranky as she felt. She hated loud champions of hopelessness. “The party's over, we go miserably on?”

“We become like Albericht in Wagner's Ring cycle and renounce love. In our case the sacrifice earns not power over all humanity but whole, beautiful power over ourselves and our destinies and our happiness, a life free from vulnerability and compromise.”

“David.” Ella rolled her eyes. “You are drunk.”

“And your point is…”

Elizabeth put her glass down with a thud. “That is a complete load of crap.”

“Yeah?” He turned toward her, eyes showing the pain his sneer couldn't hide. “Then talk me out of it.”

“If I thought it would do any good…” She stood abruptly, her chair scraping hardwood, moved to the living room and started pacing. The movement freed her from the prison of David's words, made everything clearer. “It's pointless to sit here
moaning. We need to help Megan get out of that situation.”

“I've got it.” Ella snapped her fingers. “I could shoot Stanley!”

“Good idea.” David pantomimed cocking a rifle. “I'll shoot at the same time, so they can't tell which of us did it.”

“David, you're my hero.” Ella reached over and touched his cheek, eyes soft with affection. “Why can't I fall in love with you?”

“Because you're too smart.”

“Shh.” Elizabeth was on the right track now, the righteous path, and she wasn't in the mood for clowning. “I'm serious about helping Megan. We have to fix this somehow. She's desperately unhappy. I bet that's why she told us the Gillian story.”

“Be careful. She might not want to get out.”

“I don't believe that.” Elizabeth stopped pacing and scowled at David. “And neither do you.”

“Ms. Elizabeth, I think you've gotten in enough trouble deciding things are a certain way before you know for sure. Leave this alone.”

“No.” Elizabeth walked back to the table, confronted him directly. “I need to make something good come out of this visit. I haven't been able to help myself, so there must be some other reason I'm in Comfort.”

“Why?”

She frowned at him. “Because otherwise, why was I sent here?”

“You weren't
sent
here. You've assigned meaning to a random set of circumstances and events and called it destiny. If you can not only reject love but toss out the need for meaning as well, you'll have freed yourself forever.”

“Oh, right. Gotcha. To be completely happy, you just have to
give up being human?” Ella rolled her eyes. “Come on, David, even you aren't that cynical.”

“No?” He grinned his handsome Paul Newman grin and Elizabeth no longer felt envious that people like David had found their places and purposes in the world. No wonder he called his life hell. Because he'd retreated. He didn't fight. And neither did Megan. “What do you think, Elizabeth? Am I that cynical?”

“No.” Elizabeth shoved at his shoulder. “It's how you protect yourself.”

“Women! I told you both the truth and you only see what you want to.” His phone rang; he stood and headed toward the kitchen, taking his glass with him. “I give up. Don't finish the bourbon while I'm gone.”