Family Reunion, Nancy Thayer [the kiss of deception read online .txt] 📗

weird Bemi, or herself. Why hadn’t she been cold and cutting? She’d behaved horribly. Couldn’t she have handled it better? Her anger melted as she was drenched with burning shame.

Ari carefully pulled around the lot to the exit sign, checked for oncoming traffic, and headed toward her grandmother’s house. She screamed as loudly as she could while she drove.

Ari pulled into her grandmother’s driveway, turned off the engine, and just sat for a while, staring at nothing. Her breath came out squeaky and hoarse and she wasn’t certain she could walk. She took a long drink from her water bottle. She wiped her face and put on a touch of light lipstick. More deep breaths. As she got out of the car, weirdly, her mother’s voice came to her, saying, “Be a big girl now,” as she had said to Ari when she was a small child getting a vaccination.

Finally she crawled from her car. She felt weak, a hundred years old. The image of her father’s face today—so worried, so surprised, so guilty—flashed before her repeatedly. It made Ari feel furious at her father, and it made her feel sad for him.

She found Eleanor sitting in the living room. Two tumblers of iced peach tea sat on the coffee table.

Eleanor said, “Your father called me.”

Ari sank onto the sofa opposite her grandmother. “You know I saw him.”

“Yes. He wants me to tell you that he’s tremendously sorry, sorry about everything.”

Ari wanted to make a sarcastic reply, but she was too tired. “The woman—Bemi—isn’t even pretty.”

“Your father says he’s not going to see Bemi anymore. He wants to talk with your mother. He wants to know where your mother is. I told him I didn’t know and I wouldn’t tell him if I did.”

Ari sat back in surprise. “That must have been quite a phone call.” She thought a moment, her mind whirling. “I hope Mom is in love with that guy she met and she divorces Dad.”

Eleanor was quiet for a long time. “I’m not sure you truly hope that.”

Ari put her head in her hands. “I don’t know.” She sighed. “Bemi said my father is famous for his skill as a surgeon.”

“Yes,” Eleanor said. “I think he is.”

“Does that woman think I don’t know how talented Dad is?”

“Maybe she thinks you’ve forgotten that, gotten used to it.”

Ari thought about that. “Do you think Einstein’s wife thought he was boring?”

Eleanor laughed. “I’d bet Einstein’s wife thought he was exhausting.” She rose. “I’m going to fix myself a drink. I think you should take a nap. We’ve got chaos all around us and I’m sure you can’t think straight. I certainly can’t.”

“I am tired,” Ari admitted. She seemed always to be tired these days. “Thanks, Gram.”

Her bedroom smelled of flowers. While she was gone, her grandmother had cut some of the Darcey Bussell roses Eleanor had grown in the shelter at the front of her house and put them in a vase. The roses sat on her bedside table, the leaves dark green and glossy, the roses crimson and old-fashioned, as if they were a part of the house. Of the family. Ari sat on the bed, pulled off her sneakers, and stretched out on the quilt. She loved this house, this room. If she lay on one side, she could gaze at the never-ending blue ocean, a body of salt water that during a storm could drive its salt into one small, fragile flower and kill it. But Eleanor had found a shelter for the rose. The bush was tucked into the one spot around the house where it could thrive. Ari thought of the baby, her baby, not even as big as a rosebud now, and how she was curled around it, protecting it, feeding and nurturing it. Had this last hour of anger and sorrow harmed it? She hoped not. She hoped it lay safe and innocent while the storm raged past.

—

She slept. Not long, because when her phone woke her, it wasn’t yet dark.

“Hi, Ari,” Beck said.

“Hi, Beck.” Ari thought his voice was like balm. She was so relaxed from her nap, as if sleep had carried her anger away.

“I’ve been thinking of you, Ari,” Beck said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get down to the island this weekend.”

Ari scooted into a sitting position, cushioned by her pillows, and closed her eyes. Her entire body seemed tuned to the particular tone and resonance of Beck’s voice. Just this, she thought. Just now. Just always.

“Ari? Are you there?”

“Sorry, Beck, yes, I’m here. I’m so glad to hear from you. How are you? What did you do this weekend?”

“Actually, I spent Saturday doing paperwork in my office. Sunday I picked up Hen off the boat in Hyannis and took her up to Boston for the day. We saw a matinee of Hamilton.”

“Lucky Hen! She adores you.”

“What did you do this weekend?”

“Oh,” Ari said casually, taking a great deal of pleasure in saying this, “Cal took my grandmother and me for dinner at Fifty-Six Union. We had a wonderful time. My grandmother was quite charmed, I think.”

Beck was silent for a moment. “I hope you’ll spend this weekend with me. You know the yacht club is having another dinner dance, and the weather looks good.”

Don’t do this, Ari thought. Don’t get my hopes up. “Sounds like fun,” she said.

“If the weather holds, we can go sailing. Maybe with Hen.”

Ari sat up straight. “Are you messing with me, Beck Hathaway?”

“I am most certainly not messing with you, Ari. I really want to see you.”

“All right, then,” Ari said, almost grumpily. “I’d like to spend the weekend with you.”

After the call, Ari showered and put on clean clothes. The confrontation with her father and Bemi had somehow faded to the background, like a panel on those slowly revolving fantasy lamps on children’s bedside tables. Now Beck was in the forefront—Beck was on most of the panels, she thought.

She found her grandmother in an unusually happy mood. They worked together roasting Brussels