Chapter 12
Chapter 12
I’m awakened by two things: The morning light streaming through the window, hitting me straight in the eyes. And Knox humming “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” I recognize it, because Uncle Sylvester is a huge Cole Porter fan.
Besides humming, Knox is making a racket in the kitchen. I can hear pots and pans clanging and something that sounds a lot like a coffee grinder. Yuban, my ass.
I check the clock on the bedside table. It’s only seven. I try to remember what day it is. Since I’ve been here, the days are a blur. Without having to go to work every morning, it may as well be a perpetual weekend.
Tuesday.
I’m pretty certain it’s Tuesday, because the farmers’ market was on Sunday. Of this I’m sure.
I throw my feet off the side of the bed and force myself to get up when what I’d rather do is stay in bed. In this room with the faded cabbage rose wallpaper and pink canopy bed. I kind of love it here.
Something crashes—it sounds like shattered glass—and a shout of “Shit!” echoes through the floorboards. I find a robe in the closet and go downstairs to see what the commotion is.
Knox is sweeping up the remnants of a Pyrex dish when I find him.
“Mornin’.”
“Good morning. What’s going on? It sounds like World War III down here.”
“I had a battle with the cupboard. And the cupboard won.” He starts putting away the bowls that are now spread out across the floor.
“You want some help?”
“It was only a minor setback. I’ve got it from here. Grab yourself a cup of coffee, sit back, and watch the master of breakfast.”
There’s a hutch with mugs hanging from hooks in one of the Hoosiers. Each cup has a map of a state. Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming, Michigan, Rhode Island, Vermont. It’s not all fifty, but a good showing just the same. I take Minnesota.
The coffee maker is on the other side of the kitchen. I have to walk around some of the broken glass to get there to fill my cup.
“You sure you don’t want me to get this?” I point to the floor.
“I got it.” Knox sweeps the rest of the pile of glass into a dustpan and dumps it in the trash. “Watch your feet until I vacuum.”
I have on socks that I borrowed from Katie’s drawer, as well as her pajamas.
“So, chicken-fried steak, huh?” I’m watching him bread ground beef. “I must admit, I’ve never had it before. Why do they call it steak if it’s really hamburger meat?”
A car pulls up just as he starts to answer, and we both look outside the window as a willowy blonde alights from the vehicle. She’s tall, maybe five-eight or five-nine, and looks a little like Gwyneth Paltrow. Very glamorous and sure of herself.
“Do you know her?” I ask.
“Uh-huh.”
I wait for him to tell me who she is, but he goes back to breading his beef, dredging handmade patties through flour, egg, and panko. I’ve been a psychologist long enough to read a room, and it’s there, a soft pull of tension around Knox’s mouth.
The doorbell rings, and his mouth pulls even tighter.
“Yoo-hoo, anyone home?”
“We’re in the kitchen,” he says.
She, the woman, sweeps in, clearly familiar with the layout of the house. She’s fifteen times prettier than I thought she was when I first saw her through the window. It’s safe to say she’s supermodel material. Actually, more beautiful than a supermodel, who truth be told are usually a little odd-looking. Gangly and like their faces aren’t quite right.
“Hello, Sienna,” Knox says.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Sienna looks straight at me. “I didn’t mean to interrupt anything?”
I start to tell her she isn’t, but Knox says, “If you were really worried about it, you wouldn’t have shown up without calling first.”
She laughs, but it’s an embarrassed laugh. A laugh meant to cover up the fact that she’s been called out in front of a stranger.
“Katie said it was okay for me to borrow her ski pants,” Sienna says.
“Katie doesn’t live here anymore.”
“I know that, Knox.” Her voice is tight. “I’ll just grab the pants and be on my way.” She starts for the staircase.
“Now is not a good time,” Knox says, stopping her in her tracks. “If you’d like to come back, three would be better.”
I don’t understand why he’s making such a big deal about it, why she can’t run upstairs, grab the pants, and be on her way. Why be such a jerk about it? It’s unlike him.
And then it hits me who she is. Who Sienna, of the blond hair and blue eyes, of the supermodel beauty, is. Who she was to Knox.
“Seriously?” Sienna may as well stamp her feet on the floor. “It’ll take all of five minutes, Knox. And I’m already here.”
“I’m sorry, but this is an inconvenient time.” He passes a pointed glance my way. “You’ll have to come back.”
“You’re an asshole!” She marches off, slamming the door behind her.
The sound of Sienna starting her engine, and then her tires on the gravel road, fills the room as I watch through the window as the back of her car jackknifes down the driveway.
“So that was her, huh? The ex-fiancée,” I say.
“That was her.”
“May I say something?”
“Knock yourself out.”
“It doesn’t seem like you’re over her.”
“You can be over someone and still be angry with them.”
I stop to mull that over, because he makes a valid point. I may or may not be over Austin, but there’s no question that I’m pissed as hell at him. Love and anger can be mutually exclusive of each other, but I’m not altogether sure that’s what I heard a few minutes ago.
“Why?” I ask.
“Why am I still angry at my ex? Because she did a shitty thing. She betrayed my trust. And worse, she took away my best friend.”
Ahh, now we’re getting somewhere. “Are you angry with her for that? Or the best friend? Because from where I’m sitting, he’s equally responsible.”
“You’re doing it again. You’re shrinking me. Aren’t you supposed to be on vacation?”
“Yes. But friends and family get me twenty-four-seven.”
He laughs. “Thanks, but no thanks. And as for him, the best friend, he’s more than equally responsible. He violated the guy code, which in my book is unforgivable. But it doesn’t mean I don’t miss him. And right or wrong, fair or unfair, I take it out on Sienna.”
“Do you miss Sienna, too?”
He drops two pieces of his breaded meat into a pan of sizzling oil. “I thought I would, but the sad thing is I don’t.”
“Why is it sad?”
“You spend nearly a decade with a person, shouldn’t you miss them when they’re gone? And what does it say about me that I don’t?”
“I guess it says that it was over even before she left.”
“She says I was only staying with her out of loyalty. I never could figure out if she said that to ease her conscience or mine.”
“Perhaps it was to ease both of yours. She’s very beautiful, Sienna is.”
He nods. “She’s very beautiful. But so are you.”
It’s not until I get home that I realize why Ronnie hasn’t responded to any of my emails. She never got them. I find them in my outbox, sitting there like they’re waiting to be called into the doctor’s office, but no one has come for them.
There must be something wrong with either my laptop or my Gmail. Unfortunately, my computer savvy is limited to hitting the control-alt-delete buttons when something goes wrong, or rebooting. It’s always Ronnie who deals with these malfunctions.
There’s a big box computer store in the neighboring town, so I pack up and hit the road. On my way, I call Ronnie, but as usual, get no answer. This is becoming a habit with her. I leave what is now my fifth message and pull off the highway to join the line at the drive-through coffee place right before town.
Austin and I used to come here on the way to the cabin. The coffee is not great. It’s one of those places where they put the cream and sugar in the drink for you and the coffee is inevitably too sweet. But it was our thing, a routine I’d come to associate with the start of a weekend in the mountains. Happiness.
I suppose the only reason I’m here, waiting in the long queue, is out of habit, sort of a Pavlov’s dog. I see the coffee drive-through; therefore, I want coffee, even though I had three cups this morning at Knox’s. The man makes a really good cup. Now, his chicken-fried steak is another story. I wasn’t too crazy about it.
But it seems that I might be crazy about him.
Isn’t it weird how life works? That saying—when one door closes, another one opens—always seemed like a throwaway line to me, like something designed to make you feel better when life goes to shit, even if it’s not true. I’ve been guilty of using the cliché a time or two myself with despondent patients, knowing full well it’s a phony platitude. Most of the time, the door just closes. Parents die, and you leave your happy home to live in a soulless apartment in the sky where you can’t jump on the couch or touch the knickknacks. Or your husband leaves you with no warning and a year later is engaged to a woman named Mary.
But this time, another door has opened. Knox.
I get my overly sweet coffee and start again for the computer store. It’s in a large strip mall that’s anchored on one side by a Target store and the other side by the aforementioned electronics Mecca. This is the town where Ghost residents go to do their real shopping. While it’s not as charming as our small town, it has every big box store known to mankind, including two do-it-yourself emporiums.
Parking is plentiful, and I slide into a space right in front of the store, grab my laptop, and go inside. Surprisingly, it’s crowded. I traverse the computer aisles, looking for someone to help me, but everyone seems to be in either the appliance or electronics departments. There are a few kids playing with the video game testers, and I wonder why they’re not in school.
“Excuse me,” I say, trying to hail an employee, but he gives me the five-minute sign and breezes past me.
I wander around for another ten minutes before finding someone else with a name tag, wearing what appears to be the store employee’s uniform of khakis and a white polo shirt. He directs me to an empty counter, where I wait for another ten minutes for someone to actually notice me and come out from whatever back room she was hiding in.
“How can I help you?” she asks.
I wait for her to look up from her phone, but she doesn’t.
“I’m having problems sending email. I was hoping someone could look at the issue.” I push my laptop towards her on the counter, which finally gets her attention.
“Maybe it’s your Wi-Fi. Did you try sending the email from here? Our signal is strong. Let me give you the password.” She hands me a laminated sheet on a chain that says “Serendipity” and goes back to her phone.
I find their network, plug in the password, go to my outbox, and try to send Ronnie’s emails again. Nothing happens. “Nope. It’s not working.”
She slides me a glance and lets out a put-upon sigh. “What email service do you use?”
“Gmail.”
“It’s probably a problem with it, not your computer.” She crosses her arms over her white-polo chest and stares down her pug nose at me.
“I don’t think so,” I say, because even if it is, I don’t have the first clue how to solve it. And it’s not like Gmail has a customer service line. Like I said, Ronnie always takes care of my technical problems.
“I guess we could look at it for you, but you’ll have to leave it. We’re slammed today and it’s first come, first serve.”
I want to say it’s served , not serve , but I doubt that would ingratiate me to her, and I’d really like to get this resolved, though I’m not thrilled about separating myself from my laptop.
“You’re sure no one can look at it today? I can pay extra for the rush.”
She scowls at me like she’s a cop to whom I’ve just offered a bribe. “That wouldn’t be fair to our other customers.”
“When will it be ready then?”
“It’s hard to say.” With her dagger-long nails painted a bright purple, she taps out a series of keys on the counter’s computer. “There are five people ahead of you, so it could be a couple of days. It’s up to you.”
I’m tempted to look for another computer place, but who knows if it’ll be any different there? And I really need to be able to send emails, so I reluctantly leave my laptop with the hope that it’ll be fixed no later than tomorrow.
On the way home, I stop at the fancy grocery store in the strip mall next to the one with the computer store. It’s one of those co-op deals that looks a lot like Whole Foods but is even more expensive. Their cheese section, though, is unrivaled, and their organic produce is marvelous. Since I won’t be here for the next farmers’ market, I stock up.
Knox is on the roof when I get to the cabin. The roof, it seems, has become a full-time job. He waves down to me, and I yell for him to come in for lunch. It’s more like an early dinner, but I’m starved.
I decide to make a charcuterie board with all the cheeses I’ve bought and try to copy a picture of one I find on my phone. Whoever did it makes it look easy, effortless, like they blindly threw cheeses, meats, olives, grapes, and veggies together on a platter and voilà, an Impressionist painting. Whereas mine looks like vomit—literally, like someone threw up.
I set the board, a wedding gift that has never been used, on the table anyway and find a bottle of red hiding in the back of the pantry.
Knox comes in and washes his hands in the kitchen sink. “Kind of late for lunch, don’t you think?”
“Probably. But aren’t you hungry?”
“I’m always hungry,” he says, then looks at the table, or more accurately, my poor attempt at charcuterie. “Nice. Fancy.”
I laugh, despite myself. “Don’t be shy, dig in.”
He opens the wine and pours us each a glass.
I clink my goblet against his. “After this, I don’t think you should get back on the roof.”
“I’m officially done. Your roof, I’m proud to say, is as good as new.”
This announcement of his should be great news, yet all I can think is now Knox won’t have a reason to come around anymore. And I’ll miss him. I’ll miss our morning coffee and our impromptu meals. I’ll miss our conversations and our stories. I’ll miss going to sleep at night, looking forward to seeing him in the morning.
“So I guess you can focus full time on your book now.”
He nods. “The deadline is looming.”
And suddenly I have this very odd sense that our—his and my—deadline is also looming.