Pictures of You (28 page)

Sam had spent the rest of the evening in the ER, hooked to an IV, and after that, the kid had never invited Sam over again; and every time Charlie ran into the father, the guy seemed uncomfortable, like he couldn’t wait to get the hell away.

This time, though, Sam was at his friend Kit’s house, and Kit’s father was a doctor. He called the number Sam left and talked to Kit’s mom. “We’re so glad Sam can stay. We’ll take good care of him,” she said, and her voice was so sincere that Charlie could have hugged her.

Still, without Sam, the house felt empty and cold. He knew he could invite Isabelle over, but he didn’t know how he felt having her here, in April’s house, just yet. He went out again, by himself.

Charlie walked down the main drag, just a small street full of shops and restaurants, scattered with wood benches and a few scrubby trees. He and April used to love to take walks when they were courting, and later, when they had Sam, they’d take him with them everywhere. He had loved the small-town quality of the place, the feel of community, the way everyone seemed to know everyone else. But now, he was stunned by the new stores. When had there ever been an Italian restaurant there? When had the toy store he and April had loved closed? Where was their favorite indie bookstore? It was as if April had taken parts of the town with her when she died. Charlie passed by the soccer field. There was the Blue Cupcake team in their jerseys. Sam hadn’t gone back to the team
since his mother had died. He hadn’t wanted to play anymore. Not that they ever really let him do anything more than hand out water or carry the ball, anyway.

His cell phone rang and he lifted it up. Isabelle. At first, he felt that heady flash of joy. But then his heart felt clipped. Could he really love her the way he had April? Could he trust her? Was this a good thing for him—and more important, for Sam?

“Hello?” he said, but the line went dead. Isabelle, he thought. Isabelle. He glanced down at the phone, pained.

She hadn’t left a message.

O
NE NIGHT, WHEN
Charlie didn’t call her, Isabelle couldn’t sit still. Oh, she knew it was probably that he was just busy with Sam, or maybe something had come up. Still, she got up and biked around the dark streets.

She glided to Charlie’s street, and stopped in front of his house. One light upstairs was on, and the rest was dark. She stared at the house. Another minute, and then she would bike back home, and then the door opened and Charlie came out in his pajamas and robe. He strode across the street until he got to her.

She said it for him. “What am I doing here?”

“Don’t go,” he said.

“What about Sam?”

“We’ll lock the door. We’ll set the alarm. You’ll be gone before he wakes up.” He nuzzled her neck and she felt her stomach tighten with desire. “Please,” he said.

Isabelle stayed the night. She left early in the morning, way before anyone was up. The air was sharp and clear and no one was around, except for a neighbor who knew Isabelle from the days when she used to stalk the house. “Good morning!” Isabelle called, and the woman lazily waved as if there was nothing startling about Isabelle being up and about at six in the morning, as if Isabelle was just another person who was part of the neighborhood. When Isabelle took off on her bike, the wind sang in her ears.

S
HE GOT USED
to seeing him, two, three times a week, and sometimes, Charlie just showed up. When they were with Sam, they were careful not to hold hands or touch. The one time Charlie put his arm about Isabelle and Sam looked over, Charlie pretended he was suddenly brushing lint off her shoulder. “Got it,” he said, his fingers lingering.

Isabelle was running out of her apartment, late for work, and there he was, holding up a basket of food. “I brought a snack,” he said. One night, she was at the greengrocers buying oranges to juice and she bumped into Charlie by the cheeses. “I’m taking Sam bowling tonight. Come with us,” he said.

One evening, when they were all set to go out to a play, she heard Sam’s lungs faintly whistling. “Go ahead and we’ll meet you,” Charlie told her, his voice rushed, but Isabelle saw how stricken Sam looked and she shook her head. “Let’s get your rescue meds, cookie,” Isabelle said, and she sat with Sam on the couch, quietly talking to him until the medicine kicked in and he could take long, even breaths. “There you go,” Isabelle said, giving him a hug. When she finally looked up from Sam, she saw Charlie watching her, a look of amazement on his face. “What?” she asked.

He shook his head. “You were so calm,” he said.

Nowadays she had less work, and though it gave her more time with Charlie and Sam, it made her nervous. “Take time off,” Chuck kept telling her. “In fact, let me call you when we have work. That’s a better idea. Let’s do that.”

Isabelle sat, stunned. She got paid for only the days she worked. When she took a vacation, it was never a paid one, but she took so few that it hadn’t really mattered. It was one thing to go in and try to look busy, going through old prints, trying not to see the funny looks customers still sometimes gave her when they found out who she was, but it was another to be told not to come in at all.

What if the work really dried up?

She riffled through the bills. She hadn’t made enough money to cover them this month, and what about next month, and the
month after that? Where would she go and what would happen to her? She couldn’t ask Luke for a loan, and even if she could muster up her courage, would he give it to her? And how would she pay it back? If she got into photography school, they might give her a stipend, but she wouldn’t hear anything about that until the summer, and she knew how foolish it was to count on something like that.

If she told Charlie, he’d offer her sympathy and try to make her laugh. But it wasn’t what she wanted and she wasn’t even sure what she really needed anymore. Everything seemed in flux, Charlie, her job, her whole life.

She told herself they were a couple. He didn’t see other women, and she certainly wasn’t interested in other men. But sometimes Isabelle wasn’t so sure she understood what was going on. One night, when Sam was sleeping over at a friend’s, Charlie invited her to the house for dinner. It felt new to her, and special. They were grilling salmon, and Charlie put her in charge of making the salad, when the wall phone rang.

“Got it,” he said, reaching for the receiver. She heard Charlie’s voice change. “Charlie, what is it?” she said. “Is Sam okay?” He turned slightly away from her.

“Where?” he said into the phone. “No. No, she didn’t have that.”

Isabelle waited. Charlie hung up the phone. “It was Hank, the detective I hired,” he said. “For April. He thought he had a lead. A doctor in Santa Fe said he had seen a woman who wanted her whole appearance changed two weeks before the accident, but she had three tiny moles on her back.” Charlie swallowed. “It wasn’t April.”

“I’m sorry.” She kissed his face. After dinner, she he took him out for tea and cupcakes at the Blue Cupcake, and though he laughed and joked with her, she could still see that phone call hanging over him. Isabelle knew he needed to know what had happened, but she knew, too, that as long as he had that need, he wasn’t letting go of April, that she was still part of their lives.

Isabelle knew that if she had met him in any other circumstances, she’d still want to be with him, and why not? He was kind, he doted on his son. He was smart and sexy. Every time she saw him coming toward her, the air seemed to sparkle.

“Do you love this guy?” Michelle asked, and Isabelle hesitated. She had been in love with Luke full throttle from the moment she laid eyes on him, but this with Charlie was different. Slower. More cautious. She didn’t know where she stood with him, and sometimes she didn’t care. She just wanted to be with him.

“What if I said yes?” Isabelle said quietly, and Michelle sighed.

“Then I really give up,” Michelle said.

Isabelle didn’t give up, though. It made sense, didn’t it, that they would protect Sam, that they would protect themselves by taking things really, really slow? There would be a right moment and they would somehow know it, and then it would all come together. Wouldn’t it?

O
NE AFTERNOON
, I
SABELLE
was photographing a wedding, a job she had gotten through an old client. It was the beginning of June; the sky, as hard and blue as a sapphire. As soon as she had walked into the reception space, a headache bloomed. The room was huge and covered with mirrors. Flowers dripped from the stairways and tables. Isabelle had dressed up a bit to blend in with the guests, but even in her fancy green silk, her hair clipped with a rhinestone pin, she was underdressed. She had asked Charlie if he wanted to come with her, if he wanted to bring Sam. “To a wedding?” he said, as if she had asked him if he wanted to fly to Spain that night, and though she had shrugged it off, she had felt a little stung.

She thought of her marriage to Luke, the two of them standing up in front of a justice of the peace. No guests, no parents, nothing but each other. The only flowers Isabelle carried were the wild ones she had plucked impulsively from the side of the road. Her ring was a simple band, and Luke hadn’t even worn one until she
fussed. “It destroys the natural beauty of the hand,” he insisted. She hadn’t cared then that no one was there to see them make their commitment. But that had been a kids’ wedding, not an adult one, and she couldn’t help but feel that maybe that had something to do with why their marriage hadn’t made it to forever.

She scanned the room. Ah, there was the bride. She was Isabelle’s age, and a little overweight, in a white dress pouffed out like a meringue. When she noticed Isabelle taking a photograph, the bride beamed and then came over, holding up the heavy edges of her dress, showing off her sparkly white shoes. “I can’t believe how happy I am,” she told Isabelle. “Do you have a guy?”

“I do,” Isabelle said, but even she could hear the doubt in her own voice, and she turned her face away from the rush of sympathy she saw in the bride’s eyes. “He has a young son. We’re taking it slow,” Isabelle said.

“Ah, a stepparenting issue,” the bride said knowingly.

“He lost his mom. We’ve only been a couple five months.” Five months! She knew Charlie wanted to give Sam more time, and she didn’t want to push him, but somehow in her mind, five months seemed like the magic number to her. The day of reckoning.

The bride touched Isabelle’s shoulder, so gently that Isabelle felt like throwing herself into her arms. “I’ll throw you the bridal bouquet,” the bride said conspiratorially. “It always works. How do you think I got my Dave?”

“You don’t have to do that,” Isabelle said, but the bride was gone, and there was Dave, tall and balding with green eyes like a go signal, making his way toward his bride.

It was midnight when she got to Charlie’s. Sam would be asleep, and she’d be gone before he woke up. She felt dense and uneasy, and despite the bride’s aiming the bouquet at her, Isabelle had let the flower girl catch it.

She lifted the rock for the key. She could probably make a copy for herself and somehow so could Charlie, but neither one had, and the more she thought about it, the sicker she felt. She was
here every night, but she didn’t even have a dresser drawer of her own.

Charlie was in the living room, watching a black-and-white movie, his wire-rimmed glasses settled on his nose. “Hey,” he said happily when he saw her. Edward G. Robinson flickered on the screen, yearning after Joan Bennett. “
Scarlet Street
,” he told her. “A she-done-him-wrong. An avenging angel.”

Isabelle sat down. “What?” Charlie said. He flicked off the movie. “Hungry?” he asked, and she shook her head.

“I’m full of wedding food.” She peered at Charlie in the dim light, trying to see him more clearly.

“You look so tired. Was it an awful wedding?”

She took off her shoes, rubbing her toes. Her ears still felt stuffy from the noise. “It was lovely. I really liked the bride. She was really nice.” Isabelle kept rubbing her toes until Charlie pulled her feet into his lap and rubbed them for her. “She said the moment she met her husband, she knew.”

“Everyone talks like that at a wedding, don’t they?”

“She wanted me to catch the bridal bouquet.”

“Ah, she wanted you to cut her a deal on the pictures.”

Isabelle pulled her legs down and tucked them under her. “That’s not it,” she said. “She wasn’t that way and neither was her husband.” She bent toward Charlie and kissed him, the way the bride had kissed Dave. She pressed against him, putting her hands into the back of his shirt. “I love you,” she said, and he nuzzled the line of her shoulder. His hands slid over her breasts, and then she felt April, a force field between them, and she kissed him harder.

Isabelle pulled him to the floor so roughly, she banged her elbow. She pulled him into her, but then she made the mistake of looking at his face, and she saw, shocked, that he was crying.

Stunned, she got up and began putting her shoes on. Charlie tried to reach for her, but she stepped away.

He leaned against the wall, dazed. “I’m sorry”

“You’re crying about her.”

“I’m so sorry,” he said, quietly.

“Charlie, what are we doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know where you are. Or maybe I do. I know you loved her. I know love doesn’t die just because a person does. I know she was your wife, she was Sam’s mother, but can’t there be room for someone else? Can’t you love me, too?”

Charlie took her hand and this time she let him. “We just need more time.”

Isabelle let go of his hand. “What more about me do you need to know? What more can I possibly show you about me that I haven’t shown you already? Charlie, I was leaving here that day. But I stayed because of you and Sam. I’m staying here now because of you and Sam.”

“Have a little faith in me.”

“What do you think about?”

He drew her closer. She leaned against his chest and she felt his hair tickling her cheek. “I think about Sam a lot. His asthma. Whether he misses his mother.” He swallowed. “I think about whether he knew what he was doing going away with April.”