A Man I Used To Know, page 23
“Lila,” he said, glancing away so he wouldn’t have to meet her eyes. “I didn’t think you’d make it home before we left.”
“I’ll need about a month.” She brushed raindrops from the shoulders and sleeves of her jacket, then took it off. “Is that all right?”
“A month? What for?”
“To wind up my practice and get my patients settled with other doctors. I think a month should probably do it, Tom.”
“You’re quitting your practice?”
“Yes, I am.”
“And then what?”
“I’m going with you,” she said.
They were so close together that it was almost impossible not to touch him. With a huge effort she kept herself from reaching toward him, wrapping her arms around him and pressing her body against his.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because I love you and your kids. Because I can’t bear the thought of living without you again, and it’s time I started having enough courage to manage my inner life as carefully as the one I live on the surface.”
“Archie told you the whole story, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “He did. Why couldn’t you tell me?”
He looked at her then, and she was torn by the bleak pain on his face. “You know why,” he said.
“Oh, Tom...”
He lifted handfuls of soup tins and stacked them automatically inside the cupboard. “I always felt guilty,” he muttered. “I felt like the whole mess was my fault, and my punishment. But it seemed so wrong that my kids should have to suffer.”
“Your punishment?” she asked. “For what?”
“For loving you.” He turned to her again. “I could never stop loving you. All those years when she accused me of being unfaithful, I kept trying to tell her there was no other woman in my life. But it wasn’t true. You were always there, Lila.”
She put her arms around him and nestled against his chest. “We can’t control our thoughts and memories. You were always in my heart, too.”
His arms tightened around her. “You’ll really come with me? You’re prepared to throw away everything you’ve built here and travel off into the sunset without even knowing where you’re going?”
“Not only prepared, I’m excited about it,” she said. “And I’m not afraid of anything except losing you again.” To her astonishment, she realized that what she said was true. “All that counts is being with you, Tom, and not losing this one last chance for love and happiness. Whatever happens afterward, wherever life decides to take us, this time we’re going to deal with it together.”
He sank onto the bed, looking dazed with happiness, then pulled her down beside him, stretching out and cradling her in his arms.
“Think how different our lives would have been if you’d made this decision fifteen years ago.”
“I wasn’t ready then.” She looked gravely into his eyes, so close to her own. “I needed to grow up a whole lot and learn all kinds of things about myself and life before I could decide I was ready to follow you.”
He gathered her closer with a warm, teasing laugh. “Oh, Lilabel! And you always said I was immature.”
She burrowed against him, kissing his throat. “But if I’d gone with you back then,” she murmured, “Kelly and Casey wouldn’t exist, and they’re both such wonderful people. So maybe it’s just as well that things worked out the way they did.”
“I love you, Lila,” he whispered, his voice husky with emotion. “We’ll have such a wonderful life together, darling.”
“Tell me what we’ll do. What will our lives be like, Tom?”
“Well, let me think...” He stretched out on the bed, still holding her, and ran a finger over the line of her forehead, nose and chin, then caressed her lips with a slow, delicate touch.
She caught his finger gently between her teeth, took his hands and began to kiss the rest of his fingers one by one.
“Tell me,” she said.
“Okay. First I think we’ll finish painting the barn and get the pasture fence repaired. And then I’m going to rent some land from Archie and go to a few llama auctions. Maybe we’ll even travel to South America to find some top-grade breeding stock and start building a herd. I’ve been reading about llamas. They’re a great moneymaking prospect, Lila.”
“You’re...” She leaned up on one elbow, staring at him in confusion. “But, Tom, I don’t understand. You’re talking about staying here? Now that I’ve agreed to leave my job and travel with you, you’re saying you want to settle down instead?”
He pulled her back into his arms and kissed her, then held her tenderly.
“I’m tired of traveling, Lilabel, and after this past year I don’t enjoy it much anymore. Neither do the kids. I didn’t really want you to come with me, I just needed you to be willing to come. I knew when that happened, it would mean you were finally ready to commit everything you had to this relationship. And I couldn’t be with you on any other terms.”
“But...” She shook her head against his tanned throat, still dazed. “But if all you wanted was to settle down here and go into business with my father, why didn’t you agree to it when I first made that offer?”
“Lila,” he whispered, “you still don’t understand how much I love you, do you?”
“Maybe you should tell me.” She smiled and began to caress his long body.
“I love you so much that living here and seeing you every day would have been hell unless I could be certain you felt the same way about me. After a while the frustration would have driven me away again. And the last thing those poor kids need,” he said, his eyes darkening suddenly with pain, “is to be uprooted from a place they’re happy in.”
A light was slowly beginning to dawn inside her mind, glowing from a joy so bright and intense that she was dazzled by its splendor.
“But this is...Tom, it’s wonderful!”
“What’s wonderful, sweetheart?”
“This means you’ll stay here with the kids, and I can keep my practice, and we’ll all live together and love each other, and Kelly and Casey will go to school...”
“And we’ll sleep together every night,” he murmured against her hair. “And we’ll raise kids and llamas and make love every time it rains.”
“Every time it rains?” she asked.
He grinned down at her, his eyes sparkling. “That’s going to be a family rule, Lilabel. And guess what?”
“What?” she asked, smiling.
“It’s raining now,” he whispered.
She stretched luxuriously in his arms, listening to the rain drumming on the aluminum roof of the camper. They felt so warm and enclosed within the roar of the storm, as if they were the only people in all the world.
“But the kids are going to be alone in the house soon,” she told him, suddenly remembering Archie’s leather jacket and polished boots. “Dad’s going to town. As if enough miracles haven’t already happened today,” she added, shaking her head, “it seems my father has a date with Marie.”
“Damn, you’re right.” Tom kissed her and sat up reluctantly. “We’d better go up to the house and look after them. They’re both going to be so happy to hear we’re not leaving after all.”
Lila sat up, too, hating to leave his arms. “Tom,” she said.
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“I think it’s going to be raining all night,” she told him. “And you should hear how nice the rain sounds rustling through the trees outside my bedroom window.”
He grinned, his eyes kindling with emotion. “I think I’d like to hear that, Lilabel.”
They kissed one more time and strained together in a wild, sweet embrace that thrilled her all the way to the core of her body, rich with promises of the night to come.
Finally, still clinging together and laughing, they climbed down from the camper and splashed through the puddles toward the big lighted house where the children waited.
EPILOGUE
Three years later
ON A BEAUTIFUL SPRING morning, Kelly came through the front door and walked across the veranda to sit on the steps next to Casey, who was holding his old carved llama. By now, the llama, called Thunderhead, was worn and discolored from years of constant play. The little leather saddle and woven bridle had each been replaced twice.
But Thunderhead was a star, because he had appeared on the cover of Lila and Archie’s first book for children. Nowadays, children from all over the world wrote letters to ask more about the llama and to tell how much they’d loved the book.
Their baby sister, Bella, sat next to Casey in her padded lounge chair. He showed her the llama and she reached for it, puffing in excitement, but Kelly frowned at her brother and shook her head.
Bella was sure to chew on the llama. She was only five months old and put everything in her mouth.
When Casey withdrew the toy, Bella screwed her eyes up and waved her feet in their little white socks, which meant she was about to yell. Hastily Kelly gave her the set of colored plastic keys tied to the handle of the lounge chair. Bella settled back, pulling at the keys and murmuring contentedly to herself in her own strange language.
Casey was seven years old now, halfway between his two sisters. Kelly was fourteen and Bella had been born just before Christmas. When Lila went to work three afternoons a week at the clinic, she always packed Bella up and took her along. Everybody at the clinic loved the baby.
Kelly loved her, too, just as much as she’d always loved Casey.
Now that Kelly was older, she didn’t fight as much with her brother. And Bella wasn’t her sole responsibility the way Casey used to be, so she was able to relax and enjoy being a big sister.
Their parents were both nearby, rocking in the porch swing and reading the newspaper as they liked to do on Sunday mornings.
But at the moment there wasn’t a lot of reading going on, Kelly realized when she stole a glance at them. They were nestled close together and kissing, apparently thinking themselves unseen behind the fringed canopy of the swing.
“They’re doing it again,” she murmured, bending close to Casey.
Bella cooed and tried to grasp her hair.
Kelly patted the baby’s fat cheek, smiling.
Though she and Casey pretended to object, even called it “gross,” they loved to see Tom and Lila kissing and cuddling, or looking all warm and misty as if they wanted to gobble each other up. Their parents’ warm, constant love for each other, and for their children, was like a thick stone wall that enveloped the family in safety and kept all the dangerous things out
Kelly had never felt so safe, so utterly, completely happy. And today was a special day....
“When are they coming, Mom?” Casey called in the general direction of the porch swing.
“Anytime now, dear,” Lila’s voice said.
Casey called her “Mom” all the time now, and so did Kelly. When they first started, Lila had been so happy that she cried, but she was used to it by now.
The little boy nodded and squinted at the road again, galloping his llama up and down the veranda post to amuse Bella, who laughed with deep throaty chuckles.
Archie and Marie were coming home today in the big motor home they lived in while they wandered all the way down to Arizona during the winter, and then back up the coast to Canada again in the spring.
“Whoever would have thought,” Marie often teased, “that Tom would be the one sitting on the veranda, and Archie would be off drifting around the country like a tumbleweed!”
But Kelly’s father didn’t seem to mind staying at the farm. In fact, he was so happy that he sang and laughed all the time, and hugged any of the kids that happened to be nearby.
While Casey was watching the road, Kelly spotted somebody walking in the distance. Her throat went dry and her heart pounded with excitement as she watched a boy strolling along the graveled trail by the river.
The new arrival was Lanny McGregor, who lived on the next farm. He was a big, sturdy, quiet boy, an honor student and a football player, and lately his voice had begun to get deep and manly.
Lanny and Kelly had been playing together for years, ever since she came to live at the farm. Today, Lanny was obviously coming down to do some fishing. He had a pole over his shoulder, and he carried a metal stringer and a bucket.
“Looks like Lanny’s heading off to go fishing. And he’s all by himself,” Kelly’s father said.
“Poor boy. He does look lonely, doesn’t he?” Lila said, with the solemn, teasing note in her voice that Kelly secretly loved.
“You know, I remember being that age,” Tom said, “and having a pretty girl to go fishing with. What a great time that was.”
Kelly heard him chuckle, and glanced over in time to catch the meaningful look that passed between her parents. Lila was smiling up at him, her face gentle with emotion.
“I guess maybe I’ll go down later and see what he’s doing,” Kelly said casually, peering at Lanny’s tall form between the cottonwoods.
He had settled on the big flat rock with his fishing equipment, and she was anxious to join him. But first she wanted to see Archie and Marie.
“Well, ask him to come in for lunch,” Lila said. “I like that boy.”
Tom bent to kiss his wife tenderly and pushed the floor with his toe to set the porch swing moving again, just as the morning light flashed on the big flat windshield of Archie’s motor home when it rounded a bend in the river road.
Casey bounced up and down in excitement. “Here they are! They’re coming!”
Kelly lifted her face blissfully to the warmth of the sun while they waited for the motor home to get closer.
All around she could hear the gentle, familiar cadences of her life...the creaking of the swing and her parents’ murmured conversation, the baby’s contented chatter, the birds singing in the cottonwood trees and the quiet flow of the river where Lanny was waiting for her.
“Bella,” she whispered to the baby. “You know what? You should look around and try to remember this, because it’s probably the nicest place there’s ever been in the world.”
Bella gazed up at her and Casey with a serious, quizzical expression, then began to laugh and kick her legs. Kelly laughed with her.
She got up and took Casey’s hand, and they ran down to greet Archie and Marie as the motor home drove into the yard.
ISBN : 978-1-4592-5338-4
A MAN I USED TO KNOW
Copyright © 1999 by Margot Dalton.
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Margot Dalton, A Man I Used To Know
