C
HAPTER
16
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many dragonflies in one place.”
“Hmm.”
Thea shot a look at Hugh. That sort of noncommittal, unengaged answer was not usual for him at all.
“The Marginal Way is so lovely, isn’t it,” she said.
They walked at least another two yards before Hugh said, “Uh-huh.”
Thea felt the icy hand of dread on her neck. “Are you okay?” she asked, though she was afraid of what Hugh’s answer might be. She herself did not feel okay. She felt sick. The other night, things between them had been strained, and then that stupid article she had read that morning had given her false hope, if only for a moment, that life might actually turn out to be lovely.
“No, actually,” Hugh blurted, “I’m not okay. I’ve been wanting to say something to you almost since that first day in the diner.”
The icy hand of dread tightened. Hugh was going to tell her that nothing could come of this reunion, that it was simply too late for them. Of course, he was. “Okay,” she whispered, completely unsure of how she would handle hearing the devastating words from his mouth.
Hugh took her arm and led them off the path and out of the way of the other strollers. He took off his sunglasses, took both of her hands in his, and looked down at her intently.
“I love you, Thea Foss,” he said. “Maybe I’ve always loved you, maybe I never really stopped loving you. Maybe I just let other people’s plans for me get in the way. I’m sorry if this is hard for you to hear. I’m making no presumptions about your feelings and I’m asking you for nothing. But I just had to speak up.”
Thea sagged forward and felt Hugh’s grip on her hands tighten in response. “Oh, Hugh,” she cried. “Hugh, I love you, too. I really do! I thought you were going to—Never mind what I thought. I—”
Hugh cut off her words with his mouth on hers. Their kiss, the first one in so many years, was passionate and heartfelt and almost as wonderful as the long and tight hug they engaged in right after. I could die a happy woman at this very moment, Thea thought. But I so don’t want to.
“Get a room,” someone called, not unkindly. Someone else laughed in appreciation.
Hugh and Thea pulled apart. “Let’s sit somewhere,” Hugh suggested. “We’ll be less of an attraction with our backs to the audience.” They took a seat on a bench a yard closer to the cliff. Hugh held her left hand with both of his.
“Well,” he said with a grin, “that was a big relief. A guy’s never sure he’s going to get the answer he’s hoping for.”
“You mean you really didn’t know how I felt, how I feel?” Thea asked. “I’m stunned. I thought I was being very transparent. I was afraid I was throwing myself at you. Well, as much as someone like me does that sort of thing.”
Hugh laughed. “Women are mysterious creatures for us, Thea. Even a woman you’ve known for a long time can be impossible to understand. It’s a flaw in the masculine design, I guess.”
“Well, then, I’ll try to be very clear in the future. That is, when I get over the shock of our being here together. Honestly, after you didn’t respond to that letter I sent you the Christmas of our senior year, I thought I’d never see you again, let alone be declaring my love for you.”
“Wait,” Hugh said, “what letter? I don’t remember getting a letter from you that Christmas. If I remember correctly, we hadn’t been in touch at all for months.”
“Yes, you know, the one in which I said I wanted us to try again. I said I thought we had what it took to be a really good couple for the long run. And I promised that if I didn’t hear from you by the end of January, I’d never contact you again.”
Hugh’s expression was troubled. “Thea, I swear I never got that letter. Believe me, that’s something I’d remember.”
“I do believe you,” Thea said. “Oh my God. What could have happened?”
“I don’t know.” Hugh shrugged. “Maybe it got lost in the holiday mail. Maybe—Well, I suppose my parents could have intercepted it ... I’m sorry to say that sort of behavior isn’t beneath either of them. But there’s no way to know for sure. It’s hardly something they would admit to after all this time.”
Thea was stunned. She had never considered the possibility of the Landrys having interfered with her life in such a blatant way. But before she could process the enormity of that possibility, Hugh asked:
“What made you reach out to me again that winter?”
“Mrs. Tolliver.”
“Who?”
“I was volunteering at a retirement home,” Thea explained. “Mrs. Tolliver was one of the residents. She’d been there for almost ten years by the time I met her. We got along really well. She told me she’d been married for almost fifty years to the boy who had been her first love. It was a real-life love story, Hugh. Seriously, every time she talked about her husband and their life together, she—glowed. It made me think that maybe you and I could have that special life together, too. I know we hadn’t been getting along all that well, but ... I still had feelings for you so, I wrote you that letter.”
“Wow. That was brave.”
“Would you have called me?” Thea asked. “If you’d gotten the letter?”
Hugh didn’t answer right away. “Well,” he said after a long moment, “I don’t know.”
“Oh,” she said, her voice a bit wobbly.
Hugh squeezed her hand. “No, let me explain. I want to be honest about everything. And from what I can remember about who I was in senior year of college and where I seemed to be going ... remember, I was pretty heavily influenced by my parents ... I just can’t say for sure that I would have been able to listen to what you had to tell me with an open mind.”
Thea nodded. “Okay. I have to admit I’m disappointed. I was hoping you’d say you would have jumped the first flight back east to be with me. But at the same time, I know that your being honest with me is better than lying to protect my feelings.”
“That’s what we should be about, especially now, Thea, after all that’s happened to us. Honesty.”
“That’s not something I’ve had much experience with lately,” she said ruefully. “Let me ask you another question. Were there times over the years when you thought about me?” she asked.
“Of course I thought about you. Especially, I have to admit, when my marriage began to fail so spectacularly. I couldn’t help but compare Susanne to you, which was ridiculous because—well, because of all sorts of reasons. It was unfair of me.”
Thea tried to remember if she had ever consciously compared Mark Marais to her memories of Hugh Landry. Oddly, she couldn’t remember if she had. “Did you ever think about contacting me?” she asked.
“Sure,” Hugh said promptly. “But I didn’t want to make a messier situation even messier. And I was afraid that if I did contact you I’d find you wanted nothing to do with me. And maybe I’d find that you weren’t at all who I remembered you to be, or who I needed you to be for me at that lousy time. All in all, I made the right decision to—well, to leave you alone.”
But if he hadn’t left me alone, Thea wondered, maybe I would never have married Mark. But that was gross speculation. “And then ...” she prompted.
“Then,” Hugh went on, “after the divorce, I threw myself into work even more than I had before. After a time, when I began to burn out, I met this woman, Raina, at my gym. I’ve told you a bit about her already. We had absolutely nothing in common but a love of sports. Seriously, I don’t think we ever talked about politics or the arts or anything remotely important. Instead, we went skiing and scuba diving and hiking and rode our bikes fifty miles each weekend. My parents were horrified with the match. Which is probably why I eventually asked Raina to marry me. Childish, huh?”
Thea smiled ruefully. “I’m not one to judge.”
“And then the accident happened. Suddenly, like I told you, I was no longer a suitable playmate for Raina. Better I found out when I did than years into a marriage. So, it doesn’t say much for my track record, two spectacular fails.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Hugh.”
“I could tell you the same thing,” he replied with a smile. “So, do you want to tell me a bit about your marriage? You know you’ve never even mentioned your ex-husband’s name.”
“Yes,” Thea said, surprising herself a bit, “I think that I do want to tell you. I probably should say that I didn’t date much in my twenties, hardly at all, in fact. And I never considered getting married. Really. I felt I was doing just fine on my own. I liked my work; I was a good teacher. I bought a condo when I was only thirty. I had some nice friends, nobody very close, but there were people I could go to the movies with, even travel with if I wanted to.”
Thea paused and looked out at the Atlantic glistening in the August sun. She had never spoken this narrative before, not to anyone but her therapist, and that had been at times an excruciating process. To tell it now to someone she knew so well, someone with whom she had shared so much, both good and bad, should, she thought, be easier. But as she went on, she found that in some ways revealing her past was even more painful when the listener was a person whose respect she so desired to maintain.
“And then?” Hugh prompted.
Thea sighed. “And then, I met Mark. Mark Marais. It was at the MFA in Boston. There was an exhibit of medieval illuminated prayer books on loan from some small museum in Belgium. I was studying a particular book in a glass wall case when this person, this man, suddenly spoke to me. I forget what exactly he said, something about the piece I was looking at. Next thing you know, we were chatting and having lunch in the restaurant upstairs, the expensive one. He paid. He was older then me, by ten years, I found out later. He was dressed nicely, kind of a mix between preppy and, I don’t know, a European elegance. Oh,” Thea cried suddenly, “this is so embarrassing!”
“Thea ...”
“He seemed so nice,” she went on. “He spoke French, though not very well, but he laughed at himself for it. It all happened so fast. The next thing you know I was introducing him to my parents and he was charming them with a story about how his father was a self-made man and how he’d followed in his father’s footsteps and was now an entrepreneur but had never lost his feel for the ‘common man.’ ” Thea winced. “Yes, he actually used that term. And we fell for it, all three of us.”
Hugh whistled. “Oh, boy. A classic con artist. Let me guess. You eventually found out he’d scammed other women before you.”
“Not until much later. But yes, I found out about the other women he’d duped, and about his arrest record. I should have known things weren’t what they seemed. There were so many signs, but I just didn’t see them. Or, if I did see them, I ignored them, like the fact that he had no friends, none at all. When we got married some guy showed up at the church to be his best man. He left before the reception was over and I never saw him again. And Mark never talked specifically about his work. He claimed client confidentiality. He said because he was entrusted with so much of his clients’ money he had to be ultradiscreet. I believed him.”
“People like this guy Marais are good, Thea,” Hugh said grimly. “They’re professionals. You weren’t taken in because you were stupid. You were taken in because this Mark person knew what he was doing.”
“I know that now,” she admitted. “But it still ... it still hurts. And my parents were so thrilled that I was finally getting married! My mother started dropping broad hints about becoming a grandparent before we were even on the honeymoon.”
Hugh shook his head. “It’s amazing how unsubtle parents can be about that topic.”
“Yes, well, it wasn’t long after the wedding that I started to doubt Mark’s—honesty. We were living in the condo I’d bought on my own. I put him on the deed as co-owner, but in spite of all his talk about the big money he handled, he rarely made his share of the mortgage payments, let alone of the utility bills. And odd sums of money began to disappear from our bank accounts. Stupidly, I’d agreed to put all of our money together. We’d get into terrible fights about that. He’d say he needed some capital to put back into his business, that it was all an investment in our future. He’d promise to let me know in advance when he would need to withdraw money, and then, he’d break that promise. Bills started to go unpaid. Checks started to bounce.”
“Not a good situation.”
“No, not good,” Thea agreed. “Until then I’d had perfect credit. And then he even convinced me to quit my job teaching, which I really loved, to enroll in a corporate training program at one of the big marketing firms downtown. Getting into the program was exhausting, but I made the cut. The pressure was enormous, but so was the money, and that’s all Mark cared about. I was absolutely miserable but as money at home was always tight, I stayed on. I had no choice. But when I had to work late at the office, which was often, Mark would get so angry ... I felt I was losing my mind. I felt so alone. The marriage, everything, was a nightmare.”
“What about friends?” Hugh asked gently. “Did you talk to your friends about what was going on?”
Thea shook her head. “Oh, no. Peggy, the woman who’d been my maid of honor, she’d just had her first baby and the last thing I wanted to do was bother her with my woes. Besides, Peggy was doing everything right. She had a good husband, she was starting a family, and she was working at a job she enjoyed. I felt like such a big failure compared to her. And Mark, well, he’d pretty much driven my few other friends away, though I know I was partly to blame for not standing up to him.”