Just Like Heaven (13 page)

“I’m not.”

“—or gay—”

“I’m not.”

“—or where you live.”

“Rocky Hill.”

“The Old Grist Mill was quite a schlep for you.”

He did a quick calculation in his head. “You’re not exactly close to home yourself.”

“Why did you come here?” she asked. “I mean, how on earth did you end up at a steak place an hour and a half away from home?”

“It’s Scott’s favorite place. He grew up two towns over.” Turnabout was fair play. “How did you end up here?” He executed a perfect Mr. Spock eyebrow lift. “A steak place?”

“I know, I know.” Her sense of humor was obviously intact. “Not exactly where you’d expect to find a cardiac patient one week out, is it?”

“Not exactly.”

“Paul’s idea. He wanted someplace—” She stopped. “You can figure it out, right?”

“Romantic.”

“Yep.” She gestured toward the inn nestled in a stand of oaks and maples. “Nothing says romance like candlelight and dead cows.”

He threw back his head and laughed loudly enough to stop conversation across the parking lot. “You’re the second person in the last twenty minutes to reference dead cows. Glad we talked after I finished the porterhouse.”

“So Episcopalians like their beef, do they?”

“Some of us do.”

She nodded. “Good to know.”

Was this what happy felt like? He used to be good at being happy. He wouldn’t mind trying it again.

“It seems we’re destined to keep running into each other, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t mind,” he said. “Do you?”

“No,” she said, “I don’t mind at all.”

“Some people would call this the hand of God at work.”

“Or the hand of fate.”

“I’m a God’s-plan kind of guy.”

“I kind of figured that out, Father Mark Kerry.”

“And you’re a hand-of-fate kind of woman?”

“Twelve years at St. Aloysius will do that to you.”

“Twelve years in the same school? This isn’t
Little House on the Prairie
territory.”

She swatted him lightly on the arm. “St. Aloysius provided a quality education from kindergarten through senior year of high school. Once they got you, you stayed got.” She shot him a sly look. “At least until you graduated.”

He had a score of questions he wanted to ask her, but this wasn’t the time or the place and, quite frankly, he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t be crossing some invisible social boundary. Silence was a good substitute. A companionable silence, even better. He had never been with someone like her before. It didn’t matter if they were laughing, talking, or looking up at the stars: he felt fully connected to her just the same.

“Looks like court adjourned for the night,” she whispered as Scott, Marcy, and the angry guy strolled across the parking lot toward them. “Listen, I didn’t mean to railroad you into lunch on Tuesday. If you want to cancel, I promise there won’t be any hard feelings.”

“Do you want me to cancel?”

“No,” she said. “Do you want to cancel?”

“I don’t want to cancel.”

“Then I guess it’s settled.”

“Good.”

“One o’clock at my house.”

“I’ll be there.”

“I’m counting on it.”

“Okay, you two, what was all the whispering about?” Marcy teased. “You were thick as thieves over here.”

“Mark is coming over for lunch this week and we were confirming the day and time.” She said it easily and naturally as if that was all that had been going on between them.

Then again maybe it was. Maybe he’d gotten it all wrong and the sparks he saw arcing between them in the early spring darkness were all in his imagination, like the memory of love.

 
“Looks like Maeve left the porch light on for you,” Paul said as he turned in to Kate’s driveway. “I feel like it’s senior year all over again.”

Kate was silent as memories of that tumultuous year rose up before her.

“Bad choice of years,” he said. “Sorry.”

Senior year of high school was supposed to be about college applications and prom dresses, not morning sickness and maternity bras.

“At least it had a happy ending,” she said, wishing she could get this crying thing under control. “I had a beautiful baby girl to show for it.” And a seventeen-year-old husband who was man enough to shoulder his half of the burden and more. “When I look back I understand why Maeve was half out of her mind with worry. It could have been a train wreck.”

Paul nodded in the darkness. “We didn’t know what we didn’t know. We thought we had life by the balls.”

“I don’t know if I’d go that far.” Sixteen and pregnant was hardly a position of power for any girl. “I was pretty uncertain about the future.”

“You? I never saw anyone more determined to make her way in the world than you.”

“Are we talking about the same girl?” She remembered herself as a needy, insecure teenager who didn’t know which end was up.

“You’re strong, Kate. You always have been. There was never any doubt that you’d find a way to be successful.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I think.”

He groaned and let his head fall back against the head rest. “What I’m trying to say is we all did well for ourselves. We all came from the same background and we all managed to climb a few rungs higher on the ladder.”

“All that because my mother left the porch light on?” she teased. “You’re worse than Proust.”

“You can invite me in for coffee,” he said. “We haven’t had a chance to talk yet.”

“Paul, I hope you don’t mind if I beg off tonight. I’m not quite up to full speed yet.”

He wasn’t a stupid man. He knew what she wasn’t saying. “I fucked it up, didn’t I?”

She took his hand and gave it a quick squeeze. “You couldn’t if you tried.”

“He’s all wrong for you,” he said as they walked to the front door.

She loved her friend too much to pretend she didn’t understand.

Nine

“I’m going home today,” Gwynn announced over breakfast the next morning. “Monday lunch is usually pretty busy and Aidan can use the help.”

Kate managed to keep her mouth shut but it wasn’t easy. Last Monday, just before the heart attack, her daughter had said the opposite was true.

“You can take my Miata,” Kate offered. “I can’t drive for another couple of weeks.”

“I’d offer my VW,” Maeve said, “but I have an appointment tomorrow in Paramus.”

Gwynn beamed them both a happy smile. “Thanks, both of you, but Andrew is driving up to get me.”

Kate focused on her egg-white omelet.

“When is he coming?” Maeve asked as she slathered raspberry preserves on a slice of unbuttered whole-wheat bread.

Gwynn looked at the microwave clock. “In about twenty minutes.”

“He’s welcome to stay for breakfast,” Kate said. “Unless he actually likes his eggs with yolks in them.”

“That’s okay.” Gwynn looked charmingly uncertain and more than a little in love. “He’s been up since four. He had breakfast a long time ago.”

“He can at least come in for coffee,” Maeve said. “It’s a long drive.”

Paradise Point was two hours away from Coburn and that was without traffic.

“Coffee sounds good.” Gwynn glanced over at her mother. “I really want you to meet him, Mom. I know you think he’s—”

“I don’t think anything, honey. I barely know him.” The little white lie. Where would civilization be without it?

“Exactly! He’s really nervous about you and Maeve and I thought maybe this would make the first time less scary.”

“We’re scary?” Kate looked over at her mother, who would probably get a bestseller out of this exchange. “Did you know we’re scary?”

“Of course we’re scary,” Maeve said, reaching for another slice of toast. “Matriarchs are powerful figures who are meant to inspire awe.”

“Gwynnie didn’t say we’re awesome,” Kate corrected her, “she said we were scary.”

“But scary in a good way,” Gwynn said, then started to laugh. “You know what I mean.”

“And what did you mean by ‘first time’?” Kate asked as she polished off the last of her fake eggs. “We’ve met Andrew before.”

“I mean, first time since I told you our news.”

So there it was again. She had hoped the whole getting married thing would blow over like a spring storm, but no such luck. She had two options: she could ignore the situation and pretend it didn’t exist (which was very tempting) or dive in with both feet and hope she remembered how to swim.

The old Kate would have pushed the matter into the bottom drawer of her file cabinet and ignored it the way she ignored most anything of a highly charged emotional nature. The new Kate, however, found she needed to know.

“What did your father have to say?”

Some of Gwynn’s sparkle dimmed. “He was cool with it.”

“Was he?”

“He didn’t go ballistic, if that’s what you mean.”

“So he thinks you should wait.”

Gwynn shot her mother a look. “You probably told him what to say.”

“I didn’t tell him anything.”

“Right,” Gwynne said. “Like you didn’t get your whole agenda out there while I was arranging those stupid flowers.”

“Your mother didn’t say a word,” Maeve said. “I was there and—”

“Thanks, but I don’t need you to defend me, Maeve.” Kate’s temper was approaching the boiling point. “Your father makes up his own mind, Gwynn, and if he went ballistic, as you put it, then he went ballistic on his own. I had absolutely nothing to do with it.”

“But he—”

“Your father was even more delighted than I was that you were going back to school for your master’s. We love you, Gwynn, and we want the best for you.” She wiped tears from her eyes with a quick swipe of her hand. Damn these stupid unpredictable emotions anyway. It was so much easier to make your point when you weren’t sniveling like a schoolgirl.

“I think I know what’s best for me.” Gwynn’s spine was every bit as strong as her mother’s and grandmother’s.

“Waiting tables at a dockside restaurant while your husband floats around on a fishing boat? I don’t think so.”

“You’re a snob,” Gwynn said. “I never realized it before, but you are.”

“I resent that.”

“Gwynn has a point,” Maeve said. “You are a bit of a snob, sweetie, just like your father was.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it,” Kate shot back, “since I never met the gentleman.” Her father, the oldest son of a well-known senator, split with Maeve a few weeks before Kate’s birth and wasn’t heard from again.

“This is what always happens,” Gwynn shouted over the din. “We’re supposed to be talking about me, about
my
life, and somehow you two always manage to bring it back to your problems.”

“Problems?” Maeve looked shocked. “We don’t have problems, do we, Kate?”

“Problems?” Kate asked, wide-eyed. “Us?”

Thank God, even Gwynn laughed.

“All Andrew wants to do is come in for a minute and say hi.” Gwynn hesitated. “And to give you some flowers.” She took a deep shuddery breath Kate could hear from six feet away. “He wanted to visit you in the hospital but he would have had to turn down a three-day trip and we really need the money.”