Chapter 20
Noah watched as Grace let out a shaky laugh before taking a sip of her coffee, her gaze lowered, her blonde lashes fanning her porcelain-pale cheeks.
“I guess I was,” she replied after a moment, her voice as shaky as her laugh had been.
This clearly wasn’t easy for her, and Noah could hardly fault her for that.
Telling his own story would, he suspected, feel like taking out his appendix himself with an oyster fork.
He might want to know more about Grace, but he wasn’t willing to return the favor.
Not yet, anyway, and most likely not ever.
She’d had a low opinion of him already without him telling her anything more, although he hoped he’d redeemed himself a little in the last few days.
Still, he didn’t want to risk what they had… whatever that was.
“What do you want to know?” she asked as she took another sip of coffee, her gaze still lowered. Her golden hair was falling out of its French braid to curl in tendrils about her face. In the warm lamplight, her skin had a peachy, almost translucent glow.
Noah settled himself more comfortably on the sofa. “Whatever you want to tell me. I don’t… I don’t need to know anything, Grace. I know we agreed before not to dig around on the internet. We don’t have to dig around any other way, if you’d rather not.”
She lifted her gaze to his, her eyes wide and clear, the color of smoke. “So we never get to know each other?” she asked quietly. “Is that what you’d prefer?”
“No,” he admitted after a pause. “That’s not what I’d prefer. But I understand about valuing your privacy.”
Her lips curved in a faint smile. “Yes, I imagine you do.” She sighed, tucking her legs up even more under her, her braid resting over one slender shoulder. “Well, I kind of want to talk about it, to be honest. There’s a lot I haven’t told anyone, mainly because there was no one to tell.”
“No one?” Noah queried softly, although why should he be surprised? His own life was pretty much devoid of friends now. Grief and guilt had a way of isolating you, both by choice and not by choice—people didn’t want to be around you, and you didn’t want to be around people. Maybe Grace was similar.
“Not really,” she admitted with a wry laugh that subsided into a sigh.
“I think I told you that I met Brad when I was only twenty-two, and I married him very soon after. I had some friends from college and grad school, but they fell away pretty quickly. And everyone in our New York circle—they were his friends first. First and last.” She sighed as she rested her head back against the sofa.
“It got pretty ugly at the end, and then I figured out pretty quickly just how few real friends I had. Which made it easier to come here, so that was a plus.” Her smile was both brave and fragile and made Noah ache.
“So what happened?” he asked gently. “With your marriage?”
She shrugged, her lips pursed in thought, her gaze distant and veiled.
“Nothing happened all of a sudden, not really,” she began haltingly, seeming to choose her words with care.
“At the beginning, Brad wowed me with his confidence and attention. He was so sure of himself, but he was also sure of me. Full of flattery, and while I like to think I was generally pretty sensible, my head got turned almost without me even realizing it was happening. I kept him at a distance that first summer, because he was flashy and I didn’t think I liked flashy guys.
But he could be charming and self-deprecating, too, and I liked that part.
” She fell silent, seeming lost in thought, and Noah waited, knowing there was more, a lot more probably, and Grace needed to tell it in her own time. Her own way.
She took another sip of coffee as she settled more into the sofa.
“I think I felt in control of the situation that summer,” she remarked reflectively.
“I was flattered by his attention, but I was also amused by it, and I didn’t think it was actually going anywhere, because I had big plans.
I was intent on my fellowship, and finishing my master’s in marine biology.
I really wanted a career in environmental protection.
I was applying for a grant to study the Great Barrier Reef the following summer.
” She spoke reminiscently, with a pang of sentimental sorrow, and Noah guessed that none of those dreams had come to pass.
“So what happened to turn it into something serious?” he asked after a few moments, when the only sound had been the crackle of the logs in the fireplace, the shifting of embers as they settled into the grate.
“My dad died,” Grace stated simply. “I loved him so much, and he had always been so supportive and proud of me and my dreams. He dropped dead of a heart attack at the end of August, right as Brad was about to return to New York, and I was going back to Rhode Island for my degree. He was only forty-nine.”
“Grace, I’m sorry.” Noah knew how devastating the loss of a parent could be.
His own dad had died when he was in his twenties, a stroke that had debilitated him and left him a shell of a man until he’d finally died four agonizing years later.
And his mother now refused to speak to him, which was another, different kind of loss.
It left him feeling like an orphan, and maybe that was how Grace had felt, when her dad had left her life so suddenly.
She nodded, accepting, her expression somber.
“It really left me reeling. My mom and I have never been super close. She’s pretty old-fashioned, and she thinks the only reason to go to college is to get an ‘MRS’ degree.
” She smiled wryly, although her face was still full of sadness.
“Which is what she did, and what I ended up doing, funnily enough, because within six months of my dad’s death, I’d dropped out of my master’s program, moved to New York, and gotten engaged to Brad. ”
She sighed, lifting one slender hand to knuckle her forehead.
“I don’t even know why I did. It’s all a blur to me now—a blur of sadness and grief and feeling like everything was meaningless.
And Brad felt like my only rock. He was really kind—sending me flowers and chocolates and texts.
Surprising me by coming to Rhode Island and taking me to amazing restaurants.
Looking back, I can see that it was all superficial stuff.
He didn’t want to listen to me talk about my dad, and he didn’t like it when I was sad.
But if anything involved flashing his credit card around and looking like Prince Charming, then he was all for it.
And I was sad and lost enough to think that meant he cared.
And maybe it did, at least a little, at first. I don’t know.
Maybe I was always just an acquisition to him.
Maybe that was the only way he could view a girlfriend or wife or anyone, really. ”
She shook her head abruptly, her face twisting in bitterness and self-derision.
“Looking back, I can’t believe how stupid I was.
There I was, a grown woman, with a college degree, a whole future ahead of her, and I just…
folded.” Her face twisted all the more, so for a second, as beautiful as she was, she looked almost ugly, and Noah longed to comfort her.
Listening, he suspected, was the best comfort he could offer right now.
Then Grace ironed out her expression and continued in a flat voice, “I dropped out of the program at his suggestion. He said he wanted to take care of me, and I guess I wanted to be taken care of. My mom wanted it too, she loved Brad. He was wealthy, well-connected, attentive, good-looking, and he always flirted with her when we visited. What was there not to love?” She raised her eyebrows, letting out a short, sharp laugh before a sigh escaped her, long and low.
“It just felt easier to stop resisting and go with the flow… and so I did.”
“That’s understandable,” Noah said quietly. “Especially when you were grieving.” He knew, all too well, how grief could derail you. Destroy you. It was one of the reasons why he’d holed up at Grayhaven for eighteen months, if not the reason why he had no intention of ever leaving.
“Yes, I suppose,” Grace allowed, sounding unconvinced, “but… it was like the life had drained out of me. I didn’t realize it for years, but I just became this colorless person.
This mannequin in beautiful clothes with nothing going on inside.
” Her mouth twisted again. “Because Brad liked everything, and especially me, a certain way. Designer clothes. Flawless makeup and hair. Of course, he never said it, and I never felt pressured, at least that I realized. It was always just suggestions. He’d book an appointment for a hair salon or some kind of Botox tweak and tout it as a treat.
He bought all my clothes with the help of a stylist, to keep me from having to worry about it.
And everything was like that—planning our wedding, and then decorating our house, organizing our lives, finding friends…
it was all arranged to keep me from having to do anything.
He’d joke that all I needed to do was look beautiful, and it took me over a decade to realize he wasn’t joking.
He even called me his little airhead, like it was an endearment, and for way too long I believed that it was.
I was grateful that he arranged everything.
I told myself I was lucky. How stupid could I be? ”
“Grace—”
She shook her head, angry now, and he understood it.
He was angry too, when he looked back on how he’d acted, how stupid he’d been.
He couldn’t deny Grace the same understandable emotion.
“I was grateful at first,” she continued, the words coming faster, a little jumble now in her haste to explain, “and I slipped into it at all without realizing how much I was losing. It took years for me to realize Brad’s raised eyebrow or pursed lips filled me with anxiety.
To understand that I spent hours getting ready, making sure I looked perfect for him, and then had this almost sick feeling of relief when I saw I’d gotten his approval.
I had eczema, and I developed an ulcer, and I didn’t even know why.
” She shook her head again. “It took me way too long to understand what was going on and I mean… ultimately, that’s on me, isn’t it?
” She lifted her head to look at him with wide, dark eyes, her face full of pain.
“What the hell happened to my personality?”
Noah was silent for a moment, absorbing all she’d said—and implied. “I think, ultimately, it’s on him,” he finally said. “He sounds like a real piece of work.”
She let out a broken laugh, bowing her head so her hair, slipping out of its braid, fell in front of her face, hiding her expression. “Yeah, that he was,” she agreed in a low voice.
He could tell there was more she wasn’t saying, maybe even a lot more, and he knew he didn’t want to press her about it.
She’d shared a lot already, and he wanted to make sure he was careful about handling that information.
She’d made him a keeper of secrets, and he didn’t take that title lightly, especially when she was looking so fragile.
“Thank you for telling me,” Noah said quietly. “I know it can’t be easy.”
“No.” She was silent, her head still lowered, and then she took a gulping breath and raised her head, tucking her hair behind her ears. Her eyes looked bright and a little damp, and Noah ached to hold her, knowing he couldn’t take that liberty.
“So after all that,” he asked finally, “what was the straw that broke the camel’s back? What made you leave?”
“Oh, the obvious,” Grace replied, and now her voice sounded jagged, reminding Noah of shards of broken glass.
“He had an affair. Well, he didn’t call it an affair.
Having sex with a stripper while entertaining clients is not, apparently, an affair.
It’s no big deal, really. He couldn’t possibly understand what I was upset about, because it didn’t mean anything. ”
Noah shook his head slowly. “Oh, Grace…”
“And in a way, I couldn’t either,” she continued, “because in that moment… it was like the scales fell from my eyes. Honestly, it was so sudden, so complete, it felt… biblical.” She let out a laugh, this one, thankfully, of genuine humor.
“It was like I could see myself properly for the first time. How I’d been sleepwalking through a decade of my life.
More. And I could see how much I didn’t love Brad, I hadn’t ever loved him, and certainly never enough to give myself the emotional equivalent of a lobotomy.
” She shook her head, smiling now, seeming almost lighthearted.
“It was a great moment. A devastating moment, but a great one, because for the first time in my entire marriage, I felt free.”
“I can imagine.” He hesitated, and then, compelled by her own honesty to offer his own, “I think I’m pretty sure I know how that feels, actually, although my epiphany was a little less… liberating.”
Grace’s fair eyebrows rose and she sat back on the sofa as she regarded him thoughtfully. “Your epiphany?” she repeated, waiting for more, and he knew he had to tell her.
For the first time, he wanted to.