If the Shoe Fits (21 page)

“How annoyed?”

“Very.”

“Sarah?”

“He was… well, he was in a sort of fury. And then, well, and then we talked things over and we both agreed that it was all for the best if we didn’t see each other anymore. Or rather, I suggested that part, and I guess he sort of reluctantly agreed…”

“Am I going to have a leather glove thrown in my face or not?”

“Very funny. Like I said, the fact that he’s bringing another woman to the baptism this weekend proves that he’s
way
over me.”

“Kind of like your inviting me proves that you are over him? Don’t answer that. I’ll bring my dueling pistols.”

It had been almost seven months to the day (the night, really) that Devon had last seen Sarah.
That
is
not
technically
accurate
, he chided himself, since he had seen her every minute since then, just not in reality. He checked her website, he dreamed about her, he tried to act disinterested when he asked Max about her. He knew she had been in London and had to force himself to stay away. Her website had occasional updates about the new store scheduled for a September opening, and it was all he could do not to sneak into the building to make sure the construction work was being done properly. When he’d read an article about the owners of the old building on Bruton Place resisting her offer, he didn’t think it went beyond the pale to make a few phone calls to convince them she would be an admirable buyer. He was just trying to be helpful. He didn’t want to impose.

He was overcome with equal parts dread and desire at the prospect of finally seeing her in the flesh at Dunlear in three days. He had told Max last Friday at dinner that he was bringing a girl with him, hoping that would lend the whole weekend a friendly, careless tenor. Little did he know that he’d set in motion a string of events that would create a situation that was anything but friendly or careless. Unbeknownst to Devon, after he’d left Max and Bronte the previous weekend, Bronte had sworn Max to secrecy about Sarah bringing a buffer date.

“If Devon’s going to try to be all what-me-worry? at the expense of
my
best friend, then he can squirm a bit,” Bronte barked at her husband in the taxi home. “How dare he bring some strumpet to our first family event for Wolf?”

Max smiled softly and rubbed Bronte’s forearm. “Narinda is not a strumpet. And if nothing had ever transpired between Dev and Sarah, then none of that would matter. Obviously, something happened, and maybe this is a good way for them to just move on.”

“Move on? Are you blind? Neither of them can even have a conversation about the other, much less be in the same room. And all these months in London with both of them trying to be all casual every time we invite them over for supper, like, ‘Uh, by the way, will fill-in-the-blank be there?’ And then always happening to be busy when one or the other is already coming over? Come on. Those two have ‘Unresolved Issues’ written across their foreheads.”

“Okay,” Max replied in typical marital mode, “what should I do?”

Bronte’s phone beeped with a text reply from Sarah before she could answer him.

bringing backup in form of eliot cranbrook next w/e, ok? pls don’t tell you-no-who. Dont want 2 seem tit-4-tat xos

“Perfect!” Bronte crowed. “That idiot brother of yours is going to get what’s coming to him.”

“I know he’s an idiot, but you don’t need to sound quite so pleased about his imminent torture.”

“Oh, okay. But something’s got to jar him out of his funk, and this is just the thing.”

“And what might ‘this’ be?”

“One strapping American hunk named Eliot Cranbrook. He is a great old friend of Sarah’s and apparently he’s coming to Dunlear this weekend.” Bronte practically squealed under her breath. “I think I’ll put the two of them in the big yellow suite.”

“You are cruel. Even Devon asked to put Narinda in a separate room.”

“Look.” Bronte turned to Max, all business. “If Devon is too much of a fool to step up and declare his own feelings, then it’s up to the rest of us to give him a little shove in the right direction. Let’s make him a little jealous. Make him see what he’s missing.”

“I’m not sure Devon does very well in the jealous department. Does this Cranbrook fellow own a bulletproof vest?”

Bronte smiled with a wicked gleam in her eye. “Oh, this is going to be delicious.”

Max felt like a bit of a rat when he met up with Devon for lunch a few days later. Even though he hated to withhold the information about the pending arrival of Devon’s supposed rival, Max was beginning to see the logic. Devon was acting like a fool.

“So are you all set with Narinda coming down to Dunlear this weekend?” Max asked casually.

Devon’s head snapped up. “Yeah. Why? Did Bronte say something about it to Sarah?”

Poor, stupid git
, Max thought. “She might have said something. What’s up with you and Sarah anyway? Was it nothing or was it something?”

Devon stayed quiet.

Max persisted. “This weekend is supposed to be—no!—is
going
to
be
a happy celebration of the birth of my firstborn child, you idiot. I don’t want it devolving into some weepy episode of
Downton
Abbey
. Get it together, Dev.”

“Thanks for the sympathy, Max.”

“You know what I mean. Bronte’s a bit
emotional
.” Max rolled his eyes to convey that that was an understatement of gargantuan proportions. “She’s got a five-week-old baby and, while she’s a rock in almost every way, she was never very sturdy in the unexpected emotions department to begin with, so I am not going to tolerate any unforeseen… hiccups. Maybe you should give Sarah a call or stop by to talk to her in the next day or two, so we don’t have to have any histrionics over the weekend.”

“Histrionics? How multisyllabic of you. I’ll give her a ring. But it’s all a whole lot of nothing. We’re all grown-ups.”

“Are we?” Max cocked up an eyebrow, then looked out toward the busy sidewalk.

Devon’s face turned stormy.

“Devon.” Max put down his sandwich and slowly wiped his hands with the too-small brown paper napkin, choosing his words with purpose. “Remember that time we were meeting with the farm labor negotiators last year… when I was so keyed up about Bronte, and you punched me in the face?”

Devon smiled. “Yeah, I remember.”

“I’m not going to punch you right here in this chrome and glass café, but I might take you into a nearby alley if you don’t pull yourself together. One way or the other, you have to figure out what this bird is to you.”

“What do you mean? She’s nothing. She wants nothing to do with me.” The bitterness of his denial only served to further reveal the depth of his feeling.

“Devon, it’s me, Max. I am not going to pry. I don’t want to know any gory or illicit details. She’s my wife’s best friend; you are my brother. We have to move on. Please try to reach some sort of rapprochement and we can all look back on this and smile. It was a brief encounter at my wedding for chrissake. Let it go.”

Devon’s hair was hanging in front of one eye and he made no move to push it out of the way.

Max continued carefully,“If, on the other hand, you have strong feelings for her, why aren’t you pursuing her? I can tell you from gruesome firsthand experience, it’s worth it.”

“I don’t mean to be evasive, Max, but I just can’t have this conversation. Especially not in the middle of a busy lunch hour at Pret.” Devon finally swiped the strands of stubborn hair out of his face. “I’ll try to be the mature adult and call her and we can, as you say, move on.”

“So pursuit is out of the question?”

“Max, I don’t think she’d have me if I crawled on a bed of hot coals and begged… and if she did, then I’d just resent her for making me willing,
wanting
, to beg. It’s a mess. I’ll deal with it. Let’s drop it. Tell me more about the wolf cub.” Devon forced his tone to lighten. “Is he reciting Gibbon yet?”

The two brothers finished their sandwiches amid a genuinely amusing discussion about the sheer indignities of caring for a newborn. “I don’t know how Bron can deal with all that
excrement
as if it were nothing more than a bit of crumb on the kitchen counter. She actually turned to me last night, before passing out cold, of course, and told me that she found it so amazing that Wolf’s diapers didn’t even smell!”

Devon burst out laughing along with his brother.

Max went on, hoping to amuse his younger brother out of his funk and enjoying any opportunity to talk about his wife and child. “Talk about
The
Selfish
Gene
! Can you imagine a more spectacular genetic adaptation? She honestly believes his shit doesn’t stink!”

By this time, they were laughing so hard that people were starting to glance their way. They settled down a bit, then cleared the remnants of their lunch and walked back to Max’s office.

“Thanks again for crossing the river to have a quick lunch with your boring brother, Dev. Sorry I couldn’t get away for longer. See you Friday night at Dunlear.” Max gave Devon a brief, supportive pat on his upper arm, then added, “Call her.”

“I will,” Devon conceded. No matter how miserable he was, he wouldn’t do anything to mess up Bronte and Max’s weekend. Devon pivoted back down toward Pall Mall, through Trafalgar Square, and then down toward the river. Maybe he should call her right now, walking down Craven Street. He smiled at the wordplay and put it off for a few more minutes.

He was happily distracted by the sounds and bustle of the bright spring day, one of those May days in London that made you forgive every last gray, drizzly, suicide-inducing, dark-at-four day of the past few months. The sun was almost too bright, throwing all of the new spring buds into sharp relief against the sooty limestone of a Victorian pediment or Georgian sill. Window boxes were replanted. The grass in the city parks was an intense, vivid shade that his younger sister Abby used to call “super green” when spring came to Dunlear Castle in their youth.

Now
is
the
time
to
call
Sarah
, Devon admitted to himself. He kept his pace as he took his cell phone out of his pocket and approached the Millennium Bridge that spanned the river. He always appreciated the feeling of South Bank, his London, rising to meet him when he crossed the bridge on foot. He felt the weight and power of places like the Ministry of Defence and Buckingham Palace fall away as the southern part of the metropolis took him in. His mother’s world of Mayfair and the
ton
, his brother’s world of commerce and accomplishment: they were behind him. The art and music and creativity of the southern half of the city lay ahead of him. He stopped in the middle of the bridge, not immune to the irony. He dialed the number he had memorized the first time he had punched it into his phone at Heathrow last October, before his flight to Chicago. It was her U.S. phone number, but he knew she had an international phone and used the same number when she was abroad.

The line crackled then started ringing with the familiar British
beeep-beeep
. She picked up after the first ring.

“This is Sarah James.”

Speechless.

He probably should have prepared a little bit more.

“Hello?” she tried again. “Anyone there?”

“Sarah. It’s me—it’s De—”

“I know who ‘me’ is,” she interrupted quickly.

“Um.” He looked down at the river and thought a swim, a permanent, dark, arctic swim, sounded like a great idea right about then. She wasn’t going to give him an inch.

Silence.

“Are you still there?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Silence.

This had to be one of the most bizarre phone conversations he had ever had. “All right, well, I promised Max I’d call you before the weekend, to avoid any awkwardness, so that’s what this call is.”

Silence.

“Are you there?”

“Yes,” she said, but softer this time. He heard a door close on her end of the line. “I’m at work and there are construction workers everywhere and it’s distracting. I wasn’t expecting…” Her voice trailed off.

“Sarah.” As much as he had thought about her and
pined
, he supposed was the word for it, he had not realized the power of simply uttering her name aloud. He remembered he needed to apologize. “I don’t really know where to begin, or end, or whatever, but I think Bronte and Max just want everyone to get along and make it about Wolf this weekend. I’m sorry if my inviting someone was immature or upset you. I just thought it would help to have a buffer or whatever.”

What
am
I
talking
about?
he wondered to himself. “Sarah?” he asked again into the void.

“I’m still here. I don’t know what to say…”

A torrent of possibilities she might choose flew through his brain:
I’ve missed you horribly. I want to give it a go. I want you in my bed. I hate that you’ve invited someone when you knew I would be there.
Or even,
I
don’t care what you do one way or the other.
At least that last option would put an end to the limbo in which he had suffered and clung, holding on to some insane thread of hope that she might still be interested in seeing him. If he just left her alone. That made sense. Right?

Silence.

“Well,” he tried again. “I don’t either, Sarah.” He was going to say her name every chance he got. “I still want to apologize for—”

“No!” she barked at him.

Had he really hurt her so much in such a short time that she couldn’t even bear to discuss it? Or was her vehemence a perverse sign that she still had salvageable feelings for him? Or, more likely, that she was terrified he would attack her and not in a good way? He was about to speak again when she continued.

“Devon.” His name sounded so good in her gentle voice. “I don’t really know exactly, I mean, I think I know what happened that night, but at the time, I was so confused… in any case, you don’t need to apologize anymore—”

“It was totally my fault, Sarah. Please. I won’t talk about it if that’s what you want, but I just don’t want you thinking that I would ever behave like that again.”

A short pause, then she continued, “It’s not like I want to bury it or dredge it up… I just needed a little clarity. And time. And then weeks went by, and now months, and… oh, I don’t know…” Now she was the one fumbling for words.

“Well, at least we are talking now. Why don’t we go for a walk when we get out to Dunlear? Saturday morning?”

“I don’t know, Dev—”