Too Close to Touch (29 page)

Kylie felt a wave of dread at the implications of the message.
She
needs to think?
She’s not in a good place?
Neither of those statements boded well. Gretchen sounded so tired. Kylie wished she could be there to help. She also wished Gretchen would ask for her help…for her presence…for anything at all, but for the Þ rst time, she began to seriously doubt it was going to happen. The thought was more than she could bear.

The phone rang and her heart skipped a beat, as it had been prone to doing all week, a fact that was beginning to irritate her. She snapped it up.

“Gretchen Kaiser’s ofÞ ce, this is Kylie. May I help you?”

“Hi, Kylie, this is Jessica Scott returning Gretchen’s call. Is she in?”

Kylie was confused. Returning Gretchen’s call? “No, I’m sorry, Ms. Scott, she’s not. She’s—”

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TOO CLOSE TO TOUCH

“Oh, wait,” Jessica interrupted. “I see she actually left me the Poughkeepsie number. It would be nice if I paid attention once in a while, huh?” Her laughter peeled across the line and Kylie winced as if it was Þ ngernails on a chalk board. “I’ll call her there. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“No problem,” Kylie muttered to the dial tone. Her brain instantly replayed the conversation she and Gretchen had had about the infamous Jessica Scott when they’d had dinner together.

“She probably just wants to see how things are going. She might
have heard through the grapevine that upper management was happy
with our budget revisions. She might just want to say hi.”

“She’s your ex!”

“Not exactly.”

“You’ve slept with her, though.”

“Yes. We’ve…kept in touch.”

A mix of jealousy and panic rose within her and threatened to choke her where she sat. Gretchen had called Jessica from Poughkeepsie?
She
called her? But not me? Well, she called me, but not exactly to chat.

Why Jessica? Why…

Her thought process stopped abruptly when she remembered the other thing Gretchen had said about Jessica.

“I was ready to get out and Jessica called me at just the right time.

She keeps me aware of what’s going on in my Þ eld.”

Kylie rubbed at her temple with her Þ ngertips. Was Gretchen looking for a new job? Already? Without even talking to her about things Þ rst? The idea was almost more than she could bear. She felt like a lead blanket had just been dropped over her shoulders and the air seemed to completely abandon the room.

After all that had happened between them, how could Gretchen close her out this way? They’d made love—no, they’d made
passionate
love—but it had been more than that. Hadn’t it? They’d made a connection, a solid, emotional connection, and Kylie had been sure they were on a path to… She searched the air for the right words. Something more? It was vague, but frighteningly accurate.

She avoided thinking too much about any kind of a future with Gretchen, but she knew deep down that’s exactly what she wanted.

She thought Gretchen had wanted it too, but now, she wasn’t so sure.

Gretchen’s message left her uncertain. The uncertainty made her angry.

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GEORGIA BEERS

She wanted to call Gretchen, call her right now and ask her what the hell was going on. But she thought of Gretchen’s deep, throaty voice on her voice-mail, of how utterly exhausted she sounded, how hard it must be to sort and sift through an entire life’s possessions of your dead parent, and she just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t bear to call and burden her with more.

Instead, she stared straight ahead at nothing with no idea what to do next.

No idea at all.

v

God, I hope I’m doing the right thing.

It was the clearest thought in her mind as Gretchen hung up the phone. Her timing was lousy, but if she was going to make a change in her attitude—hell, in her life—this was the only way to do it. She knew she needed to talk to Kylie, really
talk
to her. But her head was just too full and it was all she could do to keep it from exploding in a mess all over the living room walls.

She ß opped herself onto the couch to wait for J.J. They were both so exhausted. Gretchen felt like she’d been through an emotional wringer over the last week and just when she thought she was done with the tears or the pain or the regret, she’d stumble across another memory and the ß oodgates would burst open yet again.

As worn out as the process was making her, J.J. was in much worse shape. He was taking their father’s death extremely hard and there was actually a little part of Gretchen that was jealous, envious that she didn’t have a close enough relationship with her father for his death to devastate her. Despite the fact that she’d been way more affected than she’d expected to be, that jealousy made her feel ashamed.
What
kind of person envies another’s pain?

She brieß y thought about eating, but her stomach churned in protest. The refrigerator was packed full, people stopping by all week and dropping off casseroles and pasta and loaves of bread so she and J.J. wouldn’t have to worry about cooking. They’d picked a little bit, but the kids had eaten most often.

She looked at the pictures adorning the table across from her. She and J.J. in their adolescence, looking awkward and gawky, her mother smiling at the camera in a rare moment of relaxation and carefree

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happiness, her parents’ wedding picture. She squinted at that one, trying to Þ nd evidence that they weren’t as happy as they looked, but she failed. Her mother’s cheeks were rosy and her eyes sparkled. Her father was smiling like he was the luckiest guy in the world. Gretchen wondered when it all went downhill, when he decided his job and his business friends were more important than this woman he obviously adored the day he married her.

Live life. You’re supposed to
live
it.
She heard John Kaiser’s deep, rumbling voice in her head and wondered if it was a lesson he’d learned too late…and if so, did he regret it? Did he regret the gymnastics tournaments he’d worked through? Did he regret not being home when Gretchen had announced she was the valedictorian of her high school graduating class? Did he regret that he wasn’t present the day his wife had Þ nally given in to the cancer and had passed into the next world?

Did he regret that he’d given his daughter so little of his attention that she’d moved away without a backward glance? Did he regret that the two of them had never sat down and talked through their differences, their decisions, their anger?

They were all questions Gretchen would never have the answers to, and that was a very hard pill for her to swallow. She wasn’t the kind of person who took things on faith alone—truth be told, she had precious little of it—and right now, she was having a very difÞ cult time knowing these queries would swim around in her head forever.

When J.J. arrived twenty minutes later, Gretchen was still sitting in the living room lost in her own thoughts. He gave her a wave and a weak “hey,” then leaned against the door frame between the living room and dining room and studied her. She looked even more tired than he felt. He’d never seen his big sister seem so small before. Her face was drawn and her eyes looked inexpressibly tired. Her old sweats and ratty T-shirt hung on her as if they were three sizes too big. Her hair was pulled back off her face, but it was out of control even in its clip, sticking out at all angles.

It was disconcerting for him; she’d always been so strong, so larger-than-life to his younger self. He’d always trusted her to take care of things. Seeing her so lost and unable to control the happenings around her shook him up much more than he cared to admit. Not to mention the fact that he never expected her to take the loss of their father so hard.

It wasn’t like the two of them were very close at all, nor had they

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GEORGIA BEERS

been in years. He’d expected her to be sad, but not this distraught. He suspected it was more guilt and regret than grief that was bogging her down.

“Sleep okay?” he asked softly as he entered the room and sat down beside her.

She shrugged. “You?”

“Eh.”

“J.” Gretchen didn’t look at her brother as she spoke his name, but he turned to face her anyway.

“Hmm?”

“Am I like him?” Her voice was so small and so frightened, J.J.

got his Þ rst sense of what she must have sounded like when she was six years old. He swallowed, knowing what she meant and knowing the answer, but unsure as to whether she wanted the truth.

“What do you mean?” he stalled.

“You know what I mean. Work has always come Þ rst for me, hasn’t it?”

He remained silent, sensing that she just wanted to vent and needed him to listen. He nodded and she continued.

“I thought…” She squinted, concentrating as though trying to Þ gure out a riddle. “I thought if I could be like him, if I could be as successful and respected in my Þ eld as he was, he’d Þ nally sit up and take notice, you know? That he’d point at me and say to his friends,

‘That’s my girl right there. Isn’t she something? Chip off the old block, that one.’ But he never even looked. And I kept trying and kept focusing until I didn’t even care if he noticed anymore. It just became who I was.

I worked. I succeeded. It’s what I did. God, I treated Diana just like he treated Mom.”

J.J. pressed his lips together, his heart breaking for his sister. He’d liked Diana very much. He’d seen what was happening so long ago and he’d even tried to tell Gretchen, but she’d been unable to accept his words. Diana hadn’t been as strong as their mother. Or maybe she’d been stronger. Gretchen turned to him then and there was such fear in her dark eyes that he wanted to scoop her into his arms and protect her.

“I don’t want to end up like him,” she whispered. “I don’t want to make those mistakes. I don’t want to shut the important people out of my life and end up alone.”

A tear spilled over and down her porcelain cheek and at that

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TOO CLOSE TO TOUCH

moment, J.J. did wrap his arms around her. It was the only thing he could think of to help her.

“It terriÞ es me, J.” she muttered into his chest.

“I know.” He pressed his cheek to her hair and tightened his grip on her. “Gretchen, if you don’t want to be like that, then don’t.” He said it as if it was the simplest piece of advice in the world.

And in a way, it was.

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TOO CLOSE TO TOUCH

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Kylie lay on the couch late Saturday afternoon watching
Ferris
Bueller’s Day Off
for the thirty-Þ fth time in her life. She could recite every line and it reminded her fondly of high school. Whenever she was channel surÞ ng and came across that Þ lm, she stopped and watched the rest, whether it had just started or it was almost over.

Muttering lines with the actors, she could actually smell the approaching thunderstorm on the breeze drifting in through the open windows, and she felt the tingle of excitement. She’d brieß y entertained the idea of turning on the air-conditioning, but the sound of the rain soothed her, despite the mugginess of the air, and she didn’t want to close the windows. Summertime thunderstorms were one of her favorite things.

She burrowed farther into the throw pillow, getting comfortable in anticipation despite her pounding head. Taking another long slug from the bottle of water on the coffee table, she waited for her second dose of Motrin to kick in, glad she’d chosen a gray and rainy day on which to be hungover.

Going out the previous night with Brandy had been a great idea.

They’d had a lot of fun…until the fourth martini. Try as she might, Kylie couldn’t get Gretchen out of her head after that. More accurately, she couldn’t get the fact that Gretchen hadn’t called
at all
on Thursday or Friday out of her head.

Apparently, she’d thought she could wash that reality away with copious amounts of vodka and vermouth. Thank God Brandy had pooped out early and was ready to head home by ten. One more of

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GEORGIA BEERS

those deadly concoctions and Kylie would be in inÞ nitely worse shape than she was now.

The good news was she’d gotten the name and number of the breeder Brandy had mentioned the previous week. Glancing at the basket of Rip’s toys, Kylie sensed that by the time the latest litter was ready to leave the mother—about three more weeks—Kylie would be ready to at least go look at the puppies. Rip had been gone for nearly four months and Kylie’s life felt empty without a dog.

She was contemplating the possibility of some tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich when the phone rang. She wasn’t really up for chatting, but something in her nature didn’t allow her to let it ring.

She’d never been one to screen her calls, and therefore got nabbed by telemarketers on a regular basis.

“Hello?” she answered without emotion.

“Kylie?”

Kylie sat up, recognizing Gretchen’s voice immediately. To punish her for her too-quick movement, her head swam and her stomach churned. She bit back a groan. “Hi.”

“Hey. How are you?” Gretchen sounded unsure, like she was treading carefully.
And she should be.

“I’m Þ ne. And you?” Kylie tried to remain cool, to stay neutral, despite the twittering Gretchen’s voice could cause in the pit of her stomach.

“I’m hanging in there. Hey, listen. What are you up to?”

“Today?”

“Right now.”

Kylie glanced at the cable box. It was 4:27. She had no plans at all, though she almost wished she did. She also hadn’t showered and was still in her pajamas. “Um…I’m sort of in the middle of something right now, but I’ll be done by Þ ve.” She grimaced and punched the couch cushion next to her, annoyed at how easy she made things for other people, Gretchen in particular.