Chapter 17 Mona
MONA
The next day is Sunday. The entire group, including Colleen and Roy, goes to church and then lunch in town, not returning until almost three in the afternoon.
I stay at the house. To clean bedrooms and bathrooms while everyone is gone. And to avoid Douglas as much as I can.
There’s no way to safely talk to him with everyone else around—and I don’t have any idea what I’d say anyway—so I need to just push through until Christmas Day when I’ll get a respite since I’m spending it with my family until midafternoon, after which I’ll have to come back to help Colleen and Roy with dinner.
On Monday it’s sunny and mild, so the group goes out on Douglas’s largest sailboat for most of the day.
I stay at the house. To bake and prep dinner and clean some more. And to avoid Douglas as much as I can.
On Tuesday Blakely gets everyone to go shopping and to a matinee in Charlotte. Once again, the outing takes most of the day.
I’m invited. Not by Blakely, of course, but by Greer and Aunt Augusta and Douglas. All of them go out of their way to make sure I know I’m welcome on all their outings.
But I’m still avoiding Douglas as much as I can.
I wouldn’t have attended such activities with any of my other clients, and so there’s no reason to do so now. Plus I’ve been finding the days easier when I don’t have to be front and center, watching Blakely making moves on Douglas.
He still isn’t reciprocating, but he’s also not telling her to back off.
He doesn’t appear happy. He’s as unfailingly courteous as ever, but he seems more stiff and withdrawn.
Maybe that’s the way he is around anyone other than me.
I don’t know. I honestly don’t know anything except I want all these people to go away. Then maybe I’ll find the courage to talk to Douglas again.
I just want this week to be over.
Then the month will be over.
It feels like the beautiful days I had with Douglas are already gone, so now we’re just running out the clock.
I hate it. But I don’t know why I even briefly entertained the possibility that life would give me such a gift. That this brilliant, deep, romantic, gentle, generous man might actually fall for me.
I’m not the woman that the best men fall for.
I’ve never been that woman.
Why would everything I’ve known is true about the universe change now?
So all in all, I’m having a miserable week of it, and it’s not any better on Wednesday, Christmas Eve, when Douglas declares he wants to hike in a state park about an hour away.
Most of the party is quick to agree and make plans for driving there and preparing snacks, supplies, and a picnic lunch.
Aunt Augusta and the youngest niece already have appointments to spend the day at a local day spa.
I’m quite sure the spa is much more Blakely’s speed, but I’m not remotely surprised that she’s the first to jump on the hiking plan.
If Douglas hikes, so will she.
I am not participating in either activity. Colleen and Roy have today off since they’ll need to work all day tomorrow, so I’m responsible for any meals and housework.
I’m relieved for the easy excuse to give to everyone who asks me to come along.
Douglas doesn’t ask. He’s barely acknowledged me all day.
I’m hiding in the kitchen, pretending to wipe an already pristine counter, while everyone is sorting themselves into cars out front, when Blakely breezes into the room as gorgeous and glamorous as ever.
She’s wearing jeans, boots, and a fur-trimmed sweater over her top.
Her glossy hair is pulled back in a ponytail that manages to look far more elegant and mature than mine.
I’d topple buildings for my hair color to have dimension as stunning and natural as hers.
“I’m afraid I had a small accident,” she says with an ingratiating smile that might fool others but doesn’t fool me for an instant.
“No problem at all,” I say, shifting into automatic professional mode without a second’s hesitation. “How can I help?”
“Come look.”
I’d prefer to know the nature of the accident now so I can bring appropriate supplies, but she’s already striding down the hall and up the main stairs, so I have no choice but to follow her.
She goes into her room—my room—and then over toward the mahogany dresser.
I gasp when I see an entire bottle of nail polish remover spilled from the dresser onto the hardwood floor.
The custom Brazilian rosewood floors original to this house and without question the most gorgeous flooring I’ve ever seen.
Blakely left the polish remover pooled on the floor untended for all the time it took for her to come find me.
Without a word, I run into the bathroom and grab her damp towel from this morning, using it to soak up the pungent liquid.
“I’m so sorry I can’t help,” Blakely says from behind me. “I need to run. Douglas is waiting for me.”
I mumble out something unintelligible in response. She’s already out the door, and she doesn’t care what I’d say anyway.
She did it on purpose.
I have absolutely no doubt about that fact.
Just to be petty and spiteful. To give me an impossible task. To have something additional to use in complaints about my services here.
And she ruined—ruined—these beautiful floors in the process.
The towel can only do so much. When it’s soaked up the worst of the liquid, I toss it into the bathtub and sprint downstairs to collect some supplies.
When I return, the stain on the floor looks so bad I choke on the growing pressure in my throat. I use paper towels to sop up any remaining liquid and then apply wood soap to see if it helps at all.
It doesn’t.
I try another solvent, rubbing it into the spot, and that doesn’t work either.
The acetone has eaten all the way through the finish and into that precious wood. It’s going to have to be completely refinished. And even then it might never look quite right again.
It’s ruined.
I burst into tears.
I’m still rubbing the stain obsessively, bent over on my hands and knees, but I’m sobbing helplessly as I do, my tears dropping onto the wood to be wiped off with the solvent I’m still trying to apply.
These beautiful floors. I love them so much. They remind me of Douglas.
Solid. Mature. Old-fashioned. Enduring. With a strength that still yields and gives. Crafted by hand with skill and care. With a value not shaped by sleek perfection or altered by passing fads.
These floors mean something—if only because of all the years they’ve spent carrying the weight of human lives.
Now destroyed by spite.
Like whatever I had for a few weeks with Douglas.
I’m sobbing so uncontrollably I have no idea anyone else is in the room until Douglas’s voice breaks into my anguish.
“Oh no, my beloved. What happened? Why are you crying?”
I sit up on my knees, shocked momentarily into silence as I stare dazedly at him coming toward me with long strides.
He gets on the floor with me. I burst into tears again as he pulls me into his arms.
I cry into his chest as he murmurs, “No, no, please don’t. Sweetheart, please tell me what it is. I can’t bear for you to cry like this.”
“I need… I need… to fix the… the floor.”
“I don’t care about the floor. I only care about you.” He draws me back so he can see my face, which is no doubt embarrassingly wet and blotchy from my prolonged melodramatic collapse. “Please tell me what happened.”
“Blakely…” I choke on the word. I’m too emotionally wrought to think through how best to handle this. What would be safest. What would be most appropriate. All I can see is his dearly loved face twisted with deep concern and confusion. I can’t leave him like that. “Blakely…”
His brows draw together. “What did Blakely do?”
He’s leaning against the dresser, and I’m in a heap between his legs. His hands have lifted to gently hold my head.
“She spilled that.” I nod toward the stain. “On purpose.”
He blinks. “On purpose? What the—?”
“I don’t understand why you can’t see it,” I burst out. “I’ve tried to be good. I’ve tried to ignore her. I’ve tried to never rile her up. But don’t you get it, Douglas? She’s…” I suddenly know exactly how to make it clear to him. “She’s Blanche Ingram.”
He blinks once. Then again. His expression flickers.
He’s the most well-read man I’ve ever met. And he’ll know Jane Eyre as well as he knows Wordsworth or Aristotle or Foucault.
He finally understands.
Slowly his jaw tenses and his eyes narrow. “What has she done to you?” he asks, very softly. But thick. Almost dangerous.
“Nothing terrible. It’s just so many endless pokes. She talks about me when she knows I can hear her. She acts like I’m gauche and lower class. She implies I’m a fortune hunter trying to steal you from her. She does small, petty things that make more work for me.”
“Why would she focus her enmity on you?” He believes me. He clearly hasn’t doubted a single thing I’ve said. And now, like he always does, he’s trying to better understand it.
“Because she’s after you! She’s decided you’re the man for her, and she must have sensed there was something between us. She was rude from the beginning, but it was impersonal until she picked up enough vibes to decide I’m her competition.”
“You’re not her competition!”
That hurts a little. I swallow hard. “I know I’m not competition. But she thinks I am. She doesn’t know the door between us is shut for more than only December.”
“That’s not what I meant.” He sounds a little grumpy now, and he’s not meeting my eyes. “I mean at no time, in no world, could Blakely ever be in the running for my heart.”
Okay, I melt a little at that. Clutch his soft shirt in my hand. “Oh.”
“You should have told me this before. I never would have let her—or anyone—treat you like that, especially not in my own home.”
“I know you wouldn’t. But before today it was all just silly little…
pokes. It felt too trivial to make a big deal about.
But then she destroyed these beautiful floors I love so much, and I’m sure she did it on purpose.
And everything that’s piled up on me over these few days just… just… buried me.”