Thorns of Truth (22 page)

“Don’t you get it?” he exploded. “We don’t
want
your fucking spaghetti sauce. You only made it so we’d have to sit here and listen to everything that’s the matter with us.” His voice wobbled up an octave, then broke, reminding her of when he’d been thirteen and in the first awkward throes of puberty. “What about
you,
Mom? When was the last time you cooked dinner just because you felt like it? How come you never talk to us anymore unless something’s wrong?”

His words were like tiny flung pebbles, their sharp edges pricking her. She watched Jay heave his overstuffed backpack onto his shoulder and shoot her a look of such scorn, it sliced her to the bone. Then he was gone, vanishing from sight like a shadow slipping along a wall.

Rose wanted to go after him, but her feet wouldn’t budge. She felt as hopelessly stuck as in the days right after Max’s death. The things Jay had accused her of, they were all true. Except for tonight, when
was
the last time she’d cooked a real dinner? These days, their freezer resembled the frozen-food section in D’Agostino’s—the casseroles and covered dishes from well-meaning friends and relatives had long since been eaten, or thrown out, and in their place were boxes of Stouffer’s lasagne, Lean Cuisine, Hot Pockets, Sara Lee.

Rose sank into the nearest chair. The pressure in her sinuses had become a throbbing headache, but she was too tired even for the trip down the hall to the bathroom for an aspirin.

In the corner, Mr. Chips began to squawk, fluttering his wings and scattering pinfeathers over the table’s polished oak surface like so many ashes. Time for the vet to clip his wings again, she thought. Not that there was much danger of her cockatiel’s flying off. Poor thing, he’d been in that cage so long he actually seemed to prefer it to life outside.

She dropped her head into the crook of her arm, the tabletop cool against her cheek. It smelled of buttered toast and Pledge. How many glasses of spilled milk had she mopped up over the years? How many chins had she wiped? Did all of it count for nothing?

In her head, she heard Max’s voice, faintly impatient this time:
It’s not like money in the bank, Rosie. You have to keep spending it in order to earn it back.

With a cry of frustration, she jumped to her feet and raced over to the stove. Blindly, without thinking, she seized the pot of spaghetti sauce and heaved it into the sink. Watching it swirl down the drain—blood-red that faded to watery pink when she turned on the tap—Rose was filled with fury. Not at Jay. Or Drew. But at herself. All that wasted time and energy, fantasizing about how she could have saved Max, when all along her children had been right here … and she’d done nothing, absolutely nothing, to save
them.

She had to stop feeling sorry for herself. Stop wanting back what was lost forever. Max might be dead, but
she
was still alive. And it was high time she started acting like it.

Rose marched over to the bulletin board by the phone, which had become a junkyard of mostly forgotten reminders stuck up with bright pushpins—pink message slips, old shopping lists, a wrinkled dry-cleaning ticket, an invitation to some long-past charity event she’d neglected to respond to—and tugged free the slip of paper on which Eric’s number was scribbled.

Before she could talk herself out of it, she was punching in the numbers, wondering if there was still a chance, however slim, that Eric was free for dinner tonight.

“You subscribe to this? I’m impressed.”

Rose, rummaging for her keys on the cluttered bachelor’s chest by the entrance to the staircase, turned to look at Eric. He was seated on the sofa, thumbing through an old issue of
Harvard Business Review
he’d picked up off the coffee table. His blue eyes regarded her with bemused admiration, as if nothing she did or said would have surprised him.

“It’s my husband’s,” she told him. “I haven’t gotten around to canceling it.” She would, though—first thing tomorrow.

Just thinking about it made her feel lighter somehow, as if a weight she hadn’t even realized she was carrying had been lifted from her shoulders.

She wished she could feel as easy about Eric. Over the phone, he’d seemed hesitant at first—could she blame him, after the way she’d acted last time?—but when he arrived a few minutes ago, he’d greeted her as if nothing were wrong. Even so, she’d detected a certain reserve.

Was Eric having second thoughts? After the way she’d acted the other night, had he concluded that she was more trouble than she might be worth?

Or maybe, she thought, he’d merely come to his senses and realized what he’d be getting into with her. Not just Mandy, but the whole combination plate: Max, the boys, her law practice.

She wasn’t getting any younger, either.

A stitch of anxiety formed in her stomach.

Relax. It’s not the Last Supper,
soothed a voice in her head. Just dinner with a friend at her favorite bistro, down the block. As soon as she could find those damn keys …

That reminded her: Mandy had stopped by this afternoon to ask—somewhat sheepishly—if Rose had an extra set of keys to the office. Her own, she said, had been missing since the night of the party. Rose had made a mental note to check with Eric but guessed that Mandy, as drunk as she’d been, had misplaced them somewhere in her apartment. And hadn’t she been sloshed at last Tuesday’s partners’ meeting, too? Yes, Rose was sure of it.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Eric’s recalling with wry affection, “My dad belonged to this book club, and after he died, die books kept right on coming. Mom just lets them pile up. Once, when I asked why she pays for books she doesn’t read, she said she likes having them arrive in the mail each month—the same as if Dad were still around.”

“I’m sorry about your father. Was it recent?” Rose realized that, as much as she’d told him about herself, she knew very little about Eric. He was too good a listener.

“Six years ago. Cancer.” He smiled sadly, as if remembering something too personal to be shared. Then said, “You know what gets me the most? That he never saw me sober.”

Rose felt her throat tighten at the thought of all the events yet to come that Max would never witness: graduations, weddings, births. “You obviously weren’t raised Catholic,” she observed, somewhat dryly.

“Close enough. Episcopal.” He cocked his head, giving her a puzzled look.

“
Well, then, I don’t have to tell you. The Great Scoreboard in the Sky—it lights up every time you make a home run. Your dad is probably cheering from the bleachers even as we speak.”

He smiled. “Sounds like the Yankees versus the Dodgers.”

“A hundred to nothing. World Series, 1956,” she supplied.

They both laughed.

“What about your mom?” Rose inquired.

“Alive and well in Minneapolis.” He leaned forward to rap his knuckles lightly against the coffee table. “At seventy-one, would you believe it, she’s discovered the Internet. She e-mails me every other day. Usually about some exotic trip she’s planning.”

“If she’s anything like you, it doesn’t surprise me.” Rose thought of Sylvie and felt a flicker of old sadness.

He shook his head. “If you could have seen her just after my dad died … Hell, all she did was watch TV and knit afghans. It’s as if she’s been transformed into this whole other person. She’s actually starting to read some of those books that come in the mail. She’s even
dating
.” Eric grinned. “My brother can’t forgive her for that.”

“I didn’t know you had a brother.”

“Kenny. He’s an orthopedist. Wife, three kids, lives in St. Paul. We talk on the phone every so often, but we’re not close.”

“No sisters?”

“Nope.” Eric tossed the magazine down, linked his hands behind his head, and tilted back to look up at her. “
Your
sisters, on the other hand …” He hesitated, then asked, “Can I be honest?”

“Might as well.”

“They’re nothing like you. Not one bit. It’s like you came from different families.”

Rose froze. Eric wasn’t the first to have said it, but for some reason, coming from him, it struck a nerve. Maybe because it would have been so easy to confide in him, as she had about so much else. She thought,
What would that accomplish? Except give him one more reason to feel sorry for me.

In an attempt to cover her uneasiness, she joked, “Maybe I was left on the doorstep by gypsies.”

“Now,
that
would make sense.” He laughed heartily, and she felt a current of electricity shoot straight down through her belly.

It was his eyes, she thought. They were fixed on her in a way she found faintly unsettling. He seemed to be waiting for something … some signal.

He’s looking at me the way Max used to.

Rose had to turn away, so he wouldn’t see how much she wanted him, too. Tears filled her eyes, dissolving Eric’s reflection, in the mirror over the mantel, to a watery shimmer. Only his shirt stood out, plain white against the sofa’s dark upholstery, like a crisp envelope with an invitation to some delicious event tucked inside.

Rose longed suddenly for him to take her, right now, right here. On the sofa, on the carpet, it didn’t matter where. No words, no coy flirtation, no dipping in one toe at a time.

She realized she was trembling. She felt feverish—icy cold one minute, burning up the next. And, oh God, this wicked heat between her legs. What on earth was
happening
to her?

Rose swung around to face him, bracing herself against the shock of his unguarded gaze as she might have thrown up a hand to shield herself from a too-bright light.

“Eric? Something you mentioned the other night—I know it’s none of my business, but I can’t help wondering. That woman you spoke of—why didn’t you marry her?”

“I didn’t ask.” He spoke quietly, those scrubbed blue eyes never leaving her face.

“Why not? If you loved her that much.”

“There are some things you don’t ask unless you know the answer.”

He’s still in love with her,
she thought, surprised to realize she was jealous.

But that was crazy, she told herself. Why should she care?

“I don’t mean to pry,” she apologized. “It’s just that …”

“Anything you want to know about me, just ask,” he told her. “I have nothing to hide.”

“Okay.” She swallowed hard, and met his gaze. “Why did you agree to have dinner with me tonight?”

“I wanted to see you.”

“But
why
?” she pressed, beyond caring how pathetic she must seem—a woman who barely knew her own mind, asking questions she wasn’t at all certain she was prepared to have answered.

“I love you.”

It was his eyes that held her pinned against the mantel while he rose and slowly walked toward her. His expression tender, and at the same time uncompromising. She couldn’t tear her gaze from him—the wry curve of his mouth, the tiny hooked scar over his right eye, his schoolboy’s hair falling over the forehead of a man who’d been through hell and still believed in second chances.

When he took her in his arms and kissed her, his mouth on hers was like a slow dance, the last of the evening, when the chairs are stacked on the tables and everyone else has gone home. Rose swayed against him.
Oh God, it’s been so long.…

It was as if she were waking up from a long sleep, senses that had been dormant sparking to life, one by one. The tip of his tongue setting off tiny shock waves as it traveled down her throat. His hand on the back of her neck almost scorching her.

He was tender, so tender. As if not wanting to frighten her. At the same time, there was nothing tentative about his desire. His whole body felt charged with it. Wordlessly, he unbuttoned her blouse, pushing it off her shoulders. But they couldn’t seem to stop kissing long enough for her to wriggle out of her skirt. She had never known a man with more levels to his kissing than Eric, each one more dizzying than the last. Oh, sweet Jesus, how had she survived without this for so long?

Rose would have followed him anywhere. To Zanzibar—to the moon, even. It wasn’t until Eric seized her by the wrist and they were heading for the bedroom down the hall that the spell broke. A cold wave of panic swept over her.

No… I can’t.
Not in the same bed where she and Max had …

But it was too late. Turning back was impossible. Rose felt crazed with wanting, so crazed that when she lay down with Eric on the bed—the bed on which she and her husband had made love more times than she could count—it felt no more strange than a river following its natural course.

And now here was this delicious man with skin like something sweet poured over a rich weave of muscle and bone. Touching her in places she’d nearly forgotten were capable of sensation. Cradling her breasts as if they’d been as firm and lovely as a virgin’s. Lovingly exploring her belly with his tongue as he moved down between her legs …

And, oh, God, he was … It felt so good.…

Max had been a skilled and patient lover. But nothing like this.

Stop. Don’t think about Max.

Putting Max out of her mind was easier than it should have been, her thoughts scuttling away like leaves caught in a current. There was only Eric’s naked body, his hot mouth, the mounting heat between her legs.…

It happened with the force of a collision—the orgasm she’d never believed possible, not for her, not
this
way. Slamming through her, wave after wave of the purest pleasure. Bending her up like an arched bow, her limbs quivering.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph …

A narcotic haze descended over her. It was as if she were dreaming, and in dreams there were no rules. She could scream, thrash, sweat rivers. As Eric mounted her, she wrapped her legs tightly about his, drawing him tight against her. Beads of sweat from his forehead dropped onto her face like tiny warm kisses. He moved inside her, deep thrusts followed by slow gliding strokes, until she was once again on the verge of coming. She hovered deliciously. It seemed they could go on like this forever. She felt the muscles in his back go taut, but he was holding back, waiting until she’d had her fill.