The Cottage (36 page)

“I think he was being decent,” Jimmy said honestly, “and he was doing the right thing. He's right. He is too old for you, and you should have kids. When you're fifty, he'll be ninety.”

“Maybe that doesn't matter,” she said plaintively. For the moment, she still missed him. She had never known anyone like him.

“Maybe it does. Do you really want to give up having kids? And even if you could have talked him into it, he would never have participated in that with you.” She knew Jimmy was right. When Jimmy had had his accident, Coop had entirely removed himself, because going to see him at the hospital was “unpleasant.” In the long run, she needed a man who was willing to do both pleasant and unpleasant. And Coop would never do that. She hadn't liked that side of him when she'd seen it.

“I don't know. I just feel like shit.” It was comfortable opening up to Jimmy again. She had missed his friendship. The only one she'd spoken to since it had happened was Taryn, who had been very understanding, but also thought Coop had done the right thing. And in some part of her, so did Alex. It just didn't feel good.

“You'll probably feel like shit for a while,” Jimmy said sympathetically. He knew it well. He had been there after Maggie. But ever since the accident, he was feeling a lot better. It had been a kind of epiphany for him. “When I get my casts off, I'll take you to dinner and a movie.”

“I'm lousy company,” she said, feeling sorry for herself, and he smiled.

“So am I a lot of the time. I've been biting my mother's head off. I don't know how she stands me.”

“I suspect she loves you.” They both knew she adored him.

He promised to call Alex again the following day, and when he did, she sounded a little better. He called her every day until they took his casts off. And to celebrate, he took her out to dinner. His mother drove them, and she was relieved to see that Alex looked better than she had expected. It had been a hard blow, but maybe the right one in the long run. It was hard to say, but she hoped so. Coop had talked to her about it again. He had thrown himself into doing a series of commercials, which distracted him. And for the moment, he was worried about Charlene's DNA test. The last thing he needed now was a baby to support, not to mention Charlene, whom he was still furious with.

“I swear, Valerie,” he had told her the day before, “I'm never going out with another woman.” He was positively fuming and she had laughed at him.

“Why is it that I don't believe you? If you were ninety-eight and on your deathbed, I wouldn't believe you if you made a statement like that. Coop, your whole life has been about women.” Over the past weeks, they had become friends, and he was surprisingly open with her, and she with him.

“True,” he said pensively, reconsidering. “But in most cases, the wrong ones. Alex wasn't the wrong one, and if I'd never known about her money, it might have been different. I knew about it from the first
moment I met her. It was always a factor in how I felt about her. I was never able to separate the two elements. What I felt for her, and what I needed from her. It was too confusing in the end.” He had reexamined it a thousand times, but always wound up in the same place. Confused. And then, finally, he was sure he had done the right thing. He had even admitted once to Valerie that Alex had been too young. A first for him.

“I still think you did the right thing, Coop,” she said honestly. “Although I'd understand it if you married her, she's a very special girl and she loves you. You could do a lot worse.” But she hoped he didn't marry her. For Alex's sake.

“I love her too. But the truth is I didn't
want
to marry her. Not really. And I certainly didn't want to have babies with her. I felt I
had
to marry her, or should, because I needed the money. It's what my accountant wanted me to do.” Given what he said, she still thought he'd made the right decision for both of them.

“What are you going to do now to solve those problems?” Valerie asked him with concern.

“Make a great movie,” he said thoughtfully, “or a lot of very bad commercials.” He had already told his agent that he was willing to take some very different parts than the ones he'd played previously. He was willing to consider playing an older man, or someone's father. He no longer expected to play the leading man. His agent had been dumbstruck, and it had nearly killed Coop to say it. But his agent was more hopeful for him than he'd been in the last decade.

It was the first of July before Coop looked like himself
again, and Alex finally seemed more cheerful. Valerie had driven Jimmy to see her at the hospital several times, and one weekend that she knew Coop was away, Alex had actually come to the gatehouse to have dinner, with Mark and Taryn. The kids were coming home after the Fourth of July. They had finally agreed to go to their mother's wedding. They still said Adam was an asshole, but they were doing it for their mother. And Mark was proud of them.

“We're getting engaged,” Mark said with a look of pride at Taryn. They were both feeling a little shy about it, but it was easy to see that they were both excited, and very much in love.

“Congratulations!” Alex said, feeling a pang. She still missed Coop and the time they'd spent together. She had never expected it to end so quickly, and it still hurt a lot that it had.

Jimmy was hobbling around the room on his crutches, and his mother was trying to talk him into going to their house on Cape Cod later that summer.

“I can't get away from work, Mom. I have to go back sooner or later.” He had already promised them to go back the following week on crutches. He couldn't do home visits. But he could at least see people in his office. Valerie was going to drive him to work, and she was planning to stay with him until he was fully walking again, and able to drive.

“I feel like a kid with my mother driving me everywhere, and taking me to the bathroom,” he confessed to Alex with a rueful grin.

“Be grateful you have her,” Alex scolded him. They all had a nice evening together, and afterwards as she
drove home, she wondered what Coop was doing. She knew he had flown to Florida for two days, to do a commercial on a sailboat. But he hadn't called her. He said he thought it was best if they didn't talk for a while, although he hoped they'd be friends one day. For the moment, it wasn't a cheering prospect. She was still in love with him.

Mark's kids came home after the Fourth of July. And three days later, Alex saw on her calendar that it was the day for Charlene's DNA test. They were supposed to get the results in ten days, and she wondered what was going to happen, or when she would hear about it. But two weeks later to the day, Coop called her. He was ecstatic, and had wanted to share it with Alex. The moment he heard, he'd picked up the phone to call her.

“It's not mine!” he said exuberantly, after he asked Alex how she was doing. “I thought you'd want to know, so I called you. Isn't that marvelous? I'm off the hook.”

“Whose is it? Do you know?” Alex was happy for him, although it tugged at her heart to hear his voice again.

“No, and I don't give a damn. All I care about is that it's not mine. I've never been so relieved in my life. I'm too old to have children at my age, legitimate or otherwise,” he said for Alex's benefit. He wanted to remind her, and perhaps himself, that he was not the right man for her, in case she was mourning for him. He missed her too, but every day he was more certain that he had done the right thing in ending it with her. And
he was more adamant than ever that she belonged with a man who wanted to have children with her.

“I'll bet Charlene is disappointed,” Alex said pensively, still absorbing what he'd said. She knew it was a huge relief to him, and how worried he'd been about it for months.

“Probably more like suicidal. The father is probably a gas station attendant somewhere, and she won't be getting support and an apartment in Bel Air. Couldn't happen to a more deserving woman.” They both laughed, and Coop sounded more relaxed than he had in months. And the following week Alex saw in the tabloids in the grocery store a front-page piece that said
COOP WINSLOW LOVE BABY NOT HIS!
She knew it had to have been planted by his press agent. Coop was vindicated. Which left him footloose and fancy free, with his bills still to pay, and Alex still lonely for him. But he had made it clear again when he called that he wasn't coming back to her, not only for her sake, but for his. It no longer seemed right to him to be with a woman forty years younger than he. Times had changed. So had he.

“Okay, okay,” she said when Jimmy chided her for working more than usual. He could never see her. “So I still miss him. There aren't a lot of other people like him.”

“That could be a good thing,” Jimmy teased her. He had started working again and was feeling better than he had in a long time. He was sleeping well, and claimed he was getting fat on his mother's cooking, but he didn't look it. He had another month of physical therapy ahead of him, before he finally got his final
casts off. He insisted on taking her to dinner and a movie, with his mother still acting as chauffeur. But he was in much better spirits, and as time wore on, so was Alex. She felt more like her old self again, and she enjoyed spending time with him. Maggie had been gone for six months by then, and Coop for one, and they were both healing from their emotional wounds.

“You know,” Jimmy said to her one night over Chinese dinner. He had taken a cab for once. His mother had a dinner date, and he didn't want to impose on her. Alex had said she would drive him back to the gatehouse. “I think you should start dating.”

“Really?” she said with a look of amusement. “And who appointed you as the guardian of my love life?”

“That's what friends are for, isn't it? You're too young to go into mourning for a guy you dated for four or five months, however long it was. You've got to get out there in the world, and start again.” He sounded almost fatherly about it. They always had a good time together, and there wasn't a single subject between them that was sacred. She was completely open with him, just as he was with her. They shared a special bond of friendship that meant a lot to both of them.

“Well, thank you, Dr. Strangelove. And for your information, I'm not ready.”

“Oh, bullshit. Don't give me that crap. You're just chicken.”

“No, I'm not. Okay, I am,” she amended, “and besides I'm too busy. I don't have time for a relationship. I'm a doctor.”

“I'm not impressed. You were a doctor when you went out with Coop. So what's different?”

“Me. I'm wounded.” But her eyes were laughing as she said it. She just hadn't found anyone she wanted to date yet, and Coop was admittedly a tough act to follow. He had been wonderful to her, even if it hadn't been a relationship meant to last for a lifetime. She was beginning to see that, although she still wished it had.

“I don't think you're wounded. I think you're lazy and scared.”

“What about you?” She turned the tables on him, as they polished off their dim sum, and she ate the last of his pot stickers.

“I'm terrified. That's different. Besides, I'm in mourning.” He said it seriously, but he didn't look nearly as devastated as he had when she'd met him. He looked healthier again. “But I'll go out with someone one of these days too. My mother and I have been talking a lot about it. She went through it when my dad died, and she said she made a big mistake not getting back out in the world again, and now I think she regrets it.”

“Your mom is a gorgeous woman,” Alex said admiringly. She had enormous affection for her and thought Jimmy was very lucky, and said so frequently.

“Yeah, I know. I think she's lonely as hell though. I think she loves being here with me right now. I told her she should move out here.” And he meant it.

“Do you think she will?” Alex asked with interest.

“Honestly, no. She likes Boston, she's comfortable there. And she loves our place on the Cape. She usually spends the whole summer there. She's going as soon as I get my casts off. I think she can hardly wait.
She loves to putter around fixing the place up while she's there.”

“Do you like to go?” Alex was curious about it.

“Sometimes.” He had a lot of memories of Maggie there, which were going to be hard for him to deal with, he knew. He had decided to give it a rest until the following summer. By then, he thought it would be easier for him to handle, and his mother said she understood. She was always very sympathetic, and understanding about whatever he did. Particularly now. She was just grateful he was alive.

“I hate our place in Newport. It looks like Coop's place, only bigger. I've always thought that was stupid for a beach house. When I was a kid, I wished we had something simple, like the other kids. I always had the biggest and the best and the most expensive. It was embarrassing.” And the place in Palm Beach was even bigger, and she hated that too.

“I can see that was very traumatic for you,” Jimmy teased her as they sipped their tea, and she complained that she'd had too much to eat. They were like two kids kidding around with each other. “I mean look at you now, you never wear decent clothes anymore. I don't think you own a pair of jeans that's not ripped. You drive a car that looks like you bought it in the junkyard, and from what you tell me, your apartment looks like you furnished it in a dumpster. It's obvious that you have a psychotic phobia about anything decent or expensive.” He didn't realize it, but he could have made the same speech to Maggie, and had often.

“Are you complaining about the way I look?” She looked vastly amused and not the least bit insulted.

“No, you actually look pretty good, considering that you live in hospital pajamas ninety percent of the time. The rest of the time you look great. I'm complaining about your car and your apartment.”

“And my love life, or lack of one. Don't forget that. Anything else you want to complain about, Mr. O'Connor?”

“Yeah,” he said looking into her eyes, and noticing that they looked like brown velvet. “You don't take me seriously, Alex.” His voice sounded strange when he said it.

“What am I supposed to take seriously?” She looked startled.