When We Were Friends (29 page)

“You like?” I said.

“I
love
! For selfish reasons too, since I’m sure seeds from all the weeds you killed were making it down the street and planting themselves in my lawn. Leah, this is Jack, the man who serves as, but will never be, my husband.”

“That’s because I’m too good for you.” Jack walked up the path, arm extended. “Susie told me about you. You be around for our barbecue?”

I stood and took his hand. “Barbecue?”

“She hasn’t been invited yet,” Susie said. “Tell Alex our July barbecue bash is on the nineteenth, and that you’re both coming. Molly too, obviously.”

“Well thanks, but we’re actually leaving in a few days. Wish I could make it, though.”

“You’re not leaving. I hardly got to know you!”

I smiled. “Wish I could stay, but there’s only so much advantage I can take of Alex.”

“Well if that’s the only reason you’re leaving, forget about it. I know Alex, and he’s lonely as hell; needs something to pull him away from his dang computer. It’s been tough for him living out here on his own, especially with everything he’s been through and the issues with his mom and his sister. And I have a feeling there’s even more about him that we don’t know. He’s a pretty complex man, and he hates talking about himself, but you can tell he’s troubled.”

I wanted to ask what she meant, what exactly he’d “been through,” but she seemed so sure I’d know what she was talking about. And really it was bizarre that I didn’t know, that I hardly knew anything about his past, that we’d talked about almost everything, but not about his family.

“I guess he thought he could come out here to get away from it all. He should’ve realized in a place like this all you have is your thoughts, so they grow. But it must be so healing having you and Molly here. So.” She smiled. “You’re all coming, ’kay?”

I started to apologize, but she interrupted me. “Just tell Alex it’ll be very chichi so he should bring something fabulous. You, all you need to bring is the baby. Where is she anyway? And how come you were sitting on the ground?”

“She’s inside with Alex.” I held up my blank sketch pad. “And I’m trying to get inspired by the garden, sketch it so I can make a mural of it someday.”

“You paint murals?” Jack said. “Well we’ve always wished we had a mural! Of the beach where I grew up in Kennebunk. Are you any good?”

They lived together? I didn’t think they were lovers; Susie’s gaze when she turned to him was obviously adoring, but Jack’s purple sweats and a certain manner about him suggested that probably wasn’t possible. I could imagine my relationship with Alex might’ve turned into this if I’d been able to stay long-term, a lopsided friendship, him gently accommodating, me wanting something I could never have. “I won’t be here long enough to do a mural, but I could sketch an idea for you, and you could try and do it on your own. Beaches are pretty easy.”

“We have the drawing talent of prehistoric humanoids,” Susie said, “so don’t waste your time unless you think you’ll be able to paint it yourself. But I thought we already settled that you’re staying? We need a baby in the neighborhood, and fresh blood to spice things up, since this street usually has the pizzazz of bingo night at a retirement home. I’ll tell Alex that, and maybe he’ll be convinced to hold you hostage.”

“She’d probably handcuff you to the porch herself,” Jack said, “except then you couldn’t paint our mural.” He held up his hand. “The nineteenth?”

I bit back a smile. “Nice to meet you,” I said, waving back.

After they’d gone I sat back down, luxuriating in simple contentedness. I set my sketchbook on my lap and started to work, penciling in a garden path, a trellis climbing with ivy, multicolored scribbles to suggest the flowers, absorbing myself in the scritch of lead on paper and the paradise I was creating.

I don’t know how long it was I was sitting there when I heard a small shuffling behind me and turned to see Alex sitting next to me, cradling Molly in his lap. I startled, slashing a green mark across my penciled sky. “How long’ve you been there?”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I love watching you work, you have this … intensity. You’re a lot more complex than you let on, which makes me want to know you better.”

My face flushed. “You’ll be disappointed.”

“I don’t think so,” he said softly, then, “I guess Pamela’s gone? I really liked her.”

“Yeah, me too. She’s one of the few people in the world who gets me. And likes me in spite of it.”

Molly scrambled off Alex’s lap, reached for a pink petunia, squashed it in her fist and then brought it to her mouth. I pried it from her fingers as Alex reached for the sketchbook. “Pretty,” he said. “Kind of ethereal.” He flipped back through the pages, slowly. “Wow, you’re really talented.” He looked up at me, his eyes bright with appreciation. “You painted murals of all these?”

“Most of them, yeah.” I felt a little heart skip of pride. “And thanks.”

“I should’ve realized how talented you are. You have that look about you, a kind of graceful look.”

“Well thanks. But I’m about as graceful as an industrial dump truck.” I leaned back on my hands. “A
drunk
industrial dump truck.”

“I don’t mean that kind of graceful, I mean
grace
-ful. Someone with grace. You need grace to be an artist.”

I smiled like I knew what he was talking about and was accepting the compliment. What did that mean exactly? Who used the word “grace” outside of church and New Year’s Eve? I said it to myself once, practicing, and then again:
You are a woman with grace
. I’d have to look the word up when I got inside.

He turned to a sketch I’d made for a two-year-old, of the characters from
The Wind in the Willows:
Mole and Ratty, Mr. Toad of Toad Hall, standing in a circle in the woods. He looked at it a good two minutes and then said, “You can just tell, looking at this, what a good mom you are. Just from the kindness in their faces.”

There was something melancholy in his voice I couldn’t interpret. “You okay?” I said instead.

“What? Sure, I’m fine.”

“I’ve never heard anybody say the word ‘sure’ with less conviction.” I reached to touch his hand, then wondered if that might be inappropriate, so pulled back. Figuring out appropriateness was so complex when it involved a man who thought he knew who you were but actually didn’t, who was unknowingly letting you hide out in his house with a kidnapped baby, who maybe had a girlfriend or maybe didn’t, on whom you kind of had a crush but knew the chances of him
ever feeling the same were less than zero point zero one percent. It was not your typical Miss Manners situation.

“It’s just that I’m looking at this drawing and thinking how you are with Molly and then about everything you’ve been through. Realizing the world should be this simple and this good, but that it never comes even close.” He shook his head. “Sorry, I’m sounding morose. It’s just I had a completely crappy phone conversation with an old friend, and our conversations never end well. We have what you could call a twisted past that manages to dig under and uproot every conversation.”

I watched him a moment, then said, “It’s okay, you don’t have to talk about it.” I waited, on the off chance he might actually want to talk about it. When he didn’t go on, I added, “But I’m a good listener, so if you ever need a shoulder, here I am.” I patted my shoulder, then got immediately profoundly embarrassed at myself. I might as well shake him, my hands around his neck, screaming, “Just tell me!”

“Thanks,” he said, then handed back my sketchbook. He bent toward me and, for a tortured second, I was sure he was going to kiss my lips. I froze, my eyes wide, something soft but fierce ballooning inside my chest, but he just kissed my forehead softly and then stood and walked into the house.

I spent the rest of the morning in the garden with Molly, discovering earthworms and spraying water rainbows and then, since she had a penchant for sticking nearly everything in her mouth anyway, I led her to the herbs I’d planted, giving her small tastes of oregano (she was not a fan) and thyme, which she granted her tentative approval by reaching for more. I’d just given her a sprig of rosemary when I heard music start from the inside of the house, a trumpet playing “Sentimental Journey.” What did it say about a man when he enjoyed music from the ’40s? Did he identify with the earnest idealism of that time because he was himself so idealistic? Or did he just have the taste of an eighty-year-old?

Alex was in the living room on the computer. He smiled up at me and Molly, touched his cheek. “You got a little sunburn, Leah. Very flattering.”

The song on the CD changed to “In the Mood,” and to keep Alex from seeing whatever my face was showing, I started to dance with Molly across the room. “Yeah, but by tomorrow it’ll be peeling and I’ll look like I have leprosy.” I dipped Molly toward the floor, smiled at her laughter. “Star loves this song. Actually has the single, probably left from the phonograph days.”

Alex watched us a minute, and then he rose. “Hey, Moll, mind if I cut in?”

I froze, watching him approach; he took one of my hands and set his other hand on my shoulder, and we waltzed awkwardly a minute with Molly between us until he brought that hand to my waist. “Better,” he said.

I couldn’t breathe, feeling nothing but his hand, as if my whole body was centered around the skin at my waist. “I suck at dancing,” I said.

“It’s okay; me and Molly don’t, so we’ll lead and you follow.”

And so the three of us danced around the living room, Molly laughing, Alex squeezing lightly at my waist whenever he wanted to change direction, the feel of it echoing down and through me as if he were squeezing somewhere else entirely.

And then the song changed, Sinatra singing “I’ll Be Seeing You.” As I started to back away, Alex pulled Molly from me, set her on the floor and then reached for my hand and pulled me closer.

My eyes snapped wide but then, slowly, I let myself relax. I hadn’t been this close to a man since Keith, and the feel of this was completely different. Alex’s chest was muscular where Keith had been skinny, collarbone and ribs like a cage around him. And Alex’s scent was different; Keith had always smelled of cigarettes even after showering, like years of smoking had seeped into his very pores. But Alex had an innate sweetness under the scent of his Ivory soap, like fresh-cut wood. Really, exactly the way I would’ve expected him to smell.

Molly sat by our feet, smiling up at us almost conspiratorially.
It’s not really what you think
, I wanted to tell her. And myself. It was a friendly dance; friend-friends did this all the time and having never really had a man as a friend, of course my body was interpreting it as something else. Unconsciously molding myself to him, I rested my head on his shoulder, my hand against the small of his back. I could feel the whisper of his quickened breath against my ear, like fingers tracing against it. Or lips.

And then I heard ringing from inside my pocket. I glanced down, willing the sound to go away.

“Is that your phone?” Alex said softly.

“Yeah.” I pulled away. “Sorry.” Meaning mostly that I was sorry as hell I’d left my cell phone on. I reached for the phone and answered.

“Lainey!”

It was Sydney, and as soon as I heard her voice, my legs started to walk me backward from the room.

“I have to take this,” I said after I’d already reached the hall, and then I stuck my head back into the room and repeated, “I have to take this,” then strode upstairs, my heart in my throat. “Okay,” I said, “tell me what the hell’s going on. Do you know how it feels not having any idea?”

“Stop,” she said tightly, “I don’t have time for this, just listen a second, okay? This is important, something’s happened, it’s the FBI. They were interrogating me, Lainey. And I had to give them your name.”

“You what!” I said.

“I couldn’t help it, I had to. They asked for a list of the people I’d talked to the month before Jacqueline disappeared, and I had to tell them about you because there were witnesses. If I didn’t tell them and they found out we’d met, then they’d start looking deeper and we’d all be in trouble. This way they’ll think you’re just inconsequential, one of the thirty, forty people I saw.”

“But if they look me up they’ll realize I left home!” I paced across my bedroom, my heart racing. “I’m in their records, Sydney, because I asked the cops to check on my mom last week and I told them I hadn’t seen her for days, so they’re going to wonder why I left and get suspicious.”

“You called the cops?” She paused. “Well seriously, they’re so disorganized I doubt they’ll even cross-check your name. But if they ask then you can make up some story. Tell them you took your mom somewhere to help her relax, and you’ll be back in a week.”

“You don’t think they’ll ask where we are and check hotel records?”

“Well they might, I guess. So maybe you can just say you guys’ve been sleeping in your car or camping. Tell them more or less where you actually are in case they can trace your phone location, but I doubt any of this is even going to come up. Just act all friendly and
sweet and innocent, that’s what I’ve been doing, and they’ll believe all you are is friendly and sweet and innocent. And maybe you could tell them you know I’m the kind of person who’d never lie.”