“God, I hate it when you’re sarcastic.”
“Only because you’re not used to it.”
“What do you expect me to do?”
“Be honest.”
He could feel himself losing it, and he gritted his teeth. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean? Tell me what you want from me?”
She dropped her eyes, and for a moment he thought she was embarrassed. But when she lifted them, she didn’t look embarrassed at all. She looked tough and determined. “I want your heart, Ryan.”
Her quiet dignity spoke of intelligence, of decency, of qualities that made him feel like the guilty party, which was something he didn’t deserve, so he struck back hard. “This is a great way to go about getting it.”
She didn’t flinch. Instead, she took a few steps toward him. She looked young, innocent, very beautiful. “I want your heart, and I want your forgiveness.”
Her words should have pacified him, but they only made him angrier. “This is bullshit.”
She gave a weary sigh, as if he were the unreasonable one. “Go back to work. You’re still too angry to talk.”
His sense of being ill-used had eaten away at him for days. No. Longer than that. He’d had plans for his life, and none of them had included being a twenty-year-old husband and father. She’d stolen his dreams. She’d stolen his future, but he’d swallowed his resentment. Not in one big gulp—that would have been too much to ingest—but in queasy sips—sips so small and far apart he’d never managed to get to the bottom of the glass.
“If you want my forgiveness,” he heard himself say, “you’re going to have to wait a hell of a long time for it.”
Her head came up. He told himself to leave it at that, but he hadn’t been sleeping well, and he knew he’d taken too much for granted, taken her for granted, and that she was right—he had held something back—but he no longer cared about fair. “I hate what you did to me. I’ve always hated it, do you hear me?”
Her face grew as pale as Gigi’s two nights ago, her eyes as wide and just as stricken. Tough. For fourteen years, he’d swallowed his resentment, and for what? So she could run away and upset everything?
“Ryan—”
“Shut up!” He whipped her with his words, blasted her with everything he’d stored up. “You said you wanted me to be honest. Here’s some honesty! You stole my fucking life!” His arm shot out, and he caught a display of glassware with the back of his hand. She gasped as the pieces flew, shattered, just like his marriage, but that didn’t stop him. He bore in, said what he’d barely let himself think. “You took away my choices when you decided to get pregnant. You didn’t care what I wanted. All you cared about was what you wanted. I hate what you did to me, goddammit. And hell, no, I don’t forgive you. I won’t ever forgive you.”
Shocked silence fell between them. Her face was ashen, her lips trembling. His lungs constricted, and he felt as if he were choking. Broken glass lay everywhere, wine and water goblets, shattered pitchers. Shards slicked the floor, brutal ice, the glittering debris of a fractured rainbow life.
He waited for her to fall apart, wanted her to fall apart like he was. Instead, she met his eyes, and through the trembling in her voice, he heard a lifetime of sadness, right along with a toughness he’d never expected. “All right,” she whispered. “All right, then.”
The reality of what he’d said hit home. He didn’t want this. He didn’t want his life broken. He wanted his marriage back, his wife, the woman who’d once looked at him as though he hung the moon and stars. Everything he’d said was true, but where was the relief he should feel at finally getting it off his chest? Where was his old bitterness? He needed it back. He needed to gnaw over the righteousness of his anger so he could justify the broken glass, the shattered marriage.
But he’d waited fourteen years too long to tell her how he felt, and his bitterness had no taste left.
Her breasts rose and fell beneath the soft fabric of her dress. She’d given him everything he’d wanted, everything he’d dreamed of, and instead of treasuring it, he’d just thrown it all back at her.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. Her expression was full of compassion and understanding—pain, too, but not the sharp agony he felt. “I’m so very sorry.”
He knew then that he’d screwed everything up, and he had no idea how to make it right. His secret resentment had been the bedrock of their marriage, responsible for her eagerness to please, for his subtle, punitive detachment. But now that resentment had gone up in flames, and he wanted to tell her he loved her. Except she’d never believe the words after everything he’d just hit her with.
His eyes stung. He had to get out of here. He made his way to the door and fumbled with the lock.
She didn’t say a word to keep him with her.
As Sugar Beth came out of the bookstore’s back room, she saw a little boy staring at the Nightingale Woods mobile she’d hung a few hours earlier, part of a promotion for the newest book in the Daphne the Bunny series. The boy was around five, dressed in jeans and a striped T-shirt, and he had the slightly broadened features that signaled Down syndrome.
He was the first child who’d ventured into the dimly lit and awkwardly positioned children’s section all morning. “I know I should give it the same attention I give the rest of the store,” Jewel had said when Sugar Beth had asked her about it as they opened up the store that morning. “But I don’t have any passion for selling children’s books. Besides, they haven’t been profitable for me.”
“Not surprising. It’s hardly the most appealing part of the store.”
Jewel had stuck her small nose in the air. “Fine. If you think you’re so smart, you’re the new manager of the children’s book department.”
“There isn’t a children’s book department.”
“And don’t let it interfere with your other work.”
Sugar Beth had grinned down at her diminutive employer. “Only my third day on the job, and I’ve moved into management. I knew I’d be a star.”
Jewel snorted and walked away.
Sugar Beth had to fight the urge to pick up the phone and call Colin with the news. She couldn’t do that kind of thing any longer. The fact that she’d dumped him didn’t prevent him from calling her, however. Generally he used Gordon as an excuse—he’d insisted on sharing custody. Sometimes he called with a question. Did she remember if she’d renewed his Atlantic Monthly subscription? Had she taken his tweed sports coat to the dry cleaner, because he couldn’t find it? She missed him desperately, and sometimes she wished he’d press her for a dinner date, but he seemed to be biding his time, a hungry wolf on the prowl, waiting for a moment of weakness so he could pounce. Maybe his strategy was working because this morning she’d had to resist the urge to run over and make him breakfast before she headed to the bookstore.
She couldn’t start brooding again, so she turned her attention to her small customer. She was alone in the store, and Jewel would expect her to assist the parent who’d come in with the little boy, but she didn’t. Instead, she followed the direction of his gaze to the fanciful mobile. “Do you like the Daphne books?”
He gave her a wide smile. “Like Benny!” He pointed toward the cardboard figure of a mischievous-looking badger wearing goggles and an aviator’s scarf. “Benny’s my friend. Read book!”
She grinned. How could she resist all that enthusiasm? The boy grabbed one of the earlier books in the series from the display she’d just set up. She took it from him. “What’s your name?”
“Charlie.”
“Come on then, Charlie.” She sat cross-legged on the floor, deciding right then that they needed to add some small chairs or at least a few pillows. She patted the space next to her, and Charlie settled close.
“Daphne Takes a Tumble, by Molly Somerville.” It was probably Colin’s influence, but shouldn’t children be trained from the beginning to recognize authors and titles? “Daphne the Bunny was admiring her sparkly violet nail polish when Benny the Badger zoomed past on his red mountain bike and knocked her off her paws . . .”