Touching Stars (27 page)

“Ariel,” she said without thinking.

“But he’s here with
you,
not with her.”

“Because of the boys.”

“Because
you
offered him a home again,” he said gently. “Gayle, you brought him back because you thought he needed you. But really, who needed who? Have you asked yourself? Because I think you have to. It’s now or never.”

Hours later she was still thinking of things she should have said to Travis. The boys were off with friends, and the guests were busy on their own. Without the sound of sneakers squeaking across the floor, the roar of video games, the carriage house seemed twice as large as usual. She’d made herself a salad and eaten only a few bites. Then, since no one was at home, she’d let herself into Noah and Dillon’s room for another session with Buddy.

She had decided almost from Buddy’s arrival that she wanted to use him to surprise Noah, who was obviously having a difficult summer. She had tried and failed to come up with a surefire way to retrieve the good-natured, happy kid Noah had been before Eric came back. There wasn’t any easy way, she knew, but it had occurred to her almost immediately that teaching Buddy to talk would make Noah smile. After all, it shouldn’t be hard. Eric and Dillon had been told that the little parakeet talked when they bought him. A refresher course was in order, that was all.

Buddy was chirping away when she walked into the boys’ bedroom. She rolled Noah’s desk chair over to the cage and put her nose against the bars.

“No place like home,” she said clearly. “No place like home.”

She’d chosen her phrase carefully. It was the punch line of a joke she and Noah shared. As a child, he had been entranced by
The Wizard of Oz,
watching the video so often that he had memorized large chunks of the dialogue. Now, as a teenager, whenever she asked him to do something he didn’t want to do, he closed his eyes, clicked his heels and said…

“No place like home.” Gayle wiggled her finger at the little bird, whose eyes were white with excitement. “No place like home.”

Fifteen minutes later, Buddy was chattering away, but nothing resembling words emerged. She gave up and went back downstairs.

She was just pulling the salad out of the refrigerator again when someone knocked on the door. Before she could open it, Eric did.

“May I come in?”

She was in no mood for another confrontation, but during their marriage she and Eric had agreed on the value of sweeping problems under the rug. That which couldn’t be solved was usually never mentioned again. So, hoping the rule was still in force, she nodded.

“I brought you something.” He stepped inside and flashed the largest bouquet of flowers she had ever seen. “I’m not sure which are your favorites these days, so I sort of overdid it and bought everything I could find.”

“Master of the grand gesture.” She was afraid her voice betrayed her reaction. She was touched, surprised—and pleased. After the talk with Travis, the last frightened her.

“If you’re going to make a gesture, go all out.” He held the flowers out to her.

She met him halfway across the room. The flowers filled her arms. Lilies, stock and roses added a cool, sweet fragrance to the air. She buried her nose in the midst of them and tried to think of something to say.

Eric spoke before she could. “Gayle, I’m sorry. I really am. I had no business doing what I did. I really thought you’d be pleased, but it was stupid to make assumptions. We’ll go over your plans, and I’ll put everything back the way you wanted it.”

She looked up at him. “Give me a few days to figure that out.”

“Sure. It’s going to take that long just to haul out the stuff I’ve already wrecked.”

“Did it make you feel better?”

“What, making you angry?”

She had to smile. “No, wielding the sledgehammer and crowbar with such abandon.”

He sent her his most winning smile, the one that had reduced the younger Gayle to mush. “You have no idea. A couple of weeks on a wrecking crew and I’d be in great mental shape.”

“Then at least we can call it therapy.”

“I’m forgiven?”

“You never used to apologize.”

He raised a brow. “It would be a mistake to assume I’ve stayed exactly the same for twelve years.”

She wondered how much he had changed. Since his arrival, she’d seen both the Eric she remembered and hints of someone more mature and responsible. Certainly he was trying hard to make up to his sons for years of benign neglect.

“You’re forgiven,” she said. “And the flowers are beautiful. Thank you.”

“Have you had dinner yet?”

“I tried. Salad just doesn’t appeal tonight.”

“Let me take you out. One of your guests was raving about an Italian restaurant in Edinburg.”

A warning alarm sounded in her head. Yes, it was perfectly acceptable for them to go out to dinner together. No, after her talk with Travis, she wasn’t inclined to do it. She felt confused in ways she hadn’t for years, vulnerable and wary and altogether too open to suggestion. She didn’t want to sit with Eric over a bottle of wine and reminisce.

“Another night,” she said. “You’ll like the restaurant. It reminds me of—” And then she realized she was reminiscing anyway.

He knew immediately. “Franco’s? In Echo Park? I think of Franco’s a lot. Nobody makes a better marinara sauce. Not even in Italy.”

Old friends, old lovers, old husbands. No one else could finish sentences in quite the same way. No one else could stir up powerful memories with just a few words.

She turned toward the kitchen. “I need to put these in a vase. Or, more likely, in vases. Many vases.”

“I’ll help.”

“Great. Then I’ll make grilled-cheese sandwiches, if that sounds good.”

“Much better than going out alone.”

The flowers filled three vases, large ones, and Eric helped her set them in the living area and on the kitchen table. The third one she took into her bedroom. She’d put the most fragrant flowers in this one so she could enjoy them in the darkness, too.

Back in the kitchen, she found Eric pulling cheese and bread from the refrigerator.

“Cheddar or Swiss?” he asked.

“I like Swiss.”

“Dijon or deli mustard?”

“Dijon for me.”

“Whole wheat or rye?”

“Let’s try rye.”

She got out the frying pan and the butter. He made the sandwiches. Neither of them spoke until dinner was sizzling in the pan.

Eric leaned against the counter, arms folded. “I had a really good swimming lesson with Dillon. He’s learning to float. By the time we finished he was floating on his own for half a minute. I think we turned a corner. He even did a couple of laps in the pool without fussing.”

“It’ll be such a relief to know he’s not afraid of the water. I live in fear he’ll end up in the river and panic.”

“He’s quite a kid. I’ve missed out on a lot.”

He’d surprised her again. She decided to be generous. “The two of you got off to a bad start.”

“My fault, of course. But I had myself pegged. I wasn’t ready to be a father of three, and I knew it. What I didn’t get was that I had to step up to the plate anyway.”

She flipped the sandwiches, more for something to do than because they needed it.

She put down the spatula and faced him. “You’ve stepped up to it this summer, Eric. That’s worth a lot.”

“If I find my sons again, before they’re lost to me completely, it’s because you made it possible.”

Before she realized what she was doing, she reached out and touched his cheek. She hadn’t noticed the welt when he’d walked in, his face half-hidden by gladiolas and sunflowers. But now she realized he’d had an encounter with something even angrier than his ex-wife. “What happened here?”

“A hornet.”

“Did you put something on it?”

He shrugged.

“Men,” she said wryly. “Just like your sons. It’s some weird rite of passage. One moment the boys wanted me to kiss every boo-boo, the next they didn’t even want to tell me they’d broken their arms or sprained their ankles.”

“They broke arms?”

“Jared, one arm and a dislocated shoulder. Noah?” She tried to remember. “A collarbone. And numerous sprains. Dillon? Oh, that list goes on and on. He’s afraid of the water and not one bit afraid of anything else. He’s fallen out of trees on his head, tripped over his own feet and broken his nose, suffered shin splints and a toe fracture, inflamed tendons. They greet him in the emergency room like some sort of mascot.”

She flicked off the burner. “Let’s get something on that sting.”

“Why didn’t I know about all those injuries?”

“You were a little far away to haul them to the hospital. I figured they would tell you if you called, but of course they didn’t want to sound like babies.”

“Don’t worry about the sting. The swelling will go down.”

“And now I know where they get their male stoicism.”

She left and returned with the first-aid kit. “The sooner I do this, the sooner we’ll eat.”

“You sound like somebody’s mother.”

“That’s what happens, I’m afraid. Find a chair.”

He laughed, but he went over to the table and took a seat. Gayle followed, rummaging through the kit. “Did you remove the stinger?”

“I was a little busy keeping Dillon afloat.”

“It’s a good thing you didn’t have an allergic reaction.” She put her hand under his chin and tilted his face toward her. “Just a minute.” She left to turn up the light to its brightest setting. Then she returned and tilted his chin again. “Nope, you didn’t get it. Now that the area’s so swollen, it’s going to be harder.”

“Let’s call it a badge of honor and forget it.”

“Let’s not. It might continue to swell.” She squeezed a little, and when he didn’t wince, she squeezed harder. “I think I can scrape it out if you can hold still.”

“I’m a model stoic, remember?”

She patted his cheek and went into the bedroom, returning with a credit card. “Okay. You’re about to benefit from my American Express.”

He laughed until she began to carefully scrape it along the site of the sting. “Ouch.”

“Sorry. Give me another second. We’re almost there.”

She was able to free the stinger, and she wiped it away with a handy paper napkin. “I couldn’t use tweezers. Sometimes the venom sac is still attached, and squeezing can release it.”

He put his hand to his cheek. “How do you learn this stuff?”

“We have three sons who regularly find yellow-jacket nests the hard way.” She straightened. “Okay, that’s the worst of it. I’ll get you some ice to put on it, which next time you should do immediately.”

He stood, but she hadn’t moved away quickly enough. They were chest to chest, her nose to his chin. She took a step backward and looked up at him. Eric touched her hair, pushing a strand off her cheek.

Neither said anything for a long moment; then he spoke, his voice soft. “After I moved out for good, it took years to get over the feeling I was coming back. I’d think, gosh, I have to remember to tell Gayle about this, or I’d see something at a market or in a shop that would suit you and find myself heading over to buy it.”

For a moment she couldn’t seem to remember how to breathe.

“And then…I’d remember,” he said.

“And what came next? Relief? Sadness? Gratitude that we’d both moved on?”

“A mixture, I guess. But more sadness than I think you give me credit for.” He dropped his hand.

“Sometimes it takes a while to realize something’s ended.”

“Relationships change, but they don’t end unless somebody dies. And even then…”

“Being married ended. Putting each other first ended.” She hesitated. “As it should have. Did you ever regret the divorce? Really and truly? Because I don’t think I did. I was sad, too.” Sadder, she supposed than she wanted to admit. At the time,
sad
would have been a poor choice of words.

“I was sorry it had come to that,” he said.

She squared her shoulders a fraction. “Me, too, but I never really doubted we’d done what we had to.”

“I regretted I couldn’t be somebody I’m not.”

She wondered how often and for how long. It wasn’t in Eric’s nature to spend time pondering past errors or the things that made him tick. His life zoomed by on fast-forward, and there had never been a pause button.

“I regretted I couldn’t be the woman who sat at home and endlessly waited for you,” she said. “But I’m enough like you that I needed to keep moving, too.”

He laughed, but it sounded forced. “I wonder why we didn’t figure all this out ahead of time?”

“Youth? Ignorance?”

He shook his head slowly. “No. I don’t know why I asked the question, because I know the answer. We couldn’t figure it out because we were blinded by love. And it colored everything we were and everything we did for all those years we were together. Say what you will about our differences, but that was one thing we always agreed on.”