The Promise of Stardust (27 page)

My mind was spinning. Admittedly, I'd already run a couple of scenarios, but I hadn't considered one where I would be unable to finish med school at all.

Hank walked over to me and put his hands on my shoulders. “What I'm saying is I will see you through this, and I don't want you to worry. Dennis and Linney saved my family when I was drinking. And I'd like to help yours.”

I nodded again.

“Good,” he said. “Be a doctor. In honor of Alice. To honor your dad.”

I wondered if I could really make a difference. Dad was still dead. Alice was still dead. Medicine didn't seem as miraculous as it once had. Not like when my mother saved Mike after he almost drowned. And if I could not save the people I cared about most, what point was there? “I'll try,” I said. “I, uh, I have to get back.”

“Okay, son. You take care. I'll keep in touch.”

When I returned home, Mom was sitting in the dining room with Aunt Beth, drinking coffee, looking weary. “Can you take the dog out for a walk?”

Lucky, our Irish setter, was curled up by the living room hearth. He raised his head when he heard “dog.” “You want to go out, boy?”

Five minutes later, in sweats and running shoes, I jogged down Bow Street with Lucky at my side. The subzero air dug into my lungs, but it didn't matter that it was cold. It didn't matter that I should be studying. I wanted to see Elle, and she was only a few miles away. She'd said she missed me.

At the fork, I turned down Wolf Neck Road, remembering all the times we had snuck down there to be alone. After I reached the driveway, I trudged out onto the field. Because of the dark and because of the frozen layer of snow, I couldn't be entirely certain if I had arrived at the right place, but I pulled a crushed rose from my pocket, one I'd picked up from Dad's funeral, and I dropped it on the garden for Celina.

It was now or never. I cut a path to the house. The dog barked as we climbed the porch steps. Before I had a chance to knock, the door pulled open, but Elle didn't answer. It was that guy she was with the previous Christmas when she had only acknowledged me in a “Matt, this is …” What the hell was his name? Adam, something.

“Hi,” he said. “Can I help you?”

Elle bounced down the steps, wearing a pair of flannel pj pants and pulling a camisole over her head. Her lacy blue bra disappeared. “Oh my gosh,” she said when she saw me. “Matt, I wasn't expecting you.”

Obviously
.

“Adam, you remember Matt? Matt Beaulieu, Adam Cunningham.”

“Oh. Sorry about your loss, man.” Adam extended his hand to me. His handshake was strong and sincere, and there was something a little south of the Mason-Dixon Line in his accent.

And I hated him.

“Thanks.” I hadn't thought this through. Although, in my defense, Elle hadn't mentioned this asshole on the drive up or in any other conversation we'd had in the past two days.

Elle bit her lower lip, and squatting to rub Lucky's ears, she avoided looking at me—or at Adam.

“I'm headed back to New York tomorrow, and I wanted to, you know, thank you for driving me home.”

“Sure, no problem.” She stood.

“We're staying for a couple of days.” Adam draped his arm around her, and she seemed to fit there, comfortably. He continued: “I drove up this morning so we could go skiing tomorrow. Ah, do you want a drink or anything?”

“Water would be great. For Lucky. In a bowl. We were out for a run. I saw the light on.” What a fucking lame excuse, especially since the house wasn't visible from the road.

Adam disappeared to the back of the house. Elle shifted her feet, but didn't offer me a seat. It was as though she couldn't wait to be rid of me.

I was stuck, waiting for water for the dog. “You and him?”

“We live together, so yeah. About a month ago we started living together. We both want to work for NASA. Did I tell you I won a summer internship?”

“No. NASA. That's great.” I tried to gather my breath, my pride. I tried to sound like this news that she was living with this guy didn't faze me. Instead I blurted out, “Are you happy? I mean, do you love him?”

“I wouldn't be with him if I didn't. But this really isn't any of your business.” She looked away for a moment, squeezing her eyes shut. “It's been years. We haven't even talked in years.”

Her anger pummeled me. I never meant to hurt her, yet she had punished me deliberately, and continued to do so now. Yes, I was wrong, but so was she. “Not talking wasn't
my
choice. I
tried
to talk to you.”

She glared. “I don't want to do this. I especially don't want to do this right after your dad's funeral.” She balled her hands into fists and covered her face. “I don't want to hurt you, but if I tell you how angry I've been, I will.”

“Oh, Elle, come off it. You've wanted to hurt me ever since it happened. And you have. Silence is as scathing as confrontation. Get it over with. Say it. I was a bastard.”

Her chin jutted out, then she lowered her eyes and softly said, “You were.”

“And I'm sorry. It was the worst mistake I've ever made.”

She sighed, a long and heavy morose sigh. “Look, we were young. Stupid. What happened with us didn't even mean anything. Between my mom dying, and my dad's alcoholism, and having to stay home to take care of Christopher, I was just trying to find an escape. I picked lucky you to be the vehicle. Then the baby made me understand the consequences of playing house.” She stopped speaking abruptly and clapped her hand over her mouth, looking back toward the kitchen.

“He doesn't know?”

“Of course not. Why would I tell him?” she whispered.

“I don't know. I guess if—”

She stepped so close I could feel her seething words. “Do you tell every girl you meet you got your girlfriend pregnant when you were in high school?”

“No, but—”

“What do you want here? You want me to tell you I'm still pining away for you? That I waste my time, telling a great guy like Adam that I screwed you the first chance I got. Stud that you were, you knocked me up? I told him we went out. I told him it ended badly. Look, you met some sorority girl who swooned and spread her legs willingly. Good for you. At least it gave me someone to blame for all my troubles. I used you to pin all my disappointments on. Pin the tail on the ass.”

It was like she'd written a completely different version of history than I had. I stood in shock for a moment, absorbing her blistering analysis, and decided that if she needed to see it that way, I'd let her. But I would not pretend that was how I remembered it. “It wasn't like that for me, Peep. I loved you,
deeply loved
you. I didn't want to break up. I wanted to be with you—I wanted—you. That girl, she got in the way—one night. One night. What happened, happened because I'd had too much to drink, and I wasn't thinking. I never planned to cheat on you.”

I took Lucky's leash and headed for the door. Within seconds the night air tore into me, and I found myself shivering, not because of the temperature but because of Elle's coldness. I wondered if I'd hurt her so much that I'd made her this way or if she'd always been so jaded underneath.

“Wait! Stop. The water for Lucky.” Elle padded down the front steps in her bare feet. The walk still had a layer of ice at its edge, Jack Frost etches, brittle and cold.

Adam followed behind her, pulling off his sweater, and he tugged it over her head. It hung to her midthigh. It was such a goddamned transparent gesture of possession that I wanted to kill him.

“Can you give me a minute with Matt?” she asked him.

He kissed her temple. “Sure, I'll be inside, babe.”

She watched him return to the house, a house they seemed to share. “Matt,” she said softly. “I didn't mean—that you meant nothing to me. But it doesn't mean anything now. Or it shouldn't. We were kids. It just seemed so powerful at the time because it was the one good thing I had to cling to.
You
were the good thing. You helped me survive the most difficult events I've ever faced.”

With only the porch light for illumination, her pupils were as wide as if she'd been tripping on belladonna. If someone looked at her features one by one, they would probably have thought she was homely. Her nose was a little wide. Her cleft chin a little pointy. Her mouth—well, yes, her mouth was a perfect bow. And the intensity of her eyes had me from the time she was a little girl when we used to play staring contests on the front porch. She wasn't perfect, but she was so vibrant that she was intoxicating. I was under a spell and unable to look away.

She touched my forearm. “I do still care about you. I—I loved you. I did. And—I've missed you. God, Matt. I want to stop being angry. It takes so much energy to be that angry. Can we, maybe, talk like friends do, from time to time? I mean, I'd like to reciprocate. Be there for you now. You know, losing your dad.”

“I don't need your pity, and I don't want it.” I turned from her and started walking, but Lucky was still slurping up the water, and I was snagged when I reached the end of his leash.

“What about my friendship? Do you want that?” she asked.

Adam stood at the door, watching. And I wondered if she would marry him. “Does he treat you well?” I asked, looking at the house.

She twisted to the door and smiled at him. “Yes. He's patient.”

“And old, Elle. Jeez, he looks like he's thirtysomething.”

She lowered her gaze and shook her head. “He wants to take care of me. He waited a long time. We knew each other for a couple of years before we got together.”

“I see.” But I didn't want to. I flipped to the first other subject that came to mind. “What's with you and your father? Christopher said something about you aren't getting along with him.”

“Daddy will be okay about Adam after he gets used to the idea we're living together,” she said.

Shit. That change of subject failed miserably.

Elle's teeth began to chatter. It was freezing, yet I didn't want her to go back inside. To him. She would be with him. That night. Christ. Or maybe they had just been together.

“If you want, call me sometime,” she said. “Maybe you and a girlfriend could come down to Princeton. It's pretty around there. There are millions of restaurants.”

“Or you could come up to New York.”
Maybe Adam could stay home
.

She shrugged.

“Sure. I'll do that,” I said, never intending to. But I did.

A month later I called. And I continued to call almost every week for as long as Elle lived there. After she moved to Houston, it didn't take long for me to figure out Adam's schedule and that it was better to call when he wasn't home. Elle talked more freely in his absence. We quickly fell back into the most solid of friendships. And I rationalized that as long as she was a part of my world, as long as I had her in my life, I could survive.

   27   

I knew this much for certain: the baby would not survive if my mother won her lawsuit. And the baby
had to live
for me to justify what I was doing to Elle. For two conscience-crushing hours Mom testified that Elle would rather die than rot away in a hospital bed, and she described how Elle looked now, drooping, stiffening, flattening, unable to swallow, unable to see or hear. “If Elle knew what was happening to her she would be terrified.”