C
HAPTER
13
“Am I too early?” Thea asked, peering into Alice’s living room through the open front door Sunday morning around 9:00.
“Not at all,” came a voice from the kitchen. “Come on in.”
Alice had left a note under Thea’s door the evening before, inviting her to brunch. By this time in her Ogunquit sojourn, Thea was smart enough to accept any and all invitations from Alice, especially those involving food, which, as a matter of fact, they all did.
Alice had made eggs Florentine with a side of maple-smoked bacon, and a salad with crumbled blue cheese, walnuts, orange chunks, and local greens. There was also a basket of warm biscuits, a plate of butter, and two varieties of jam. And, of course, there was a pot of Alice’s signature good, strong coffee.
“I’m in heaven,” Thea said, taking a seat at Alice’s kitchen counter. “At least, the breakfast version of it.”
“Glad to hear it. Every cook needs an appreciative stomach nearby. So, where’s your old friend this morning?”
“He’s working. He’s got his phone and computer with him, of course. Where’s your furry sidekick?”
“Off chasing poor innocent wildlife, I suppose. Well, she had a slice of bacon before she left the house, so maybe the wildlife is safe for the moment.”
Alice made sure that everything was in reach of her guest before digging in to her own meal. After she had gobbled up the egg dish and a biscuit, she laid her fork against her plate. “Need a little break,” she said. “So, kiddo, what are you holding back from me?”
Thea coughed on a bite of salad.
“It’s a small town,” Alice went on. “People have seen you hanging around with the handsome guy with a cane. Naturally, they’ve been coming to me, as if I would know anything more than he’s the ‘old friend’ you ran into.”
Thea finished chewing and took a gulp of coffee before answering her curious landlady. “Well,” she said, “I suppose there’s nothing to hide. His name is Hugh Landry. We were a couple in high school and for most of college.”
“So, what happened?” Alice asked, picking up her fork again and applying it to her salad.
“It’s hard to say, really. He went to school in California. Things just ... fell apart. I made one last effort—plea, really—for us to try again, but ...”
“And you hadn’t seen each other since college?”
Thea shook her head. “Nope. No communication at all. And then, he just showed up in Ogunquit.”
Alice slapped the counter with her open palm. “Fate. The relationship is meant to be.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that ...”
“It sounds ordained to me. But then again, I’m a romantic. I want people to be happy. I believe they can be.”
“But we’re just friends, really,” Thea protested. “I ...”
Alice eyed her young guest with interest. “Yes?”
“I’m afraid that if we ...”
“Do you still love him?”
“I don’t know. Well, of course I do, but maybe I’m just remembering that I loved him. Maybe—”
“Have you kissed yet?”
“No!” Thea cried.
“Well, Jeez Louise, grab him and kiss him already!”
“I can’t do that! What if he ...” Thea felt herself blush as she remembered how badly she had wanted to kiss him and to be kissed by him two nights before. “Besides, he’s going back to New York soon,” she added, though in truth she had no idea what Hugh’s immediate plans were. After that first meeting in the diner, neither of them had even mentioned their immediate, daily lives back home in Massachusetts and New York. It was as if they had been living in the moment and the moment was all.
“Seize the day. Carpe diem, if you prefer the Latin. He who hesitates is lost.”
“I ...”
“Okay, okay,” Alice said. “I’ll let you finish your meal in peace.”
Thea did finish her meal and took a deep breath afterward to help digestion. “Alice, how long have you been in Ogunquit?” she asked finally.
“Oh, for about four years now,” Alice replied, “since right after my second husband passed. We used to come here for a week each spring and fall. I suppose that like you, I came to Ogunquit to—recuperate. I fell in love with the house and got it for a song. As far as I can see, I’m staying put.”
“Where are your husbands, uh, buried? That’s an odd question. I’m sorry.”
Alice waved her hand in a gesture of dismissal. “No worries.” She nodded toward the fireplace. “Gabe is in that yellow ceramic jar on the mantel. He’s number two. Ted, my first husband, wanted to be buried in his family’s plot in Oregon. Bit inconvenient for me, in terms of visiting, but he understands.”
“Oh.” Did Alice really talk to her dead husbands? Well, if she did communicate with the spirit world, Thea supposed there was nothing wrong with it. She herself was fairly obsessed with dead people and times gone by. “Do you have—do you have any living family?” she asked.
Alice laughed. “Guess it’s only fair that I answer some personal questions after I’ve been badgering you for information about your love life.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You need to stop apologizing,” Alice said briskly. “I have a sister in Michigan. Terry and I are close but life deposited us an airplane ride away from each other, so we keep in touch as best we can on the phone and via e-mail. Her son lives in Boston. He finds his way up here about once or twice a year and I return the favor about the same. John’s a nice young man, in his second year of medical school. I’m hoping that when I get old and violently out of sorts he’ll help me depart this weary world.”
“You mean ...”
“Better not say it aloud,” Alice said in a stage whisper. “Of course, I haven’t broached the subject with him yet, but there’s still time.”
Thea laughed. “Alice, you’re incorrigible. But on the subject that must not be named, I do agree with you. About ...”
“Yes. Well. So, do you have siblings? Cousins? Aunts and uncles?”
“No to all. Both of my parents were only children. So am I. My last surviving grandparent died when I was in high school. Hugh knew her. He was so nice to her. He used to bring her flowers and she used to flirt with him a bit. It was kind of sad but also kind of cute. It made her happy.”
“So, this old paramour is a nice guy?”
Thea felt herself blush. “Yes,” she said. “He’s very nice. In truth, he’s probably the nicest person I’ve ever known.” Much nicer than I am, she added silently.
“I always thought that niceness was underrated,” Alice proclaimed. “More coffee?”
Thea declined. She offered to help Alice clean up but Alice refused, claiming she enjoyed the washing up after a meal as much as she enjoyed the preparation of the meal. “All part of the entertainment process,” she explained. “It works for me.”
Thea went downstairs to her apartment a few minutes later to find her cell phone ringing. It was her mother. Thea, feeling relaxed and emboldened by her talk with Alice, took the call.
“We were worried,” Gabrielle said reproachfully. “You didn’t call us back. We left two messages this week.”
“Sorry,” Thea lied.
“Are you all right, Thea?”
“I’m fine, Mom.” She paused, hoping to maximize the shock value of her next words. “You’ll never guess who I ran into in town. Hugh Landry.”
Gabrielle was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Oh. My. I don’t know what to say.”
“How about, ‘That’s nice.’ Or, “How is he?’ ” Or, Thea thought, enjoying her mother’s discomfiture, how about, At least it wasn’t Mark Marais.
“Oh. Of course. How is Hugh?”
“Great,” Thea said defiantly. “Fantastic.” She would offer her mother no more than that.
“Well, that’s good,” Gabrielle said. “Please give him our ... I mean, please tell him that we said hello.”
“Sure. Look, Mom, I have to go. Thanks for calling.”
Before Gabrielle could protest, Thea ended the call. She felt a bit guilty for having been less than pleasant to her mother. She might even have been downright rude. She knew that to act so was childish and unworthy of her better self. She hadn’t even asked about her father. Thea looked down at the phone sitting in its usual place on the occasional table and then went to find a book with which to spend the afternoon.
C
HAPTER
14
“Is everything okay at your office?” Thea asked. It was evening and she and Hugh were having dinner at the Cape Neddick Lobster Pound.
“As okay as it ever is,” he said. “I realize that’s not much of an answer.”
“I’m sorry you had to work all day.”
Hugh just shrugged.
Since they had sat down to eat, Thea had been aware of a strain between them, an element of uneasiness in their conversation. Or maybe, she thought, she was imagining it. She knew that her own dissatisfaction with the progress of their reunion might be coloring what was in reality an ordinary and companionable chat between two old friends. Since when, she wondered, had everything become so awfully complicated?
“I guess you’ll have to be getting back to New York soon,” she ventured.
“I still have a few vacation days,” Hugh said, “but, yeah, I can’t be away forever. Even though right now I’m feeling frighteningly content right where I am.”
“Me, too,” Thea admitted. Her dissatisfied but expectant heart made a tiny little leap.
“Being out of the city is always refreshing.”
“Oh,” Thea said flatly. “Yes.”
“What will you do when you go back to Massachusetts?” Hugh asked.
“I’m not quite sure,” she admitted. “My career ... during the last year of my marriage it kind of went off track. I haven’t told you that I gave up my teaching position for a more lucrative path at my former husband’s request. It was a disaster from the start.”
“Oh. I’m so sorry I brought up a painful subject.”
“No, I don’t mind. It’s just that ... it’s frightening. I kind of have to rebuild my life. Part of me knows I can do it because I have no other choice. But another part of me is ... is very scared.”
Hugh took her hand in what Thea could only call a brotherly way. “You were always far more resilient than you gave yourself credit for, Thea,” he said. “And maybe it’s time you learned how to feel some compassion for yourself.”
Thea managed a smile.
Hugh released her hand and patted it. “I know I sound kind of parental or paternal. It’s one of the results of all the therapy I had after the divorce and then the accident. My friends tell me I can drive people crazy when I’m in counselor mode.”
“Oh,” she said. “That’s okay.”
There was a moment or two of what Thea was certain anyone, even her own counselor, even Alice, would judge to be awkward silence.
“I don’t know why,” Hugh said suddenly, “but I’m feeling kind of tired. Do you mind if we call it a night?”
Thea felt his words like a blow. “Of course not,” she lied. Her appetite had fled anyway; her dinner stirred uneasily in her stomach.
They drove back to Thea’s apartment in silence. When Hugh pulled into the driveway, Thea assured him that he didn’t have to walk her around to her door.
“I’ll wait until I see your lights come on,” he promised.
When the last sound of Hugh’s tires on the gravel driveway had faded, Thea fell into the chintz-covered chair and buried her face in her hands. Only days before she had sworn to Alice that she would never marry again. Since then, she had been reunited with Hugh and though nothing at all had been said to make her believe there was a shared future in store, it was exactly the thing she wanted—a shared future with Hugh Landry. She wanted to be married to him. She wanted to have children with him.
Thea lifted her head and sighed magnificently. “You’re an idiot, Thea,” she whispered to the empty apartment. If she had followed the advice of her therapist she would never have run away to Ogunquit. She would never have stumbled upon Hugh. In short, she never would have gotten herself into such a glorious, heartbreaking mess.
C
HAPTER
15
The next morning Thea drove to the Hannaford in York to stock up on a few basics—deodorant, toothpaste, milk, and coffee. Alice had suggested that maybe if she bought a better brand of coffee she might make a better cup of coffee. It was worth a try.
Red plastic basket over her right arm, Thea joined the line at one of the express checkout stations. The woman in front of her was positively ancient and moved with a slowness that was very close to stillness. The cashier, a teenage boy with one of those huge earplugs in his left earlobe, seemed to know or at least to recognize her, and chatted amiably while with trembling fingers the woman extricated coins from her cracked leather purse.
While she waited patiently, Thea scanned the impulse purchases—candy, horoscope scrolls, and of course magazines. Cooking, health and exercise, fashion, gossip ... The glossy at the end of the row caught her attention. Rather, the words printed along the right side of the cover did: “Reuniting with an Old Flame—Is It Worth It?”
Thea reached for the magazine and then let her hand fall. How much real, sound advice could you get from an article in a magazine that featured makeup tips, the latest fad diets, and a feature on a gaggle of sisters staggeringly popular for nothing more than being public? To waste money on something so ephemeral and ...
The ancient woman in front of her finally moved off and Thea tossed the magazine onto the counter, along with her other purchases. Five minutes later, she was sitting behind the wheel of her car in the parking lot, rapidly scanning the article.
Phrases, sentences leapt out at her. “An early relationship that the parents had belittled or in some ways actively hindered.” “A split that had occurred for largely situational reasons.” Being separated by three thousand miles could count as a “situation,” Thea decided. And certainly her own parents hadn’t been supportive of her dating Hugh.
Her eyes darted to the final few paragraphs of the article. If the two people now reunited had been each other’s first loves, if their relationship had been criticized and cut short, the writer told her, then their chances of romantic success the second time around were close to eighty percent.
Thea’s heart began to race. If this article could be believed, then she and Hugh stood a very good chance of making it again as a couple. They wouldn’t part in a few days, Hugh for New York and Thea to rot away in her rented apartment. She thought about their conversation at dinner the night before, how she had sensed that there were so many important things being left unsaid. Well, maybe not on Hugh’s part, but certainly on hers. But if Hugh really didn’t have anything to say to her, anything like, “Thea, I love you,” then ... then, she was imagining a future that existed only in her own fantasies.
Thea looked down at the glossy cover of the magazine, at its bright purple and pink lettering, sensational headlines, and ridiculously airbrushed model. The article could all be lies, she thought, the studies faked, the results a joke perpetrated by the sneering editors on an unsuspecting, gullible, magazine-reading public. There would most likely be no future with Hugh, no romantic reunion, certainly no marriage, and the sooner she accepted that strong possibility, the better.
Thea tossed the magazine into the backseat of the car and started the engine. Her therapist, she thought, would be proud. How Alice would judge her determination to reject the hope of love, she decided, she would rather not know.