45. Alice Cinematic Display
Alice Cinematic Display
We were all on the floor in our pajamas, a fire that our Boy Scout Merit had built roaring in the fireplace, even though it wasn’t particularly cold outside.
“Your real strength,” Charlotte said to Grace, as she dipped a cookie into milk, “is in knowing exactly what people will need, at exactly the right time.”
“Even if it’s before dinner,” Iris agreed. “I have never needed a warm cookie or a glass of milk more than right now.”
“How are you feeling?” Grace asked me.
“Vindicated,” I said.
“Vindicated?”
I nodded. “I don’t know if any of you have ever experienced this, but there is this thing that happens to you when someone has told you something about yourself for a really long time. You kind of start to believe it.” I took a sip of milk. “So, for almost two decades I have believed that I somehow killed the men I loved. And now I know that isn’t true.”
Charlotte reached over and squeezed my arm. “No more Black Widow for you,” she said.
She was giving me a lot of grace tonight when she should have been blaming me, at least a little, for this situation.
“So, you two are good?” Julie asked.
My face got hot, and not from the fire.
“Maybe it’s Charlotte’s place to say it and not mine,” Grace chimed in, “but, Alice, this is a bizarre series of coincidences.”
I wanted to jump in to defend myself, but, well, they weren’t totally wrong. All eyes were on me.
Charlotte shook her head. “Look, Alice, I’ll be honest, I was panicked and frantic, and Iris didn’t have her phone, and I couldn’t find mine, and you had that crazy ‘vengeance is mine’ Bible verse on your mirror, and I’d had no idea that you were one of the people Bill had supposedly stolen money from and—”
“Wait. What?” Julie asked, sitting down on the couch. “You were one of the people who lost their money?”
I just sighed.
“Why didn’t you tell me that?”
“I didn’t want you to worry.” I paused. Today had been harrowing and eye-opening. And it seemed like a good day to tell the truth. So I was going to. “First of all,” I said, “the Bible verse, if you read all of it, is about how we don’t need to take our own revenge because the Lord does it for us. I saved it to remind myself that it’s not my responsibility to settle the score.”
“Ohhhh,” Charlotte said, looking sheepish. “But you can see how once I found out you were on Bill’s list…” She trailed off. Then she picked back up. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“Because I didn’t want you to be suspicious of my kindness toward you.”
Charlotte didn’t respond.
“Look, Grace isn’t totally wrong that I had something to do with all of this. I kind of did. Because I did seek you out,” I said, focused on Charlotte. “I didn’t follow you into the bank that day, but I planned to find you, to invite you here. It wasn’t random, and I should have told you that.”
“But why?” Grace asked quietly.
I shook my head. “Because, for all these years, I’ve felt like I had some curse on me that made all my husbands die. If I could only right this huge karmic debt, I could make things good again. I have spent most of my life trying to earn some sort of invisible forgiveness for crimes that I didn’t willingly commit. If I could take in and love the wife and the child of the man who had stolen the only bit of security I had ever had in this life, then I was really doing something. Surely that would be enough to make things right.” What I didn’t add, because it made me sound so pathetic, was that everyone would know I wasn’t guilty. Everyone would quit talking about me.
All eyes were on me now, staring in disbelief.
“It seems to have worked,” Merit said.
“What? Don’t give in to my mad ravings. Tell me how crazy that is!”
“It’s not crazy,” he said.
Iris shook her head. “Nope. You took us in, Jeremy came back, your name is cleared, your karma is righted.”
“And we’re definitely going to get your money back,” Charlotte said. “So, I agree with the kids. The plan worked.”
Julie laughed. “Y’all are all nuts.”
“We’re all nuts, and we found each other!” Grace said.
“Alice,” Iris said tentatively. “Maybe it isn’t any of my business. But do you think that will make you feel better about moving in with Elliott? Now that you know you aren’t the Black Widow?”
“I’m not sure about anything yet.” But wasn’t I? Hadn’t today given me an awful lot of clarity? I had spent years clinging to this sainted image of a man who wasn’t even real. Or, at least, he certainly wasn’t who I’d thought he was. I had bought this house because it felt like some sort of invisible tie to him. Knowing what I knew now, it wasn’t hard to let it go. Knowing what I knew now, I was ready to move on.
Iris stood up and stretched. “Well, no looking back, Alice.” She paused. “Mom, can I go see Chloe and Dabney? They’re probably worried since I left school early.”
Charlotte looked aghast. “Are you kidding me? No. I am Velcroing you to my side. I will be going to school with you and sitting in the desk beside you for all eternity now.”
“I’ll go with her,” Merit said.
Charlotte sucked in her breath. “Fine,” she said. “But I want your phone on, and when I text or call, you better answer within two seconds or I’m calling the police. And be home by dinner.”
Iris hugged her mom and then me. “Our last supper.”
My eyes filled.
As the kids went upstairs to change, I said, “I don’t know if this helps, but I don’t think we were ever in any real danger. Jeremy is obviously mentally unwell, but I don’t think he’s dangerous.”
Julie shook her head. “How about you don’t defend the husband who has caused you almost twenty years of misery? That’d be great.”
“How did that feel, Alice?” Grace asked. “I mean, to think this man that you loved was dead for all these years and then…”
I let out a small laugh. “He said he wanted to get back together! Like this was some great act of love that was going to bond us. We were going to flee the country together and make a new life with his stolen money. What a joke.”
“I strongly suggest that you do not get back together with him,” Julie said.
Charlotte nodded. “Having had my fair share of experience with trying to make a jailhouse relationship work, I concur wholeheartedly.”
“What is so weird is that I have spent eighteen years pining for him, remembering him as this great love that no one else could ever measure up to. And now I realize that I dodged a bullet.” I shook my head. “I’m not spending another minute looking back. Not on any of it. Only forward now.”
Julie, frank as always, said, “Well, Grace, what will you do? I mean, if I go live with Mom and Charlotte goes home and Alice moves in with Elliott…”
Grace laughed and said sarcastically, “Thanks for clarifying, since I have given this no thought at all.” She looked down at her hands. “Well, things are going well for all of us, it seems. I talked to Troy today,” she said quietly.
I almost dropped the glass in my hand. “Like, Tokyo Troy? Like, your ex-husband?”
“Well, he isn’t technically my ex-husband. We’ve never gotten divorced. But, yes.” She smiled. “He wants me to come with the kids when they visit.” She bit her lip and grinned. “He wants to talk about us and how we can fix things.”
Charlotte gasped. “Grace, that’s amazing!”
She shut her eyes and one perfect tear slid down her gorgeous face. “It is my only prayer and greatest wish,” she said. “And it’s coming true.” She took a deep breath. “I am going to be a wife and mother so perfect for him that he can’t help but want me back.”
Julie put her hand on Grace’s forearm. “Grace, you are one of the most extraordinary humans I have ever met. You don’t need to prove your worth to anyone, husband or no.”
She shook her head. “You just don’t understand.”
“Then help us understand,” I said.
“All of you are brilliant and confident and not afraid of the world. I married Troy because I needed him. I needed him to take care of me. And now that he’s gone, it’s just really hard.”
“Is it?” Charlotte asked. “Because you seem to be killing it. You keep an entire house full of people alive, you’re an incredible mother, you have one of the most successful corners of the internet, and Growing with Grace was a huge bestseller.”
A smile played on her lips. “I just sold a cookbook to my publisher too.”
I put my hands up in the air. “What? And you didn’t tell us! We need to celebrate!”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. None of it feels like that big of a deal.”
“Well, it is,” Julie said. “It’s a huge damn deal.”
Grace smiled at me, this time her eyes lighting up.
“And you are so beautiful on top of all of that,” Charlotte said. “If I didn’t love you, I’d hate you.”
“I hate you, like, twenty percent despite my love for you,” Julie said seriously.
Grace laughed. I wanted to say more, but, in a great cinematic display, the door flung open. “Alice!” Elliott yelled. He turned and saw me and ran, scooping me into his arms and kissing me. Not letting me go, he said, “Thank God you’re okay. I’m never going to let anything bad happen to you ever again.”
He kissed me again. He was looking at me so intently that I wasn’t sure he noticed anyone else was in the room. “I know you have said over and over that you don’t want to get married. And I get it. Kind of. But, Alice, I love you and I’m not letting you go again. It’s you and me. Okay?”
I smiled and nodded. “Okay,” I whispered.
Then, in a day of shocking things, he did something that was perhaps the most shocking. He got down on one knee, reached in his pocket, and pulled out a beautiful gold and mother-of-pearl ring that was engraved AP . “I know what you’ve said, Al, but I want to be all in. I don’t want to just move in together. I want to be together forever. I want it to be you and me, and I don’t care if I’m sharing a bed with your ghosts or your fears. Because I’m not afraid. And when I found this ring yesterday, I knew it was a sign. So, Alice, I might be crazy. But I’m leaving it all on the table tonight. I want you to marry me. I want to be your husband. And I don’t give a damn what Juniper Shores Socialite has to say about it. Will you marry me?”
That elicited laughter from the women around me, reminding me that Elliott and I weren’t alone here. Had he asked me this this morning, I probably would have said no. But everything seemed different. Jeremy hadn’t died. I hadn’t been the bad luck charm. In fact, looking down at that beautiful ring with my future initials—perfectly selected by this wonderful man—I couldn’t help but feel like good luck was all around.
I nodded at him and started laughing. “Elliott, I didn’t kill Jeremy. He’s alive!”
He gave me a puzzled look. “Right. So I’ve heard.” He gestured around him. “Um. Kind of on one knee down here, babe.”
I leaned down and kissed him. “Sorry. So what I’m saying is that, if I didn’t kill Jeremy, then I won’t kill you. So, yes! I’ll marry you,” I said. Then, in a very serious voice, I added, “Why did it take you so long to ask?”
Elliott let out this relieved and shocked little laugh and picked me up, kissing me. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” I said. “He stole eighteen years of my life. I’m doing whatever I want from now on. And I want to get married. To you.”
Elliott slid the ring onto my finger. “I’m really glad to hear you say that because I made an offer on a house today.”
I gasped. “The one on the sound?”
He shook his head. “Nah. The one on the beach.”
I gasped again, covering my mouth. “Really?”
He nodded. “It’s so beautiful, the view is perfect, and it’s super close to Charlotte and Iris.”
“But what about your boat?”
“That’s why God made marinas.” He smiled.
Then I had a brand-new thought. I looked at Charlotte for some reason. “Wait. If Jeremy is alive, am I still married to him?”
A stunned expression crossed her face.
“Were your other marriages illegal?” Julie asked. “Are you a polygamist, Alice?”
“Oh, the heyday Juniper Shores Socialite is going to have with this one!” Grace said.
We all started laughing, though it wasn’t that funny.
“How about we sort all that out tomorrow,” Elliott said. “Tonight, let’s celebrate.”
Moving forward , I thought. Moving forward. Sometimes that meant moving altogether. The mommune had been the most magical time of my life. But it was time to move on. For all of us. It shocked me to realize that I couldn’t wait.