Then he motioned toward Michelle.
“Michelle came to pick up Maddie a little early,” he said.
My heart was beating so hard, I actually thought they could hear it. I forced a friendly smile. “Is that right?”
“I apologize for just arriving!” she said. “My phone is useless in wine country.”
Ben smiled at me, his eyes apologizing. “They have to get back to London, but she wanted to come by the house so you two could meet.”
“Or meet again,” Michelle said.
She spoke in this powder-soft voice, which forced you to lean forward just to hear her. I drilled her with a look, disliking her powder-soft voice, disliking that she was trying to add levity to the awkwardness of that meeting on the street. At another moment that would have been what was called for, but after my conversation with her daughter, it was the last thing that was called for.
Michelle gave me a smile, which lit up her face, making her seem younger and older than she was, almost like a different species. As pretty as she was when she wasn’t smiling, when she did—smile at you—it was trancelike. Making it hard to avoid being mesmerized by her. Michelle knew it. Of course she knew it. Every man in the world told her.
And if I wasn’t intimidated enough by the idea of her, the perfect woman standing territorially close to my fiancé—and staring at me post-pancake, un-showered—certainly sealed the deal.
“Benjamin has told me wonderful things about you.”
She put her hand on his arm, as though she had ownership over Benjamin, whoever he was. As though I was someone they were meeting.
“Did he?” I said.
“He did,” she said.
Michelle smiled, and it wasn’t lost on me. She didn’t want it to be lost on me—her eyes piercing me, like a challenge.
Michelle held my gaze, until I turned back to my fiancé. “Ben, can I talk to you alone for a second?”
Ben glanced at Michelle, embarrassed. “Of course.”
“It’s nice to see you,” Michelle called out as I stormed out of the kitchen, the softness of her voice rising just enough that it was impossible to miss it.
I walked out the back door, toward our patio, as Ben followed behind. I didn’t know where I was leading us, which might explain why the two of us ended up in our wedding tent.
We ended up where we were supposed to be married in five days, the sun shining down on it, burning through.
“I’m so sorry, Georgia,” he said. “She showed up early.”
I tried to catch my breath, the chill from the vineyard rising up behind me, making little sense with that sun.
Ben shook his head. “She insisted on coming over and saying hello.”
“You didn’t want to give me a heads-up?”
“I tried to call, you didn’t pick up your phone.”
My phone was upstairs. I hadn’t brought it to breakfast and I didn’t have it now. Another thing I didn’t know about having a child. You always had your phone. Ben had assumed I had mine.
“I thought that it would make it less weird for the two of you to meet, but obviously that was a mistake. I’ll tell her to go.”
He shook his head, looking a little bit angry.
“Michelle wants you back. That’s what you left out.”
He tilted his head, confused. “What did you say?”
I started to tell him how I’d done the math based on when Maddie had said she’d last seen Clay. Michelle and Clay had ended their relationship, Michelle had reached out to Ben. She’d made a decision to make herself available to him, she’d made a decision that she wanted that.
“That’s what you haven’t told me. And then you just let her come here?”
“No . . .” he said.
“Why aren’t you looking at me, then?”
Ben shook his head. “She’s . . . Michelle is complicated. She’s confusing wanting to take a shot with me and wanting to take a shot with Maddie’s father. It’s not the same thing.”
“It is, actually. That’s who you are, Ben.”
Ben’s eyes got cold. “Why do you care what Michelle wants from me?”
“She is the mother of your child. That has weight.”
“Not to me, just you,” Ben said.
It didn’t feel appropriate to say the obvious, which was that it mattered to Michelle too. Apparently, it mattered to her more than anything, including her own relationship and whatever hurdles she had to overcome to tell Ben the truth.
“This is a woman that eviscerated you. And now she wants you.”
He shook his head, frustrated. “I never said she eviscerated me,” he said.
I looked at him in disbelief, that word locked in my brain from the time he’d volunteered it. Even if he was choosing to forget, it had power that she had disappeared on Ben. And that she wanted the opposite now. This was hard enough when I imagined that Michelle was still with Clay, like the magazines said she was, like Ben had let me believe she was.
“Look, let’s focus on what matters, okay? Michelle knows that the best thing we can do together is be good parents to Maddie. She knows that. She knows that I love you. She knows that I’m marrying you.”
“Why?”
“Why am I marrying you?” he said.
It didn’t feel like a great time to ask that question. But I wondered: If what I’d thought was connecting us—honesty, friendship, a deep understanding—was gone suddenly, then what was between us?
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Ben said.
“Why are we moving to London, Ben? Is it for the job? Or did you find the job so you’d have a reason to be near them?”
“I wanted that job long before I knew about Maddie. You can’t really be suggesting I’d be that duplicitous. You can’t suggest you don’t know how long I wanted that job.”
Ben wasn’t wrong. It was a low blow. He had wanted that job and I knew that. We had talked about it late at night, many times. This was his dream job—working for the London firm, designing homes all over Europe. We had talked about whether my career would allow the move. The firm’s new London office made it easy. My desire to live abroad, to live in one of the greatest cities in the world, made it preferable.
But when he reminded me of that now, it just felt like another thing he was trying to prove.
Ben moved closer to me. I moved away.
“It’s hard for me to turn my back on Maddie,” he said. “When she needs me.”
“Who’s asking you to?” I said.
“Well, being there for Maddie, that means not turning my back on Michelle, either.”
“Meaning what?”
He shrugged. “I’m still trying to figure that out.”
That stopped me, especially when Michelle’s version of his being there probably meant I wouldn’t be.
Ben shook his head. “Let’s relax for a second,” he said. “Let’s take a walk.”
I heard a knock and looked in the direction of the house. We both did.
My mother stood by the sink, waving at us through the window to come inside. Michelle and Maddie were visible behind her, Michelle kneeling down so she and Maddie were eye level with each other.