Barefoot by the Sea

She coughed a laugh, despite the weight of the topic. “I beg to differ.”

“She’s dead,” he said. “And…I’m…”

“Also dead,” Tessa whispered, standing as well. Dead to love, dead to possibilities, dead to the chance at a new life. The gardener in her ached to tend him and nurture him back, but something in his eyes told her that wasn’t possible. “Until you’re ready to talk about it, you’ll stay that way.”

“I can’t talk about it, Tessa.” The statement was flat and unequivocal, the complete lack of emotion cutting deeper than when he’d been ragged with feeling. “So don’t ask me to.”

“Then why did you tell me at all?” And, Good Lord, why had he lied all this time? The question shocked her, both because it hadn’t occurred yet and—well, why?

“Because I can’t talk about it.”

“So you pretend it never happened?”

He swiped at his hair again, the anguish a little different now. He’d gone from jagged pain to regret in the space of a few minutes. “It’s easier that way,” he finally said.

“Easier for who?” she demanded, hating the rise in her voice but unable to stop it.

“Just easier.” He rounded the table and put still more space between them. “I shouldn’t have talked about it. I really shouldn’t have.”

Definitely regret. But why? She stood speechless, the truth descending like a mid-summer storm cloud.

“You know now,” he said, waving his hand like he was absolved, somehow. “You understand.”

Was he kidding? She didn’t understand anything. Only that he was still in love with someone else. Dead or alive, it didn’t matter. He was in love with another woman, and that was the little something he’d been hiding all this time.

He was at the door in a few steps, his hand on the knob, the unspoken good-bye echoing through every dark corner of the room.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, letting himself out.

Stunned, she didn’t breathe until he was gone. “Yeah,” she whispered to the emptiness. “So am I.”

She heard the growl of his motorcycle starting up and the whine as it took off into the night.

She was sorry, all right. Sorry and vindicated. Because, deep inside, she’d known this from the very beginning. Sure, the girls could say it was her silly fear of secrets, and she could rationalize and rationalize along with them, but she’d known deep in her gut that he was holding back something important, something truthful.

From her bedroom she heard the soft digital ding of her phone.

That didn’t take long. Of course he had to finish this conversation. Resentful of the hope that bubbled up, she ignored the call, dropping her head into her hands until the sound stopped.

A few minutes later she washed up in the bathroom, and she heard the ringtone again. Turning the water on harder, she tried to drown it out. What was left to say at this hour of the night?

As she climbed into bed the phone rang again, and this time she could see the screen light up on the nightstand.

Catherine Galloway.

Her mother was calling now? At two in the morning? That couldn’t be good. She picked up the phone and answered, “Mom?”

A sniff was all she got, making Tessa sit straight up in bed. “Mom, is that you? Are you all right?”

“I…I need to talk to you, Tess.”

“Now?”

“I know it’s late out there. Did I wake you?”

“Actually, no. What’s the matter?”

“She’s dead.”

For a moment, Tessa thought of John’s wife. But of course that wasn’t who her mother meant. “Who’s dead?”

“Finally, after all these years, she’s dead.”

Oh. The answer landed on Tessa with a thud. Uncle Ken’s wife. She couldn’t even remember the woman’s name since “Uncle Ken” never brought his wife with him when he visited their home. Because it was business, her mother would say.

Yeah. Monkey business.

Her mother shuddered another sob. “I wanted her dead for a long time, and now she is.”

Tessa cringed, so ashamed that her mother would even have that thought, and, coming on the heels of her conversation with John, the sentiment sounded more than crass. It was downright sinful.

“Well…” Tessa wasn’t about to start an argument with her mother now, not with her nerves and emotions laid bare by John. “There you go.”

Catherine choked. “You don’t understand, Tessa.”

“No, I can’t say that I do.” She curled under the sheet and comforter, wishing like hell she hadn’t picked up the phone. “What happened to her?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Some cancer of something.”

How could she be so cavalier about another woman’s life? “How old was she?” Tessa asked, a wave of sympathy for Mrs. Donnelly rolling over her. Far more sympathy for the deceased than for the woman who’d slept with Mr. Donnelly for almost twenty years.

“Sixty-something,” she said. “Oh, God, it hurts, Tessa.”

And not, she knew, because of guilt. Catherine had never felt guilt about the affair; she’d only felt remorse that it had ended with her lover’s death.

“It hurts?” Tessa couldn’t possibly keep the astonishment out of her voice. “How do you think she felt when her husband dropped dead at forty-eight of a heart attack?” Her husband who kept a mistress and an illegitimate child for sixteen years?

“She felt well taken care of,” Catherine said bitterly. “She was never a wife to him. Never the way I…” She had the dignity to let her voice trail off. “She got a couple of million dollars in life insurance and I got nothing.”

Possibly because you weren’t his wife? “You got the business,” Tessa said.

She snorted bitterly.

“And you got me.”

Silence, then a sigh. “I’m sorry to put this on you, Tess. I know how you feel, but I have no one…” Her voice cracked with a sob. “I have no one. There’s never been another man for me.”

But he wasn’t the man for you, either. He wasn’t your husband.

But Tessa and her mother had had this fight far too many times for her to start it again now. Catherine Galloway had made her choices: She’d loved another woman’s husband and she chose work—and time with that man—over being with her daughter.

And now she was all alone.

“When did she die?” Tessa asked.

“A couple of days ago.”

“Why didn’t you call then?”

She sniffed again. “I guess I didn’t care that much. I hate her, have always hated her. She was his wife, always demanding and whining for more of his time.”

She was his wife.

“But the funeral was today, and of course I had to go.”

“Of course.” Because who doesn’t love a hypocrite at a funeral?

“And I’ve been miserable ever since. I thought I was over him, and everything, but I guess not.”

Maybe she did feel guilt but didn’t recognize it. “Are you sorry, Mom?”

“Sorry?” she spat the word out. “For the best thing that ever happened to me?”

Tessa’s heart twisted for multiple reasons, but mainly because she knew she wasn’t the best thing that had ever happened to Catherine—Ken was.

“Of course I’m not sorry. I’m wrecked because the place was so packed you couldn’t find a seat.” Ugly notes of jealousy darkened her voice. “And the eulogies! My God, you’d think they buried Mother Teresa.”