The Carson Springs Trilogy: Stranger in Paradise, Taste of Honey, and Wish Come True (142 page)

A corner of his mouth crooked up, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “There isn’t a good way to do this, is there? I could tell you I love you, but you already know that. I could say I’m sorry, but you know that, too.”

“I guess all that’s left to say is good-bye.” She eyed his suitcase in the corner, asking in a remarkably steady voice that carried only a cool hint of irony, “Need a hand packing?”

He shook his head, looking more bereft than he had a right to be when, after all, he was the one leaving. “It can wait. Unless you’d like me to go now.”

She sighed wearily, climbing under the covers. She had no more strength left. “Do what you like. I’m going to bed,” she told him, burrowing into the sheets that smelled faintly of their lovemaking. She was sick of being noble. Sick of being brave, too. Right now, the only thing she wanted was to fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.

“Anna.” She felt the mattress sink down, then his hand stroking the back of her head.

In a small, choked voice, she asked, “Was it always going to be this way, Marc? Was there ever a time when you thought it would turn out differently?”

“I didn’t let myself think that far ahead.” He spoke softly.

She rolled onto her back, looking up at him. “I’m not going to make this easy on you,” she said fiercely. “I love you too much.”

His jaw clenched, and she saw the battle being waged behind his carefully constructed facade. “The last thing I want to do is pack that damn bag.” He flashed a resentful look at the suitcase as if it were the enemy, the cause of all this grief.

Then don’t,
she wanted to cry. But she only turned over onto her stomach, pressing her face into the pillow so he wouldn’t see her tears. It would only make him want to rescue her all over again, and she didn’t want that. All she wanted was to stand on her own two feet with the man she loved at her side.

She was nearly asleep when she felt him slip in under the covers. She held very still so he wouldn’t know she was awake; it was only when he began stroking her hair that she could feel her body giving in, traitor that it was. His hand moved lower, his thumb tracing the outline of her shoulder beneath the flimsy cotton of her nightgown. When he kissed her neck, the last of her resistance melted. She rolled to face him, offering her mouth to be kissed, and feeling how aroused he was. She marveled anew that she could stir such desire, that he never seemed to tire of her.

She sat up and peeled off her nightgown. His eyes, glinting amid the shadows, seemed to ask, Are you sure, or will this only make it worse? In response, Anna stretched out before him naked, her body no longer a source of shame but something precious to be offered. Marc didn’t need a second invitation.

There was a sweet, almost elegiac unhurriedness in the way he stroked and kissed her, exploring the yielding wetness between her thighs. When he finally entered her, it was with exquisite care. They took their time making love, reveling in each other as if there were no reason it couldn’t go on this way forever, night after night into the twilight of their years.

It wasn’t until they drew apart, sated, that the real world crept back in. Anna lay awake with her eyes closed, cradled in his arms, knowing he couldn’t protect her from the one thing she dreaded most: finding a way to live without him.

It started to rain, the first real downpour in weeks, and she listened to it drum against the roof and gurgle in the gutters. Tomorrow when the sun came out, the fields would be covered in a soft green fuzz, and the poppies that had been nodding their furled heads would be drifts of gold, but for the moment the world was contained in the ticking of the clock on the nightstand, measuring out the precious last minutes in Marc’s arms.

In the days that followed, she threw herself into the seemingly Quixotic quest for a job, which kept her from wallowing in misery and at the same time reminded her hourly of the price of being infamous. It seemed no one wanted to hire her, most of the places she inquired at turning her away before she could get so much as a foot in the door—like Phil Scroggins at the pharmacy, who’d told her the job had been filled when it was only that morning that the ad had appeared in the
Clarion.

Liz told her not to worry, reminding her that once the will was probated, they’d both be rich. But that could take months, Anna knew, and meanwhile there were bills to pay, a car in need of a new transmission, and a cat that had developed mysterious oozing sores requiring repeated trips to the vet. It occurred to her that her life hadn’t really been on hold all this time, as she’d imagined. While she’d been off fighting to prove her innocence, it had been quietly accruing in her absence, like the stack of unread mail on the table in the foyer and the thick coating of dust everywhere she looked.

On the plus side, there were friends willing to stick their necks out. Like Myrna McBride, who’d offered her a job at The Last Word, and Laura, who’d insisted she’d have her hands full when the baby came and that she could use another clerk at the shop. Anna had turned them both down. She’d made up her mind about one thing: She wasn’t going to be hired out of pity, nor would she work for a friend or, God forbid, a relative.

It was Andie’s boyfriend who’d suggested she try the newspaper. They were looking to replace the person at the front desk, and no one was more qualified, Simon teased, than she, who’d been headline news in the
Clarion
for weeks. Bob Heidiger, the editor in chief, a tough no-nonsense veteran of the
Los Angeles Times,
must have seen the cosmic irony in it, too, for he agreed to hire her on a trial basis.

By the end of her first day the piles of paperwork on her desk had been cleared away, the files organized, and the contents of the drawers placed in order. The following week everyone else on staff, it seemed, was throwing her the little jobs they didn’t have time for: from emptying wastebaskets and tracking down Fed Ex packages to blue-pencilling a column on acorn woodpeckers for an editor out sick with the flu. Bob was impressed, and on Friday made it official, saying gruffly, “Hell, I just hope you decide to keep
us.
”

What he didn’t know was that she welcomed even the most menial tasks. The busier she kept, the less time she had to dwell on her thoughts. Nights were when she gave in to loneliness. But like the food with which she’d once salved her misery, the tears she shed into her pillow brought only fleeting relief.

Laura urged her to see someone, and Anna agreed to it only because she wouldn’t have left her alone otherwise. She made an appointment with a therapist, a seventies throwback with long graying hair parted down the middle and an office scattered with cushy pillows and plants and New Age crystals. Joan Vinecour had listened with furrowed brow, occasionally murmuring something in response, and after two sessions informed Anna that she was suffering from PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder. Anna thanked her, wadding up the prescription for Prozac she’d been given and tossing it into a trashcan on her way out. If she was depressed, it was because she had every reason to be. Nothing would be gained from numbing herself against the pain.

But the picture wasn’t all bleak. There was pleasure in small things—time spent with friends and her new closeness with Liz. After her first week on the job, when her sister offered to treat her to an afternoon at the spa, she didn’t hesitate to accept. The following Saturday, a day that normally would have been given over to chores, found her winding up Agua Caliente Road, eagerly anticipating the pampering that awaited her.

The atmosphere at the spa was one of orchestrated calm, heightened by the Carlos Nakai flute music drifting from hidden speakers in the walls. A Native American bark painting hung over the polished oak reception desk, where a smiling young woman in drawstring trousers and a gauzy white top greeted her when she walked in.

Then Liz appeared to usher her into the locker room, where she was issued a pair of rubber sandals and a waffle-weave robe that her sister informed her was made of organically grown cotton. Women strolled about half dressed, some naked, while others sat blow-drying their hair and putting on makeup in front of mirrors so flatteringly lit that the Bride of Frankenstein would’ve looked good. A table along the wall held pitchers of herbal iced tea and chilled spring water in which slices of lemon floated.

“I’ve booked you with Eduardo. He’s the best,” Liz informed her. Anna had declined the Peruvian hot rocks massage; the no-frills kind would do.

Soon she was lying facedown on a padded table in a room softly lit with aromatic candles. “Don’t fight it,” soothed a heavily accented voice as sure, strong fingers dug into the knotted muscles in her shoulders. “Let it go.” But every time she started to relax, she felt as if she were falling and tensed up again.

An hour later, her muscles pummeled and kneaded into submission, she staggered outside. A flight of stone steps meandered down a slope so lush with ferns and foliage it looked almost primeval. She passed under a pergola laced with vines, then over a wooden bridge spanning a creek. It was the forty-niners, she knew, who’d made the discovery that over time had proven more valuable than gold: water bubbling from the earth, warmed by underground thermals to a constant eighty-four degrees.

These days the water was fed through pipes into man-made pools so cleverly designed she could almost believe they were natural. She sank into the nearest one, which, blessedly, she had all to herself, only dimly aware of voices wafting through the tall bamboo along with the faint strains of Native American flute music.

She was dozing off when Liz materialized unexpectedly out of the mist. She’d changed out of her work clothes into a robe, which she dropped as she slipped in beside Anna with a contented sigh. “The pay sucks, but, ah, the perks …”

“I should’ve taken you up on your offer,” Anna said with a dreamy smile, referring to the job Liz had offered her.

“It’s not too late.”

Anna shook her head. “No way. I’ve learned my lesson: Family and work don’t mix.”

“I sincerely hope you’re not comparing me to Monica,” Liz replied in a faintly injured tone.

“Don’t start.” She nudged Liz playfully with her toes the way she once had in the bathtub when they were kids. “Besides, in a few months we can both retire if we want.”

“Somehow I don’t see it.” Liz looked tense even as she stretched out. “Don’t get me wrong, I
live
for Dylan, but the truth is I’m just not cut out to be a full-time mom.”

Anna felt a stab of envy. “It’s nice that you have a choice, at least.”

“You’ll have kids of your own someday.”

“I’m not so sure.”

Liz eyed her knowingly. In the secret language of sisters things didn’t always have to be spelled out. “You miss him, don’t you?”

Anna nodded. There was no use denying it.

“I guess we both knew what we were getting into.” Liz sighed. “And look where it ended up.”

“You, too?” Anna cast her a quizzical look.

Liz’s face constricted in a spasm of grief, then smoothed over as if through sheer force of will. “Last night was the last straw,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice. “He asked if he could come over, said he had something to tell me that he couldn’t say over the phone.” She gave a bitter laugh. “I thought it would be that he was divorcing his wife. It’s been over between them for years. Ever since Davey got sick—” She broke off, darting Anna a look that was half sheepish, half defiant. “Okay, so now you know. But spare me the lecture. It’s a little late for that.”

David Ryback? Anna wouldn’t have guessed it. She’d heard that his marriage was in trouble, sure, but had chalked it up to the strain of their son’s illness. “Does Carol know?”

“Deep down, don’t most wives?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Anna said dryly.

Not one to pass up an opportunity to inject her jaded view on the subject, Liz said bitterly, “Believe me, you’re not missing out on much. Marriage is vastly overrated, in my opinion.”

Easy for Liz to say—she’d had her shot. And as far as their being in the same boat, Anna would never have crossed that line if Marc and his wife had had anything close to a real marriage. On the other hand, who was she to judge? If she’d been disapproving once, now all she felt was pity for all involved. There were no villains in this story, just good people who’d lost their way.

“Just because it didn’t work out with Brett—” she started to say.

But Liz wasn’t interested in hearing about her ex-husband; she was too preoccupied with David. “Are you shocked?” she asked with a look that both dared Anna to say something and begged for her to understand.

Anna recalled seeing David and Carol in church; they’d looked less at odds with each other than defeated somehow, their son, small and pale, wedged between them like a buffer. “After what I’ve been through, nothing could shock me. Besides,” she added, “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”

“It was different with you and Marc.”

“I thought so, too.” Anna felt the knots that had been pummeled into submission start to tighten once more.

Liz shook her head in sympathy. “You were so perfect together. I really thought—” She broke off, her face crumpling.

Anna put her arms around her sister. In the warm water Liz was shaking all over, as if chilled. “Don’t cry. It’ll get better. It has to.” Carlos Nakai had given way to Enya, and through the dense bamboo floated the sounds of laughter and the slap-slap of rubber sandals making their way down the steps.

Liz choked back a sob. “I’m sorry. You’re the last person I should be dumping on.”

“It’s all right,” Anna said. She was used to it.

Liz drew back to eye her with a mixture of awe and resentment. “I wish I knew what your secret was. How the hell do you do it?”

Anna smiled. “I guess it’s like climbing a mountain—you only look at what’s in front of you.”

Liz gave a teary laugh. “Fuck it. Just throw me the goddamn rope.”

When they emerged at last, flushed and glowing, Anna said casually, “I thought I’d stop in to see Mom on the way home. Want to come along?”

She waited for Liz to say that she couldn’t take the time off work, or she had to pick up Dylan, or she was meeting a friend. But she only shrugged and said, “Sure. Why not?”