Lighting Candles in the Snow (17 page)

Chapter Twenty-two

D
ressing casual, taking my time, I was rethinking my decision to send Jeremy away at the door. Why not talk a little first? See what he had to say for himself?

Soft and relaxed was the look I went for, like I didn’t care about making an impression, or care one whit about Jeremy.

Jeremy who?

I pulled on my oldest, most worn jeans, with rips and tears in the knees, my comfort jeans topped with a cotton, blue-gray jersey top that matched my eyes. I blow-dried my hair and curled it slightly, then pulled it into a loose pony tail, holding it with a wide, red barrette.

No leaving my hair down. This evening called for restraint, not sexy. I would be Mountain Woman. A touch of make up, no need to go overboard like I was trying for anything. A bit of blush, dark brown mascara, lip gloss, and I was done.

Now, what for dinner?

I wasn’t hungry myself, being too nervous and anxious about seeing Jeremy again, but I might as well fix a decent meal for him. Because after dinner I’d send him packing.

I tried to think creatively as I examined the contents of the refrigerator and the pantry. Mostly low-cal food. No matter, I knew what to do with it. Add butter to anything and it goes from diet to delicious.

When I heard his knock an hour later, I had the table set and dinner ready. Rotini pasta with olive oil, butter and garlic poured over raw spinach leaves and then mixed in until the spinach was barely cooked. Add a sprinkling of Parmesan and ground pepper, and you have wonderful.

There was ice water with sliced lemon and French bread with butter. Neither of us could tolerate margarine. Even unemployed I wouldn’t stoop to using it. For dessert there would be mint chocolate chip ice cream in frosted glasses. Perfect. A simple yet elegant meal. We would eat, and afterwards I’d say sorry, darling, this isn’t going to work out.

I opened the door, my heart racing, and we fell into each other’s arms. Jeremy kicked the door shut with his foot. He kissed me, lifting me off the ground and bending into me. My skin tingled. He smelled incredible. There went plan number one to send him away at the door. Time for plan number two—eat first, say goodbye later. For good.

“Jeremy, dinner is ready.” We’d eat like civilized people before anything happened. Or didn’t happen.

He smoothed my hair tenderly. “Okay, let’s eat. I’m starved. You look fantastic, by the way.”

Those brown eyes were drinking me in. But we would eat and talk lightly about nothing in particular, and I’d make him leave. Never mind how tortured I felt staring at this beautiful man, longing to lose myself in the fire coming from him like a tangible aura. He practically glowed.

We moved into the kitchen.

“Go ahead and sit down. Everything’s ready,” I said, as I pulled on my oven mitts and lifted the pan of hot pasta to pour over the spinach leaves. It had to be done at the last minute or the spinach would get soggy.

“Can I help with that?”

Jeremy came over to the stove. I gripped the pan, and he held up the serving dish of spinach with butter-drenched sautéed garlic poured over the top.

“Thanks. Now if you’ll just grab that long serving spoon and scrape out the rest of the pasta.”

He knew the routine. I’d made this dish before, a good recipe for when you’re rushed but still want to eat healthy.

He stirred it, breathing it in. “This smells delicious. What a cook you are, Karoline.”

I brought over the basket of French bread. Butter, garlic, bread, pasta—a meal to inspire love-making. Or not.

“Oh, yes, the candles,” I said, as I brought a plate with a five stubby candles arranged in a circle. I lit them and turned off the kitchen light. “There! Better than any restaurant.”

Jeremy smiled at me over the sweet little candles in the center of the table. “This is nice,” he said in a gentle tone. “Your spinach pasta thingy is one of my favorites.”

The irony of this dinner was not lost on me. I wondered if Jeremy was aware of it, too. I believed he was, because of how he looked at me with a kind of guilty appreciation. Like I had somehow magically, with my extraordinary culinary skills, turned back the clock to that evening of our anniversary and erased what had gone before and after.

Well, I was no savior. Jeremy would have to save himself from his demons.

He would soon be out the door and forever out of my life. I’d be nice to him until after we had the ice cream. Someday I might be able to forgive him. As he gazed at me across the candlelight, I wondered if he would ask me to.

Jeremy ate a lot. He noticed that I wasn’t, unusual for me since I’ve always been a girl with a healthy appetite.

“What’s wrong, Karoline? You barely touched your food.” He reached for another slice of bread and spread it thickly with butter.

“I’m not very hungry. I’m enjoying watching you eat, though.”

It was nice to have someone to share dinner with. Usually I grabbed something and ate in front of the TV at night. I glanced at the clock. Seven on a Wednesday.
Criminal Minds
was about to start.

“I feel bad eating all your food,” Jeremy said.

Your
food. It used to be
our
food. My food, my apartment, my single, lonely otherness from Jeremy.

He glanced up with an expression of concern. No one is more observant than a writer. You can’t let out a quiet little sigh without a writer ex-husband noticing.

“There
is
something wrong.” He set down his fork. “I’m sorry, Karoline. I shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t be here. It’s painful for you.”

He pushed back his chair and made a move to get up.

This was my opportunity to agree, to say, “No, you shouldn’t be here. I think you should go. Please leave. Please go and never return.”

Seeing Jeremy sitting across the little table from me, enjoying the meal I had prepared just for him made me happy. I couldn’t bear the thought of him walking out, supposedly to save me pain.

What kind of life is it anyway if the sole purpose becomes saving oneself pain? Then why get married, why have children, why do anything? Why even walk outside your door, because you might get hurt? Just sit alone in your house day after day with nothing but the TV for company, to save yourself pain.

I shook my head. “No, Jeremy, you coming over isn’t painful. What hurts more is you
not
being here. Don’t leave. I swear, if you do, I will die of grief. My heart will break in a million pieces. Melodramatic yes, but honestly how I feel.”

There went plan number two.

“Don’t walk out to spare me some kind of imagined sorrow.”

His face softened and I was afraid I might cry. He remained silent, watching me, letting me talk.

“This evening isn’t something I’m enduring to make us both feel better about, about, what happened the other day.”

He reached across the table and gently wiped the tears from my cheeks.

“Sorry, Jeremy. I don’t know why I’m crying. It’s silly.” So much for strong Mountain Woman—I felt more like a child crying for her lost toy. “Only don’t leave. Please.”

“It’s not silly,” Jeremy said, touching my hand. “There’s a lot happening between us right now, a lot of emotion. I don’t want to hurt you again, Karoline. I have wanted this for so long, you and me together. I can’t believe you would want me. Not after what I put you through. I was a jerk, worse than a jerk. I have problems, things I never told you, things I never wanted to talk about. I kept everything inside, and I guess you could say it made me sick.”

I thought of what his mom had told me. Evil has a way of causing sickness in others, in innocent people that it touches.

He fiddled with his knife and fork, finally setting them at cross angles on his plate.

I watched him and waited. He had something more to say, and I wondered what.

“I told you I was getting counseling?” he said, like it was a question.

“Yes, you said something about it. That’s really good, Jeremy. Remember, I always tried to get you to go. I felt like you needed to talk to someone, to get professional help.”

“I realized it too, but I wasn’t ready to accept it. You have to hit bottom, I guess, to be willing to admit certain things and make changes.”

“And you hit bottom?” I wondered if our divorce had anything to do with it.

“Let’s go sit in the living room,” he suggested. “We can talk for a while then I’ll help you clean up.”

“There’s dessert,” I said. “Nothing special, just ice cream.”

“We’ve got all night. We’ll talk, we’ll eat ice cream, we’ll clean up the kitchen.”

He took my hand and led me to the living room, to our big comfy sofa that had embraced me during the long months when he had been out of my life.

Had it been just a week ago that Zac Kline sat there making his moves on me? Good thing I had resisted. To have sex with Zac then turn around and make love to Jeremy would have made me feel like the biggest slut, like I had cheated on my husband.

We settled ourselves in our favorite cuddling position, with Jeremy leaning into the arm of the sofa, and I with my legs curled under, lying against him, his arm around me. It felt so familiar and happy, I almost started crying again.

“This is nice,” he said, stroking my hair.

“Very nice.”

More than nice. It was wonderful. I could have burst from the joy within, my own Wasatch Mountain High bubbling up and making me light-headed.

“Anyway, Karoline, I want to tell you about this counselor I’m going to see.”

I wondered what made him finally give in to the idea of counseling. “How long have you been going?” I asked.

“It was after our divorce was final. When that notice came, it was a knife cutting right through me and taking out something precious. The memories tortured me, although I pretended like I didn’t care. So what, I told myself. There are plenty of other women out there. I can have a woman whenever I want one.”

“Oh wow, Jeremy, that’s harsh.”

“I know, sorry, but I don’t like feeling hurt. I do anything to avoid it, to distract me from the feelings. I moved in with this girl for a while, I don’t know, to salve the wounds and get things back to normal.”

Get things back to normal.
How many times had I told myself that? How many times had Suzie and I agreed that was exactly what I needed?

Both Jeremy and I had been apart trying to get things back to normal when what felt natural and effortless was us being together. Normal was Jeremy and me cuddling on the sofa, his arm around my shoulders, his soothing voice pouring over me like water on a thirsty land.

“It wasn’t working with this woman. I stayed away longer and longer, and she kept making demands, asking me what was wrong, didn’t I love her, and that kind of shit. No, dammit, I didn’t love her. I loved you, Karoline, only you. And I had lost you. I had thrown it away by screwing up big time, not just once either, but that night of our anniversary. . . . God, Karoline, what I did that night. . . . I can hardly stand to think of it.”

I let him go on. Jeremy admitting guilt was huge.

“So, yeah, I hit bottom, realizing what I had done to the only woman I cared about. You believed in me, Karoline, you had always been there for me, and I treated you like dog shit.”

Jeremy had never admitted any wrong doing before, or taken responsibility. After the Incident, he had shown me lots of attention and treated me like a queen, like everything was fine, but he had never admitted any real guilt. Still, we had been all right for a time, until he began drifting away again, staying out too late, drinking too much, getting into the porn. It had been an unhealthy pattern that had come to its inevitable conclusion.

“After the divorce, I got to thinking of moments in our marriage when I had acted like I didn’t care, when I accused you of who knows what, to make my own lies more bearable. I was such a bastard, I was a fucking bastard, and I knew it, and it made me sick.” He banged his fist on the arm of the sofa. “I kept seeing your face when I’d come home late, and I’d been with a woman. I’d fucking cheated on you, Karoline, and you looking at me with such innocent trust.”

I couldn’t say anything. My heart wept remembering those times when he’d come in late, drunk, acting strange and distant. And I had wondered, suspecting but not wanting to know the truth.

He needed to talk it out, to confess. I would listen because I loved him, but hearing the words was like ripping off skin.

“I figured you didn’t know anything, and what you don’t know can’t harm you, right? I kept on being the cheating bastard, and figured as long as you didn’t know, it wouldn’t matter. What a goddamn fool I was. You believed in me, and even when you knew, even when you found me with another woman, you stayed. I didn’t understand how someone could do that, could love me enough to stay with me through it all.”

He shook his head and jumped to his feet, pacing in front of the sofa.

“I wasn’t good enough for you, Karoline. I wasn’t worthy of you. I wanted you to kick me out, to make me feel better about the shit I’d put you through. I didn’t deserve you. I still don’t deserve you.”

“Jeremy. It’s okay. I’ll be the judge of what I deserve. But . . . thank you.”

Thank you for finally accepting responsibility
.

“I found this counselor, a friend told me about him, how he had helped her get through some stuff in her past, and I thought, what the hell? Why not give it a shot? If it didn’t help, I’d stop going.”

“And did it help?”

“Yeah, he was exactly the person I needed to see. Dr. Lance has a way of bringing things out that I haven’t faced in, well, ever. Only it’s not just him getting me to drone on about my past, like you think will happen when you go to a therapist, but he helps me see how the bad shit has shaped me. He showed me skills for coping and taking control, despite the dark times that always did me in before.”

“That sounds really good, Jeremy. I’m glad you found someone who can help you.”

He sat back down, calmer now. “I go to a twelve-step program three or four times a week along with the therapy. I’ve got sponsors to call for help when I have weak moments.”