The Way They Were (32 page)

She didn’t know how long she sat hunched in the corner—one hour, two, five. The police told Rourke not to speak with anyone about the accident, but they didn’t understand. Kate wasn’t just anyone. She waited for him to come to her.

“
This is a small town,” Sergeant Kilney had said. “We’ll catch him. Or her.”

When Rourke found Kate, the sun had pierced the blinds and shot across the bed. She hadn’t noticed.

“
Kate? Are you okay?” His voice drifted to her, a godsend pulling her from murky water.

She blinked. Twice. He crouched before her, a thick lock of dark hair falling over his forehead, concern stretched across his tanned face. He was so handsome and so perfect. And she was so in love with him. Kate reached out and touched his cheek. “Didn’t the police tell you not to talk to anyone?”

“
To hell with them.” He sat down next to her and stroked her hand. “Have you been in this corner all night?”

She nodded. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I wanted to call and I almost came over—”

“
Oh, baby.” He pulled her into his arms and whispered, “It’s going to be okay.”

“
Is it?” She kept her voice low so she didn’t wake her mother. Georgeanne Redmond in a gin stupor was not a pleasant woman.

“
Of course it is.”

“
What’s going to happen now?” She could hardly get the words out.

“
My aunt’s coming from Chicago. She’ll handle everything.”

“
The rich one?” Rich people did not live in Montpelier.

He shrugged “I guess. She’s my mother’s older sister. I hardly know her.”

A tiny trickle of fear pulsed along the edges of her brain. “Is she going to take you away?”

“
Of course not.” He pulled her against his chest and stroked her hair. “I love you, Kate. Nobody’s going to come between us.”

She turned her face into his shirt and let the conviction in his voice soothe her. “Don’t ever leave me.”

“
Never.” His grip tightened. “We’re bound together for life.”

Two days later he was gone.

July 24, 1995

Montpelier, New York

“
I wish you didn’t have to go.” Kate buried her head against his chest and closed her eyes. She inhaled his scent like a dose of oxygen. He was the only one who could make everything right and now he was leaving.

Rourke tightened his arms around her back and buried his face in her hair. “I’ll be back in a week.”

His mother was being transported to a Chicago hospital and of course, he had to go with her. But he was coming back. “I’m sorry for acting like such a ridiculous baby.” She lifted her head so she could see his eyes. “It’s just that everything is happening so fast. The other night at the lake…”

“
I love you.” He brushed his knuckles across her cheek and gently turned her face toward him. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” He leaned down and touched his lips to hers. “Always.”

“
I’m scared. What if your aunt won’t let you come back?”

His laugh rolled over her, making her insides burn. “I’m eighteen. What can she do? Force me?”

“
I don’t know what she can do. You don’t even know her.”

“
I don’t have to know her. She’s merely a means to help get my mother settled and see that my tuition at Princeton is paid.” He smiled down at her, a lazy, seductive smile that made her want to touch him. “Relax, baby. Nothing’s going to happen to us. I won’t let it.”

August 15, 1995

Montpelier, New York

“
When is he coming back?”

“
Soon.” Please, Rourke, please come back soon.

“
Didn’t he tell you he’d be back in a week?”

“
Maybe his mother had complications.”

“
But three weeks? What if he doesn’t come back?”

“
He will.” Please, Rourke.

“
Maybe the aunt won’t let him come back. She looked like a tough one. Did you see the Cadillac she was driving?”

“
Everyone saw it, Angie. It was the only one in Montpelier.”

“
You didn’t tell me he was loaded.”

“
I didn’t know.”

“
He should have told you.”

“
It wouldn’t have mattered.”

“
Kate, money or lack of it, always matters.” Pause. “Maybe the aunt’s convinced him to stay in Chicago. She might you know, especially if she’s a rich bitch. They don’t like mingling with us common folk. And with him going to Princeton and all, hmmm, she might not think Kate Redmond from Montpelier, New York is good enough for her blue-blood nephew.”

“
Shut up, Angie.”

“
I’m just saying.”

“
Don’t. Rourke’s coming back.” Her voice wobbled. “He has to.”

“
What does that mean? Kate? Ah shit, are you pregnant?”

The words fell out in tiny half-spoken syllables. “I don’t know.”

Journal entry - May 4, 1997

It has been six hundred and thirty-three days since I last saw you. When you left, I destroyed all the pictures of us- everything first out of anger, then despair, and finally, fear. I didn’t want to remember the thick silkiness of your hair beneath my fingers, or the tiny chip in your bottom front tooth…I didn’t want to remember there was ever an us, but your voice, your touch, everything about you, has consumed me for almost two years.

I’ve forced myself to wait until today to write. This has proved the hardest task of all. This is a special day—my daughter’s first birthday. Her name is Julia. Her eyes are just like her father’s—the color of a summer storm. She’s the reason I have the strength to write this letter and not mail it. (Where would I mail it anyway?

Where are you?

Do you ever think of me?

Do you ever wish things had been different?

Clay is good to me and I try to be a good wife to him. I try. He’s an honest worker. A family man. He even changes Julia’s diapers and reads her
Good Night Moon
at bedtime. I pretend I don’t see the hurt in his eyes when he touches me and I flinch—not so much anymore, just a little. He’s always gentle, but he’s not you. Nobody’s you.

How can I go on living like this—wanting you, thinking about you, wondering where you are and who you are with? And why you could not trust our love enough to get us through what happened? The pain is so deep I think sometimes it will ooze out of me and I won’t be able to stop it. But I have to. For Julia’s sake.

Where are you???? You promised me nothing would ever separate us. Were those words only to get me into bed? I won’t believe that. I can’t.

I chopped my hair off right after you left and dyed it red, but when I looked in the mirror, I still saw my mother’s face. I am not my mother! What happened was not my fault but you blamed me, didn’t you? And then you walked out of my life. I hate you—hate you—HATE YOU! That’s not true. I love you. But you don’t care, do you? I’ll never love anyone else this way. Not even my husband. How sick is that? Clay saved me and all I had to give him was one tiny promise. Never mention your name again.

Not much. Unless your name was in every breath I took, every moment of my waking thoughts, every pore in my body.

My tears keep smudging the ink and I can hardly see what I’m writing. But I still see your face, right here in front of me, as though six hundred and thirty-three days had not passed, as though I could turn around and you would be standing there in your old faded jeans and Rolling Stones T-shirt—as though everything were normal.

No one talks much about what happened anymore unless someone new passes through. Then the gossips start whispering like scattered leaves. I’m sipping Chardonnay 1991, remember? I plan to save this bottle and toast us once a year when I open this book and write you letters I’ll never send. I bought this book when Julia was six months old. I told Angie, (remember her?) it was to keep track of Julia’s landmarks. But the way she looked at me, she knew it had something to do with you. Somehow, she always knew.

I waited six more months to write in it—six, long, tempting months. But there was Julia to think about. And what good would it have done anyway? So I hid the journal in the back of my closet, inside a shoebox, and spent the next several months devising a plan. I’d dig it out on Julia’s first birthday while she was taking her afternoon nap, and the cake was in the oven, and the chicken was marinating for the dinner I’d planned for Clay’s parents. I’d lock the bedroom door and pour myself a glass of Chardonnay from the bottle tucked away in the closet behind my dresses. Then I’d sprawl on the bed and ease open the first blank page. And dream about how life could have been. If you hadn’t left me.

It’s the only way I can survive the years to come. Once a year I’ll permit myself to think of you, not in anger and hatred, but with the truth—with a love that cries for you, hurts for you, and a memory that stops with the last time we made love and erases the blood-stained sheet covering your mother’s body. Once a year, I will pretend you are mine. And it will be enough. It will have to be.

Journal entry—May 4, 1998

Julia is two today. Clay wants another child and it is only right and fair to give him one, though I have convinced him to wait until I finish college. (I’m taking classes at Montpelier Community College, majoring in art and design.) And you? Where are you??

Angie wanted to hire a private detective to find you—in Chicago? She wanted to get pictures of you with other women, I’m sure, so she could convince me what a worthless soul you are. I told her no. I’ve never mentioned you since the day you left, but there is something in my eyes when she says your name that tells her you still live in my heart.

Last week I took Julia to the lake and spread out a blanket in the very same spot where we made love two nights before you left. We ate peanut butter sandwiches stuffed with bananas and sipped juice boxes. She fell asleep on my lap as I stroked her hair and I remembered every single moment of that night with you—as precise and finite as a movie—the feel of your hands inching over my body, your mouth, your teeth, your tongue. The feel of you pressed so close to me, and then filling me, stretching me, loving me. Three times. Do you ever think of that night? The night we pledged our love and our lives to each other?

I choose to believe you do, even if only in your subconscious imaginings. There is strength in what remains behind—remember William Wordsworth? Twelfth grade Literature? That’s what I’m doing, each minute, each day, I’m finding strength in what remains behind and I store it up for this day, once a year, when I can write freely about it. For myself. And for you.

To file:

Client: Rourke Flannigan

Subject: Kate E. Redmond

Date: July 23, 1999

Ms. Redmond was observed entering Tops grocery where she purchased the following items: four Rome apples, one head of lettuce, three bananas, and a loaf of whole wheat bread. She picked up a prescription from the pharmacy for amoxicillin, (for daughter, Julia.) She later traveled to Hannah’s Greenhouse where she purchased one bunch of forget-me-knots, two bags of topsoil and a spade. She returned to her residence and left twenty minutes later with a small satchel and a blanket. Ms. Redmond traveled north four miles on Indian Road, entered Huntington Lake where she proceeded to park her silver 1997 Toyota Corolla and walk toward the lake. She spread a blue and red plaid blanket on the ground and sat down.

Ms. Redmond removed the forget-me-knots from her satchel and placed them on the blanket beside her. She sat for approximately thirty-five minutes after which time she rose and tossed the flowers in the lake.

Dinner reservations at The Grainery with Mr. Maden. Ms. Redmond wore a black low-cut dress with black high heels. Mr. Maden wore tan slacks and a navy sport coat. Couple returned at approximately 8:45 p.m. and retired to bedroom
.

Journal entry—May 4, 2000

I wish you had never come to Montpelier.

I wish you had never looked at me.

I wish you had never touched me.

I wish you did not have eyes the color of a storm slicing the lake.

I wish you did not have a chip in your bottom front tooth that makes me want to kiss you.

I wish you did not have a laugh that pulls my insides like warm taffy.

I wish you were not tall and strong and tanned.

I wish you did not know how to make me smile.

I wish I had not touched you.

I wish I could forget your face, your taste, your scent, your touch.

I wish you had loved me enough to come back before it was too late.

Journal entry—May 4, 2001

I graduated from Montpelier Community College last Saturday. Magna Cum Laude. Not bad for a mother with a five year old. Not Princeton, of course, but still, not bad. Julia was there, sitting in the third row with Clay and his family. Clay’s father has emphysema and has to wear one of those oxygen masks and carry that little cart around with him everywhere he goes. They don’t expect him to be here next Christmas.

You must have graduated by now, too. Princeton? Or did you change your mind and opt for Dartmouth? I have absolutely no clue where you are or what you are doing, other than making a huge success of yourself. I always knew you were going places, but there was a time I thought I’d be going there with you.