Chapter Eleven #2
“Oh no! Not me. I’ll leave that for the professionals.
” She twinkled at him over her wine. “The first couple of times you came over I thought you didn’t like me.
” She said this in a teasing way, but she might have been half serious.
He couldn’t tell. He had a sudden urge to blurt out the truth—that she was smart and beautiful and he looked forward more than he wanted to admit to seeing her.
But he took a long sip of his wine instead.
“So what do you think now?” he said.
She glanced at him mischievously. “I think the waiter’s coming.”
They ordered what the people at the next table were having: fried calamari to start and a couple of pastas. Vodka penne for her and rigatoni with meat sauce for him. Over another glass of wine she confided that Andrew hadn’t returned to school on Wednesday.
“So what’s he going to do?”
She looked weary all of a sudden. “Stay here for the time being, I guess. I want him to talk to a therapist. I’ve never seen him like this, so depressed.”
“The powdered sugar seemed to liven him up the other day.”
“That’s the only thing that got him out of the house all week. Something’s going on with his dad too. Andrew doesn’t want to be in the wedding.”
“Do you care?”
“Not really, except they’ve always been close.” She pushed a bit of lemon around the plate. “I’m just worried about him.”
They were sharing the calamari at this point. At first, they’d politely tipped a few onto separate plates, but something had shifted, and now they were picking up bits of fried squid from the serving plate with their fingers, like they’d shared food together a dozen times.
“What about you? How long will you stay?” He hadn’t meant to ask this. He dipped a calamari into the sauce so he wouldn’t have to look at her. New York wasn’t far, but the city was another world. Her world. He’d never see her once she left.
She sighed. “I was supposed to be back already. I never thought I’d be here this long. But now, I don’t know. I need to get my dad settled, and I’m starting to think it’s time to sell the house.”
“Sell the house?” Something tightened in the pit of his stomach. “Didn’t you find a lady to help out?”
“Yeah, but it’s not going great. She’s keeping the place clean, which is a plus. But he doesn’t let her do anything else, even put away his laundry. He had a fit about that the other day.”
“Would he agree to sell?” He couldn’t picture Mr. Linden giving up the house and hives that easily.
“That’s the thing, I don’t know. My sister and I would have to convince him. But he can’t live alone anymore.”
“I can see why he’s attached to it,” he said carefully.
“You and your sister grew up there, and it’s a beautiful piece of property.
There aren’t many like it around.” He thought uneasily of the rumor that Weber Properties had been sniffing around.
They’d snap up the Linden place in a heartbeat, then bulldoze it for a dozen more houses. Obliterate the meadow.
“It’s not just that we grew up there,” she said, “it’s all tied up with my mom for him. They moved here when they first married and always talked about keeping bees one day. But then she got Alzheimer’s. He took care of her at home until the end.”
Their dinners had arrived, but neither of them made a move to eat. “I don’t know much about Alzheimer’s,” he said, “except I had a great-aunt with dementia, and she ended up in a facility. They tried to keep her at home, but eventually it became impossible.”
“It is impossible. It’s horrible, I don’t know how my dad did it.
And I wasn’t any help. I couldn’t deal. I went off to college and hardly came back.
Even after she died, I didn’t come home.
My dad and I always hit heads; he liked to give orders and I didn’t want to take them.
And the house…” She raised a shoulder. “It reminds me so much of her. My dad hasn’t changed a thing. ”
“You were a teenager when she got it?” He did some quick math. “She must have been pretty young.”
“My age,” she said bleakly. “Early onset. And now every time I forget my keys I think—this is it. It’s starting.” She laughed a little to try to lighten the mood, but he could tell this was a deep, unrelenting fear.
“Does it always run in families?” He thought he’d read something about that, but he hadn’t paid a lot of attention to Alzheimer’s.
“This kind does, yeah.”
The group at the next table had opened another bottle of wine and cranked up the volume. He leaned forward, focusing on Cassie. She was beautiful and fragile and terrified. Who wouldn’t be? “Is there a test,” he said gently, “so at least you’d know?”
“There’s genetic testing if you know what mutation your parent had, which we do. Because my mom had it, there’s a fifty percent chance I inherited the mutation. If I do have it, I’ll definitely get early onset. One hundred percent. They can’t tell me exactly when, but it will happen.”
He exhaled softly. All his concerns seemed trivial compared to this. His ongoing irritation at Sophie, his obsessing over which bees had mites or if they had enough honey for the winter. None of it compared. Cassie woke up every day afraid she might lose her mind.
“What are you going to do?” he said.
She sighed. “I was on the fence for a long time, but Shelly’s been after me.
I wasn’t going to do it because there’s no treatment at this point.
Maybe some clinical trials down the line.
” She picked up her wine, then set it down.
“But it’s so hard not knowing, wondering whether I’m cranky because my personality is starting to change or if whatever word I forgot means it’s starting.
So I made an appointment with a genetic counselor. At least I’ll know.”
He touched her hand, which felt cold even though the restaurant was warm. “That takes a lot of courage,” he said. “Either way.”
“How do you mean?”
“Knowing and living with it or deciding you don’t want to know. And living with that.”
She looked directly into his eyes. “What would you do?”
He considered for a minute. “I don’t know. I probably wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning.”
She let go a laugh and her face relaxed. “You have a sneaky sense of humor, you know that?”
“I do?” He wasn’t sure if this was good or bad. “I’ve been called a lot of things, but not sneaky.”
She took a bite of pasta, her mood lighter. “I mean you’re funny, but it sneaks up on you. Most of the time, you’re so serious.”
“I’m not always that serious,” he objected. He tried to think of a time when he’d been lighthearted but came up blank. “Lilah thinks I’m a goof,” he offered lamely.
She laughed at this. “I’m sure Andrew thinks I’m ridiculous too. He says I worry too much, but there’s a lot to worry about. He’s leaving school right before finals. Tell me how I’m not supposed to worry about that!” She aimed her fork at him for emphasis.
“So does it get any easier? Being a parent, I mean.” This was something he’d actually thought a lot about. Whether he’d worry the same when Lilah was twenty.
“It gets easier in some ways. I don’t worry about the stuff I did when he was twelve, but girls are tougher. All that drama.” She shuddered. “I remember how I was at that age. My mother must have been a saint.”
Somewhere along the way, they’d finished their wine and ordered more.
He was pleasantly buzzed. He leaned back in his chair, amused and enchanted.
He could sit across from her all night. The way she tossed her hair when she spoke, not even realizing how it showed off her lovely neck.
And her eyes, which changed in the light.
At first he’d thought they were green, then decided hazel.
“So what were you like when you were twelve?”
“Pretty much a brat. You wouldn’t have wanted to know me.” She narrowed her eyes. “How old are you anyway? I bet I could have babysat for you.”
He grinned. “If I tell you, will you tell me?”
“Definitely not.”
“So we’re at an impasse.”
She gave him a mock serious look. “So what do we do now that we’re at an impasse?”
“Go for a walk?” He needed to get up and move. If he sat here any longer he would say something stupid.
He paid the bill, refusing to let her split it even though she protested that she’d asked him. “Next time’s on me, then,” she said.
His heart sang. Apparently, there would be a next time.
They strolled through the downtown, which had mostly closed up for the night. A couple of restaurants were still open, but the stores were dark. Any night of the week, Laurelton was pretty much done by nine.
“A little quieter than New York,” he said. Laurelton was a backwater. Pricey, but a backwater. No wonder she couldn’t wait to get back to the city.
“Way quieter, but nice. We probably would have been run over by a taxi by now in New York.”
“Do you miss it?”
She was quiet for a moment. “Believe it or not, I miss going to the office. And the coffee shop down the street. I miss that a lot. And my friends, there’s a group I run with every week. I don’t miss the traffic and how expensive everything is.”
He had a sudden, ridiculous hope she would give up on New York all together. Stay here and take over her father’s house. It would be the perfect solution, except she’d probably go insane. They stopped at the corner and looked both ways, but no cars were coming.
“Anyway,” she said, “I have to get my dad sorted out first.”
They passed the bakery and the real estate office, then meandered off the main drag onto a side street that sloped downhill past a frame shop and a consignment store, petering out to a dry cleaner at the bottom.
The utilitarian side of downtown. The evening had cooled and she’d forgotten a jacket.
He put an arm around her and she leaned into him. “This is nice,” she murmured.
“It is nice.” He breathed in the scent of her hair, her skin.
She used something lemony, which he liked.
She felt intoxicatingly good. They stopped to look in the window of the consignment store, and he trailed a hand lightly down her shoulder.
She moved closer with a small intake of breath that made his heart skip.
She looked up at him. “So now’s the time to tell me if you’re seeing anyone.”
He laughed in surprise. “Does it look like I’m seeing anyone?”
“My ex said he wasn’t, but he managed to find someone new in record time. So I suspect he was.” Her voice was light, but the hurt was plain underneath.
He turned to face her. “I’m not seeing anyone. Just Lilah and Charlie.”
She looked perplexed for a moment then broke into a smile. “Oh Charlie.” She gave him that teasing smile he found so irresistible. “I don’t know why you didn’t want to let him out of the car that day.”
She was standing close, and he didn’t want to talk about Charlie. “Because I hadn’t been there before, and I didn’t know you.”
She looked at him in a way that made him forget everything else except how much he wanted to kiss her. “What about now?” she said, toying with his shirt right above his wrist. She was touching his skin, and he was having trouble breathing.
“What about now?” he repeated dumbly.
“Do you know me now?”
He ran his hands up her arms. Her sweater was buttery, but her arms were firm underneath. His heart banged around his chest. “Not as well as I’d like.” He dipped his head and brushed his lips against hers, and the jolt that went through him just about brought him to his knees.
He kissed her then, for real, in front of the consignment shop, and even in her heels she stood on tiptoe, which made him even more crazy for her.
That she couldn’t get enough of him either.
They kissed for a long time and his hands were in her hair, and when they finally pulled apart they were both out of breath, but smiling.
She took a look around and straightened her sweater. “We probably look like a couple of kids.”
He laced his fingers through hers. “That was way better than anything I did when I was a kid.”
She leaned into him. “Me too.”
They walked holding hands back to her car and he kissed her again, more chastely this time since there were people walking by.
“When can I see you?” he said.
“Soon. Call me.”
He gave her a wave as she pulled out, then made his way in a daze back to his truck, which was parked a block over.
He wasn’t quite sure what had happened tonight.
Somehow, during the course of the evening he’d fallen hard for Cassie Linden.
A lawyer from New York. A beautiful, strong, resilient woman who’d likely be gone in a month.
But he couldn’t help grinning as he fired up his truck. He wondered whether tomorrow was too soon to call.