Michelle jerked forward as if she realized what I realized, looking like she felt badly for saying the wrong thing. She smiled ruefully. “Ignore me, I’m just talking too much!” she said.
The transparency of Michelle’s intention—pretending to be a friend, to deliver this information—was almost so cruel that I admired it. But I also realized it was a means to an end. What she really wanted, what she still wanted, was Ben.
It was the only thing she could see. The way it was the only thing Henry could see when he looked at my mother, the only thing Finn could see when he looked at Margaret. The only thing so many of us could see when we wanted something that we weren’t supposed to have.
Michelle raised her hands in surrender. “I shouldn’t have gotten into all of that. The important thing is that we’re here now. I need to learn to keep my mouth shut! Now I’ve gone and made a mess of things, just when they seemed to be getting back on track for the two of you.”
The tone in her voice was so sweet—but even her tone couldn’t hide her eyes. Her urgency. There was urgency there for Michelle because this was her last chance too. Before the wedding, before Ben made me his permanently. It was her last chance to convince me that we shouldn’t want that.
She leaned forward, performing. “I’m just such an honest person. It’s very hard for me to keep secrets,” she said.
“You kept Maddie from Ben.”
Michelle gave me a wry smile, the gloves off. “Well. Sometimes it isn’t.”
This was when we were interrupted. Five of the older wine club members—seventy-five years old—unable to hold off any longer, surrounded us to ask Michelle for her autograph.
“For our grandchildren,” their leader said.
Then, like a whoosh, Deputy Sheriff Tropper in his pinstripe suit was stepping in to run crowd control. He knocked the old women back. Drawing a two-foot barrier between them and Michelle.
“Ladies, you need to form a line. Ms. Carter only has two hands.”
Michelle laughed, giving the old women a hearty shrug, smiling at Tropper gratefully. The mixed emotion she had been showing to me was gone from her face. Her winning smile back in its place.
A Few Good Men
Ben held two glasses of scotch in one hand, Maddie’s hand in his other, when I caught up to him. He gave me a smile, but I couldn’t make myself smile back.
“We need to talk,” I said.
Ben tilted his head. “Okay . . .” he said.
I took him in—tall and strong in his suit. Michelle could have any man in the world, and yet she was entirely fixated on this man—a man who wasn’t available to her. Was it as simple as that? It would be easier to believe it was—Michelle wanting what she couldn’t have, Michelle thinking she was entitled to it. Though she wanted him also because he was her child’s father, the two things rolling around together, the generous and selfish parts of herself, to make Ben feel like he was her soul mate.
Ben sent Maddie back to Michelle and took my hand, walked us to the edge of the tent, the vineyard side, the moon and stars shooting out over the vineyard, shining over the vines.
“What’s going on?” he said.
“I had a little talk with Michelle.”
He looked at me anxiously. “I knew her coming was a bad idea.”
“I’m just trying to understand if your visit to London was about our future there or your future there.”
“Our future.” He held my face in his hands. “Everything is about our future.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me about Surrey?”
“Surrey?” Ben looked at me, realizing what I now knew. “Georgia, come on.”
“It was more than Maddie, wasn’t it? You were trying to see if you could be a family. If you could be with her.”
Ben shook his head. “Of course not. It was always about Maddie.”
“What happened to no more secrets, Ben?”
“Nothing. Michelle tries to paint things in a light that she wants to see them in,” he said. “I told you Michelle is complicated.”
“Is she complicated or is she a liar?”
He pulled back, as if deciding how honest with me he needed to be. He picked his drink up, stalling.
“Look, when she came back, I had a moment, sure. I had a moment of thinking about this woman who broke me who was now the mother of my kid. Any man would have had the same moment of hesitation.”
I looked away from him, my heart dropping. “You didn’t tell me, though.”
“How would it have been helpful to tell you that? To tell you I was having a moment? Do you share with me every guy that crosses your mind?”
I was too struck by what he said to fight back. How could I fight back? He was right—any man would consider the most beautiful woman in the world, if she wanted him, if she was the mother of his child.
“I know Michelle is throwing you, and throwing out your idea of our plan together. But don’t let her.”
He leaned in and put his face up to my ear, whispering.
“The important thing is what I decided. I decided to stay with you. It was the easiest decision I ever made.”
I nodded and wrapped my arms around him, trying to trust his words. Still, something felt off in his explanation. It didn’t feel like the whole story. The whole story was that Michelle had left Ben. Now she wanted him back. That seemed to be the story.
And here was the problem—it wasn’t about Ben messing with our master plan—with my idea of what our ordered and lovely life was going to look like. It wasn’t about knowing I was going to have to navigate Michelle.
It was about the fact that when Ben said it was the easiest decision he ever made, staying with me, he shielded his eyes. He shielded his eyes and, even if he wasn’t saying it out loud, I knew he only wanted that to be true.
I told Ben I needed a minute alone and walked to the bar, pouring myself sparkling wine, downing a glass. The bartender stared at my speed, not saying anything, but wanting to say something. I gave him a look, daring him.
I took the bottle itself and moved away from the bar. I moved toward the corner, where I could watch Finn on his side of the party, Bobby on his. My mother looked back and forth between them as she stood there with Henry; Henry, who looked uncomfortable—not because he was there—I had learned enough about Henry to know there probably wasn’t any room in the world he felt uncomfortable in. No, he was uncomfortable because he saw how agitated my mother was and he thought he was causing it. He was uncomfortable because he cared.
I poured more sparkling wine into my glass when Lee came up to me in the corner, like she belonged there too. “The bartender says you took the last of the good stuff. Care to hand some of it over?”
She took my glass out of my hands, making it her own. “You okay?” she said.
I nodded.
She took a long sip, my heart racing. “You don’t seem it,” she said. She looked at me, debating whether she knew me well enough to say it. She turned away, apparently deciding against it. Then, thinking again, she turned back.
“You shouldn’t feel badly about it,” she said.
“What’s that?”