“Actually, there’s not all that much for the groom to do. I just show up when and where they tell me to.” Kevin was as handsome as ever, but there was an odd look about him. He had the blank, bemused expression of a man who had just stumbled on the sidewalk and turned to see what invisible object had tripped him up.
As he approached, Lucy found herself pulling spare pieces of paper over her tree window, feeling the need to shield it from his view. She went to the side of the worktable and leaned against it.
“Your brace is off,” Kevin remarked. “How’s the leg?”
“Great,” she said lightly. “I just have to be a little careful with it. No high-impact stuff for a while.”
He stopped a little closer to her than she was comfortable with, but she didn’t want to back away.
Contemplating him, Lucy wondered how a man she had once been so close to could now seem like a stranger. She had been so certain that she had been in love with him … and it had been a good approximation, just as silk flowers could look very much like real ones, or cubic zirconium could sparkle just like diamonds. But their version of love had been a form of playacting. All their love-words and cozy rituals had been a way to cover up the emptiness beneath. She hoped that he had found a deeper, more genuine relationship with Alice. But she doubted it. And that actually made her feel sorry for him.
“How are you?” she asked.
Something in her tone caused Kevin’s shoulders to lower. He sighed deeply. “It’s like being caught up in a tornado. The color of the flowers, the guest favors with personalized ribbons, the photographer and videographer and all that crap … this thing is way more complicated and crazy than it should be. I mean, it’s just a wedding.”
Lucy brought herself to smile at him. “It’ll be over soon. Then you can relax.”
Kevin began to pace around the studio, which was familiar territory to him. He had been in there countless times when they had lived together. He had even helped to install the vertical storage racks for the glass. But Lucy felt uneasy as he intruded farther into her studio. Kevin didn’t belong there anymore. He no longer had the right to wander through her workplace in such a cavalier way.
“The weirdest part of all of it,” he said, inspecting a shelf of finished lampshades, “is that the closer the wedding gets, the more I find myself trying to figure out what happened with us.”
Lucy blinked. “You mean … you and me?”
“Yes.”
“What happened was that you cheated on me.”
“I know. But I need to figure out why.”
“It doesn’t matter why. It’s over. You’re getting married the day after tomorrow.”
“I think if you’d just given me a little more space,” Kevin said, “I would never have gone to Alice. I think the relationship with her started as my way of showing you that I needed more room.”
Her eyes widened. “Kevin, I really don’t want to go there.”
He came back to her, standing even closer than before. “I felt like there was something missing between you and me,” he said, “and I thought I would find it with Alice. But lately I’ve realized … I had it with you all along. I just didn’t see it.”
“Don’t,” Lucy said. “I mean it, Kevin. There’s no point.”
“I thought you and I were too settled, and life was getting boring. I thought I wanted excitement. I was an idiot, Luce. I was happy with you, and I threw it away. I miss what we had. I—”
“Are you crazy?” she demanded. “You’re having second thoughts about the wedding? Now, after all the plans have been made and the out-of-town guests are arriving?”
“I don’t love Alice enough to marry her. It’s a mistake.”
“You made promises to her. You can’t back out! Do you get some kind of sadistic thrill out of making women fall in love with you and then dumping them?”
“I’ve been pushed into this. No one’s asked me what I wanted. Don’t I get to decide what makes me happy?”
“My God, Kevin. That sounds like something Alice said to me. ‘I just want to be happy.’ Both of you think happiness is this thing you have to chase after, like a child with a shiny toy. It won’t happen until you start finding ways to take care of other people instead of ways to please yourself. You need to leave, Kevin. You need to live up to the commitment you’ve already made to Alice. Take some responsibility. Then you might have a shot at being happy.”
Judging from Kevin’s scowl, he found her advice condescending. There was a mean, raw edge to his tone. “What makes you the fu**ing expert? You, who’s going out with that D-class poser, Sam Nolan. Mr. Wine Expert who comes from a family of trailer-trash drunks and is going to end up just like them—”
“You have to leave now,” Lucy said, going to her worktable, putting it between them. In the spectrum of self-pity to rage, he had swung from one extreme to the other.
“I talked him into going out with you. It was a setup, Luce … I was the one who did it. He owed me a favor. I showed him your picture on my cell phone, and asked him to take you out. It was Alice’s idea.” Now Kevin was smiling as if at a macabre joke. “To stop you from acting like the victim. Once you were going out with someone, once you moved on, it would get your parents off our case.”
“Is that what you came here to tell me?” Lucy shook her head. “I already know that, Kevin. Sam told me about it at the beginning.” She reached down to the worktable until her fingers encountered the soothing flat coolness of glass.
“But why did you—”
“It doesn’t matter. If you’re trying to cause problems between me and Sam, there’s no point. I’m leaving the island right after the wedding. I’m going to New York.”
Kevin’s eyes widened. “Why?”
“I’ve got an art scholarship. I’m going to start a new life.”
As Kevin took in the news, a bright flare of excitement appeared in his eyes, and his color rose. “I’ll go with you.”
Lucy stared at him blankly.
“Nothing’s keeping me here,” he said. “I can move my business—I can do landscaping anywhere. God, Lucy, this is the answer! I know I hurt you, I know I fu**ed up, but I’ll make it up to you. I swear it. We’ll start a new life together. We’ll leave all this shit behind.”
“You are insane,” Lucy said, so astonished by his behavior that she could hardly find words. “You’re … Kevin, you’re getting married to my sister—”
“I don’t love her. I love you. I never stopped loving you. And I know you feel the same way about me, it hasn’t been that long. It was so good between us. I’ll make you remember, you have to—” He came to her and gripped her arms.
“Kevin, stop it!”
“I slept with Alice, and you slept with Sam, so we’re even. All in the past. Lucy, listen to me—”
“Let go.” In the midst of her outrage, she was intensely aware of the glass all around them, panes of glass, shards of it, beads and tiles and frit. And she understood in a fraction of a second that with the force of her will, she could shape it into whatever she wanted. An image appeared in her mind, and she focused on it.
Kevin gripped her closer, breathing harshly. “It’s me, Lucy. It’s me. I want you back. I want you—”
He broke off with a muffled curse, and Lucy was released with startling suddenness.
A bone-chilling squeak rent the air as a small dark shape darted and flapped around Kevin’s head. A bat. “What the hell—” Kevin lifted his arms and flailed at the aggressive winged creature. “Where did that come from?”
Lucy looked at her soldering table. Two of the corner pieces she hadn’t yet affixed to the rest of the window, cuts of black obsidian glass, curled and wriggled. “Go on,” she said, and instantly they flew from the table, another pair of bats joining the attack against Kevin.
The trio of bats sliced through the air with serrated wings, diving until they had driven Kevin to the door. Stumbling and swearing, he went outside. Two of the bats followed him. The third flew to the corner of the room and dropped to the floor, scuttling across the cement surface.
Taking a deep breath, Lucy went to the window and opened it. The sun was low, rolling toward twilight, the air weighted with the lingering heat of the day.
“Thank you,” Lucy said, standing back from the window. “There you go.” After a moment the bat took flight, slipping through the open window, disappearing into the sky.
Twenty
“You’re going to have to clear out soon,” Sam said, lowering to his haunches and watching as Alex worked underneath a tiny staircase that led from the second floor to the central cupola of the house. Alex had scraped and cleaned every crevice beneath the rickety staircase, and was now in the midst of pounding shims into the edges of all the treads and risers. By the time his brother was finished, the staircase would be solid enough to support an elephant.
“Why’s that?” Alex asked, pausing in his hammering.
“Lucy’s coming over for dinner.”
“Give me ten minutes, I’ll be finished with this.”
“Thanks.” Sam contemplated his brother with a frown, wondering what to say to him, how to help him.
Alex was behaving strangely these days, slinking around like a nervous cat. Sam and Mark had both hoped that getting through the divorce would have provided some kind of relief to Alex, but instead he was going downhill. He was thin and haggard-looking, with dark circles draped under his eyes like funeral swags. It was a testament to Alex’s genetic blessings that, even emaciated and exhausted, he was still strikingly handsome. At Mark’s wedding he had stayed in the corner, drinking, and women still hadn’t been able to leave him alone.
“Al,” Sam said, “you’re not getting into bad shit, are you?”
The hammering stopped again. “I’m not doing drugs, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“You look like hell.”
“I’m fine. Never been better.”
Sam gave him a dubious glance. “Good to hear.”
At the sound of the doorbell, Sam went downstairs to see who it was.
He opened the front door to discover that Lucy had arrived early. Instantly he knew that something was wrong—she looked the way someone did when a death had occurred. “Lucy?” He reached for her automatically, and she swayed back. Recoiling from him.
Sam was mystified, staring at her alertly.
Lucy’s mouth looked dry and ravaged, as if she’d been biting it. And then she forced herself to smile. “I have something to tell you. Please don’t interrupt, or I won’t be able to get through it. It’s great news, actually.”
Sam was so distracted by Lucy’s counterfeit cheerfulness, and the obvious misery beneath, that it was hard to take in what she was telling him. Something about an artist grant or program … something about an art center in New York. The Mitchell Art Center. She was going to accept. It was a prestigious grant—the kind of opportunity she had worked for her entire life. It would last a year. She probably wouldn’t come back to the island afterward.
Then she fell silent and looked at him, waiting for his response.
Sam groped for words. “That’s great news,” he managed. “Congratulations.”
Lucy nodded, wearing a smile that looked like it had been tacked on with pins. He stepped forward to embrace her, and she let him for just a moment, but all her muscles were knotted and stiff. It was like putting his arms around a cold marble statue.
“I couldn’t turn it down,” she said against his shoulder. “A chance like this…”
“Yeah.” Sam let go of her. “You should do it. Definitely.”
He continued to stare at her, trying to wrap his brain around the fact that Lucy was leaving him. Lucy was leaving. The phrase filled him with a numb, blank sensation that he guessed was relief.
Yes. It was time. Their relationship had started to get tricky. Always best to cut things off when they were still good.
“If you need me to help you put your stuff in storage—” he began.
“No, everything’s under control.” Lucy’s eyes had turned wet even though she was still smiling. She stunned him by saying, “It’s easier if I don’t see you or talk to you from now on. I need a clean break.”
“Alice’s wedding—”
“I don’t think there’ll be a wedding. Which is good, for Alice’s sake. Marriage is hard enough for people who actually love each other. I don’t think she and Kevin had a chance. I don’t think—” She broke off and let out a shivering breath.
As Lucy stood there with tears glittering in her eyes, Sam was gripped by an unfamiliar feeling, the worst feeling he’d had in his adult life. Sharper than fear, more painful than grief, emptier than loneliness. It was what he imagined an ice pick in the chest might feel like.
“I don’t love you,” Lucy said with a wobbly smile. At his silence, she said, “Tell me you feel the same way.”
Their familiar ritual. Sam had to clear his throat before he could bring himself to speak. “I don’t love you too.”
Lucy continued to smile and gave a satisfied nod. “I kept my promise. No one’s been hurt. Good-bye, Sam.” She turned and went down the front steps, favoring her right leg.
Sam stood on the front porch, watching as Lucy drove away. Equal parts of panic and angry wonderment engulfed him.
What the hell had just happened?
Slowly he made his way back inside the house. Alex was sitting at the bottom of the main staircase, patting Renfield, who was at his feet.
“What’s going on?” Alex asked.
Sam sat beside him and told him everything, hearing his own voice as if it came from outside himself. “Not sure what to do now,” he said gruffly.
“Forget her and move on,” Alec said prosaically. “That’s what you always do, right?”
“Yeah. But it never feels like this.” Sam dragged his hand through his hair until it stood in wild tufts. He felt physically ill, nauseous. Like his veins were filled with poison. He ached in every muscle. “I think I’m coming down with something.”
“Maybe you need a drink.”
“If I start that right now,” Sam said roughly, “I may never stop. So do me a favor and don’t say that again.”