Chapter 15
Fifteen
The door to the bathroom slammed against the wall and I came to a screeching halt. I’d meant to find quiet—a space where I could think straight, but instead I found an old woman, seated at the edge of the lounge, visibly frazzled mid diaper change with a squirming infant.
"Oh, thank God," she said, from over one shoulder. "I forgot the wipes! Would you be a dear and go fetch them for me?”
I let out the breath I hadn’t realize I’d been holding and rushed toward the diaper bag by the sink.
“It’s been so long since I’ve done this,” she said. “I’d forgotten how wiggly these babies can be.”
Clothing, a can of puffed snacks, and a tiny sock came out of the first pocket.
“Lord only knows what would have happened if you hadn’t come in here. Can you imagine the mess?” She shook her head, then one hand into the sky as though she were talking to God. “No. Never mind. I don’t even want to think about it.”
I unzipped the next compartment, and sure enough, a slender flat container was tucked in along the edge. I grabbed it, ran back to the old woman and opened it. “Here,” I said, holding out the package as though I’d just become her personal assistant.
The baby looked at me with the biggest, widest blue eyes I’d ever seen in my life—and I realized then that she was just as nervous about what was about to happen as the old woman.
The woman let out a sigh, then tugged on the first wipe, but the sticky stack wouldn’t separate.
“Oh bother,” she whispered, pulling the wipes out of the container like an endless scarf in a magic show.
One end hit the baby on her forehead, and she blinked, but then she opened her mouth, revealing two pearly teeth, and the most infectious grin I’d ever seen in my life.
The old woman paused, then laughed, then took the whole wad of wipes and tickled the baby’s belly with it. “Oh, you think that’s funny, do you? You almost gave your Gran a heart attack, yes you did.”
The baby kicked and squirmed, but somehow the woman finished the job, fastened the last of her buttons, then let her loose with a relieved breath.
“I’m Helen,” the woman said to me. “And this little hellion is my great-granddaughter, Chloe.”
I smiled, charmed by the little girl who was now sitting on the opposite side of the lounge, clapping.
“It’s nice to meet you both,” I said, then turned to the diaper bag again, where I returned the wipes into the pocket where I’d found them.
“And you are?” Helen asked me.
“Em—” I began, but then instantly stopped myself— “Vivienne,” I corrected.
She inhaled, seeming not to notice my stumble. “Vivienne Blackwood? Vivienne from Florence?” She spoke the name as though I were a celebrity….
That’s when I realized where I’d seen her before. She was the woman from the banquet where I’d first met Dean. Mr. McHenry’s wife.
Though she looked different now—dressed in a country-style denim instead of the floor-length gown I’d last seen her in. Her silver hair hanging down at her shoulders instead of pinned up in a perfect French twist. “We thought you weren’t coming,” she said.
My stomach dipped in panic. “There was a change of plans,” I said, trying my best to remain calm.
She nodded once, then began slipping socks back on the baby’s feet. “Well, I’m glad you’re here,” she said in a tone that reminded me of Mary Poppins. “Our Dean has been lonely for quite some time.”
Lonely?
The single word rang in my mind like a warning bell.
Ten minutes ago, he had a woman who looked like a supermodel lifted up on her toes in the biggest hug I’d ever seen.
Eleven minutes ago, murmurs circulated around the deck so loud that even a child could have imagined what they were saying,
But twelve… Twelve minutes ago, his thumbs were entwined with the belt loop of my shorts—and I was so enthralled with him, I would have given him anything he’d asked for.
So, did I believe Dean Weston had ever been lonely? Not even for a little bit.
The door whipped open then, and a young woman skittered to a stop in the entryway.
She looked about thirty, wearing blue jeans, with her bright red hair tied up in a knot on the top of her head.
“I was just”—she sounded almost panicked—“coming to make sure everything was okay? You’ve been gone an awfully long time,” she said to Helen.
The old woman lifted the baby with outstretched arms and handed her over. “It was touch and go there for a little while, but we made it through, now didn’t we goose?” she said to the baby.
The two women began talking about someone named Blair, and I took this as a sign to quietly excuse myself to one of the stalls.
I set down the lid, and sat on the toilet fully clothed, allowing myself time to decompress… to reflect on why I was so bothered.
Dean was nothing to me. I barely knew the guy.
If anything, his finding another woman to spend the weekend with would release me from this ridiculous obligation I’d somehow locked myself into.
I pulled out my cell phone, intending to pull up my contract with Dean, wondering if there was a clause that would get me out of this mess, when a message from John caught my attention.
John: Text me when you get there.
John: Don’t forget. You know I worry.
It came in three hours ago and I didn’t see it. Damn!
Me: I’m here. I’m safe. I’ll be heading to my first massage in an hour.
I held my breath, guilt over my elaborate lie making my heart patter.
He wouldn’t understand. Or if he did, he wouldn’t like it. He’d ask too many questions, and I just didn’t have the strength to answer them right now—or probably ever.
UNDELIVERED
The message appeared almost as soon as my message was sent. Then I remembered Dean and Thomas's conversation about cell towers.
“Shit!” I said under my breath.
“Everything okay?” Helen asked from somewhere on the other side of the door.
I’d expected her to be gone already, but she was still out there. Doing what? I had no idea.
“Oh, it’s fine.” I replied, “I was just… talking to myself.”
I opened the door a second later, finding Helen leaning over the counter, reapplying a thin layer of coral lipstick to lips that already looked flawless.
I walked over to the sink, washed my hands, then took a pristine white hand towel out of a basket.
“It was nice meeting you,” I said, as I made my way to the laundry basket.
“Can I see it?" she asked.
I halted halfway across the room, so confused by the question that I turned around to face her again. “Excuse me?”
But I found her gaze locked on my left hand, her expression soft, so much so that I wondered what she was thinking.
At first, I hesitated, unsure if Helen was the type to know a knockoff diamond when she saw one, but I had to risk it. I walked toward her with my hand outstretched, ring poised in her direction, almost wishing for her to discover the truth.
But she didn’t look at the ring. Instead, she flipped my hand over, her grip steady and strong, and glanced down at my palm.
“You can tell a lot about a person in their hands,” she said calmly. “You don’t mind if I look, do you?”
Mind? I wanted to yank my hand back as though she’d just burned me…
But I didn’t…because there was something so hopeful in her expression that I almost became hopeful, too.
I nodded, ignoring the bells that rang like a firetruck in my head, telling me to run, and watched the little old woman lower her glasses to the tip of her nose.
“This,” she said, tracing a line in the middle of my palm, “is your heart line. It starts below the pinky finger, stretching horizontally to the opposite side of the palm.”
I leaned closer, watching the path under her slightly crooked finger. Her touch was warm, a little papery, and I became very aware of my own pulse tapping against her fingertip.
“People always think the life line tells you how long you’ll live,” she went on, voice low and matter-of-fact.
“It doesn’t. It tells you how you hold your life.
The head line is how you make sense of things.
But the heart line…” She tipped my hand toward the light.
“The heart line is how you give and receive—where you open, where you guard. Breaks, forks, little chains—those are places the story changes.”
I didn’t believe in this stuff. Not really. But the way she said it made me hold still, listening to each word as though they were a roadmap set in stone.
“That’s so odd.” She frowned and lifted my hand a little higher. “It’s broken right there. In almost the exact same spot as my Grandson’s.”
I swallowed hard, so curious about what it meant, that I leaned closer still, resting my hip on the counter right next to her.
She was right. There was a district and sudden break in the line at the edge of my palm. If she hadn’t pointed it out as odd, I would have never noticed, but now I couldn’t look away, even if I tried. “What does that mean?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine,” she said, releasing my hand to lean against the wall. “For Dean, I’ve always believed it was due to the tragic loss of his parents when he was young.”
A shiver ran up my spine, not only because of what she’d just said, but because she’d referred to him as her grandson. Then I saw it. The similarities between them. The cleft in her chin that was much softer than Dean’s, but still just as prominent. The eyes that were the exact shade of brown.
I stepped backward, unable to wrap my mind around what was happening.
My hand instinctively closed, as if trying to protect the parts of myself that felt too vulnerable to share.
She must have noticed the shift in me, because her mouth softened. “He hasn’t told you, has he?” she asked. “Don’t take offense. He doesn't like to talk about it with anyone, never has,” she said quietly.
Then she reached out and took my hand again, uncurling my fingers until they were flat. “But some truths sit in the body whether we name them or not, now, don’t they?”
I remained quiet, but her fingertips hovered over my palm again, not quite touching.
“He was almost eleven when it happened,” she said, as though caught in a memory she couldn’t get away from.
“They were driving home from my house. It was dark, and the roads were wet. His sister, a baby then, was strapped in the backseat. She slept through the worst of it. He didn’t. ”
The words landed with a dull, aching weight. I could almost see it: Dean, a boy then, navigating through the tragedy with no one there to guide him.
“He changed overnight. He’d been just a boy, but after that night… he became a man. I don’t know if I ever truly saw him play again after that day.”
In that moment, the title of “man” took on a whole new meaning.
“He began checking locks, memorizing everyone’s phone number, and worrying about everything.
I remember him sitting at the kitchen table, refusing to eat a single bite until he was sure there was enough for everyone.
” She glanced down at my hand again. “It was after that night that I noticed the break,” she whispered.
“I can’t be sure of it, because I don’t have any proof, but I swear it hadn’t been there before. ”
My throat tightened, and I traced the line on my palm with my own finger. “What about his sister? Does she have a mark like this?”
She looked at me for a long time, then shook her head.
“She grew up with the story; he grew up with the night.” The woman folded my fingers over my palm and squeezed.
“For her, the pain was an absence. For him it was a crack that never quite sealed. That’s why they had their falling out.
” Her eyes lifted to mine, as though wondering what I knew.
I held her gaze, then curiosity bulldozed caution, and the words tumbled right out of my mouth. “What happened?”
She smirked, though the light in her eyes dimmed a little.
“Blair became a little wild in college.” A small, rueful smile played at the corner of her mouth, “And Dean...” She dragged out the words, as though trying to choose the right way to explain what happened next.
“He was only trying to protect her—though I guess he did so in the way one might yank a child back from a busy street.” She let out a wry laugh, then looked up at me and sighed.
“As I’m sure you can predict, it didn’t go very well. ”
My mind traveled back to the words Dean had used in the car earlier. About worrying being a way of loving a person.
I didn’t even know the man, not really. But I knew this—Dean was only trying to protect his sister, protect her and keep her safe from all the stupid mistakes that would teach her how easily she could be broken.
She grinned, then pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose.
“But you can’t bubble-wrap a person’s heart.
You can’t keep the people you love from making their own mistakes.
” Her gaze dipped to my hand, then returned to my face.
“Sometimes our mistakes are the only thing that can teach us what life is really about. And sometimes they aren’t mistakes at all—just paths to an ending we can’t see coming yet. ”
The door eased open then, and a woman stepped inside the bathroom—cutoff shorts, long, dark hair that spilled over her shoulders, and I recognized her immediately. The woman from the deck. The one Dean had hugged so hard she was almost airborne.
She hovered in the doorway, saying nothing, eyes skimming from Helen to me.
“Well, speak of the devil,” Helen said, clapping her hands in one soft burst. “Blair, it’s so good to see you again. This is Vivienne Blackwood, Dean’s fiancée. Vivienne, this is Dean’s little sister, Blair.”