Queen of Broken Hearts (48 page)

He swirls the cognac in the brandy snifter, closing his eyes to savor the smell. “Oh, you mean the time you told me if I ever asked you to do so again, you'd drop me in a New York minute? No, it's not a professional confidence I'm asking you to betray, but I'll get to that. First, what's going on with Dory and Son?”

“Better put your ear to the ground for the thundering of hooves, because your four horsemen might still ride in,” I tell him. “Dory stood up to Son; she told him it was her way or the highway. He pouted and acted the fool, of course, since it comes so naturally to him, then damn if he didn't straighten up. His halo is back in place, so Dory rewarded him by taking off a couple days to go to a Bama game. Son's so pleased with himself, you'd think he just treed Jesus.”

Rye groans. “If I'd been a betting man, I'd have lost a fortune by now, wagering my last penny that he'd never make it this far.”

We sit in a comfortable silence, sipping our drinks and looking out over the bay until I say, more wistfully than I'd intended, “I'll tell you something if you swear never to tell Dory. When she and Son split up last year, I had hopes that maybe you and Dory could get together one day. Pick up where you left off that summer all those years ago.”

Bemused, he tilts his head and eyes me sideways. “I had no idea you were such a romantic. I wouldn't think it possible in your profession.”

I pull my shawl closer, then turn my head to look out over the bay. “I've had to watch myself to keep from becoming bitter and cynical. At times I've teetered, and it's those times when the world has looked too gloomy for me. I've felt comfortless and utterly desolate. I've concluded that life is easier when we have someone to share it with. So I have to believe some relationships are good and solid. And lasting, most of all.” With a swing of my arm, I motion at the bay. “If I didn't think so, I'd row a boat to the middle of the bay and jump in, I swear I would.”

He's pensive, nursing his drink, his eyes distant. “It's a romantic notion, but I'm not sure I was really in love with Dory,” he says finally, surprising me. “She served an important purpose in my solitary life. I held her up as my ideal, the only woman I would've given up my treasured freedom for. It worked because she was unavailable. Ah, but that was in my youth, which is long gone now.”

“Hear, hear,” I say with another lift of my glass. “To our lost youth!”

“Things look quite different when you get to be my age, my dear,” he says softly.

“We look at things differently in each decade of our lives, don't you think? Our needs change, but so do our desires. Or maybe they just become blurred.”

“As a younger man, I prized freedom above all things,” Rye says thoughtfully, but there's no mistaking the regret in his voice. “I didn't want to share my life with anyone, and I think that's why I've had so many women yet never settled down with one.”

I widen my eyes in mock surprise. “Uh-oh. True confessions. If I pour you another brandy or two, maybe I'll leave here with the hottest gossip in Fairhope.”

“I have many regrets, Clare.”

“Who doesn't? Do you really think any of us can make it this far and not have them?”

He looks at me strangely. “Do you regret loving Mack?”

“No. Never.”

“I can never tell you how much I envied the kind of love that you and Mack had. It seems to me it only comes once in a lifetime, and some of us never find it.” Putting down his brandy glass on a small table in front of our chairs, Rye leans toward me, his eyes opalescent in the flickering light of the candle. “If I thought you'd love me like that …”

I take his hand in mine and smile at him. “I've loved you for years, and you know it.”

“And I treasure the special closeness we've always shared.” With a graceful move, he raises my hand to his lips. “As I tried to tell you last summer, though, I don't want to be your brother anymore. Your friendship is dear to me, but I want more. I've played it cool until I thought you were ready, but now … since things have changed …”

With a puzzled frown, I ask, “What things?”

“That's the other thing I wanted to talk to you about, the gossip going around. Everyone is saying that your Yankee sea captain is back on Magnolia Street.”

I stare at him in shock. “Lex has left the marina and moved to Elinor's?”

Rye shrugs nonchalantly, releasing my hand as he reaches for his glass. “So I hear. You mean you didn't know?”

I swallow hard, too stunned to speak. “I—I didn't. I mean, I knew she'd asked him to, but the last time he and I talked, they were still discussing a reconciliation. Nothing had been decided.” The shock and dismay I feel that Lex didn't even bother to tell me catches me off-guard. Then it hits me what Rye said, and I turn my head to look at him, aghast. “You think this changes things between
us
? You and me? But … how?”

Again he shrugs. “When you blew off my proposal last summer, I thought it might be because of Lex.”

“That's ridiculous!” I say sharply, and Rye studies me with a knowing smile.

“Methinks the lady protests too much,” he says.

“Nonsense. I've told you all along that Lex and I were just good friends, but you chose not to believe me. I thought you were just pretending to be jealous of him. I had no idea you thought I cared for him in that way.”

He stares at me in wonder. “Then we've been at cross purposes. Guess I should've had this conversation with you long before now, but I was afraid to. I had to hold on to hope, and I couldn't bear not to have at least a slender thread.”

“And what hope was that?” I ask, even though I know the answer.

“Well, I hoped you'd see that you and I were meant to be together. And one day you might feel the same way about me that I feel about you. You've spent your life taking care of everybody else. I'd like to spend the rest of mine taking care of you.”

“Oh, Rye.” I scoot my chair closer to his and put my arms around him, my head on his shoulder. “You're such a fine man, and you're so good to me. But you have to know—what you're asking of me? I'm not sure I can love anyone like that again.”

“I know that, sweetheart,” he says into my hair. “I was there the day we found Mack, and I'll never forget your face, never. As long as I live, it will haunt me. But even on that awful day, I wanted to take care of you, more than anything. Now that Mack's gone, I've come to the conclusion that you and I were meant to be.”

“You deserve someone who'll love you the way you want and need to be loved. Anything less wouldn't be fair to you—”

He puts a finger over my lips to silence me. “Shhh.” When I raise my head to his, he kisses me, then whispers, “Stay with me tonight, Clare.”

Even though the combination of his kiss and the brandy has left me feeling more responsive than I've been in a long time, I force myself to pull away, pressing my face into his neck until I can catch my breath. When I raise my head, I say in a hoarse voice, “I can't tonight. I need to sort some things out first. When—or if—I stay with you, I'd want it to be for good.”

“Mmm. I like that you said ‘when' before ‘if.'”

“You've been my buddy for so long that it's difficult to put you in another context. I guess I need some time to readjust my thinking. After having so much of your champagne and cognac, I'm feeling so woozy that I don't trust myself.”

He chuckles and gets to his feet, pulling me up with him. “Then let me get you home right now. The sooner you get your thoughts readjusted to thinking of me as a lover instead of a brother, the sooner you'll be back here, where you belong.”

At home in my bed, I'm restless, unable to fall asleep. The warm, lazy feeling the brandy brought on has dissipated and been replaced by a yearning I don't quite understand. I've been alone for so long, by choice, but I'm suddenly feeling lost and bewildered, like an exile in a strange land. I sit on the side of the bed, my hands clasped in front of me, and listen to the familiar night sounds of my house. But it's cold, and I slide back into the comforting cocoon of blankets I pushed aside. Closing my eyes, I try to will myself to sleep, to stop the jumbled thoughts that won't let me be. Maybe I should've stayed with Rye, snuggled next to him on the big antique bed that dominates his bedroom. Falling asleep in his arms would've brought me the solace I seek, surely. Our lovemaking would be gentle and loving and ever so sweet. We would sleep afterward, a deep and dreamless and peaceful sleep.

His number is programmed into my phone; without turning on the bedside lamp, I press the number and hold the receiver close, on my pillow. He answers on the first ring. “Clare?” I hear the rustle of sheets but not the click of the lamp. Like me, he's in the darkness of his bedroom, except he'll have the double doors of the balcony flung wide, bringing in the stars and the quarter moon and the salt-sweet smell of the bay. “What is it, honey?”

“I can't sleep.” I don't say that I'm cold and lonely and loss-haunted, and that some nights I miss Mack so badly it leaves me stunned, like a fish pulled out of the water and left gaping for air.

“Me, either,” he murmurs. “Want me to come over?”

“Could you just talk to me for a minute?”

“Of course. All night if you need me to. But the sound of your voice alarms me. You sound … sorrowful. Not your usual sassy self, like you were earlier this evening.” After a long silence, he asks, “I didn't upset you tonight, did I?”

“It's not you. It's me. Or rather, it's Mack.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” He lets out a long, weary sigh. I picture him rubbing his face with his long slender fingers, a gold signet ring on his left hand. Mack wouldn't even wear a wedding ring. Rye sleeps in fine cotton pajamas that I've seen his housekeeper set out for him. I know that he has a cashmere robe because it hangs behind his bedroom door, and his butter-soft leather slippers await on the antique Persian rug next to his bed. Mack slept in the buff and never owned a robe or a pair of slippers in his life.

“Listen to me,” Rye says firmly. “We both loved Mack. But he's gone, and he's not coming back. One day he left us. He went into the woods, and he never came out. I don't know if he was drunk or in one of his dark funks. Maybe the coroner was right and he tripped over a tangle of vines. When he reached out to stop his fall, the gun went off. None of us will ever know. But you've
got
to let go of him.”

“Oh, God, don't I know that! I'll go for days without thinking of him, and my life will be full and satisfying and meaningful. Then, when I least expect it, Mack will show up again. I'll walk into the kitchen, and he's at the table, waiting for his breakfast. In his study, he sits with his back to me, expecting me to cross the room and put my hands over his eyes. In our bed, I wake up through the night with his arms around me.” I take a deep breath and release it with a sob. “It's not that I can't let go of Mack. He won't let go of me! I don't think he'll ever let go of me.”

He's quiet for so long that I wonder if he's still there. “Rye?”

“I'm here,” he says finally. “I'm here.”

“You are, aren't you? You've been with me all along, and I want you to know how grateful I am. How truly grateful.”

“I can't be Mack, though,” he says, surprising me with the abruptness of his tone. “I can love you, and cherish you, but I can't ever be Mack. I can't be a substitute for him.”

“Do you think …” I pause to take in his words, stricken. “Oh, my God. Is that what I'm doing, calling you like this? Is that what this is about?”

“I don't know,” he says with a sigh. “It's been my worst fear, but it's something only you can answer.” He hesitates and seems to be choosing his words carefully. “Clare? I've gone over and over the day that Mack died, trying to figure out how it happened like it did, and why. But I don't think you have. You've blocked it out, haven't you?”

“I've had to. I know I need to go back, but I can't make myself do it. It hurts too bad. And I'm afraid of what I might find.”

Rye is silent a long time, before he says, “After all these years, it seems to be screaming to get out. You're going to have to go back, whether you want to or not.”

Haley was eleven when she came to live with Mack and me, and bringing her into our house turned our lives upside down. As Zoe Catherine had predicted the afternoon she took me to see the terns, Mack made no move to reclaim the child he thought he'd rid himself of. Although he'd taken full responsibility for her support, working long, hard hours at the backbreaking labor his job demanded, he still couldn't face up to his daughter's existence. In the beginning, he shut me out and absolutely refused to discuss her sudden appearance in our lives. He was in such obvious anguish, however, that I hounded him until he told me the terrible truth.

Breaking down and burying his face in his hands, Mack admitted that he'd heard several years ago, from one of Shirley's friends in Gulf Shores, that she'd blown the money he gave her and not had the abortion. She'd had his child instead. He swore that's all Shirley's friend told him; whether or not she'd kept the baby, no one knew. The only thing known for sure was that Shirley's drug habit had gotten dangerous. Mack was horrified by the story and the part he'd played in it. He'd abandoned a girl who was young and pregnant with no skills to support herself. He'd paid her off with a large sum that she had no idea how to manage, and she'd ended up on the streets. At that point, hearing about the baby, he could have taken steps to redeem himself and possibly saved Shirley and the child. Instead, he'd done nothing. As with his other demons, Mack dealt with it by not dealing with it, even when it tore him to pieces. When he and I lost Daniel and the other babies, he saw it as a fitting punishment, and his guilt drove him to the closest bar night after night.