When Autumn Leaves: A Novel (16 page)

Ana made sure he saw her as she entered the nursery. He was helping a customer and she casually walked past him, the orchid wrapped in tissue paper in her arms, and let herself into his office when she was sure no one was looking. A few minutes later the door opened, and Ana felt that now familiar tug in her chest at the sight of him.

“Well, this is a nice surprise! Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” Finn said, moving closer to her.

“Lunch break. I don’t have a lot of time, but I thought I’d stop by and give you this little present.”

“A present? For me? What for?”

“Because you deserve it.” She couldn’t stop herself from smiling at him. “Because I can’t stop thinking about you, and I’ll take any excuse in the book just to see you. Go ahead, open it.”

Finn took the package from her hands and gently kissed her forehead. He carefully opened the paper. “Oh my God, it’s beautiful! It’s a type of Vanda, isn’t it? A tricolor. Where on earth did you get it?”

“One of my kid’s parents. She’s been growing a whole crop of them for ages, apparently. She got the seeds from some kind of orchid enthusiast club. Do you like it?”

“I love it. Thank you.” Finn put the pot down and placed his hand on Ana’s cheek. She closed her eyes. “I’ll make sure to put it in a place where I can see it every day to remind me of you.”

His touch hot on her cheek, Ana couldn’t stand it anymore. “Finn, I . . . don’t laugh, but I . . . I just want to smell you. Is that okay?”

Finn said nothing, but he stepped back from her and raised his eyebrows. Ana drew her hand up to the collar of his shirt, an old flannel that he was wearing over a tee. She slid two fingers inside at the neck and pulled the material away from his skin, then took two steps so that she was right up against him. She put her nose in his collarbone and inhaled. Keeping her two fingers where they were, she walked behind him and smelled the back of his neck and the small hairs that ended where his skin began. She noticed Finn’s breathing become heavier.

Ana walked around to face him once again, giving him a half-smile. She turned around so that her back was up against his chest. Finn tried to return the caress, but Ana pulled away. She wasn’t done. She grabbed his right arm and let it rest flat against her hip. Tenderly, she rolled up his cuff, making perfect folds until it sat neatly at his elbow. Then she picked up his hand with both of hers and smelled the length of his forearm. She stopped at his wrist and let her nose and her lips settle there to breathe him in. Then, without even thinking about the consequences, she pushed her tongue through her teeth and licked the exposed skin in one straight line. At his wrist, where his veins looked like a winter tree, she circled her tongue slowly two or three times. Finn moaned and spun Ana around.

Ana’s eyes opened and her breathing concentrated in her chest, making it heave up and down in a rhythm that was much faster than normal. Slowly Finn kissed her, kissed her eyes and her nose and the side of her neck. When he finally moved to her lips, she felt almost faint. The feel of his mouth against her own sent a jolt that made her momentarily stiffen and then melt into the shape of his body. The kiss, which started out gentle and soft, swiftly moved into something hot and restless. Finn slid his hand down to her buttocks and picked her up, carrying her over to the desk. Her legs wrapped around him, her fingers wound around his hair. The need she felt was so intense that she momentarily forgot where she was. Something in the back of her mind, however, made her open her eyes, and the sight of Finn’s small office brought her back to reality.

“Finn, honey, stop . . . please.”

Finn stopped and looked at her. “Ana, for Chrissakes, don’t ask me to stop now.”

“Finn!” Ana spun out of his arms. “I’m not going to do this here. It’s too dangerous, and we deserve more than fifteen minutes on a desk. Come on, I want you all to myself for hours and hours. I can’t go back and teach a class after something like this.”

“Ana, I love you. I mean it.”

“You misunderstand me, Finn. The timing is what’s wrong, that’s all.”

“Well when is it going to be right?” Finn was visibly in distress. “Ana, I want to be with you so badly it’s killing me. If not here, then where? Where are these hours that you talk about magically going to appear?”

“I thought we agreed that we weren’t going to take this next step until we figured out what we were going to do about what happens afterwards.” She looked him in the eye. “Are you going to leave Ginny, Finn? I’ve already given my heart and soul to you; the only thing I have left is my body. If I give that to you too, where does that leave me? How am I supposed to function in a marriage when I have absolutely nothing of myself left to give my husband? If we do this, then I’m afraid it means that we do . . . the whole thing. Stop lying, stop denying, and really be together. Are you ready for that, Finn?”

He had distanced himself from her, looking away from her, past her. “I don’t know, Ana.”

“No, and neither do I, but . . . I . . . ” Ana stopped, though she knew she had to say the dark and horrible thing that had been really bothering her lately. The thing that hadn’t been clear in the beginning, but was coming more and more into focus each day. She put her fingers up to the skin around her eyes, unconsciously trying to smooth out the fine, almost invisible lines. “What if we’re doomed, Finn? I mean, what we’ve done is so wrong. Falling in love, that’s not wrong. But the lying, the betrayal: those are wrong on every level. We know now how big this thing is between us. But every day, every day we go home to our families with this secret. Every night we get into bed with different people. And it would kill them if they knew that as we lie there, we are wishing they were someone else. Can the universe really repay this kind of behavior with a ‘happily ever after’? Do we even deserve one?”

There was silence between them. Ana’s words were ugly, like a jinx. Maybe Finn had been thinking something similar, but he never would have said it. Why had she had to say it?

“So what, Ana? What should we do then?” Finn spat out angrily.

“I don’t know.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I don’t know, but I know I love you, and I can’t continue to function like this. It isn’t healthy. We have to do something.”

“Yeah. But what?”

Ana could no longer speak. All she could do was shake her head and walk out the door.

Getting through the rest of her afternoon was nearly impossible. Teaching twenty nine-year-olds was challenging at the best of times. But that day, after the final bell rang and her kids had left, she literally sank in her chair and put her head on the big oak desk in front of her. Retail therapy suddenly seemed like an excellent idea.

Ana parked her car across the street from Justy Bluehorn’s at exactly 2:45 p.m. She knew spending a small fortune on a pair of shoes probably wouldn’t go very far in terms of alleviating her guilt. But she also knew that on some level it would make her feel good, pretty, even optimistic. Ana put one feeling aside so she could experience the other.

In the rounded Dutch door of Justy’s shop, Ana closed her eyes and allowed herself one full moment to breathe that perfect smell of leather and dye and something else, something exotic that she couldn’t name. Being this close to so many beautiful shoes did something to her spiritually.

“Hey there, Ana.”

Ana’s eyes flew open, and she threw Justy a coy smile. “Hey yourself there, Mister. How are you?”

“Not as good as you, apparently. You look like you might just sprout wings and float. Life must be good.” Justy examined her a little.

Ana knew Justy well enough to believe it was unwise to let him look for too long or too close. His instincts were uncanny. “Life is good,” she said. “But . . . complicated.”

“Well, maybe that’s why it’s so good, then.”

Ana just smiled. There was no way he was going to bait her into saying anything. She chided herself momentarily for even mentioning complications. But Justy did that, made you say things that weren’t even on your mind.

“So, what can I help you with today? What do you need?” he asked innocently.

“Oh, I don’t
need
anything,” Ana replied. “But I
want
a pair of your shoes. Something sexy and totally impractical. And for God’s sake, please don’t ask me why. Shoes are about all the therapy I can handle right now.”

Justy stood back. “Ana, I’ve known you since you were a girl.”

“I’m well aware, Justy.”

“You are wearing this thing, missy. I won’t make you tell me what it is, but I want you to know that I know.”

Ana stopped herself from huffing. The arrogance! “Well of course you do, Justy,” she said, deferring to his arrogance.

“Not much gets by you, but at the end of the day, you are nothing if not discreet. So what you got?” She sat and slipped out of her shoes.

“Now, if I were a responsible man, I would give you a pair of these chocolate driving moccasins,” he said as he held up a gorgeous pair of shoes. Then he put them down again. “But seeing as I am a cobbler in this day and age, you already know responsible isn’t exactly my thing. So how about these?” Like a magician, he seemed to pull the single shoe out of nowhere. It was a black, stiletto snakeskin, with just a hint of a platform and a peekaboo toe.

“Oh, you glorious beautiful thing, you.” Ana slipped it onto her foot. Of course it fit. Justy never had to ask what someone’s size was. You never tried on more than one shoe in Justy’s store unless you were going to buy more than one pair. “Where’s the other one?”

“You sure now, Ana? These shoes are serious business,” Justy said, his face as straight as a stretch of road.

“Just give me the other one, Justy.”

The old man rolled his eyes and scooped up the twin from a bottom shelf.

“I’ll take them, please.” They made her feel like the kind of woman who walked down the street and was stared at and fantasized about. Like the kind of woman who had a lot of sex, and all of it good. Finn made her feel the same way. She couldn’t walk down the street with Finn on her arm, but she could walk down the street with these shoes on her feet.

“Okay, Ana.” Justy softened. “Everyone deserves at least one pair of bad girl shoes.”

Ana fished her credit card out of her wallet and handed it over. She didn’t even bother asking the price. It would probably nauseate her. She closed her eyes, thinking about the things she had to juggle into her day—Russ, Jacob, Finn, work, grading papers. She realized she had forgotten all her stress for these blessed moments in the shop, and it all came rushing back to her.

Justy returned the credit card slip for her to sign on an old-fashioned service tray. “What is it?”

She sighed. “Nothing. I just have a lot to do. And sometimes I feel like, I don’t know, like . . . time just screws with me. I have so much to do and like five minutes to do it in. You know what I’m saying?”

“Sure I do, honey.” Justy helped her stand and put a reassuring arm around her waist, as if he were about to lead her out onto the dance floor. “But you just bought these shoes here. And the owner of these shoes isn’t a slave to time. That’s far too gauche for her. So relax and take all the time you need.”

Ana laughed and gave him a kiss on the cheek. The door tinkled and chimed behind her as she closed it. She got in her car and rested her head against the seat. Ana looked at her watch, and then tapped its face. It said 2:46; according to her watch, she had only been in Justy’s store for one minute. Ana groaned as she mentally added the repair shop to her list. Then she looked at the clock on her dash. 2:46. She shook her head. She was probably just losing her mind.

The situation was past the point of being something she could simply figure out on her own. She needed an unbiased opinion. When Ana finally made up her mind to tell someone, she felt a pressure lift from the place between her shoulders. She did need help, and she knew exactly where to go to get it.

Ana told her son that he would have to stay at school in the day care program for a couple of hours. He seemed neither pleased nor displeased, reacting with a resolved indifference more suited to an old man than a boy of just under ten. This was her fault entirely, her feelings for Finn having made her de-prioritize Russ in her life. He, in turn, had begun to extract himself little by little from her. She was losing him because of her distraction. Before she left, she gave Russ a huge hug, smothering him in her arms and kissing the side of his face. She had told him she loved him, and he responded, instinctively knowing her desperation, by letting her run through the emotional good-bye without trying to squirm himself away.