Chapter Four
Eliza’s eyelids felt like lead, and her head pounded. She shifted to find a cool spot on the pillow, but the movement made the pounding worse. Her mind reached back to the night before to figure out why she felt so awful.
Ah, yes, there was a lot of wine. And sympathy. And her outburst.
Wait, back up.
Had she really announced to a roomful of people?—including complete strangers, probably Scott’s coworkers or racquetball buddies (Does he play racquetball?) ?—that her mother had slept with someone other than her father, and that that mystery man was her father?
Yes, it seemed she had.
Eliza squeezed her eyes shut even more tightly and flipped onto her stomach to bury her face in the pillow, pounding head be damned.
“Oh, good, you’re up.” Carter’s voice reached her from somewhere above her. Right, he’d taken her home. Sliding herself around on the sheets, she confirmed what she suspected?—she wasn’t wearing any pajamas.
The side of the bed sank as he sat down. “How are you feeling?”
She mumbled something incoherent.
“Sounds about right.” He chuckled. “Can I get you some coffee? I can run down to the corner.”
She didn’t have a coffee maker because she didn’t drink coffee. In fact, she couldn’t stand it. The taste or the smell. But of course he could never seem to remember that. No matter how many times she told him. She shook her head.
“Is that a yes or a no?”
“No,” she croaked. “I hate coffee.”
“Really?”
She rolled her eyes into the pillow. Even that made her headache worse.
There really wasn’t anything wrong with Carter. He was certainly easy on the eyes. He was good in bed. Enthusiastic, anyway. And he could be charming. At least, he was charming the night they met. And he seemed to charm Maren last night. But mostly he was good in bed.
Eliza wasn’t entirely sure what he did when they weren’t together. They rarely went out. He’d text her?—or she’d text him?—and they’d hook up at her place or his. He claimed he wasn’t sleeping with anyone else?—but it was quite possible he dated other women. They never said they were exclusive except for the sex. It was clear he wasn’t looking for anything more. But neither was she. Despite the fact that Mo kept telling her that this wasn’t a mature relationship. And she was a little shaken to realize her friend had never even met him. She’d tried to get them together for a drink... and then Carter had canceled.
But what they had suited her just fine. She didn’t have to consider him when she was making plans. If she had to work late, no one was waiting for her. And what was the point of trying to build a partnership with someone when life was so fragile anyway? Carpe diem.
But last night when Scott was clearly hurting, and Maren sidled up next to him to take his hand... There was something nice about that. Too bad she didn’t believe it could exist for her.
Now she needed Tylenol and a cup of hot tea. And her bathrobe.
“Can you grab me my robe?” She pointed toward the bathroom.
Carter crossed the room in two strides and was back with her fluffy blue robe. Eliza scooched out from under the covers to push her arms through the sleeves. She felt his eyes on her.
“Or you could just stay in bed...” His voice was low. Needy.
“Are you kidding me?” She quickly pulled the robe around her and swung her legs to the floor. He followed her to the stove, where she put up the teapot, and watched while she grabbed the bottle of Tylenol and downed two caplets with a swig of water from the tap. Carter sat on the sofa while she puttered around, and when she couldn’t avoid it any longer, she went and sat next to him with her cup of tea. All she really wanted was to be alone. And the beauty of him was that he didn’t tend to hang around in the morning.
She took a long sip of the steaming tea. Ambrosia.
Carter cleared his throat. “So, seems like you got some big news.”
She looked at him and nodded, waiting for him to ask something. Anything. But as the silence grew, she realized that Carter wasn’t the person she wanted to talk to about this. The person she really wanted was Laura. But she had watched her lowered into the ground ten years before.
It was one of those moments that was crystallized in her memory. It had been unseasonably hot for the middle of May. So hot that she could feel beads of sweat rolling down her back under the dress Aunt Claude had picked out for her.
The coffin sat in the apparatus that would lower it into the freshly dug grave. She looked at it, hoping that some sort of machinery had been used to dig that grave and that it hadn’t been done the old-fashioned way, by a hunched man bearing a shovel, sweating in the unusual heat. It was a strange thing to think about?—but easier to contemplate than the casket, awaiting its final descent.
The crowd was large, though not as large as it had been at the funeral home. She wondered where the others had gone. Maybe they had something better to do. Maybe it was one thing to mark the passage of life and death in an air-conditioned chapel, where you could sit in a pew and read and reread the program that summarized the life of the person lying in the coffin at the head of the aisle. A summary that couldn’t possibly capture anything at all. Couldn’t capture the songs she hummed under her breath when she was packing lunches. Couldn’t capture the way her toes looked in flip-flops in the summer. Couldn’t capture the neat way she tucked the sheets in so you could slide in like a hot dog, snug in a bun, safe and cozy and protected.
Then the rabbi was speaking again. Eliza’s dress was sticking to her back, and she wanted to pluck it away from her skin. But it felt like everyone was looking at her, and somehow, she had to stay still. Unmoving. Unmoved. Because otherwise she would collapse into a puddle of flesh and tears.
She wished for a butterfly. Or a bird. Or something that could be interpreted as a sign. Even though she didn’t believe in signs. But the air was still. Clearly, no living thing, other than the people standing by this grave, wanted to be out in the still, humid air of the cemetery. The only spots of brightness were the flowers left on some nearby headstones. They looked like roses, mostly. She thought that she would bring daisies. Her mother would like those.
Her face was wet, but she wasn’t sure if it was sweat or tears. Scott was passing the shovel to her. How could she shovel earth on top of her mother’s coffin?
Her memory stopped there. She couldn’t let herself go back. To what happened when she’d refused the shovel.
Carter kissed her neck, drawing her back into the present.
She moved away and rubbed her forehead. “What I want right now is to go back to bed and try to get rid of this hangover.”
He moved his leg against hers. How had she not focused on the fact that he was wearing only his boxers? “I could go back to bed with you...”
Seriously?
“I’m really not feeling well. And this is a lot to process.”
“I get it. No worries. I’ll get out of your hair.” He stood and put on his pants. They were on the living room floor. Apparently, the disrobing the night before had begun as soon as they’d come inside. “You know, you’ve got a lot going on. You probably need your family now. I don’t want to get in the way. Call me. You know, when you’re feeling better.”
Feeling better? Like she had a sore throat? Or maybe was bummed because she’d lost her favorite gloves? She knew that Carter wasn’t someone she relied on. That she didn’t want to rely on him. It wasn’t what their relationship was about. But how could he be this oblivious?
Within minutes, Carter was fully dressed and out the door, dropping such a quick kiss on her forehead that she might have mistaken it for a gnat.
Finally alone, she nursed her tea and carefully let her memory reach back to last night. Like tentatively poking at the edges of a wound.
Her announcement had been met with deafening silence. Then Mo had grabbed her arm. “Oh my God, Eliza! Is that true?”
“Looks like it.” She shrugged as if it were no big deal, when actually she felt like throwing up. Again. Her eyes shifted to her brother, who looked stunned.
“No. It can’t be,” he said slowly.
“I don’t know what to tell you. I can’t believe it either. But it must be.”
Eliza’s heart rattled inside her chest. What was this going to do to her relationship with Scott?
Mo’s hand on her arm tightened. “Eliza! Are you okay? You look white.”
She was able to smile weakly at her friend. “That’s kind of my natural color.”
But Mo didn’t smile back. “Not like this. I think you need to sit down. Can I get you some water?”
The prospect of everyone fluttering around her made it all worse. “I just have to get out of here.”
She expected to hear Scott protest, but he was ominously silent.
Mo’s voice adopted its “take charge” tone. “Okay, let’s get you some air.”
Eliza was vaguely aware of Mo saying quick goodbyes. She felt Maren’s and Josh’s eyes on her?—while Scott looked at his shoes. And then she was being steered out of the apartment and down to the street by Mo, with Carter immediately behind. And then Mo was flagging a cab and they were headed uptown to Eliza’s apartment.
She was conscious of being squeezed between them as the TV screen in the back of the cab played a commercial for Wicked . The cab hit a pothole and swung into the next lane, the motion pushing Mo into Eliza and Eliza into Carter.
Eliza had closed her eyes against Carter’s shoulder, and there was some conversation going on above her head. It reminded her of being asleep in the back seat as a little kid. Their voices got louder.
“Shh. Don’t fight,” she whispered, her eyes still shut.
There was more murmuring, and she caught a few words, but it was too hard to make any sense of them. Next thing she knew, they were at Eliza’s building, and Carter was easing her out of the car.
“Are you sure?” Mo was asking, but Eliza wasn’t sure who she was talking to. She was just so tired. And then the cab was gone and Carter was guiding her to the front door and then to the elevator and up to her apartment.
Now alone again, Eliza knew she should call Mo soon?—before her friend showed up banging down her door. Instead, she texted to suggest that they meet at their favorite coffee place. The last thing she felt like doing was getting dressed and going out. But she knew the kinds of bad things that happened when she gave in to the desire to glue herself to the couch. So off she went to the shower.