Good Dirt

Confrontation

Confrontation

H enry is peering in through a glass pane in the kitchen door, his face yellowed by the lamp above. Ebby exhales slowly. She is thinking about Moses and the kind of love that flourishes despite difficult circumstances. And much as she tries to fight it, the questions come to her, the same questions as always. About love. Had Henry ever really loved her? How could he have shown so little regard for her? And would anyone else who claimed to love her ever be worth the risk? She feels her mouth draw into itself and makes a conscious effort to relax her face.

Be polite, she thinks. This is Hannah’s house. This is business. She pulls open the door.

“Hello, Ebby,” Henry says. He makes a move as if to walk inside but Ebby remains in place, still holding the doorknob and blocking the entrance with her body.

Ebby raises her eyebrows. She does not say hello.

“Everything all right?” she asks. She turns her head to get a better look outside. She sees that Henry is alone. No Avery in sight.

“Avery is washing her hair,” Henry says, “and I imagine that’s going to take a while.” He chuckles.

Ebby does not smile.

“What can I do for you?” she says.

Henry clears his throat.

“Well, first of all, Avery has found another place for us, closer to Bordeaux, so we’ll be checking out tomorrow.”

“I see.”

“I mean, if that’s all right. We can pay whatever penalty you wish.”

“That won’t be a problem, though we’ll still assess the cleaning fee.”

“Oh, of course,” Henry says.

“Thanks for letting me know,” Ebby says. She starts to push the door closed, but Henry puts his hand on it to stop her.

Ebby is filled with dread at the thought of one more second with Henry here.

Please, please, let him go away.

“Ebby,” he says. “Could we just talk for a minute?”

“Talk about what, Henry?”

“About us.”

“What us ? There is no us, Henry.” She can’t resist saying, “That was your decision, remember?”

“I know, I know,” Henry says. “But you never gave me a chance to explain.”

“No, Henry, you never bothered to give me an explanation before you ghosted me on our wedding day. You didn’t even have the balls to show up.”

“But I called you, Ebby. I texted you. I asked you to give me a chance to talk.”

“That was afterward, Henry. Afterward. You had your opportunity. And that opportunity expired once you failed to show up at my parents’ house, on the designated day. With one hundred guests in the garden. Would you even be here at this door, right now, trying to talk about us ”—Ebby raises her arms and forms air quotes with her fingers—“if you hadn’t ended up running into me here?”

Silence. Henry looks down at his hiking shoes.

“Of course not.”

“Ebby…”

“Don’t Ebby me!”

“Please…”

“No, no, no. You, please. Just go away. I am closing this door, right now.”

Henry doesn’t budge.

“If we need to talk about the guest cottage,” Ebby says, “I will deal with Avery. She’s the one who booked the room, right? Or would you like me to go to her now and ask her what she thinks?”

Henry steps back and puts up his hands, as if under arrest.

“Would you at least think about it?” he says.

“Think about what, Henry? What part of no do you not understand?”

The old Henry would have laughed at the cliché. But Henry’s mouth is tight, now, and Ebby admits she feels a bit of satisfaction at the sight of it. But she also feels close to tears. She urgently needs Henry to leave. He turns away, now, and Ebby closes and locks the door. Breathe, she tells herself. Breathe.

And to think she was worried about Henry, on the day that he ghosted her. She remembers there had been news of a murder on the coast, an unknown victim of an undetermined assailant. The kind of seemingly random crime that had a person wondering, Could that be someone I know? Could Henry have gone out to clear his head before the wedding ceremony and run into someone who meant trouble? These things could happen. Every moment in life is a confluence of events and you can’t see it all coming. You need to try not to, Ebby thinks. See it all. Otherwise, it leaves no room in your head to simply live.

Ebby closes her eyes now and concentrates. She dares to think of her brother. Baz and her at the beach. Sand in their shoes. Salty air. Grit on their skin. Laughter, laughter, laughter. Hold the moment, she thinks . She walks across the kitchen and into an adjacent hallway where a full-length mirror is bolted to the wall. She flips a light on, looks at herself, and fingers her cherry-toned hair, her hand trembling.

This color is all wrong. Her hair looks like some kind of sugary drink. Was it this faded when Hannah saw her? Why didn’t Hannah tell her she looked like this? Probably because Hannah is a good friend, that’s why. But she wasn’t doing Ebby any favors. Ebby needs to take control of the situation. There is a new hair-coloring product that she has been thinking of trying. It has a 4.5 customer-satisfaction rating and comes in twenty shades. Maybe she should drive up to the main town in the area. Maybe she can find what she needs from somewhere around there.

Ebby knows that making a transition to a completely different color is best done with the help of a professional, one step at a time. But Ebby doesn’t want to have to wait for that. She needs to make a change now. She checks the time on her smartphone. Probably the stores will be closed by the time she gets up to the big town, but she’ll try anyway. She grabs the car keys and goes. She sees that Henry’s rental car is already gone. Ebby tries not to think about him with Avery, sitting down at a table outside a cute little bistro somewhere. She shoves her foot down hard on the clutch and shifts the car into first gear.

Ebby doesn’t think much of it when, on her way out to the big town, she sees a white SUV turning onto a dirt road alongside the far end of a vineyard, toward a line of trees. Sure, it’s late already. The time of day when farmers are done with their work. When a car might be driving in the other direction, toward the asphalt, not away from it. It is the kind of detail that will come back to her later, when the police begin to question people in the area about what they might have seen that was out of the ordinary, and exactly when.

For now, Ebby is thinking only that it is time to make a real change in her life. Seeing Henry with Avery drives home the fact that she has come to France for a reason. To do things differently. Henry seemed so comfortable with Avery. When will Ebby get to feel that comfortable with someone again? For a moment, she remembers Robert. How easy it felt to be with him. She shakes her head. Wake up, Ebby . Robert was a one-night stand. Or a half-day hookup, to be precise.

Only it feels like it was more than that. She may not know much else about Robert, but at least they’d established that he is indeed the grandson that her mystery caller was looking for. Before they drifted into a brief nap together, she’d summoned the courage to ask Robert about M. Gregoire.

“Gregoire?” said Robert. “Nooo,” he said, shaking his head. “My grandfather? Really? Oh, pépère! ” He rolled onto his side and touched Ebby’s face. Gently. A caress. How long had it been since someone had simply caressed Ebby’s face? Not since the week she should have been married. Not since Henry.

“Wait,” Robert said then. “Let me see your phone.”

“Well, he called the house phone,” Ebby said, “so you wouldn’t see anything here in my cellphone. You’ll have to check with your grandpa. But don’t be angry with him.”

“I am not angry. I’m glad you told me. He must have used his cellphone. Gotten into his contacts list and changed the number somehow. Tu vois? Don’t worry, I will take care of it.”

Robert’s voice keeps coming back to Ebby. And the way his face warmed up when he spoke about his grandfather. The thought of him causes a twinge below her navel. She’s not going to stop thinking about him, is she? Well, that’s good. She needs to believe that she can be that distracted by someone new. That she won’t always feel this bad about Henry. And that one day, she might not mind falling for someone again.

Ebby slows the car. Good, the shops are still open. She buys hair color and a pair of styling shears. When she gets back to the house, she takes about three inches off her hair, snipping in arcs from her forehead all the way to the nape of her neck. She turns her head this way and that to check the results. Not bad. In the morning, she will dye down what’s left of the red with a neutral dark brown. She will let her natural hair color come back in. Give her head a rest. Get a hairdresser to give her a proper cut. Then, once she has a few inches of new growth, she’ll decide what to do next.

Tomorrow, Henry and Avery will be gone. Tomorrow, things will be much better.