“No point.”
“Honestly, Wes …”
“What good would it have done, Ali? Cindie had guilted Michelle into moving up there. You know it. I know it. Poor pitiful Cindie, lost without her daughter … her son … her husband. The only thing she somehow has going for her is her job and, I swear, I don’t know how she’s doing that. Probably sleeping with the boss there, too.”
I’d not thought of that, though, somehow, I doubted it. “If she were, I’m sure she would have told Michelle by now.”
Westley stood, leaving his coffee mug on the table. “I’ve gotta finish getting ready.” He squeezed my shoulder. “Allison,” he said, using my full name, which startled me. I looked up at him. “We did good with Michelle,” he said. “Mostly you. Those seeds you planted didn’t fall into unfertile soil. So this much I know—she’ll be fine.”
I leaned back against the chair, my head resting against my husband’s abdomen and his hand moved to cup my face. “From your lips to God’s ears …”
“We’ve got to trust in that.” He tilted my face up. “She’ll be fine. If nothing else, a year with Cindie juxtaposed with a childhood spent with us will convince her that she wants to grow up to be like her mother. And I mean you, sweetheart. Her real mother.”
“Oh, Westley …”
“Hey,” he said, now squatting so that we were at eye level. “There’s something I want you to know.”
“What?”
“I didn’t marry you because of Michelle, Ali. I want you to believe that.”
“I know—”
“Because I don’t think I ever really, truly told you. I married you because I loved you. Love you. Stroke of luck for me that you came along, sure, but Michelle or not, I would have proposed to you that day. And I’m sorry—I always have been—that I didn’t tell you the truth sooner. That you may have felt like I trapped you. I was young and scared and desperate.”
My brow raised.
“Not desperate. Well, maybe a little.” He smiled. “But you—you took it—you took me—on the chin. Every bit of it and every bit of me. I don’t deserve you and I never will, but Michelle did and does and always will. And you’ve been the best, the absolute best mother.” He stood, then leaned down and kissed me, his lips soft and warm. His breath sweet with coffee. “I love you. And I love my daughter and the life we’ve made here.”
“Then why don’t you make her come home?” I asked, feeling as warmed by his words as confused by my own desires of loving her and wanting her with us.
“Because the last thing I want for her is to feel pressure from me.” His eyes softened. “From us. I won’t do that to her. I love her too much.”
I stood then. Turned. Wrapped my arms around him, pressing into him, begging for the strength only he could give. “I love you, too.” I burrowed my nose into the flesh of his neck, tears burning my eyes. This man … this man … whom I’d given so much of my life to. This man who had given so much to me. I’d never understand it, really. What draws one person to another in such a way that we feel we cannot go on, one without the other? From the moment he’d called me on the phone, having looked up my name in the phone book, and asked me out, I had been his and he had been mine. For all his faults—and for all of mine—there had been nothing I wanted in life or out of it that didn’t include him.
I squeezed my eyes and kissed his neck. Once. Twice. Thinking, for the briefest of seconds, that the only difference in Cindie and me was that she had fallen into temptation with a married man and that I, a married woman, had nearly done the same with Biff. The very idea made me shudder in both disgust and gratitude that Miss Justine had given me such a good talking to.
Oh, Miss Justine! A woman I could never put in the same category as Cindie, and yet …
“How is it,” I began, then stopped in my unsurety. Did I want to share what was in my heart?
“Hmm?” Westley asked, his voice low and tender.
“How is it that our lives can be so affected by the decisions of others?”
He stepped back. Ran a finger down my nose and allowed it to rest on my lips before I kissed it. “What do you mean?”
“I mean … do you ever think about it? Cindie decided to sleep with her professor, and then when she found out she was pregnant, and, well, you know … the whole Kyle thing. And, in the end, her decisions led to us losing Michelle—”
“We haven’t lost her.”
“I know, but …” I said, my voice now stronger in the light of my grandmother’s directive. Raise your radish, Allison. Raise it high … This will not kick you down.
There was more, of course. More I couldn’t tell him. Would never tell him. We had all made our decisions. Westley’s not to marry Cindie. Mine to marry Westley. Cindie and Patterson’s to ignore the bonds of the wedding vows he’d spoken with his wife. Hers to drag Kyle into her deception. Even Miss Justine’s decision to share with me about her relationship with Biff’s father had placed consequences on my own decisions. All of this had left a mark on Westley. But, in his way, he’d gone on about life as though this was just another wave to ski over.
“But?”
I shook my head. No. These were my thoughts and only mine. Not to be shared. Not even to be mulled over. Not too long, anyway. “Nothing,” I finally answered, glancing at the digital clock on the stove with a nod. “We’ve gotta get going.”
Westley glanced at his watch as I stepped away from him. “Man …”
I started out of the
