Chapter 4
Chapter Four
When Brodie rang on the bell of the small cream wooden house with the green awning and gable and the squeaky metal front gate, he heard the kid shout, “I’ll get it!”
He had to hold onto one of the struts of the porch to stop himself turning away as she appeared behind the glass and grinned when she saw him. “It’s the blue suit guy!” she yelled behind her.
There was a clatter from the kitchen as Zoey opened the door, her hat discarded now, her long fringe half over her eyes. “You’re back.”
“I am,” he said, wondering if his heart had ever beaten so fast. He felt like he’d made a mistake.
“You forget something?”
He shook his head.
Maeve appeared at the end of the hall. She looked at him like perhaps she’d known he would come. Her face, however, didn’t give anything away.
They stood for a second in silence before Maeve said, “You’d better come in.”
Brodie went into the house. Zoey watched his every step.
Maeve waved a hand at the clutter in the corridor and said, “Excuse the mess, I haven’t been home—” Brodie noticed that her cheeks were flushed again, realized she wasn’t immune to the tension pulsing in the air.
He shook his head to say the mess didn’t matter and glanced around, but barely took it in other than some mismatched furnishings and piles of washing on the stairs. When they got into the kitchen, the table was covered in tiny colored beads.
Zoey sat down, one leg crossed underneath her and said, “We’re making bracelets.”
“Nice,” Brodie replied, dazed by all the glittery paraphernalia; the thread, the beads, the charms—all scattered over the red-checked tablecloth. He thought of the clean lines of his Malibu beach house, the white sofas and the minimalist surfaces.
He glanced up at Maeve and caught her watching him. Her beautiful heart-shaped face and deep brown eyes were now like a painting—distant from him, untouchable.
“Take a seat,” she said, moving some medical textbooks from a spare chair round the table. “Can I get you a drink? Coffee? Glass of wine?”
It was painfully polite.
Brodie sat in the rickety wooden chair and said, “Just a glass of water, please.” His mouth was very dry.
In the homespun kitchen, surrounded by kid stuff, colorful plastic beakers on the drainboard and unopened mail piled up on the countertop, he had the thought that he had stepped unwittingly onto the wrong stage, that he would be ushered away any minute, directed to where he really belonged.
Maeve went to pour him a glass of water and when she placed it on the table in front of him and sat down opposite said, “Zoey, honey, why don’t you go and watch TV?”
“No, you said we could make bracelets.” Zoey frowned. “I’ve been waiting all day.”
Brodie watched Maeve rub her forehead. She looked more tired than before, dark circles under her eyes. But he couldn’t feel sorry for her. Right then, he wasn’t sure he could decipher a single coherent feeling from the tangle in his head.
Zoey tucked her hair behind her ears, and looking at Brodie said, “Do you want to make a bracelet?”
“Sure,” he replied.
She handed him the thread.
Sitting at the table, it felt like there was an abyss of sharks and creatures of the deep beneath him, but Zoey’s presence meant he was balancing precariously on the surface, pretending not to look down.
“You make a knot at the end then you just start threading, like this,” Zoey held up one that she’d made earlier. All purple and pink with a tiny silver starfish charm.
“I like that,” Brodie said admiringly while his stomach clenched and he wondered if he might be sick. He went to pick up a bead and tried to concentrate on threading it on the string. He remembered doing the same with his sister as kids.
Opposite him, Maeve picked up a bracelet that she’d obviously been making before he got there and appeared to be focused on threading white beads. She wouldn’t look at him. Zoey was concentrating intently on hers, too, tongue between her teeth as she worked.
Brodie kicked Maeve under the table to get her attention.
Her head shot up.
He raised his eyebrows.
She raised hers back as if to say, what?
He did a sharp nod in the direction of the kid then pointed to himself.
He watched Maeve roll her lips together as she contemplated. Then after what looked like a steadying breath, she gave a tiny nod.
The world paused.
Brodie lost time. Who knew if he was breathing. He almost laughed thinking, lucky there’s a doctor in the house.
His head tightened. His face got hot. He wondered if he might pass out. He felt an overwhelming urge to correct her, to look around and see if all his brothers were about to pop out and laugh at the joke, to wind back time and make Maeve do something other than nod.
He was sweating in his pale blue shirt. His mouth was dry again, he couldn’t swallow. Blood whooshed in his ears. He focused on Zoey’s pink fingernails as she clutched the thread. For some reason he thought of the white sofas of his Malibu house again, all pristine, with the view out to the ocean.
“You’re meant to be threading beads!” Zoey’s voice sounded so loud he startled in shock and immediately picked up a yellow bead shaped like a heart, but when he looked down he realized his hands were too shaky to get the bead on the thread.
He fumbled it and dropped it, then bent down to try and find it on the floor.
Under the table, he saw only a dry breakfast Cheerio, then spotted the yellow heart over by Zoey’s feet. Small bare feet with tiny little toes.
He thought he might be sick. He jerked up and bashed the back of his head on the table.
“You okay?” Maeve asked, jumping up from her seat.
Brodie stood up too quickly, rubbing the back of his head. “Yes, fine. Sorry.”
Maeve was standing, mouth closed, eyes blinking unreadably—could be relief or could be fear, she was still wearing her slightly crumpled floral dress that a mere hour ago he had found so intriguing.
Just like that, Maeve was now a forever presence in his life.
No longer just a pretty heart-shaped face. She was the mother of his child.
His child.
Brodie’s vision blurred.
Zoey was leaning down to pick beads up off the floor that had fallen when Brodie bashed the table. “They’re everywhere!” she exclaimed. Then, “Oh, there’s a Cheerio!”
Maeve said, “Don’t eat it!”
Zoey came up with a grin on her face, like she had definitely just eaten the Cheerio. All Brodie could see was her cheeky, dimpled smile and self-assured eyes. All of a sudden, a smaller, female version of him staring back.
“You know, I should get going,” he said.
Maeve nodded. “Okay.”
He had no gauge of her emotions; he was thinking only of how quickly he could get to that front door.
“But you’ve only just started.” Zoey held up his bracelet with one bead on it.
“Another time, I promise,” he said, heading out the room. And he was gone before there were any goodbyes.
Heart pounding, he almost ran back to the orchard where the wedding party was in full swing for the evening.
He stood on the threshold surveying the scene as he caught his breath.
The Autumn Falls band had taken over from the DJ; his mom on guitar, Hank Murphy on keyboard, Bella’s friend Claudette on the mic.
He saw Logan and Bella, noses touching as Logan whispered something to make her laugh; he saw his sister dancing with Ren, and the other ravishing bridesmaids now with their hair down and their shoes kicked off as they danced.
Brodie grabbed a drink off a passing waiter, downed it in two gulps.
Then running his hand through his hair he blew out a breath, pushed the last half-hour out of his head, and jogged down to the dance floor, plastering a wide smile on his face.