Thought I Knew You (25 page)

Drew turned to look at me in amazement. “Seriously? I think I was wrong. Maybe we do need allies.”

“Welcome to the suburbs.” I laughed. “You thought the city was tough? You have no idea. To be fair, she’s the worst one. Everyone else will be more subtle. And probably genuinely care less.”

“She makes me so sad,” he commented.

I looked up in questioning surprise. Melinda made me a lot of things, but never, ever sad.

“Think about it,” he said. “To care that much about someone else’s life, your own life has to be pretty unfulfilling.”

My mind flashed to Melinda’s half-drunken attempts to seduce Greg two years ago.
What must her marriage be like?
Steve always seemed so… dull. Drew, an outsider, had shone new light on the whole party with one simple observation. I reached up, not caring who saw, and kissed him. “I love you, Drew Elliot.”

The night before, I had lectured him. “Please, no PDA, okay?”

He replied with his usual sarcasm. “Someday, though, right? Someday, we can make out in the middle of a church barbeque? I’ve always wanted to. Please?”

I smacked him with my magazine. “You are never serious.”

“You’re serious enough for both of us,” he had replied.

He kissed me back, eyes widened in surprise. “You said no PDA,” he whispered.

“That was before. For some reason, I don’t really care that much anymore.”

Chapter 30

A
few weeks later, we had
our first real fight.
The house.
The house was the thorn in our sides, the pea under the mattress. Drew protested very little in life, his easygoing side a nice complement to my detail-oriented type-A. I found, through time, that when he did stake a claim, I should take it seriously. I tried to abide by my own self-imposed rule; however, we struggled with the house. We painted the bedroom, bought a new bed, and rearranged the furniture. Nothing in the bedroom resembled the room I had shared with Greg. But Drew couldn’t get past it. He wanted me to sell the house. He wanted us to move and find a new house to make our own. He felt like Greg’s replacement, the new daddy, in the same house, filling the same role.

“Lots of people get
married
twice. And then, the second husband is always second. It’s in the name!” I protested. “I can’t help that. We’re not even married yet…” I skirted another issue. “… but I feel like I already have to defend having a first husband to you.”

“I’ve never asked you to defend having a first husband. That’s ridiculous. But I feel like I’m renting space in Greg’s life. Can’t you see that? I don’t question your love for me. Asking you to move is not like asking you who you loved more. I need us to start fresh, so I can feel like this is my place in life.”

“It’s just a house. You’re making too much of this,” I insisted. “This is your place in life. If you want it to be.”

He threw up his hands and stomped outside.

Having quasi-lived together for seven months, I knew we were both coming to a head with our purgatory life. He still maintained his brownstone in Harlem, but he stayed with us most of the time, commuting in when necessary. The arrangement worked, albeit for the short term. Admittedly, I saw his point. My hesitation stemmed from my love for my house—the big yard, the barn, the privacy, the house’s age. I knew we could find something that I would love again, particularly with Drew’s income, but my house was my
home
. Stubbornly, unfairly, I held onto it.

Drew, almost never stubborn and rarely unfair, returned fifteen minutes later. He drew me in and held me. We made no concession, reached no agreement. But the argument had ended.

“I hate fighting with you.” He looked so forlorn, I almost laughed out loud. Having been married, I knew that fighting came with the territory.

I hugged him back and reassured him that a fight was just a fight and I wasn’t even mad. I simply didn’t want to move. He kissed me gently, thumbing my jaw and bringing goose bumps to my arms. The kiss deepened, our mouths parting. So easily ready, willing, and panting for him, I could feel him respond in kind.

Gently, he pulled away. “The kids are upstairs.”

My hand danced along his belly, teasingly. “Later.”

He groaned, looking upward. “You know, I could find a woman without kids,” he muttered.

“I think you tried that for ten years,” I replied, raising my eyebrows.

He laughed. “Touché.”

In the end, we decided that if Drew still felt strongly about it at the end of the year, we’d put the house on the market. We’d find a house that would have all the things I loved about my house and one close to my parents. I secretly hoped that by the end of the year, the ghost of Greg would be eradicated, and the house would feel more like home to Drew. To that end, I insisted, he had to stop renting the brownstone, or at least sublet it.

We spent a Saturday cleaning out Greg’s study. I boxed up all of his files, his computer, and his paperwork. I hesitated with his brown leather journal, thumbing through the worn pages. They were dog-eared from nights of close examination when he had first left, as I looked for clues hidden in the shorthand scribbling. I stopped at the page with the poem.

I carry your heart with me.

I carry it in my heart.

C!

I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up into Drew’s bright blue eyes and saw no fear, no jealousy, just compassion.

“What do
you
think happened to Greg?” I asked. I must have asked him that question a hundred times, but he always answered differently, a variation on the theme of
Who the hell knows?

“I don’t know. I really don’t. But since Detective Reynolds came up with that car, all I can think is that was him at the bottom of Lake Onondaga. With Melissa Richards. It’s the only thing that makes any sense, you know?”

I nodded. I had thought the same thing, but never said it aloud. “Do you think he was dating Melissa Richards? And if so, then who was Karen?”

He joined me on the floor of the study, sitting cross-legged next to me. “Could he have had two mistresses?”

“I have no idea. I didn’t know he had one.” I paged carefully through the leather journal. “How would you feel if I kept this? If I didn’t put it into storage?”

He thought for a moment and finally shrugged. “It’s part of you. I don’t believe you’ll ever close the door on that life. I wouldn’t want you to; it made you who you are. It eventually brought us together. I think you’ll always wonder and question. And I’m okay with that.”

I loved that most about Drew. We had no secrets. Talking was the cornerstone of our relationship. I knew all of his clients, all of his buyers, and all the galleries he frequented. Since I’d resigned from my job, he knew my days in excruciating detail. And they all involved activities with the kids. He asked my advice on things and valued my opinions. Our evenings were filled with music and chatter, and after the kids were put to bed, the television rarely went on. I loved the candidness of our relationship, so different from the eggshell environment I had my last year with Greg, where every question turned into an inquisition, every answer testy. I tried not to compare, but it was impossible. Even in our best days, Greg and I had rarely talked as frequently and with the same intensity as Drew and I did. It was a depth to life I never knew existed.

“I still wonder every day,” I said, running my hand over the soft leather cover.

“I know. I know you do. Me, too, you know? Not for the same reasons, of course.”

“What are your reasons?” I asked.

“Well, first, it’s plain bizarre. A
Twilight Zone
episode. So yeah, of course I’d love to know the truth. But secondly, I worry every day that this will end, the way everyone does when they’re in love. But I have the added worry of not knowing if your ex-but-not-ex-husband could come waltzing back into your life at any time. It’s hard to be a hundred percent comfortable when there may never be finality, you know?”

I nodded. I did know. It had crossed my mind before: what if Greg had run away and decided to come back? What would I do? I shook my head. Greg and Claire were over, regardless of his being alive or dead. It was hard to admit, and I had yet to say it out loud, but I had something with Drew that I had never had with Greg. I could never give that up. It was as though I had lived my whole life missing a sense, and Drew had given it back to me. My life seemed richer. Food tasted better; colors seemed brighter. I saw humor in situations that would have plain irritated me previously. It wasn’t that I’d had a bad life with Greg. I just never knew it could be so good. Instead of saying all of that, as I wasn’t ready to admit to the relative emptiness of my life before, I touched his hand and said, “There’s finality. That’s not something you need to worry about.”

Drew moved the desk and the filing cabinets out to the barn to be put up later on eBay. Standing in the almost empty study, I inhaled deeply. The room still had the same smell, like leather and man. Drew was going to use it as his office, a place to consolidate paperwork from his sales and possibly meet buyers.

“Mommy, where’s all Daddy’s stuff?” Hannah stood uncertainly in the doorway. Somehow, she’d become a small adult.

“Hannah, sit down.” I sat back down on the floor, tucking Greg’s journal under my leg. She plopped down next to me. I took a deep breath. “Hannah, Drew is going to live here now.”

“He already lives here,” she replied matter-of-factly.

“Yes, but he’s going to
officially
live here. He’s going to use Daddy’s old study for his office.” I gauged her reaction. There wasn’t one—textbook Hannah. “Does that bother you at all?”

She shook her head and looked around at the bare walls. In the world of a six-year-old, a year and a half was a lifetime. The memories of her father were fading. My serious daughter was so much like her father it occasionally made me cry. She even looked like him. She was sullen and withdrawn sometimes, other times thoughtful beyond belief. But she was always kind and incredibly clever with a whip-smart memory. So much like Greg.

“Hannah, what do you remember about Daddy?” I wanted her to remember Greg.

She looked thoughtful, picking at her fingernail, a brooding prophecy of her teenage self. “I remember… our camping trip.”

I searched my memory. Hannah had been three. We had gone camping in Massachusetts, near Boston. It rained all four days, ruining our plans to see a Red Sox game. We ended up seeing two movies in the closest town. I didn’t remember it being particularly fun. I vaguely recalled begging for a hotel room, and Greg being adamant about staying at the campsite. Why? I couldn’t remember.

“What do you remember most about it?” I asked.

“We played Memory every night and Candy Land. But you tried to make me play by the rules, and then Daddy said I didn’t have to.”

Ah, yes. We’d huddled in our large tent, sitting between two air mattresses and playing board games on the floor. I remembered being cold and frustrated at Leah, who kept tipping the board or picking up the memory cards with the curiosity of a one-year-old. Greg was jovial, as if we were having a great time. We took home mounds of mildewed laundry. I remembered laying down the gauntlet: we weren’t camping again until the kids were old enough to have their own tent.

Not everything has to be so tragic, Claire.

I have no idea what you’re talking about. Nothing here is tragic, it’s just irritating. Particularly because the whole trip was a disaster.

You can’t control the weather; it’s not worth getting mad over. Besides, I actually had a good time.

No, you didn’t. That’s not possible. We did absolutely nothing that was any fun at all. You’re just saying that to get under my skin, and it’s childish.

Suit yourself, but the only one acting like a child around here is you.

I had stomped around for days, seeming unable to get warm. All our clothes smelled musty even after several runs through the washer.

I couldn’t fathom why that memory stuck out in Hannah’s mind. “What did you like most about the camping trip?”

She shrugged. “Daddy was so happy,” she said with childlike simplicity. “That made it fun.”

Chapter 31

W
e expanded the gardens, because
as it turned out, Drew had an unexpected gift for growing things. In the spring and summer, he grew peppers, tomatoes, and strawberries, and in the back, along the barn, thick, unruly black raspberry bushes. He showed Hannah and Leah how to pick them and waved off my protests of making sure they were washed before the girls ate them.

“They don’t taste as good unless you eat them right off the bush,” Leah parroted.

Drew popped one in my mouth before I could argue, and all I could do was agree. He kissed me, leaving the tart remnants of raspberry on my lips.

In mid-July, Sarah visited for a week.

“Good god,” she complained. “I forgot about the humidity!”

The five of us rattled around in the house, bumping into each other, hot and bored, until I loaded everyone into the van and drove the two hours out to Brigantine. Borrowing the Arnolds’ beach house while they were in Mexico, we lazily spent our days at the beach or the pool, and the evenings on the patio, drinking and talking. The girls stayed up later than I would have liked, watching fireworks or running up and down in the surf. We cooked dinners of seafood and salads, rich, buttery lobster we ate with our hands outside while wearing bathing suits. The time was idyllic.

Drew tried his hand at cooking, and while the first two meals were only so-so, his patience and good humor won out. On the third night, he made a shrimp and crab ravioli with sherry cream sauce. We ate until our clothes were stretched tight across our bellies, and I worried that the girls would get sick. At twilight, we trekked lawn chairs and blankets down the block to the beach and lay like beached whales, watching fireworks until late in the evening.