Eventually, she extended her right hand. “It was wonderful meeting you, Tierney.”
He shook her hand. “Same here.”
“I’ll watch for your articles,” she said as she got into her car.
“Lilly—”
“Good-bye. Be safe.” She closed her car door quickly and drove away before he could say anything more.
That was the last time they’d had any contact until yesterday, when she spotted him across Main Street in downtown Cleary. Dutch bumped into her as she came to a sudden halt on the sidewalk. “What are you looking at?”
Tierney was just about to climb into his Cherokee when he happened to glance her way. He did a double take. They made eye contact, and it held.
“Ben Tierney,” she said, replying absently to Dutch’s question. Or perhaps she was just speaking aloud a name t
hat for the past eight months had never been far from her mind.
Dutch followed her gaze across opposing lanes of traffic and the median in between. Tierney was still standing there, half in, half out of his car, looking at her as though waiting for a signal as to what he should do.
“You know that guy?” Dutch asked.
“I met him last summer. Remember the day I kayaked the French Broad? He was in the group.”
Dutch pushed open the door to the attorney’s office where they had an appointment to sign the closing papers on the sale of the cabin. “We’re late,” he said and ushered her inside.
When they left the office a half hour later, she found herself looking up and down Main Street for the black Cherokee. She would have liked to say hello at least, but there was no sign of Tierney or his car. But now, when he was sitting four feet from her, she found it difficult to look at him and was at a loss over what to say.
Feeling his gaze on her, she looked across at him. He said, “After that day on the river, I called your office in Atlanta several times.”
“Your articles wouldn’t be for my readership.”
“I wasn’t calling to peddle an article.”
She averted her head and looked into the empty fireplace. She’d swept the ash out of it that morning, which seemed now like a very long time ago. Softly she said, “I knew why you were calling. That’s why I couldn’t take your calls. For the same reason I couldn’t meet you for a drink after our kayaking trip. I was married.”
He stood up, went around the coffee table, and joined her on the sofa, sitting close and forcing her to look at him. “You’re not married now.”
• • •
William Ritt smiled up at his sister as she cleared away his empty plate. “Thank you, Marilee. The stew was excellent.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
“I’ve been thinking about running a daily special on the lunch menu. Something different for each day of the week. Wednesday meat loaf. Friday crab cakes. Would you agree to sharing your stew recipe with Linda?”
“It’s Mother’s recipe.”
“Oh. Well, she’s past caring if you share it, isn’t she?”
To anyone else’s ears the words would have sounded harsh, but Marilee knew the reason for William’s insensitivity and couldn’t fault him for it. Their parents were deceased, but neither was missed. One had been completely indifferent, the other unconscionably selfish. To them, treating their offspring with love and affection had been an alien concept.
Their father had been a stern and taciturn man. A mechanic by trade, he would get up before dawn every morning and make the trip down the mountain into town to the automotive shop where he worked. He returned home in time for dinner, which he ate methodically. He grumbled answers to direct questions but otherwise had nothing to say that wasn’t a criticism or a reprimand. After dinner he took a bath, then retired to his bedroom, closing the door behind him, shutting out his family.
Marilee had never seen him derive pleasure from anything except the vegetable garden he cultivated each summer. It was his pride and joy. She was seven years old when her father caught her pet rabbit nibbling at a cabbage plant. He’d wrung its neck right in front of her and made her mother fry it for their supper. Marilee considered it poetic justice when he dropped dead of a heart attack while hoeing a row of onions.
Their mother had been a complainer and a hypochondriac who referred to her husband as an uncouth hillbilly behind his back. For forty years she made sure everyone knew that she’d married far beneath her. Her misery was the focus of her life, to the exclusion of all else.
When failing health made her practically bedridden, Marilee took a semester’s leave of absence from Cleary High School to tend to her. One morning when Marilee tried to awaken her, she discovered that her mother had died in her sleep. Later, while the minister consoled her with platitudes, Marilee’s only thought was that a woman as embittered and self-absorbed as her mother hadn’t deserved such a peaceful departure.