These Three Words (2 page)

Their offices were on the fifth floor. I knew from experience that the views of Lake Erie were breathtaking from their windows. But I wasn’t here for the views.

After today, I’d probably never need to come here again.

I could almost see the ghost images of the first day Gray had showed me this building. We’d stood on this very spot, craning our necks and looking up. Then he’d reached down and scooped me into his arms, as if I weighed next to nothing. He proclaimed he was going to carry me over the threshold.

I could almost see our reflection in the glass as he carried me toward the door. Gray was tall and kept his brown hair very short. I was on the tall side for a woman, but I’d always felt small next to Gray. My dark hair had been longer then and pulled back in a ponytail.

But mainly, in that reflection, I saw me laughing and him giving me an indulgent smile.

I saw us happy.

I thought he’d put me down once we’d entered the front doors that automatically slid open as we approached. But no. Not Gray. For a quiet man, he had a sense of the theatrical.

He’d carried me onto the elevator. I’d laughed as he’d fumbled for the button for the fifth floor. He’d joined in. His laughter was rare, but all the sweeter for it.

My hand had brushed against his hair as I held on. It had been newly cut and the stubble tickled my fingertips.

Gray had carried me past the receptionist’s desk and down the hall to his office. Only then did he set me down as he kicked the door shut in one fluid motion.

Then he’d kissed me.

Today, leaning against my car remembering the faint reflections of that day, holding the envelope in one hand, I reached up with the other hand and brushed my finger against my lips, as if to check and see if that long-ago kiss had left some trace.

I found none.

There was nothing but my memory of that long-ago day in a time when we were happy and thought that nothing could ever tear us apart.

Now, I knew better.

I stood alone in a parking lot, clutching the envelope that would put us both out of our misery. I wondered what would happen to my memories as time and distance separated me from them. Would they become clearer or fade altogether?

That first day I’d whispered that I loved the building, but now I’d come to hate it.

I understood that image was part of any company, but I’d never cared about image or status or any of the things that Gray insisted were important in order for his business to continue to grow and thrive.

I only cared about him.

Even if I’d been working to put my love aside, caring about him was now a part of my DNA. I couldn’t extricate it even if I tried.

I would always care about him. But caring and living with were two different things.

Caring and married were as well.

I suspected caring and loving went hand in hand, but now I knew that despite what the songs said, sometimes love wasn’t enough.

I rode the glass-front elevator to the fifth floor on my own two feet today. Normally I’d face the glass, eager to watch the view of the lake come into focus as I rose. Today, I faced the elevator doors and tried to brace myself for what was coming.

When the doors slid open, I walked around the corner to the receptionist.

I didn’t recognize her. The company had grown so fast that I didn’t know half of the people who worked for Gray and Ash anymore. I didn’t stop and sign in like the sign said. I simply walked across the marble floor toward the hall that led to the dark walnut door.

“Ma’am, you can’t go down there,” the new, unknown receptionist called out to me.

I could make a list of the things I couldn’t do, but the one that would haunt me was that I couldn’t find a way back to Gray. Or maybe I couldn’t find a way to bring him back to me.

I looked at the receptionist and said, “You’re wrong about that.”

I marched into Gray’s outer office. Here was someone I still knew.

“Mrs. Grayson,” his personal assistant said by way of greeting. I’d always thought her steel-gray hair seemed at odds with her name—Missy.

She mothered Gray. She’d signed on when the company was barely off the ground and had been with him and Ash every step of the way.

So had I.

I nodded at her and kept walking toward the door to his inner office.

“Addie,” she said, calling me by my first name. Maybe I was hearing things, but it sounded like she had sorrow in her voice.

Was she sorry for me?

For Gray?

Or for the pieces of our marriage that she must have noticed scattered about?

“Addie,” she said again, softer this time. “He’s on an important call. If you could wait—”

“They’re all important calls, aren’t they, Missy? Sorry,” I said. “This can’t wait any longer.”

The receptionist was at the door. “Sorry, Missy. I tried to stop her. Ma’am, you can’t go in—”

“She’s Mr. Grayson’s wife,” Missy told the worried-looking girl, who nodded then turned and went back to her desk.

I threw open his inner office door and strode inside. Gray held up a finger, telling me to wait.
Important call
, he mouthed, a hand over the receiver, as if the important caller could hear his lips move. His eyes never left me as he continued to talk, and he smiled.

I remember when that smile could stop my heart. Gray was not a person who smiled easily. His default expression was serious . . . maybe
studious
was a better word. But today’s smile didn’t stop my heart; it simply annoyed me.

Missy peeked in and Gray—once again in his default expression—gave her a reassuring nod. She left, closing the door behind her.

And I waited.

I remembered decorating this office for him. I’d started a fire at home, opened my computer, and went to a popular art site. “Show me three prints you like,” I said.

I thought he’d go for slick, sleek modern artists. I was surprised when he picked three prints by the same artist. Helen Allingham. They were English scenes. A cottage. Two children on a beach. A woman coming through a cottage gate.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. Gray had always been a man of contradictions.

I fingered the plaid sofa that sat against the rich maple wainscoting, facing the maple bookshelves. The office, like the prints I’d bought him, screamed tradition. It was an odd choice for office décor in such a modern-looking building. But Gray was a man with traditional tastes who just happened to work in a fast-paced, high-tech industry.

I’d bought a Helen Allingham print for the house, too. I’d left it there, along with everything else when I moved out. I’d only taken my clothes, books, and a few mementos.

For months, I hadn’t been able to remember any of our better moments, but that beach-walk memory, the first day at the office, and now the Helen Allingham prints were all good memories.

I’d hold on to them and try not to forget them again.

I studied Gray as he talked about orders, shipment dates, and invoices.

He needed to trim his hair. It had a tendency to curl if he let it grow out. He’d never trimmed it back in school. His wild brown curls had run amok. They’d softened his serious expression. But now that he was a bigwig at Steel, Inc., he wore his hair very short most of the time.

I could almost feel the way it had felt when I’d run my hands through it that long-ago first visit here. Prickly and rough.

I stood silently, waiting. The fact he was too busy to talk to me somehow made what I was about to do easier. It reaffirmed that I was right to be here, to be offering him a way out.

To be offering myself a way out.

Maybe if we ended things now we could avoid too much bitterness and find some sort of peace with our time together.

Gray hung up the phone and smiled again. It was a hesitant smile that said he was happy to see me, but dancing around the corners of his dark brown eyes was concern. I knew he was worried about what brought me here.

He glanced at the envelope in my hand and that smile faltered.

I was pretty sure he knew what was in the envelope, but he didn’t admit to it. He simply said, “This is a surprise. What brings you here today?”

Suddenly, I couldn’t find the words I’d practiced in my head.

Gray didn’t push. Instead he said, “I almost called you last night.”

“Why?” What could he have to say to me now when all those months I’d waited for something and he’d said nothing?

I waited for him now to respond. He paused, as if trying to remember why he’d almost called last night. Finally he admitted, “I opened the freezer, saw the ice cream, and thought of you.”

This was so, well, Gray-ish that I couldn’t help but smile. “I like ice cream, but I’m not sure I understand.”

“I bought it the day you left.”

I still didn’t understand, and my expression must have said as much because Gray said, “You always said there’s no such thing as a bad time for ice cream. So when you left, I bought it for when you came home. It’s been waiting. At first I thought we could have it as we worked this all out. And as the days turned to weeks and then to months, I thought I’d give you the ice cream when I told you—”

I cut him off.

I’d waited months for him to say something, and now that he was about to, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what he had to say. So rather than let him continue, I asked, “When did I say that about ice cream?”

“We were sixteen and Erie was having a record-breaking cold streak. The temperatures had been in the negatives for well over a week. We were driving down Peach Street, past the old Baskin-Robbins, and you screamed for me to stop. I thought we’d hit someone, but then you pointed to the store and said you were
dying
for ice cream. You said the word
dying
so dramatically.” He chuckled as if my drama still amused him.

“I said it was too cold,” he continued. “You said,
It’s never too cold for it.
Then to make sure I understood, you said,
There’s never a bad time for ice cream.
”

I remembered the old Baskin-Robbins and I did love ice cream, but I had to admit, “I don’t remember saying that.”

“I do. You got pralines and cream then teased me because I got plain vanilla. You laughed because I had all those choices and still, I just got vanilla.”

He paused, then added, “I remember everything. Sometimes I worry that you’ve forgotten all the good things. And there were so many good things, Addie.”

I knew there were, but he was right. They didn’t come to mind often, today being an exception, not the norm.

When I didn’t speak, he continued, “You said it again that one Thanksgiving when you burned the pumpkin pies.”

This was an old argument. More of a joke than anything else. “You burned the pies,” I said on cue.

“And you happened to have pumpkin pie ice cream that you served and said . . .”

“There’s never a bad time for ice cream,”
I parroted.

Gray wasn’t someone who was prone to jocularity, but he laughed.

And I felt it. For the first time in a year—I could almost hear JoAnn whisper “eight months”—I felt our old connection. Just a tenuous one, but something in me seemed to lighten as I recognized it.

I became very aware of the envelope in my hand.

“I don’t know where we went wrong,” he said, more musing to himself than looking for a response from me. “I had it all planned out perfectly and then it went to hell.”

He seemed to collect himself and zeroed in on the manila envelope I was carrying. “Why are you here today, Addie? I suspect it wasn’t to reminisce about ice cream.”

Maybe that wasn’t why I came here, but maybe that’s exactly what I wanted. I wanted to connect with him. Maybe if we could talk about old memories and ice cream, we could finally talk about the elephant in the room. And if we could find our way around that elephant, maybe . . .

Gray walked around the desk and stood in front of me. Close. As if in slow motion, his hand bridged the space between us and brushed my jawline. “Addie, I—”

Gray grabbed at his chest and made a sound that was somewhere between a strangled scream and a moan. It was a sound that spoke of shock and pain.

“Gray?” I cried and tried to grab him as he collapsed. It was as if some unseen force had driven him to his knees. He crumpled to the ground, still moaning, and curled into a ball.

I dropped my purse and the envelope on his desk and knelt by his side.

He groaned.

I’m not sure why, but I loosened his tie and unbuttoned his shirt as I screamed, “Missy, call 911.”

He moaned again.

“Gray. Please. Tell me what it is.”

“Don’t. Know.” Each word was forced, as if his pain was a physical entity he had to push each word past.

He’d grabbed his chest. A heart attack? I’d seen television heart attacks and none seemed to be this painful.

I screamed again, “Missy!”

She showed up in the doorway. “They’re on their way, Addie.”

“Ad.” Gray grabbed at my hand. “I lo—”

Loved me? Loathed me?

I wasn’t sure which he meant.

He didn’t say anything else. He lay, curled up and clutching his chest with one hand, squeezing my hand with the other.

“Love,” he managed.

Love
.

He loved me.

Old emotions whirled with new ones. Love with anger. Longing with loneliness. Joy with pain.

Things blurred and I had trouble following what was going on around us as I clutched his hand, as if holding on to it would keep him from leaving me.

The paramedics worked around us, but my focus was on Gray. I did register when one asked his name. That was one question I could answer. “Gray.”

Then I remembered that wasn’t his real name. “Graham Grayson. But he hates the name Graham. He goes by Gray.”

The man nodded, as if I’d passed some test. “Any history of heart disease? High blood pressure?”

“No. I don’t think so.” I didn’t know and I should. A wife should know things like that.

The paramedic kept barking questions. Gray’s age. “Thirty.”

Thirty was way too young to have a heart attack so it couldn’t be a heart attack. I’d seen doctor shows where patients rush to the emergency room, sure that they’re having a heart attack when all they really had was gas.