The One I Left Behind (4 page)

Chapter 3

October 16, 2010

Rockland, Vermont

“I
WAS JUST THINKING
about you,” Len said when he answered his cell, his voice low and gravelly. He had this way of making everything he told her sound like a secret.

“Impure thoughts, I’m sure,” she guessed.

“Always,” he teased, his voice dropping lower, radiating warmth that hit her right in the solar plexus and worked its way down.

Behind him, she heard the dull murmur of conversations, the clanking of cups and plates. “Hey, listen, I’m just finishing up breakfast over at Hungry Mind and I thought I might swing by. Maybe entice you into a hike and picnic lunch up on Owl’s Head.”

She let herself imagine it for a second, she and Len in the woods, him shouldering a backpack of chilled chardonnay, Brie, and a baguette. They’d bring their sketchbooks, some watercolors maybe. Find a private place to spread out a picnic blanket.

“I thought we should talk about what happened last Friday night,” Len said, shattering Reggie’s romantic visions.

“Oh?” Reggie found herself saying.

“I’ve sensed a shift in things. Maybe it’s my imagination, but it seems like you’ve been pulling away. We’ve hardly talked at all since then.”

Shit. Reggie didn’t want to go through this right now. Things between them had always had this playful easiness, but now Len was screwing with it.

“No,” she said. “Nothing’s changed. I’ve just been busy as hell with the new project. I’m sorry about the way I acted, Len. And we can talk about it soon. I just can’t do it today. Actually, that’s why I called. To let you know I’m on my way out of town.”

Len was a silent a moment and Reggie heard one of the restaurant patrons laughing. “Business or pleasure?” Len asked at last, his words crisp. She pictured his furrowed brow, wished she could lay her fingers across his forehead and smooth out the wrinkles.

Reggie bit her lip. She ached to tell him the truth, but how would she even begin?

Remember my mother, who was supposed to have been the last victim of a serial killer in 1985? Well, guess what, it turns out she’s alive and I’m on my way to pick her up and bring her home.

“Business. Nothing all that fun. I’m actually on my way to Worcester, Mass. I’m going to look over a site down there as a favor to someone.”

“Poor you,” he said, his voice a low purr again. “When will you be back?”

“I’m not sure. A couple days maybe. Depends how things go. I’ll call you when I’m back home.”

“We’ll have that picnic then,” he said. “And talk things over.”

“Absolutely.”

She hung up, feeling like shit for lying, but knowing she wasn’t ready to tell him about her aunt’s phone call yet. She promised herself she’d call Len and tell him the truth as soon as she had a better sense of the situation. Once she’d assessed things and come up with a plan, she’d tell Len everything.

I
T DIDN’T TAKE HER
long to pack. She was used to traveling and had perfected her packing so that she could live out of a small carry-on and messenger bag for up to two weeks. The rules for her travel wardrobe were that the items all went together and could be easily washed out in a hotel sink.

Crossing the bridge to her office, she tucked her MacBook Pro into her leather messenger bag, then added her sketchbook and pens, glasses and index cards. While she packed, her eye fell on the astrology chart tacked to her bulletin board. Len had presented her with it a couple months ago.

“Think of it as a map of the sky at the exact time and place you were born,” Len had explained. “This center line represents the horizon.”

Reggie had nodded and studied the chart, a computer printout Len had generated with some astrology program—three rings that reminded her of a drawing of Earth’s core, mantle, and crust. The outermost ring had the symbols of the twelve signs of the zodiac; the middle ring was divided into twelve pieces of pie, which Len explained were the houses. Reggie liked that, of course. And scattered in the houses were indecipherable hieroglyphics and numbers. “The planets,” Len had explained, “and their position within each sign.”

“The signs that your planets are in are your inner reality, but the houses are the filters through which you broadcast that reality to the outside world,” Len told her.

“Right,” Reggie had said, feeling more skeptical by the second. She’d decided to go back to trying to look at it as a map.

The circle in the center of the chart was full of colored lines that made Spirograph-like designs.

“What are those?” she’d asked, pointing.

“Your aspects. They show how the planets in your chart relate to each other. See here.” He’d pointed to a line at the top. “You have sun square moon. The sun represents your intellectual self and the moon is your emotional self, and the square is a dynamic, tense aspect. Basically these two parts of your self are in constant conflict with each another. It’s no wonder you’re so uncomfortable with feelings.”

She’d rolled her eyes.

“And here.” Len had pointed to a funny little glyph with an arrow, just above the horizon line. “You have Sagittarius rising. That’s what makes you so frank—you don’t bullshit people, you tell it the way it is, even if it isn’t what they want to hear.”

Though she couldn’t possibly believe that the position of the planets at the time you were born could have an effect on the way your life turned out, she had to admit the design of the chart—the concentric circles, the crisscrossing lines, the inscrutable symbols—was compelling. Then her eye had caught on a little blue trident just over the horizon line, next to the Sagittarius symbol.

“What’s this?” she’d asked, trying to sound casual while pointing with a shaking finger.

“Hmm? Oh, that’s Neptune. You have Neptune in the twelfth house,” Len had said. Suddenly, her heart was banging in her chest and her mouth was dry. “It’s what makes you so intuitive. You’re in touch with the forces of your unconscious. Neptune in the twelfth is a classic placement for great artists. And tormented souls.”

Standing alone in her office now, Reggie reached out to touch the little blue trident, covering it with her pointer finger. Then she turned back to her open bag and threw in her cell phone and charger, looked around the office, and grabbed the rough sketches she’d done for her latest project: a small, portable home she called the Nautilus. It represented the ultimate freedom: the ability to have a home that went wherever your life took you.

“There’s one thing I’m having trouble visualizing,” Len had told her when he first saw the rounded, shell-shaped sketches. “How are you going to put wheels on it? I mean, does it need to be mobile? This design looks like it would work better being stationary in one place.”

“Because life is about movement,” she’d said.

“Movement?”

“Our ancestors,” Reggie said, “were hunter-gatherers. They moved where the food was. They went away from bad weather and danger. They roamed. That ancient instinct is still alive somewhere deep inside us.”

“But doesn’t a house represent the ultimate stability?” he’d asked. “Isn’t part of our instinct also to hunker down in one place? Put down roots?”

“We’re not trees,” Reggie said dismissively, covering his mouth with her own, kissing him a bit too roughly. His stubble scratched her face. His mouth tasted sour.

Damn it. She needed to focus. To get her bags packed, get on the road to Worcester, and stop letting Len creep into her thoughts again and again.

All packed up, she started to leave the office, then turned back and opened up the top drawer of her desk. Reaching back in the far right corner of the drawer, her fingers found the old silver chain and pulled it out. There, dangling on the end, was Tara’s hourglass. Reggie turned it over, watching the pink sand run out.

You have one minute . . .

Then, she undid the clasp and put the necklace on, hiding it under her shirt, where it rested cool against her chest.

P
UNCHING THE HOSPITAL ADDRESS
into her GPS, Reggie navigated the dirt roads, passing snowmobile trails and hunting camps, then hit blacktop. Turning left on Route 6, she went by the Rockland town hall, Christ the Redeemer Church, and then the Hungry Mind Cafe—the lot was full of cars there for the breakfast rush. She saw Len’s old pickup and thought of stopping, but didn’t want to get tied up for too long. She thought again of telling him the real reason for her trip to Worcester, pictured his intense face full of worry, and imagined he’d probably insist on going with her. But this was something she needed to do on her own.

She’d told almost no one about her mother and Neptune. Not friends, colleagues, or casual acquaintances. Len was the only one who knew. Len and everyone back in Brighton Falls. Which was a big part of the reason why she’d never gone home.

She regretted ever telling Len. He drove her crazy with his pop psychology analysis of the whole thing.

“You’re Neptune’s victim, too, you know,” he’d said when they were in bed together last Friday night. They’d opened a couple of his bottles of homemade dandelion wine and both had had a little too much. He was drawing slow circles around her belly with his fingertips.

“How’s that?” Reggie had asked. She’d known a second bottle of wine was a bad idea. Len always got very philosophical and emotional when he was drunk.

“Look at your life, Reg. You have everything, but in some ways, it’s so barren.” He was slurring his words a little.

“Barren?” she said. She sat up, forcing his hand away from her stomach.

“You put up all these walls around yourself. You don’t talk to people.”

“I talk to plenty of people,” Reggie blurted out, pulling the covers up over her naked chest. “I go around the world talking to people.”

“I mean
really
talk, Reg. Have you ever let yourself get truly close to anyone? Had a relationship that felt solid and long-term? I mean, look at us. As soon as it feels like we’re moving to the next level, you get all freaked out and start pushing me away.”

Now her hackles were definitely raised. “You’re not exactly Mr. Commitment, either. As I recall, you were the one who wanted the no-strings-attached relationship. And I’ve gotta say, you seem pretty content to come and go as you please like a tomcat.”

It was a relationship that suited them both. They’d met four years ago at a gallery that was showing several of Len’s paintings. He painted abstract geometric shapes and lines that brought to mind stained-glass windows. Reggie was drawn to the cleanness and balance in his work. And she found his disheveled artist look downright sexy. She bought two of his paintings and asked him out.

He made it clear that he wasn’t looking for a relationship. He’d gone through a messy divorce a couple of years before and said he just wasn’t ready to get involved.

“Who said anything about getting involved?” Reggie had asked. “I’m talking about a cup of coffee, a glass of wine maybe.”

“Nothing more?” Len had asked, eyebrows raised.

“If you want to know if I’m going to show up at your place with a U-Haul after the third date, the answer is no. I’m quite content on my own. But sometimes it’s nice to have a little company. A coconspirator to pass the cold nights with.”

He’d smiled. “No strings attached?”

“If it’s no strings attached you want, I’m your gal,” she promised.

They’d had an on-again, off-again relationship ever since, joining each other for movies, parties, even weekends away. They enjoyed each other’s company, but after more than two days together, Reggie would begin to feel slightly panicky and claustrophobic. The closer she got to Len, the more she felt this happening, and she’d find herself doing little things to piss him off and push him away. Len was right. It just wasn’t in her nature to let herself get too close to people. It was a safety mechanism she’d developed years ago, one she felt totally comfortable with. And now here was Len making her question the wisdom of her ways.

“I
am
happy,” Len said. “I have a life that suits me. But the difference between you and me, Reg, the real difference, is that I’m not afraid to let people inside. I’m not afraid to love someone.”

“So now I’m incapable of love?”

“I didn’t say that. I said you were afraid.”

“That’s a big assumption. What on earth gives you that idea?”

“You think everyone’s going to leave you. That we live in this world where at any second, someone you love could get snatched away.”

“Bullshit,” Reggie said, pissed off because she knew that on some level Len, drunk as he was, was right.

“I’m just saying I think it’s sad, that’s all. That because of one psychotic prick, you’re going to spend your whole life being afraid to get close to anybody.”

“That’s not fair and you know it,” Reggie hissed.

“Don’t you ever wonder where all this is going?” he asked.

“All what?”

“This,” he said, gesturing over the bed at the two of them with great flaps of his arms. “You and me. Christ, I’m forty-five, Reggie. Are we going to be doing this twenty years from now, slipping into and out of each other’s beds, no strings, no commitments?”

Reggie squinted at him. “What is it you’re saying?”

“That maybe it’s time we had something more. Something beyond being fuck-buddies.”

Reggie cringed a little at Len’s definition of their relationship. “Like what?”

“I was thinking we could move in together.”

Reggie gave a great caw of laughter. It was, quite possibly, the most absurd thing he’d ever said to her, and it had caught her completely off guard.

Len looked crushed.

“You’re not serious?” Reggie said. “What, you want to have me bring you your slippers and pipe each evening, then pull a casserole out of the oven?” She thought of her house, her perfect little house, being slowly filled with pieces of Len: dirty shoes, crumpled sketches, roaches from the joints he was constantly smoking.

Len shook his head, reached for the nearly empty bottle of wine, and took a swig.

“I should have known that’s how you’d react,” Len said, leaning back against his pillow, closing his eyes. “It’s all there in your chart—your fear of commitment, your success, nightmares, intuition. Your need to control every situation, to be in charge.” His voice trailed off. “All the things that make you who you are. The things that make you . . .” He was nearly asleep now, his voice soft and breathy. “So damned impossible.”