The Second Silence (51 page)

‘Hank’s the best medicine anyone could have prescribed,’ Mary observed, watching Noelle wiggle into yet another pair of ivory-colored pumps. Emma, on the floor nearby, was absorbed in wedging her own foot, shoe and all, into a flesh-colored stockinet.

Noelle looked up in sudden radiance. ‘He
is
pretty wonderful, isn’t he?’ She cocked her head, brushing back a lock of springy dark hair. ‘You know something, if the subject had come up beforehand, I doubt I’d have asked him to move in. It’s funny how things work out, isn’t it? Just when you think you have it all mapped out, along comes something that’s better than anything you could have figured out on your own.’

Out of old habit, Mary bent down to pinch the toe of Noelle’s pump. ‘They look a little tight. How do they feel?’

‘Like shoes I’ll have to wear only once,’ Noelle replied with a laugh.

‘I think I like the first pair best.’

‘I’m leaning more toward this one.’

This time they laughed in unison. ‘I guess we’ll never see eye to eye on some things,’ Mary admitted. ‘But in case I haven’t put it into so many words, I approve one hundred percent of your marrying Hank. Even if I didn’t adore him for purely selfish reasons, anyone who makes you this happy would get my vote.’ The words hung in the air between them:
He’ll be a good father to Emma.

‘Thanks, Mom.’ Noelle looked both pleased and faintly embarrassed. She slipped her feet out of the pumps and reached for another box. Her eyes carefully averted, she observed lightly, ‘You know, I could say the same thing about you and Dad.’

Mary grew flustered. This was one subject she and Noelle had never discussed. Maybe her daughter had sensed it was off-limits but now wanted everyone to be as blissfully happy as she. Mary sighed. ‘Your father and I are very different people—’ She stopped. No. She had to come up with something better. ‘We might have made a go of it,’ she said, struggling to keep her voice even, ‘but I just can’t see myself living in Burns Lake. Can you?’

‘Honestly? No.’ Noelle darted a glance at Emma, who’d abandoned the stockinets and moved on to the shoes Noelle had just abandoned. Unaware of the splinter she’d driven into Mary’s heart, Noelle peeked into the uppermost box on the stack beside her before clapping its lid back on in disgust. ‘On the other hand,’ she said somewhat distractedly, frowning as she hunted through the remaining boxes, ‘almost nothing ever turns out the way you expect. This time last year who’d have believed I’d be getting married again?’

‘You have a point.’ With an effort, Mary hoisted her smile back into place. ‘The only question now is, Which of these shoes do you see yourself getting married in?’

Noelle sank back in her chair, legs sprawled in front of her in a pose Mary hadn’t seen since she was a teenager. A mischievous grin spread over her face. ‘Oh, Mom, does it really matter? No one will see them anyway, and Hank certainly won’t care. He’ll be too busy looking at
me.’

In the end Noelle chose a pair of white high-heeled sneakers that would be hidden by the hem of her long dress and comfortable enough to dance in. The gaudiest high-heeled pumps, decorated with sequins and bows, she bought for Emma, who was absolutely enraptured with them. Yes, she knew it was a lot to spend for dress-up, she confessed ruefully to Mary as the cashier was ringing up her purchase, but lately she’d been relying a lot less on good sense and more on simply what
felt
right.

Words that resonated throughout the following day and into the evening, when Mary and Charlie met for dinner at the Stone Mill. They’d be seeing each other at tomorrow night’s rehearsal dinner and the wedding on Saturday, where they’d be surrounded by friends and relatives, but tonight was just for the two of them, as it had been in the beginning. Only now their time had drawn to an end.

She spotted him by the window that looked out over the millrace, where a stream made lusty by snowmelt rushed to meet the pond below. It was early still, and the tables around him were only half filled. He was wearing a dark suit and tie, which made him look dignified and even somewhat sober-sided, more like an elder statesman than the owner of a small-town newspaper. Though she ought to have been used to it by now, the gray hair at his temples still came as a small shock. But maybe that was because she couldn’t look at him these days without seeing an overlying snapshot in her mind of Charlie at seventeen: tall and slightly stoop-shouldered, as if from shooting up too fast, with his Indian black hair that was always rumpled from running his fingers through it. And, oh, yes, his smile, that quicksilver smile that could go from zero to sixty in a heartbeat.

He saw her walking toward him and stood to greet her.
Always the gentleman,
she thought. He was smiling, but there was a touch of wariness in his expression as well. Wariness she perversely longed to banish the way she’d once playfully splashed away their reflections in the little creek hollow below their house where they used to sunbathe. But they weren’t teenagers anymore. Maybe part of the problem was that they never really had been.

‘Long time, no see.’ She kissed his cheek, squeezing her eyes shut for the briefest of moments against a stab of bittersweet pain. ‘You’re looking good, Charlie. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that suit. It must be new.’ She refrained from asking,
Did Paula pick it out?

He gave his signature loose-limbed shrug. ‘You know me, your basic L. L. Bean kind of guy. I wear this only on special occasions.’

Mary put on her best smile. ‘We have a lot to celebrate. Our daughter is getting married.’

‘That she is,’ Charlie echoed amiably. He pulled out her chair and waited until she was comfortably seated before settling back into his own. ‘What would you like to drink?’

‘A vodka tonic would be nice.’ When the waiter had taken their orders, she recalled with a groan, ‘Oh, God, that first wedding. I had a splitting headache for three days afterward. Even now when I think of how it might have ended
…
’ She shook her head, not wanting to dwell on how close they’d come to losing Noelle.

Charlie reached across the table to squeeze her hand. ‘She’s happy now. Isn’t that what counts?’

Mary squeezed back and deftly withdrew her hand. ‘Someone once said there’re no such things as happy endings, only happy beginnings.’ Their drinks came, and she slowly sipped hers, staring out the window at the water rushing past, almost close enough for her to have dipped a hand into. This time of year it’d be ice cold still; the creek wouldn’t be warm enough for swimming until at least the middle of July. When she brought her gaze back to Charlie, the deep lines like woodcuts on either side of his mouth and nose caused her throat to tighten unexpectedly. She smiled crookedly. ‘I guess we never had much of a chance, did we? It was us against the world. Now it’s the world against us.’

‘If you’re right, it’s a world of our own making.’ Charlie spoke lightly, but his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. His hand rested on the table alongside his wineglass, curved like a question mark.

‘Maybe so,’ she said. ‘But there’s no undoing it, is there?’

‘I’m not the one to answer that.’

Mary felt something crumple inside her. Her resolve to tread lightly, oh-so-lightly, was replaced by a sudden urge to get it over with all at once. It hurt too much. She was hurting

Charlie, too. ‘What are you asking of me?’ she asked in a low, unsteady voice.

The smile dropped from his face, and he regarded her with a weary sadness that would have broken her heart if it weren’t in pieces already. ‘I’m not asking anything of you, Mary. I don’t have the right, any more than you would ask me to give up everything I’ve worked so hard to build here.’ He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘When I was young and cocksure, I didn’t know any better, but over the years I’ve learned a thing or two. I know, for instance, that when you force a square peg into a round hole, either it breaks or the hole gets ground down. I wouldn’t do that to you.’ He shot her a wry look. ‘Though I’ll admit there’s a part of me that’s selfish enough to want to try.’

Mary sighed. ‘You’re right. It just wouldn’t work.’

He lifted his glass. ‘We could drink to that or simply drown our sorrows. Your pleasure.’ Through his joking demeanor she could see the pain that had tightened the muscles in his neck. His eyes were sad but resigned. And it was his weary acceptance—so unlike the fear and uncertainty of the first time—that hurt most of all.

‘Oh, Charlie,’ she said, softly, her tears dangerously close to the surface. ‘I wish—’ She paused to clear her throat before going on. ‘I wish things could have been different. If it helps, there’s no one else. There never has been, and I doubt there ever will be.’

She waited for him to say something about Paula Kent, half wishing he would, for it would have been the one concrete detail she could have used to distance herself. This felt too close. Too raw.

But Charlie, with only a touch of hoarseness, replied, ‘Well then, I guess we’ll just have to get on with our lives as best we can. Don’t worry about me. I’ve had plenty of practice.’ He offered her a bleak smile and sipped his wine. ‘Shall we order?’

‘Suddenly I’m not so hungry,’ she said miserably.

‘You should eat something anyway.’

‘Now you sound like my mother.’ She summoned a small laugh.

‘Look.’ Charlie leaned toward her, and in that moment she glimpsed the flinty bedrock glittering darkly beneath the layers of pretense. ‘The day after tomorrow our daughter is getting married. We owe it to Noelle after all she’s suffered to get through this with as much grace and humor as we can muster.’ He sat back, his expression softening. ‘Now, why don’t we have a look at this menu? I’ve been told by our Lifestyles editor that the teriyaki salmon is the thing to order.’

She felt chastened by his
…
there was no other word for it, his
nobility.
She pushed her empty glass aside and picked up the menu. ‘You’re right, Charlie. I’m being selfish.’ In a brave attempt that sounded utterly false to her ears, she added lightly, ‘There’s no point in my wasting a perfectly good evening with the most eligible bachelor in Burns Lake.’ The thought of Paula Kent once again flashed through her mind.

‘That’s how we used to refer to old Cuddles, remember? The most eligible bachelor in Burns Lake.’ Charlie laughed. ‘Poor guy, stuck in his pen with nothing to do but moon over the fence at the cows.’

Mary laughed, too, her memory of that long-ago time cast now in a soft sepia glow. She remembered how Cuddles, who was anything but, had once escaped from his pen onto the road, where an elderly couple in a pink Buick Regal cruising north on Route 30A were shocked to find Mr Pettigrew’s prize bull coming at them down the center line. The driver, a retired telephone repairman on his way to visit his wife’s sister in Vermont, had panicked and attempted to pass the bull, which promptly charged, leaving a dent the size of the claims inspector’s subsequent incredulity in the Buick’s passenger side door.

Mary smiled. ‘I don’t think that old couple ever recovered.’

‘I’m not so sure about Cuddles either. He was never quite right in the head after that.’ Charlie chuckled softly. ‘After you left, he wasn’t the only one.’ She caught a brief glimpse of something glinting darkly in his eyes; then he was rolling past it with an easy grin.

‘From what I can see, you’ve recovered nicely.’ The words were out before she knew it. ‘I hear you’ve been seeing a lot of Paula Kent these days.’

Charlie, to her frustration, neither confirmed nor denied it. ‘Is that so? Well, you know how it is in a small town. Rumors have a way of spreading.’

‘There’s truth to some rumors.’

But Charlie was withdrawing, his face closing against her like a door through which she was afforded no more than a glimpse of what lay beyond it. ‘You can’t have it both ways, Mary.’ His tone was cool, though not entirely devoid of gentleness. ‘If you want what I have to offer—which isn’t much, I grant you it’s yours for the taking. I don’t have to spell it out, you know that. But you’ve made your choice, which I respect even if I don’t much like it. Don’t ask any more of me than that.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Charlie was right: She wanted to have her cake and eat it, too, even if the thought of Paula Kent was choking her. ‘Can we start over?’

It was a poor choice of words, and Charlie winced visibly. Just as quickly he recovered and shot her his patented quicksilver smile. ‘You bet. What do you say about that salmon?’

‘Sounds good,’ she lied.

And that was that—as easy as falling off a log and at the same time the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. Almost as hard as watching Charlie walk away the first time. They dined on salad and salmon followed by strawberry-rhubarb pie for which Mary had little appetite but which she ate regardless. They lingered over cups of espresso. Charlie, in particular, seemed in no hurry to go; if he found her presence painful, it didn’t show. They chatted more about the wedding and about the likelihood of Trish and Father Joe making the same trip down the aisle. Mary, asked after Bronwyn and was told that she’d been seeing a lot of Dante Lo Presti. Apparently he wasn’t the demon Charlie had imagined him to be. On the night neither wanted to elaborate on, much less relive, the boy had proved his worth to Charlie’s satisfaction.

They parted outside the restaurant before walking to their respective cars, with a decorous kiss that left Mary’s mouth tingling. As she watched in her rearview mirror while he pulled out of the lot, unexpected tears filled her eyes. She could already feel him receding in more ways than one. At the wedding, surrounded by friends and relatives, they would have little enough opportunity to chat, much less speak as candidly as they had just now. Then she would be back in the city. When she returned to Burns Lake in the months to come, it was unlikely that she would even run into Charlie. With Doris gone, they would see each other only on state occasions. School plays. Emma’s high school graduation. And down the line if there should be another grandchild or two (their daughter was still a young woman after all) at christenings. They would murmur the usual polite exchanges. Charlie would be accompanied by Paula Kent—or whichever lucky woman happened to snag him—and that would be hard, yes, but not unendurable. She was used to putting on a brave face.