Chapter 6 #2
She assumed she would hear from Charlie by the end of the day, for a walk on the beach, or dinner, or another night of passion.
She was surprised he didn’t send her a text, but assumed he was busy, and she didn’t know if the meeting was in the city or remote.
She didn’t remember what he’d said. And she didn’t want to disturb him.
She played around with a painting she had started and hadn’t finished, but lost interest in it after half an hour, thinking about him, and eager to see him again.
By the end of the day, she hadn’t heard from him, and was worried.
She wondered if something had gone wrong at the meeting.
At ten o’clock that night she called him, and it went to voicemail.
She just said she was thinking about him, and hung up.
He had said he would call her, so it seemed strange he didn’t.
She finally fell asleep, sure she’d hear from him in the morning.
Something might have happened to him. He could have had an accident on the road.
She forced herself not to think of anything dramatic in the morning.
He had only left her bed twenty-four hours before, and he had only been out of touch for a day.
She wasn’t going to make a big deal of it when he called.
He had only just walked into her life. She couldn’t be needy and unreasonable.
She was a grown woman and had been alone for sixteen years.
She could survive a day or two without him.
She didn’t own him and he had heavy responsibilities, she reminded herself.
A crisis could have come up at the meeting that he was dealing with.
But how long did it take to write a text?
There were two voices in her head, Reason and Panic, and she was trying to walk a tightrope between the two.
By the end of the day, she still hadn’t heard from him and sent him a text that said only, “Are you okay?” There was no immediate answer and none by the next morning.
By then, she was sure that something was wrong.
But she had no one to call to ask. He hadn’t answered her phone message or her text.
And he wasn’t the kind of man to make love to her and disappear for three days.
He was attentive and kind. She felt ridiculous calling hospitals to look for him.
She wasn’t going to just show up at his house.
There might be people there, still in a meeting.
By the end of the third day, she was in despair, and there was a familiar knot in her stomach she hadn’t felt in years.
She had felt that knot the night Jean-Louis didn’t come home from work.
He was gone all night and she was livid, thinking he was having an affair.
They had had an argument that morning over something stupid, and it didn’t warrant staying out all night.
She had thought of going to the restaurant where he worked, but didn’t want to make a scene.
It had taken the police a full twenty-four hours to come to her apartment and tell her Jean-Louis had died.
All the same familiar feelings washed over her now, and she forced them from her mind. She had to force herself to know that if Charlie hadn’t contacted her for three days, there was a reason for it. He was a sensible, responsible man, and he was crazy about her.
She went for a walk on the fourth day to try to stay calm, and that night, anger finally set in.
Maybe he was one of those lunatics who convinced you that they were madly in love with you, got you to sleep with them, and then you never heard from them again.
It had happened to her once when she was much younger.
She had fallen for it, out of loneliness and despair at the time, two years after Jean-Louis died, before Axel got sick, and the guy had just vanished, and called her three months later for a booty call.
She had hung up on him. But Charlie wasn’t like that.
He couldn’t be. He was an adult, and a responsible caring man.
On the fifth day, she was livid, with herself.
She had been an idiot, and had been played for a fool.
His whole sad story about his wife. He was probably just a chronic cheater and had used her like a hooker or a sex toy.
She was mortally embarrassed by how gullible she had been.
She realized that she didn’t know him at all, and anything was possible. It was all a fantasy, and a bad joke.
She was morbidly depressed when she got up on the sixth day of his silence.
There was no explanation by now except that he was a bad guy, and whatever arrangement he had with his wife, she didn’t care.
She sent him an ice-cold text that he didn’t respond to, which was no surprise by now.
The only valid excuse for his silence by then was if he had been kidnapped or was dead, neither of which seemed likely.
As well-known as he was, his death would have made the front page.
She had looked for it, just in case, but the other scenarios she’d imagined were more likely.
She had just been a convenient piece of ass and he’d played a game, and she’d fallen for it like the innocent she was.
She blamed herself for being gullible and stupid.
She forced herself to get up and go for a long walk on the beach.
It was raining and she didn’t care. The gray weather suited her mood.
She was sorry she had ever let him into her life.
She felt foolish and used. And worse than that it had opened old wounds that she thought were long since healed.
Her parents, Jean-Louis, Axel, her grandmother.
She had lost everyone she loved, through no fault of theirs or her own.
They had all died in terrible accidental circumstances, but her heart had read them as abandonments.
It had been her nemesis for years, the fear of being abandoned, that it could happen to her again if she loved someone, that she would lose them too.
She had only known Charlie for two months, and not consistently—this time for less than two weeks.
She had slept with him, which seemed foolish to her now.
But the wound he had slashed wide open again had taken years to heal, and he had woken the demons that had tormented her before.
The demons of abandonment, when you knew you were alone in the world.
Charlie had reminded her of that fact in spades.
She was sure he wasn’t dead in a police morgue somewhere, or unidentified in a hospital, as she had feared at first. He had slept with her, played a game of pretend, and walked out on her as though she were of no consequence whatsoever, and not a word of what he’d said had been true, of how extraordinary she was and how much she meant to him.
He had used it as a ploy to get her into bed, and it had worked, which was humiliating.
She just had to pull herself up out of the hole again.
She was the only one there to do it, and she had to depend on herself and no one else.
Charlie had played a game with her. So be it. Now the repair work was up to her.
On the seventh day of his disappearance, she scrubbed her house from top to bottom, reorganized her paints, and inventoried her art supplies to order new ones on Monday to replace what she’d used.
She was exhausted by the end of the day, and reminded herself of what a therapist had told her, that she could survive the losses, and she was strong enough to do it.
There were mean, evil people in the world and she had just come across one of them.
It was bad luck but it wasn’t going to kill her.
He hadn’t raped her or injured her. He hadn’t burned her house down or stolen money from her.
He was a different kind of thief, who stole hearts and broke them, and preyed on innocents.
But she knew better now, and she had the strength she needed to push him out of her head.
The wound he had reopened would heal faster this time than her many losses, which had taken years to heal.
This was a short unpleasant experience, and she had learned a lesson from it, not to trust charming strangers with her heart.
She had a shot of brandy to calm her nerves before she went to bed, an old recipe of her grandmother’s, and was just falling asleep when her cell phone rang.
She had forgotten to put it on silent, after her seven-day vigil waiting to hear from him.
She reached for the phone and answered it without checking who it was, and heard a deep, husky familiar voice she hadn’t heard in a week, and no longer wanted to hear.
“Devon,” he said cautiously, as she came fully awake and realized who it was.
“Don’t ever call me again,” she said, hung up and turned off the phone.
She lay awake for a long time after that, unable to sleep, telling herself she had done the right thing.
He didn’t deserve an audience for some lame explanation that was all lies.
There was no possible explanation for having cut her off for a week, and refusing to respond to her or even send her a text to reassure her.
She tossed and turned and finally fell asleep.
As far as she was concerned, Charles Taylor was dead.
She was going to tell the gallery to return his deposit to him.
She had no intention of doing a portrait of him, or anything else.
She glanced at her phone and saw the silenced messages stacking up.
She didn’t read them. She wanted nothing to do with him.
He had had the use of her body for a night, and had made a fool of her.
But the game was over. He didn’t get to come back now and do it again.
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