Читать книгу The Good Liar - Laura Caldwell, Leslie S. Klinger - Страница 13

Four months later

St. Marabel, Canada

“K ate, my girl, it’s your wedding!” Liza yelled, bursting through the door of the church’s anteroom. “I can’t believe you’re shameless enough to wear white.” The sides of her auburn hair were pulled back, a few wavy tendrils escaping. She wore a soft pink dress that draped over her shoulders and exposed her collarbones.

My mother shot Liza a disapproving look.

“Liza, stop,” I said, laughing. I loved when Liza was like this—funny and over-the-top—and the fact was, she was like this ninety percent of the time. The other was a serious, soulful Liza, moody and hard to reach. She rarely let anyone see that Liza.

My mom scurried around me, fluffing my dress, and pinching off a few bouquet flowers she saw as less than ideal. We were in a tiny church tucked on an angled alley street of St. Marabel. The church was where Michael came to Mass the few times a year he did so while summering in this town. Despite the fact that I hadn’t gone to Mass in years, I found the church cozy and comforting. I needed that because now that Michael was opening a restaurant here, and Michael was about to become my new husband, and all of this meant that my life was entirely new and different and unknown. Fitting that it was spring.

“I need one minute alone with my friend,” Liza said, drawing me away from my mother and against a stone wall. Her smile waned. She looked contemplative. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she said, her voice low.

“Liza. We’ve been through this.”

Liza had seemed pleased when my first date with Michael had gone so well. She seemed delighted when he came to see me again in Chicago. She sounded cautious when I went to visit him for a weekend. And when we got engaged, she was alarmed. I understood. Our relationship had progressed so rapidly, I hardly knew how to process it myself.

Long-distance relationships are the toughest breed. Michael and I fell for each other—hard—aided by the phone sex and the long weekends and the painful goodbyes that often brought me to tears. And then I couldn’t stand being away from him. It literally wrenched something inside me that I couldn’t see him, that I was forced to only hear him at night on the phone. And so our relationship had moved with electric speed. It was either that or pretend I didn’t care and try to let it grow with a slow build. But Michael wasn’t slow, at least when it came to me. He told me the first weekend I visited him that he loved me. We were in Vermont, riding horses down the back trail of his property and watching the sun sink fast over a small mountain ridge. His horse nudged up to mine. I tightened my gloved hands on the reins, surprised. Then I relaxed when I looked into his face, a face so familiar somehow.

“I can’t believe I’m going to say this after such a short time,” he said. “But I have to.” He paused.

I heard a branch break somewhere in the woods, then the hum of a distant plane.

“I love you.” He said this with certainty. And certainty was a concept I hadn’t been familiar with for a long time. I’d been living with Scott, wondering and wondering and wondering—Would we have a baby? Would we last without one?

I didn’t return the sentiment that cold day in Vermont. I wanted to. But I also wanted to be smart. I wanted to take Michael’s words home and roll around in them. I wanted to see if they fit.

Yet the next day, when I was about to leave him at the ticket counter of the little airport, I felt a clutch in my chest. I would miss this man so much. And I didn’t want to miss him. I wanted to see him every morning, and every night. Before I’d met Michael, I’d honestly believed I would never feel like this again. Scott—like a thief who carries off valuables in the night—had stolen from me trust, hope, innocence, belief, all the components of first love. I had assumed the theft was complete and that I would never possess those things again. But now I had this surge in my chest, the return of feelings lost.

I dropped my bag on the concrete sidewalk. I stood on tiptoe and grabbed Michael’s face in my hands. “I love you, too.”

“Well, it’s about time.”

We kissed, laughing.

I went back to Vermont the next weekend. The week after I visited his summer place in St. Marabel, where he was moving to permanently open his restaurant. The weekend after that when he returned to Chicago, I walked into Michael’s room at the Peninsula to find it wasn’t a room, it was a suite, and it was filled with peonies, my favorite flower. A table was set up under the window, laden with a meal made of my favorite Chicago dishes—a cheese flight from Avec, endive salad from Bistrot Margot, sea bass from Spring and chocolate truffles from Vosges called Black Pearls.

“If you were to leave Chicago,” Michael said, “I know you’d miss the city. But I promise to try and bring Chicago to you whenever I can. My home is wherever we’re together.”

In that instant, I saw where this was going and I started to tremble.

“Kate.” He cupped one cheek with his big hand and kissed my eyes, my forehead, then, slowly, my mouth. “I want to do that every day. Will you marry me?”

I didn’t hesitate a second before I said yes.

I put my house on the market within a week. I won’t say that I didn’t sob—great, gulping sobs—when I left. But once I was in my mother’s car, on the way to the airport and away from Chicago for good, I felt like I was lifting off.

And now I was in St. Marabel, about to be married again.

“Liza,” I said. “Remember, it was you who set us up.”

“I know, I know.” She tucked a tendril of auburn hair behind her ears and peered into my eyes. “I just didn’t think…”

“You just didn’t think what?”

“That you’d get married. He was supposed to be a transition guy.”

“Well, he turned out to be my guy.”

She breathed out hard.

“What?” I said. “What is it?”

“It’s just so soon.”

“Liza, you like Michael, right?”

“Of course.”

“Why do you like him?”

She shrugged. “Because he’s an honorable guy. He’s a great man.”

“Right. And you know that just from meeting him at work. You should see his personal side. You should see him at home with me. He’s amazing.”

I watched Liza’s face as I said this. It had occurred to me early on that maybe Liza and Michael had had a fling. Sometimes the way they spoke of each other made them seem more familiar than just two old colleagues. But Liza had flatly denied this when I asked her, and Michael had laughed.

“I’m in love with him,” I said. “Can’t you be happy for me?”

Liza stood straighter. She kissed me softly on the cheek. “Of course. I am happy for you.”

Behind us, my mother cleared her throat. I turned to her. “You okay, Mom?”

My mother, Geri Greenwood, was a worrier at heart. My brothers, seven and eight years older than me, had created enough trouble that she worried her weight away, leaving her a diminutive sixty-six-year-old, whose designer clothes were a size zero. She had on a beige chiffon dress today, and although I knew she was happy for me, the lines at the corners of her mouth looked deeper than usual.

She smiled, then went about fluffing the hem of my dress. “I just want what’s best for you.”

“ This is what’s best for me!” My voice rose, despite myself. “C’mon, you guys! It’s my wedding day, and I’d like a little support, and—”

My mother’s hand reached out and touched my arm, stopping my words. She looked at me. The lines of her face softened. “I know you’re in love. And I’m thrilled for you.”

“Me, too,” Liza said. “So let’s do it, ladies.”

Liza turned and threw open the door of the anteroom. I could see the small cobblestone foyer of the church and, beyond that, the open, arched doors leading to the aisle.

I took a few steps and peeked my head forward, peering down that ivory-covered aisle, and I caught a glimpse of Michael—tall and beautiful, hands clasped, rocking back and forth on his heels. Michael smiled at Roger Leiland, his best man, whom he’d met while married to his first wife. Michael’s marriage had split up years ago, but he said he’d never split from Roger, even though Roger had changed a lot. Apparently, the love of Roger’s life died many years ago, and he’d become hardened and callous in many ways. But Michael said he’d never give up on a friend, and I loved his unabashed loyalty. Roger was shorter than Michael, more powerfully built, and probably five or six years younger, but they had a camaraderie that could always be felt when they were together.

I took in the rest of the tiny church, mostly empty, although Tomaso, the restaurateur from Chicago, was there with his wife. My brothers and their wives were in attendance, too. They were all grinning big, no doubt relieved that their little sister wasn’t the depressed creature she’d been for a year now. And there was my dad, nervously twisting around in his seat. I’d told him that I wanted to walk down the aisle by myself this time. It felt more adult somehow, more honest and real, that I and only I would walk toward my new husband.

I felt a rising of something through me—a vision of a new husband, a new town, new friends, a new life.

“Ready?” Liza said, bumping her hip into mine.

I threw back my shoulders. “Absolutely.”

Michael and Roger stood at the bar of Jameson Place, a small, charming pub in St. Marabel where the reception was being held. There were only twenty people, but the mood was as ebullient as if hundreds were in attendance.

St. Marabel was the place where Trust members from around the world had been meeting for years, and so Michael had spent a lot of time there. But now, newly married to Kate, it felt like home for the first time.

Michael ordered a glass of Lagavulin scotch from the bartender. Roger asked for red wine.

“No, no,” Michael said, “he’ll have a Beychevelle Bordeaux.” He turned to Roger. “I’ve told you, my friend, you can’t just ask for red wine or they’ll give you some Cabernet swill.”

Roger accepted his glass from the bartender and sipped. “Delicious. You became such a wine snob when you ran that winery. That was the best cover the Trust has ever given someone.”

Michael laughed. “Now what will I become? A restaurant snob?”

“No, from the way you’re staring at Kate, I’d say you’re about to become one of those insufferable people who believes everyone can find true love. If they just look in the right place.”

Michael dragged his eyes away from Kate’s incandescent face and met the gaze of his best friend. “Guilty as charged.”

Roger turned to face the bar. Michael’s scotch was delivered, and they sipped in silence.

“So,” Roger said, “I haven’t had a chance to tell you personally—good work in Moscow.”

Michael’s body tensed ever so slightly. No one would have noticed, but he knew Roger did. They were friends, after all, but they were also trained to look for such physical clues in everyone.

“That has to be the last job,” Michael said. “Now that I’m here running the Twilight Club for the Trust.”

“Now that you’ve got Kate.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Are you going to give me hell for wanting to be a good husband? A normal husband?”

Roger held his hands up in mock self-defense. “Jesus, Michael, Moscow was just something you had to finish.”

Michael sighed. “I don’t want that anymore. I want to give Kate a great life. I want to make her happy.”

“You can’t tell her anything about the Trust.”

Michael gave him a withering look. “I would never. You know that.”

Roger nodded. “I gotta tell you, buddy…” He trailed off, shaking his head, and Michael readied himself for more ribbing about true love. “I’m jealous,” Roger said simply. “I miss feeling like that.”

Michael looked at him. “I thought you never wanted another relationship after Marta.”

Roger shrugged. “You never know.”

They shared a silence during which Michael gave his friend an opportunity to elaborate. He didn’t.

“I’m telling you, I’m fine running the Twilight Club,” Michael said. “I’m excited that the Trust will have a meeting place, and I like being in on the ground floor of it. But that’s it for me. That’s my involvement now, and that’s all.”

“You’re repeating yourself.”

“Well, I just want you to know. You’re a member of the board.”

“You used to be as well.”

“That’s right. Used to be.”

Roger took another sip. “Fine, I’ve gotten the message, for what it’s worth.”

“It better be worth something. I’ve given my whole life to this.”

“Who hasn’t?”

“Michael!” Kate’s voice rang out. She and Liza were holding on to each other, cracking up. “You have to hear this story.”

Michael could feel the grin stretch across his face. Genuine, spontaneous smiles still felt foreign to him.

“Go,” Roger said.

The two men looked at each other.

“Thanks,” Michael said.

Roger gave him a clap on the back, and as Michael walked toward his wife, he let that smile take over his face again.