The Heart Of It (6 page)

Two months later

Elena was studying with her son. Well, she was studying. He was reading the last book on the list Gabe had given her two months ago. Almost all of those books had been the beginning of a series and now Simon’s mission in life was begging to go to the library.

But there were worse things than having a brilliant son who couldn’t get enough of reading.

Everything has a bright side.

Had she known that all along? Or was she just now seeing it?

They sat together on the couch, the Christmas tree blinking in random sections in front of them, the winter world outside their window. She had her commercial real estate test after Christmas, the final exam before officially becoming a real estate agent.

“Mom,” Simon said.

“Hmmm?” She ruffled his hair with her fingers, still trying to memorize the formula for the land transfer tax.

“Your phone.”

She glanced down at her cell on the arm of the couch. It was on silent, but Simon must have heard the buzz of it against the furniture.

“You can hear that? Maybe you need to turn down the hearing aids.”

“Maybe you need to get some.”

She laughed as she pulled herself off the couch and away from Simon and answered her phone.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Elena.” It was Denise’s assistant, Paige. “Sorry to bother you, I know you told Denise that you were slowly terminating all your clients, but you didn’t leave any instructions for Gabe Peterson. He just called for another date.”

“No,” she said, the word blasting through her lips from the bottom of her stomach.

“Reschedule or terminate?”

Despite hoping she’d forget the night, forget Gabe altogether, she’d missed him. The first few Tuesdays without him had seemed empty, and thoughts of him kept surprising her, like turning a corner and running right into his long body and the way he tried to take up less space.

As if she’d morphed into some kind of love-sick teenager, she’d gone into Simon’s room and looked at the photos on the back of Gabe’s books. Those blue eyes. That grin. So goofy. But earnest, too. This was a man who took silly things seriously.

A few weeks ago Simon had asked her to read
Frozen Boy
to him again, and every night she’d read for a half hour and then had to hide in the bathroom to cry.

The Frozen Boy was Gabe. The whole book was Gabe and it was so damn beautiful.

“Terminate.”

“Okay,” Paige said. “That’s the last of your outstanding clients. You’re done. Is that what you want, Elena?”

She’d done the math. Her savings would last for a few months until hopefully she started selling some houses. If they were careful and Simon stayed healthy, her savings could stretch for a year.

“It is. It’s what I want.”

She hung up and went back to sit with her son on the couch.

This is what brave feels like.

Isn’t it?

“Is Maggie coming to babysit?” Simon asked, blinking up at her him through his thick glasses.

“Nope,” she said, and sat back down with him on the couch, pulling the small weight of him against her side so she could kiss his head, rest her hand over his chest to feel the pound of his heart.

It was the same as hers.

“Mom,” he groaned, straining away from her.

She let him go, of course she did. It was what she knew how to do.

Two weeks later

It was dark in the house. She’d even turned off the Christmas tree lights. All the wrapped and ribboned boxes waiting for Simon in the morning were, at the moment, simply shadow.

Lisa’s card had come this morning and it sat on her lap, a thousand pounds of card stock, glitter, and Norwegian Christmas cheer. And years. It was heavy and thick and awful with years.

Between one breath and the next she did it. She pressed Send on her phone and after a few clicks and buzzes it began to ring.

Once.

Twice.

She thought of the lilac bushes. Of the way her sister used to comb her hair. The stories she’d told as they walked home from school, stories about puffin birds and lemurs with ringed tails. She remembered the birthday party at that awful girl’s house when they’d both, separately of each other, stole just one of the girl’s seven thousand Barbie shoes, only to get home and realize they’d stolen the matching pair.

The phone rang a third time.

A fourth.

It wasn’t just fear and Dad beating them up that had bound them together. Or their mother dying. Or Lisa running away and Elena going to their grandma’s.

There were good things. There were. Gabe was right.

There were thousands of them.

Lisa had run away because that was what she’d thought she had to do. What was the point of being so angry at a fourteen-year-old girl who’d been brutalized by a man who was supposed to love her?

Who am I to judge her anymore?

“Hullo?”

Adrenaline flooded her. “Hello? Is . . . oh. Oh, God, it’s late there, isn’t it? Early? I didn’t think . . . ”

“Who is this?” Lisa asked.

Elena pressed her knuckles against her lips until the sting of it brought her back to herself.

“Lisa?” she breathed.

“Oh God. Oh God. Oh please . . . please . . .”

“It’s Elena.”

Three months later

Tuesday, after hockey, Gabe walked into what looked like a party at the rooftop bar at the Thompson Hotel. A big party. The place was packed.

He found an empty stool on the far side of the bar, next to a woman in a sleek business suit, talking on her phone.

The blonde glanced up at him as he approached.

“Is this taken?” he mouthed, pointing at the stool.

She smiled and shook her head. “Go ahead.”

He sat and ordered his Moosehead and burger just as the woman beside him got off her phone.

“It’s busy tonight,” she said after a moment.

“That’s weird for a Tuesday,” he said.

“I think it’s a birthday party.”

“Yeah?” He took a look at all the people on the far side of the room. They were all dressed exceedingly well for a Tuesday night.

“That’s the birthday girl.” She pointed to a woman who was in an old-school flapper dress. “I think it’s a themed thing.”

“Ah . . . ” Now it made sense. “Like an old Hollywood thing?”

“Maybe. I was thinking
Great Gatsby
.”

He caught sight of a guy in a grey pin-striped suit with a pink shirt. “You might be right.”

“Well,” she laughed. “Considering my last themed birthday was a Strawberry Shortcake fiasco in the first grade, I’m not sure you can count on my authority.”

“Fiasco?”

“Unknown to my mother, one of the girls had a really bad strawberry allergy. We ended up in the hospital.”

He laughed. “Fiasco is right.”

“I’m Jennifer.” She held out her hand. She was pretty, her face open and friendly, and he felt himself relaxing around her.

“Gabe.” He shook her hand. It was the first time he’d touched a woman since Elena and the thought seemed ludicrous. Months since he’d touched a woman? Even casually? How was that possible? What kind of cave did a man have to live in to achieve that amount of detachment? “I take it you’re not here for the party?”

“No. I’m here on business for the week. I live in Ottawa.”

The bartender delivered Gabe’s beer and turned to Jennifer. “Another?” he asked, pointing to her empty glass.

“Hmmm.” Her sound was of indecision.

“Stay,” he said, following some fledgling impulse. “I mean . . . if you can.”

The brief eye contact they shared seemed like some kind of contract.

I’ll stay if you do.

I’m here if you’re here.

This drink will lead to another and then . . .

He felt some old part of himself seize in terror, and out of habit formed in the last months of Tuesdays he looked up at the entrance to the bar, hoping she’d be there. To save him from this.

But she wasn’t.

She never was.

And it was time to move on.

“Why not? I’ll have another.”

One year later

The line was out the door. There were at least ten kids and their parents standing with umbrellas and coat collars turned up against the rain.

The staff at Pages Bookstore was good and they kept things moving fast, but they were all sharing wide-eyed,
holy shit
looks with each other.

The turn-out for the Toronto signing of his new book
When You’re Dead, You’re Dead
was better than anyone expected. The bookstore was almost out of stock, and when he signed and sold the last book, he wondered if they would have a twelve-year-old- boy riot on their hands.

But Gabe kept signing and smiling and signing and answering the same question over and over again. “There will be a sequel,” he said for the hundredth time. “You’ll have to read it to find out if Henry saves his dad.”

Finally, everyone was inside the bookstore. No more kids standing in the rain and Gabe was relieved.

“His dad is going to die, isn’t he?” That was a variation on the question, and the boy who asked it slid a copy of the book with a red sticker in the corner which meant he’d brought it with him. The boy blinked big brown eyes behind thick glasses. “You can tell me.”

Gabe laughed. “I can?”

“I won’t tell anyone.”

“Why do you think he’s going to die?”

“Because parents always die in these books. Teaches the kids lessons.”

“That’s a terrible lesson.”

“Tell me about it,” the boy said drolly, and Gabe laughed.

“Well, I’ll tell you this . . . ” He leaned forward, and the boy tilted his ear towards Gabe’s mouth, revealing a behind-the-ear hearing aid.

Gabe whispered. “I’m not sure what happens, yet.”

“Not sure?” “Not sure.”

The boy nodded. “Fair enough.”

“What’s your name?” He flipped through the book to find the title page where he usually put his signature.

“Oh, it’s for my mom. I’m going to surprise her.”

“That’s nice,” he said. “What’s her name?”

“Elena.”

He dropped the pen. Coincidence. It had to be coincidence. Statistically, there was just so little chance. But his heart was pounding hard in his face.

“Is she here?” he asked.

“Yeah!” The boy was thrilled to be asked. As if Gabe had asked to see one of his treasures. “She’s over there.”

He pointed towards the wall of moms who were lining the non-fiction section, and there she was. Not even hiding. If he’d turned his head to the left he would have seen her all along.

Elena.

She wore jeans and a red sweater. Glasses.

A small smile.

The last year and a half collapsed in upon itself, a black hole of time, and it was now, and it was also every single moment they spent in that hotel room. And every single moment in that hotel bar he’d been wishing for her. And even the moments when he’d stopped.

All of it. At the same time.

It crushed him with longing.

He leaned towards the rather harried Pages manager who’d been sitting with him, supplying his books. “I . . . ah . . . I need a minute.”

“Are you kidding?”

“One minute. I swear.”

She nearly growled at him, but he leapt up from behind the table and smiled at the boy. “Introduce me.”

“For real?” he gasped with wide-eyed wonder.

“For real.”

Gabe was standing up. Following Simon.

To her.

Oh my God, she thought, embarrassed and strangely thrilled. The mothers beside her shifted and murmured.

Coming to the signing had felt brave. Despite the time that had passed, she was not here lightly. Had considered, in cowardice, having Maggie bring Simon.

But she’d wanted to see Gabe. See that he wasn’t something she’d imagined.

See that he was doing all right and maybe . . . maybe show him that she was doing all right, too. That that night had been important for the both of them.

Watching Gabe today at the reading and after, taking his time to answer all the kids’ questions with honesty and respect, it had been surreal.

And beautiful.

He was beautiful. Inside and out.

I missed you
, she thought.
I missed you more than I thought possible
.

It was amazing in the last year and a half how much she’d thought about him. And it wasn’t just after reading his books to Simon. But also after talking to her sister every week. When she’d sold that house to the family with five boys, all avid hockey players. When Simon had been so sick with the bronchial infection three months ago and she’d wished for a hug. Someone’s strong shoulders on which to rest her head.

And those times, at night, with her fingers on her own skin. Her mind on him.

“Hey Mom!” Simon said as he and Gabe approached. “This is Gabe. Gabe, this is my mom.”

“What are you doing?” She glanced sideways at everyone in the store watching them with avid eyes.

“I just wanted to say hello.”

She blinked and laughed, embarrassed and alight. “Hello.”

“This is your son?”

“This is Simon.” She ran her hand over his son’s head, and he only barely scowled at her.

“It’s good to see you,” Gabe said. “Really. Just . . . so . . . good.”

“Gabe, there are hundreds of people here waiting for you to get back to that table.”

He glanced back at the table. The line.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he said, scratching at his neck. “I just . . . I wanted to . . . say hi. I missed you.”

She took a shuddering breath through her fracturing body. She’d imagined him moved on. Looking at this crowd here, his obvious and exciting success, she’d imagined him miles out in the distance. Far away from her and that night.

“I don’t know why I said that.” His ears were blushing.

“Gabe,” the manager said, coming up alongside him. “We really need you to get back to the table.”

“Of course. Sorry.” He gave her a nod, quickly signed Simon’s book and handed it to her, which she took with limp strange hands, and then he turned and walked away.