Song of Renewal (3 page)

The innocent query stunned Liza. Not because it was inappropriate, though the redheaded, inquisitive Gwen was adept at prickly probing, but because Liza had to force herself to switch her brain into romantic memories. She had to reach way, way back inside herself to dig them out. For long scary moments, they eluded her. To what dark, unfathomable place had those momentous vignettes fled?

Sixteen-year-old Angel’s return from the bathroom to the seat beside her mother gave Liza a short reprieve. Angel leaned over and whispered, “Mama, please pass me a roll and the butter.”

Liza raised her eyebrows. “Think that’s wise?” she whispered back. “You’ve already had one.”

Angel sighed, rolled her blue eyes, and gave a terse shrug.

“Suit yourself,” Liza said, relenting only slightly. Angel was a ballerina and ballerinas needed to be light on their feet. But heck, at the same time, Liza wanted her daughter to enjoy life. “You feel okay?” she asked, suddenly alarmed at the pasty pallor of the girl’s skin. “You look a little pale.” Feeling guilty, she placed the breadbasket and butter dish within Angel’s reach.

“I’m fine, Mama,” Angel insisted in a flat timbre. Liza saw her daughter’s hands tremble before she quickly shoved them into her shorts’ pockets.

“You sure?” Liza whispered and was rewarded by a
you’re embarrassing me
grimace.

Liza observed that her blond lithe daughter didn’t get another roll but instead informed all present, just as the doorbell pealed, “Troy’s taking me over to his family’s house tonight.” She slid her father a sharp glance. “We’re gonna just hang out and watch a movie together. The whole family.” She turned on her heel and, chin leading, marched from the room.

Liza noticed that Garrison didn’t rise to Angel’s pointed use of “family” and “together.” After all, the two families were friends, and Troy’s father had helped Garrison by giving him work at their dairy farm during tough financial times. Still, Liza caught Angel’s message.

“Be home by ten thirty,” he called after Angel, who met Troy outside the door before he had time to pop in for niceties,

Angel’s relationship with Troy Bailey, her first boyfriend, had developed pleasantly in recent months. Angel was spending more and more time with the Bailey family. Liza’s heart did a funny little dip that Angel seemed so anxious to get away, that her familial affections had, somewhere along the way, done an abrupt left flank.

Gwen, their dinner guest, whose architect husband Ron was out of town on a job, had for the past hour entertained
them with stories of her own hilariously disastrous wedding day. Now she nudged Liza back to the topic.

“It’s still your turn, Liza. Your most vivid memory of your wedding day?”

Liza’s first impulse was to duck and run. That in itself gave her pause. But in the face of Gwen’s own generous revelations, Liza couldn’t refuse to be as open. She swiveled her head in her husband’s direction. He stared at her, waiting, an uncertain look in his dark eyes. Was it anticipation? No. Sadness? Probably.

Her gaze skidded past his shoulder to a far wall where, suddenly, she stared at herself on canvas. She snatched the lifeline. “When Garrison presented me with his wedding gift, a portrait he’d painted of me.” The words, poured out in the open, released some mystical sentiment curled deep inside her and for just an instant, moisture gathered behind Liza’s eyes and pleasure, rich and sweet, oozed through her. “He worked on it all that last year at USC. It was the most romantic thing I’ve ever received.”

“The one on the den wall? Over there?” Gwen asked, her gaze following the direction of Liza’s. At Liza’s nod, she arose and moved to the den niche of the large open living/dining area for a closer look. “It is absolutely breathtaking, Liza. What ballet are you dancing in it?”

“
Don Quixote
,” Liza said, her voice thick as emotions rippled through her. At one time, no one could have convinced Liza that she’d ever leave the ballet. She pushed that line of thought aside.

“Garrison, wow.” Gwen’s voice was soft, reverential. “You are one talented guy.” She slowly shook her head. “I didn’t have any idea. The graphic work we do doesn’t show your real stuff. Why aren’t you taking commissions for portraits?” She
moved back to the table and reseated herself, her astounded gaze piercing Garrison.

“It’s called survival. Regular income, family, that sort of stuff.” Garrison blushed a bit as he smiled in acknowledgment. “Thanks, Gwen. But the real honor goes to the subject I had to work with.” He looked at Liza and the undisguised appreciation in his eyes warmed her. It came so seldom lately, the glow in the mahogany depths. “She was my inspiration.” Liza almost gulped at the naked adulation in that statement. Pleasure splintered through her, a feeling so alien these days that Liza felt momentarily drunk on it.

Gwen’s amused voice shattered the moment. “Hey, you two. Wait till I leave, will you?”

Flustered a bit by her own agitated emotions, Liza arose and reached for the iced tea pitcher on the buffet to refill all their glasses.

“What about you, Garrison?” Gwen said. “Your best wedding memory?”

Liza witnessed Garrison’s transition while filling his glass. Saw his body tense and the warmth fade from his features. Felt the awareness between them evaporate and awkwardness settle upon him.

The old familiar sinking feeling returned, making her insides heavy and her spirit sag. Liza reseated herself, fighting a niggle of irritation at Gwen’s insistence on reminiscing. Why was this bothering her? Maybe it was how Garrison hesitated, as though thinking back on those days taxed his brain. That his initial response to the question mirrored her own wasn’t relevant.

Gwen was Garrison’s right hand. She assisted Garrison in his commercial graphic arts company. Liza instinctively glanced at the colleagues’ bundle of accounts, piled high on the buffet,
screaming for attention. Following dinner, they would spread them out over the table to mull, dissect, and manage.

Gwen snapped her fingers at Garrison’s tentativeness. “Wake up, Garrison. Your favorite memory of your wedding day?” Then she laughed from the belly. “Except for
that
, of course.”

Liza couldn’t help but laugh when Gwen cut her a sly wink. She also couldn’t help the thrill that shot through her, summoned by the allusion to her wedding night’s passion. It had been an extraordinary honeymoon.

Garrison blushed, grinned, and shifted in his chair. “Uh, I don’t know.” He frowned in concentration for a long moment. “I suppose it was the excitement of slipping away, finally married, from the reception in that ridiculous little black Skylark with words, not nice words, mind you, big as boxcar type slathered on with shaving cream”

“The words were
suggestive, c
ompliments of my sister Charlcy,” Liza said, brimming with memory.

Gwen laughed uproariously. “My kind of gal.”

Liza looked at Garrison. Memories and sensual nuances from those vibrant young years invaded her. “We were finally alone. I remember the buzz of not having to leave you that night.”

Oh God, how the memory stirred her. How she yearned to reclaim those intensely loving moments.

“Yeah,” he murmured softly, eyes suddenly sad as they locked with hers. Liza knew that feeling. She, too, felt it. “Remember how we couldn’t wait to get to our home?”

She smiled, remembering how, instead of leaving immediately for their beach honeymoon, they’d spent that first night at their own little rented house. They simply couldn’t wait to initiate their loving claim there. Their present home, much grander, came more than a year later when Garrison sold off some of
the property to finance it. At the time, however, the small cottage was an enchanted love nest.

Liza closed her eyes, remembering. “We wanted to cook dinner together.”

Gwen snorted incredulously, blue eyes skewer them with comical disbelief. “You cooked?”

“Of course,” Garrison said, feigning indignation. “And it was great. Steaks grilled to perfection and Liza’s heavenly potato salad. Nobody can do it quite like her.”

His gaze locked with Liza’s. For a long moment, his tender smile reached down into her heart, stirring up emotions long dormant. His darkly chiseled features spoke eloquently of that long-ago time when just a look from him sent her senses into a heated gallop. Her lips slowly curved in response.

Liza’s cell phone, hooked onto her slacks belt, vibrated and burst into a loud, syncopated Latin rhythm, scattering the magic. Darn! She’d meant to turn it off. “Excuse me,” she murmured and left the table when she saw Betty Branch’s name on the screen. The Women’s League committee chairperson had some information Liza needed for their upcoming charity bazaar.

By the time she finished the phone conversation, Garrison and Gwen had lapsed into business talk at the table. Disappointment speared her. A phone call had assassinated a breathtaking moment of young love. That starry-eyed awareness so seldom surfaced now that, when it did raise its head, she wanted to cling to it. One look at Garrison, however, put that notion to rest. Immersed in commerce, he’d gone off into that land far removed from her.

Liza efficiently gathered the dishes and, refusing Gwen’s polite offer of help, took them to the kitchen, scraped them, and deposited them into the dishwasher, her indisputable best
friend these days, what with the seemingly endless committee meetings and charity causes.

When Liza returned, business papers and two laptops dominated the dining room table. “Coffee?” she asked, drawing detached, negative nods as Garrison and his assistant delved single-mindedly into fathoms beyond Liza’s understanding.

She went into the den to catch a movie. An old Alfred Hitchcock thriller was playing on American Movie Classics, but Liza, who usually adored them, couldn’t harness her concentration to the storyline. The discussion at dinner of wedding day memories kept hauling her mind back.

She closed her eyes, laid her head back, and remembered the beautiful night following their wedding.

“I want to hang the portrait right here, over the mantle,” Liza said.

“Anything you want, my darlin’ Scarlett,” Garrison said in his oft-used Rhett Butler drawl. He swept her up and into his arms, kissing her as thoroughly as Rhett kissed Scarlett while carrying her up the staircase on those vintage
Gone With the Wind
movie posters.

Soon, he lowered her feet to the floor, lips still locked in a new, rampant pursuit of consummation. Oh, they’d had heated sessions all during the past year at school but they’d agreed to save this for marriage. Now, all the frustrated hormones swarmed into frenzy, catapulting them to the marriage bed in an unforgettable tangle of limbs and flesh and unbridled coupling.

Never in Liza’s life had she begun to imagine the pleasures Garrison would bring to her. Nor had she fathomed the words and phrases he murmured in her ear during those following months and years.

And fatherhood. Aah. Garrison leaning over mother and infant daughter, tears of joy puddled in those splendid dark eyes,
murmuring, “I’ve never loved you more than at this moment, Liza. Thank you for the most precious gift I’ve ever known.”

Liza luxuriated in the memory until the sound of voices sprang her eyes open.

“How about some coffee, Gwen?” Garrison asked.

“Sure.” Liza heard Gwen’s chair scrape as she rose. Muffled banter and soft laughter brought her nerves to a fine edge. Her ears keened to discern the words. The affinity between Garrison and Gwen triggered an icy curl in Liza’s abdomen. Liza sat there, listening to the sounds of Gwen moving about, searching for and finding things in Liza’s kitchen. Water running. Liza felt frozen to her seat, one step removed from this cozy, domestic scene.

Tense moments later, during which Gwen and Garrison talked softly, comfortably about things common to the two of them, Liza inhaled the aroma of freshly perked coffee. Her alarm grew as she rose and found Gwen in the kitchen, pouring for them.

She grinned tiredly at Liza. “We changed our minds about coffee. That good food makes one groggy. Let’s see, Garrison’s is black. Where’s your sugar, Liza?”

Liza silently got the sugar bowl from the cabinet and a spoon from the drawer.

“Thanks.” Gwen efficiently placed the steaming cups on saucers and stirred in her sugar. “Say. There’s enough for another cup there if you’d like.” She smiled and returned to the dining room, depositing Garrison’s coffee before him and taking her own seat at her laptop. Quiet conversation turned once more to shared business items and graphic designs they conspired to perfect.

Liza blindly wiped the counter clean and felt a jab of something dark, pungent, and visceral. Jealousy? No. Not exactly, but something akin to it. A sense of being stranded seized her.
She was a left-behind thing. She knew Gwen’s taking over Garrison’s coffee tonight wasn’t an intentional slight. After all, Liza wasn’t normally a part of the Gwen-and-Garrison equation.

But when had Garrison stopped depending on Liza for small comforts?

Garrison had not asked her, Liza, for coffee. He’d asked Gwen.

Truth was, Gwen had become more a wife to Garrison than Liza.

chapter two

The summer rain came in a sudden burst. The Wakefield manse’s tin roof became an acoustic conduit for the percussion, especially in Garrison’s upstairs office. It was a luxury he had anticipated when building this elegant country home for his young bride eighteen years ago. This evening, in his precious solitude, he propped his elbows on his studio desk, anchored chin in hands, and closed his dark eyes.

For long moments, he listened. Rain danced across the metal roof like a thousand snare drums, lulling him, relaxing tense shoulders and arms. Its cadence spiraled him back to his grandparents’ rural South Carolina farm, where he’d spent youthful summer vacations and indulged his love affair with painting, easel ensconced in meadows, beside creeks, and facing sloping hills. His oils and chalk art dazzled his family, and later, a much larger audience.