Spiral of Bliss 03 Awaken (21 page)

“I’m going to miss you all over again, professor.”

“I’ll miss you too.” Everything in me is fighting the idea of leaving my wife again.I got it the first time, the idea that if I left Mirror Lake, I couldn’t be accused of any new transgression that could screw things up even more.

But now? With the poisonous Crystal Winter in town? With Edward Hamilton accusing me of having a precedent of getting involved with students? With Stafford investigating my relationship with Liv?

What if he wants to know more about her? What if he digs into her past?

The thought of Stafford bringing
Liv’s
history into this investigation sickens me with fear. And what the hell am I supposed to do about it from five thousand miles away?

“Hey.” I pull in a breath to suppress the growing anger. “How about I figure out a way to stay here? I can—”

“Dean.” Liv touches my face. “You have to go back. They’re expecting you, and I… with my mother here, it’s better if you’re away.”

A wave of frustration hits me. I don’t want to be
away
from my wife. And I hate that she wants me to go.

“It’s
better
if I’m away?” I repeat, unable to keep the irritation from my voice.

“You know it is.” She eases off me, shaking her head. “Don’t fight it again, Dean, please. You have to go back to Italy.”

Tension floods me as I reach for my jeans. I pull them on and watch Liv as she slips into her underwear, her hair swinging in a curtain over her shoulder, her skin still damp.

My chest tightens. Somehow, always, everything is okay when it’s just the two of us alone together. It’s when we have to deal with the rest of the world that everything gets fucked up.

And I still have no idea what to do about it.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Olivia

April 11

his time after Dean leaves Mirror Lake again, I’m almost relieved by the fact that he’s away. Not because I want to be separated from him again, but because an ocean’s distance between him and my mother is a good thing—especially when my mother hasn’t yet given me any idea of how long she intends to stay.

I don’t have much time to worry about her though, because between the café and my hours at the museum and library, I have a commitment every day. I have to quit my bakery job, which doesn’t bother Gustave after we make plans to have him supply the café with croissants and brioche.

Marianne continues to help us with logistics, and with Brent as the café’s general manager, we move toward our early June grand opening. Marianne brings us a million samples of curtain fabrics, glasses, tablecloths, and soon we’re repainting the walls and installing a new subfloor.

I don’t see much of my mother during the week after Dean leaves. We exist in a strained but not overtly hostile way, and she continues to help out with the painting at the café. She’s never home in the evenings, as she goes out every night to clubs and bars, returning long after I’m asleep.

Though I talk to Dean at our usual time every night, safely ensconced in his office with the door locked, things are different than they were the first time. Now they’re strained by the unspoken presence of my mother and the threat to our future hovering over us like smoke.

One night shortly after he’s left, he reminds me that he didn’t use a condom the evening we fooled around at the Butterfly House.

“I’m not pregnant,” I tell him. “I started my period yesterday.”

“Oh.”

My heart thumps suddenly as I wait for more.
“Oh, good”? “Oh, too bad”? “Oh my God, let’s try again”?

There’s nothing else. Just
“Oh.”

“I guess we got carried away,” I say.

Even with all we’ve been through, I’m not surprised by this. We’ve had a rough time since last October, and we’ve both been trying to navigate this new territory between us. And in an old, gabled tower on a hill above Mirror Lake, isolated from discovery, wrapped in the intense sexiness of Dean photographing me naked… it’s no wonder we lost ourselves in cascades of heat and unreality.

“So… what if I were pregnant?” I ask.

Dean is silent. My heart pounds.

“Then I’d buy a house,” he finally says.

I can’t help laughing, even as sudden tears sting my eyes. “But would you
want
to buy a house?”

Silence again. Then he says, “Do you remember that time we went to the Vilas Zoo in Madison?”

“We went lots of times.”

“Yeah, but there was one time we went on a cold fall morning during the week,” Dean says. “Lots of mothers there with babies and little kids in strollers. I was waiting for you near the gift shop, by that front gate that swings back and forth. When you came through the gate, you looked behind you to see if anyone was following.

“Then you held the gate open so a woman pushing a double-stroller could get through. There were two kids in the stroller, a boy and a girl, all bundled into jackets and hats. The woman stopped to say something to you, and then one of the kids started getting upset and crying. And as you were talking, you put your hand on his head, right on top of his fuzzy winter hat.”

“I don’t remember that,” I say.

“I don’t think you even realized you did it,” Dean says. “But the kid settled down in about two seconds. Just like that. Stopped crying and waited for the stroller to get moving again. And I looked at you and thought,
She would be a great mother.
”

I can’t speak. I don’t think I can even contain my heart right now.

“But it’s easy when it’s just us, Liv, you know?” he continues. “That’s why it’s always been so damned good. And these past few months… half the time I want to take you to some tropical island where we can just lounge around naked eating bananas.”

I smile through the tears still blurring my eyes. “We have a tropical island, Dean. It’s called
our marriage.
And I’d be happy to lounge around naked eating bananas, if that’s what you want.”

“I want to be with you,” he says. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted. And I hate that things get screwed up every time… every time it’s
not
just us anymore.”

Now we’re both silent. The air between us vibrates with tension. I sense an odd shift in those few seconds, as if he’s the one seeking reassurance for once.

“Dean, having a child doesn’t make our lives
not us,
” I say gently. “It makes our lives
more than us.
”

He doesn’t respond. I can picture him lying on his bed, one hand behind his head, his gaze staring out the window, as if all the answers to the world can be found in the dawn light.

“I can think of a thousand reasons to say no,” he says.

“Me too.” I press a hand to my chest and close my eyes. “But if we look hard enough, we can always find a reason to say no. We can always find a reason to be afraid. So maybe it’s time to stop looking and see what finds us instead.”

We fall silent again. A very long time passes with nothing but the sound of our breath.

“I might not come out of this investigation alive,” Dean says.

“Yes, you will. But I won’t be waiting for you when you do.”

“You won’t?”

“No. I’ll be at your side.”

April 21

The sound of my mother’s laughter rings out from the front room of the second floor. She and Allie’s friend Stacy have been working on painting the Wicked Witch’s castle room for the past few days. I pause in my attempt to rip up a baseboard, trying to pretend that I’m not eavesdropping even though I totally am.

“It’s a nice place,” my mother is saying. “Small-townish, but with a good amount of stuff to do. I was there for about three months.”

“I think it’s so cool that you’ve traveled all over,” Stacy replies. “The only place I’ve been is Tennessee to visit family.”

“Liv never liked traveling,” Crystal replies. “She didn’t have an adventurous streak. She won’t even come to Phoenix with me for a few days. I wanted her help finding out about my mother’s house and stuff.”

Stacy’s response is drowned out by the sound of the radio turning on downstairs. I put down the crowbar and go to where Brent and a couple of other guys are starting to nail down the hardwood floor. I step onto the front porch and breathe in the fresh air.

Envy. That’s what this ugly, gnawing feeling in my gut is. I’ve felt it before, every time people gravitated toward my mother, praised her, wanted her acceptance. It makes no sense that I should still feel this way, but there it is. My mother has always been at ease with so many people. Except me.

Of course, those people haven’t had the history that Crystal and I do, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

I leave the café earlier than I’d planned and spend a couple of extra hours at the Historical Museum working on my report about the Butterfly House. As I walk home, I call Kelsey on my cell.

“You doing anything tonight?” I ask.

“I’ve got a meeting about that meteorology conference in Japan I’m going to,” she says. “Won’t be home until late.”

“Bummer.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“Oh, you know. If it’s not one thing, it’s your mother.”

She chuckles. “How long is she staying?”

“She said something about leaving next week. I just want her to be gone before Dean gets back.”

“Which is when?”

“I’m not sure yet. A month, maybe.” Though my heart aches at the idea of not seeing Dean for that long again, I can’t shake my conviction that he is still safer in Italy.

“Okay, go to your meeting,” I tell Kelsey. “Call me tomorrow.”

“I will. Hitch up your big girl panties.”

“I’m trying, but they give me a wedgie.”

“I’ll loan you some tweezers.”

“With the size of my ass these days, I’ll need pliers.”

Kelsey laughs. We exchange goodbyes, and I stop to pick up takeout Chinese food before returning home. After leaving the boxes on the kitchen counter, I go into the living room.

Crystal is sitting on the sofa, writing something on a pad of paper. She rips the page off and hands it to me.

“Phone call from a lawyer,” she says. “Asked for your husband.”

My heart plummets. Written in Crystal’s flowing handwriting is the name of the lawyer who specializes in sexual harassment cases.

“Thanks.” I toss the paper onto the foyer table and go into the bedroom to change.

When I emerge in clean jeans and a T-shirt, Crystal is still sitting on the sofa. I go past her, aware of her following as I head for the kitchen.

“Liv.”

“Not your business, Crystal.”

“Why does he need a lawyer?”

“Dean has a lot of investments and stuff.” I realize that’s probably the wrong thing to say. “Never mind.”

“Is the guy a divorce lawyer?”

“No! Of course not. Again, not that it’s any of your business.”

But I’m not stupid. One click of a mouse and she’d find out exactly what Sterling and Fox specializes in. I could deflect that discovery with bullshit about Dean needing a lawyer for employment reasons, but Crystal wouldn’t buy it. I’ve visited the Sterling and Fox website.
Sexual harassment
is listed as their firm’s primary area of practice.

I feel my mother watching me as I dump the Chinese food into bowls and take them to the table.

“If there’s anything I don’t regret,” she says, “it’s that I didn’t marry your father. It would have been a mess to try and divorce him.”

“Dean and I are not getting a divorce. And I’m not going to talk about it anymore.”

Somewhat to my surprise, she doesn’t press the issue. I eat a few bites before holing up in Dean’s office to read for the rest of the evening. It’s not until the following morning that I know Crystal knows. Sometimes I hate the Internet. Or at least, I wish I was a better liar.

“Is that why he’s out of town?” she asks.

I shake my head and swallow a gulp of too-hot coffee.

“Is it a student?” she asks. “Or another professor?”