The Color of Heaven - 09 - The Color of Time (14 page)

He nodded at me again. “You know…I’ve thought about that. Many times over the years.”

“Do you know who owns it now?”

“No idea,” he replied, “but I might check it out while I’m here. You never know.”

“Make them an offer they can’t refuse.”

Chris chuckled. “Yeah.” He slowed down and we pulled onto a paved driveway that led to a modest-sized home with gray cedar shakes and a covered veranda.

“Nice place,” I said.

“It’s not exactly the Foster mansion,” Chris replied, “but it’s cozy.” He shut off the engine and unbuckled his seatbelt. “Come on in.”

I got out, slung my purse over my shoulder, and looked around. The lawn was freshly mowed and there were wooden flower boxes full of colorful red geraniums. “Someone likes to garden.”

“Jared’s wife, Melanie. She’s always out here with the hose, watering stuff and clipping back leaves.” He climbed the steps to the front door. While Chris searched for the right key, I heard a dog barking inside. “You’re not afraid of dogs are you?” Chris asked.

“I love dogs.”

“Good. This one’s a real pussycat, actually. She only barks when there’s someone at the door, then she’ll just lick you to death.”

He unlocked the door and stepped inside. A small white ball of fur immediately jumped up to greet us. “This is Buffy,” Chris said.

I bent down to let her sniff the back of my hand. “Aren’t you adorable? Great name, Buffy. Slay any vampires lately?”

Chris laughed. “That’s exactly who she was named after. Melanie loves that show.”

He led me into the kitchen at the back of the house. It was slightly dated with honey oak cupboards and a green laminate countertop, but the view over the water was spectacular. The house was nestled in a quiet cove with a few other houses, all with private docks and sailboats moored further out.

“This is a great spot,” I said.

“It really is.” He hung his keys on a hook by the fridge. “That’s Jared’s boat out there. The white one on the left. Do you sail?”

“I used to. Ethan and I went out a lot when we were first married and had a boat.”

I stopped myself at that, because I didn’t want to explain how I never wanted to take Tyler out when he was a baby. I’d wanted to wait until he was older and knew how to swim, but that day never came. After the funeral, I couldn’t bear to look at the boat because I regretted not taking him out sooner. I was always playing it safe—which didn’t make much of a difference in the end.

I sold the boat ages ago.

“I could take you out sometime if you want,” Chris said.

“That would be nice.”

Chris opened the refrigerator and withdrew a giant bowl of cooked lobsters and another bowl of pasta salad. He set the bowls on the counter.

“Normally I would ask if you liked lobster, but I remember how you used to devour them. You could crack a shell open like nobody’s business. With your bare hands, even.”

I laughed. “I’m still pretty good at it.”

“I figured you would be. Talent like that doesn’t just disappear. Why don’t you grab a bottle of wine from the fridge, a couple of glasses, and meet me out on the back deck?”

I agreed and went to fetch the wine.

Chapter Thirty

As it turned out, Chris was no slouch in the lobster-eating department. He devoured two large ones in the time it took me to eat one, and this he did while telling me all about dental school and how he met his wife, Katelyn.

At the time, Katelyn had been a young and ambitious television journalist working on a segment about the challenges of getting accepted to graduate schools in Seattle. She’d interviewed Chris on camera, and he called her that night to invite her out for dinner after the piece aired. Two years later, they tied the knot—a month after he received his dentistry degree.

“So what happened?” I asked as I sat back in my chair and poured a second glass of wine for myself. “Is it too bold of me to ask why you’re not still together?”

Chris emptied his lobster shells into the plastic bowl on the table, then set his plate down on the deck floor. Buffy trotted over to lick the juice.

“It’s kind of a sordid story,” Chris replied, sitting back in his chair. “It might require another glass of wine.”

I reached for the bottle and refilled his glass.

“I don’t think that’s nearly enough,” he mentioned with a hint of a grin.

I picked up the bottle again to top up his glass to the brim. A few drops spilled over onto the table and he nodded appreciatively. “That should do the trick.”

“Okay,” I said, leaning back. “I’m listening.”

We sat for a moment in silence while he stared out at the water, and a somber note settled over the table. I realized suddenly that none of it was really a joke to him. When at last he began to explain, I was completely wrapped up in the moment, wishing things had turned out better for him.

“Things went sour a couple of years before Logan got sick,” Chris said. “He was five. I thought everything was fine between Katelyn and me. We were both working, happy in our jobs, even talking about having another baby, but it always seemed to be something she wanted to do ‘next’ year. There was always a reason to push it forward into the future. I was starting to think we might not
ever
have a second child, so I started to push her a little harder about it, because I’d always imagined we’d have at least two, maybe three. I didn’t want to wait too long.”

Chris took a deep breath and looked up at the sky. “Then one day I came home from work and a suitcase was packed and waiting for me by the door. Katelyn was nervous and quiet. I didn’t know what was going on. Then she sat me down and told me she didn’t want to have any more children with me, and that she was in love with someone else—a jazz musician who also managed the local hardware store. His name was Joe.”

I sat forward and rested my arms on the table. “Oh, God. And
you
were the one who had to move out?”

He nodded. “She said it would be best for Logan if we didn’t upset his life any more than we had to, and of course it would be best for
her
to take care of him, because she was a stay-at-home mom at the time and I was working a lot—to pay for the incredibly expensive house we’d just bought.” Chris reached for his full glass of wine which he carefully lifted to his lips, and took a sip.

“I was furious,” he continued. “I threatened her with a custody suit and told her Logan was going to live with me and I was going to fight for her to have only limited visitation rights. It was really ugly. Then I picked up the suitcase and walked out. I went to stay in a hotel. I called Jared and ranted and raved. Then I called my lawyer. I don’t think I ever hated anyone as much as I hated Katelyn that night.”

“I don’t blame you for being angry,” I said. “It must have felt like a terrible betrayal.”

“It took a few days,” he continued, “but I calmed down, eventually. When practicalities entered into it, I had to be logical and admit that she was right about one thing, at least. I couldn’t be the one to take care of Logan because of my hours at work, and despite everything, I couldn’t deny that she was a great mother. She loved him more than anything. She took him to the library and the park every day, taught him how to bake cookies and play the piano. She was always there for him during the day. I would have liked to be, but I couldn’t just quit my practice.”

“That must have been hard, to surrender to that.”

Chris took another sip of his wine. “At first I thought it was just a phase Katelyn was going through—like some kind of early mid-life crisis—and eventually she’d dump Joe and want our comfortable life back. I asked myself if I’d ever be able to forgive her when she came running back to me—so that we could be a family again for Logan’s sake—but she was really in love with that guy. And I knew on some level that he wasn’t a bad person. Logan liked him and all I wanted was for Logan to be happy.”

“I’m amazed you can say that,” I said. “I think I’d be pretty steamed if Ethan had left me for another woman. I would have hated her for stealing him away.”

Suddenly I remembered my dream where Ethan had been married to another woman named Grace. I hadn’t felt any bitterness toward Grace, but perhaps that was because in the dream, I had been the one to end our relationship. Ethan had never cheated on me, so maybe that’s why the jealousy wasn’t there.

But that was just a dream
, I reminded myself. In reality, we had never divorced. Ethan
was
dead.

“Are you okay?” Chris asked. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

I shook my head as if to clear it. “I’m sorry. I was just thinking about how relationships can be so confusing sometimes.”

“Were you thinking about Ethan?”

I nodded.

He studied my face for a moment and I felt exposed. Emotionally naked, as if he could see past the façade of cheerful, polite behavior to the real person I was inside—and see the grief that still lived in my soul. A shadow passed across his features and I knew in that instant that he recognized how adrift I was.

“But you guys were happy, weren’t you?” he asked. “You never had any problems?”

I had to think carefully about that, and found myself floating around in a sea of uncertainty. “It’s strange that you ask that question. I don’t know how to answer it, exactly, because I’ve been feeling really muddled lately.”

Chris leaned forward. “In what way?”

I was probably insane to bring it up, but I wanted to tell
someone
. Maybe it was the wine, but I felt unbelievably comfortable with Chris. Though we’d only seen each other once, and in painful circumstances, over the past fifteen years, I felt as if we’d known each other forever.

I shrugged a shoulder. “You asked about my marriage to Ethan. He’s been gone for eight years now, but I’ve been having some strange dreams lately. In one of them, I dreamed Ethan was still alive, but we were divorced and he was married to someone else. I talked to him on the phone and had a conversation that seemed very real. I also dreamed that he died when we were teenagers and we never had the chance to get married at all.” I took a deep breath. “Now that you’re asking about our marriage, I’m not sure which of those three scenarios to tell you about. They all feel so real to me. It’s like I’ve had three different lives, and they’re all running parallel to each other. Sometimes, lately, I don’t know where I am.”

Chris inclined his head with a look of concern. “If it helps, I can tell you for sure that I was at his funeral eight years ago, and there really was an accident with a drunk driver, so the phone conversation you had with him had to have been a dream.”

My face flushed with heat. I waved a hand, suddenly embarrassed. “I know… Of course that’s what happened. Dreams can just feel so vivid sometimes.” I picked up my wine and fought to get a handle on the conversation. “So…to answer your question, Ethan and I had a really good marriage and it was devastating when I lost him. Tyler too.” My voice softened as I looked out at the pink sky over the water. “I thought we’d be together forever.”

Chris reached for my hand and held it.

I swallowed over a painful lump in my throat and looked down at his hand upon mine. He had a long, thin scar running from his knuckle to his wrist bone. I traced it with the pad of my thumb.

“It’s hard when life doesn’t turn out the way you expect it to,” I said. “One minute, you imagine a certain future for yourself, then it’s ripped right out from under you. It’s like getting thrown out of a speeding car on a dark, winding road. Suddenly you’re bruised and disoriented, stuck somewhere all alone with no way to get home, not even knowing which direction to turn. Then you start walking, and you get holes in your shoes and your feet hurt. You’re hobbling and you can’t find your way back. You just become more and more lost.”

Chris nodded his head and entwined his fingers through mine. “That’s exactly how I’ve been feeling for the past four years, ever since Katelyn threw me out. Then…to find out about Logan being sick… None of it was what I imagined would happen.” His eyes met mine. “Do you think we’ll ever get back into another car and know where we’re going? Do you ever think we’ll be able to jam our foot onto the gas pedal and press down hard?”

Our fingers caressed and interwove. “I don’t know. After a certain point, there’s just so much baggage to drag. It’s hard not to be overly cautious and want to hit the brakes at every turn, or pull over and come to a full stop. To just stay put.”

We sat in silence for a long while. Buffy was curled up, asleep next to the barbeque. The wind had died down since we’d started eating, and the water was now as calm as a mirror. In an inverted double world, it reflected the stately clouds overhead and the trees on the point.

“It’s going to be a gorgeous night,” Chris said. “How spontaneous are you?”

“Pretty spontaneous. Why?”

“I’d suggest we take the sailboat out, but there’s no wind. Could I tempt you with a rowboat ride?”

Smiling brightly, I relished the joy that rose like a bubble inside me. “You most certainly could.”

Chris gave me a mischievous look and pushed his chair back. “Then let’s get going while there’s still some of that incredible light in the sky.”

Chapter Thirty-one