CHAPTER 31
Julie
There was not a single solitary sexual thought in my mind as I sat at my kitchen table stuffing giant pasta shells for the dinner I would serve Ethan. What had happened to my lusty yearning from the other day? It was gone. A fleeting hormonal aberration. I not only lacked desire, I didn’t care that I lacked it. It was almost a relief. I wouldn’t have to worry how I looked nude. My hips were bigger than they should be from too many days in front of the computer. My breasts seemed to hang a little lower every time I looked in the mirror. I didn’t have to worry about all that if I didn’t care about sex. But I was worried that I might have given Ethan the wrong idea during our last, faintly suggestive phone conversation.
An hour later, though, when I opened the front door to find Ethan standing on my porch, a bunch of flowers in his hand, the blue of his eyes matching the color of the sky behind him and his soft voice telling me how beautiful my neighborhood was, my body suddenly reacted as if it belonged to a twenty-year-old. I wasn’t sure how I would make it through dinner without dragging him upstairs to my bedroom.
I gave him a hug, and the press of his body against mine only intensified my feelings. I let go of him with a smile.
“I am really happy to see you,” I said.
“Me, too.” He leaned over to kiss me gently on the lips. “Do you have a vase I can put these in?” He held the flowers out to me.
I found a vase for the flowers and set them on the table on the porch. It would be cool enough to eat out there this evening.
In the kitchen, he looked at Shannon’s framed senior picture resting on the windowsill.
“This has to be your daughter,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, as I opened the oven door to peek at the pasta shells.
“I see your family in her,” he said. “That exotic beauty.”
I glanced at him as I closed the oven door. “She looks a lot like Isabel,” I said.
“I don’t remember Isabel well enough,” he said, grinning at me. “I only had eyes for her little sister.”
I smiled, handing him a knife and pointing him toward the cutting board. “Would you slice the tomatoes, please?”
We worked together easily in the kitchen. He seemed as comfortable in my house as he had been in his own. His selfconfidence was sexy to me. The way he touched my arm when I walked past him was sexy. Everything about him was sexy to me tonight.
We didn’t talk about anything heavy over dinner. I wanted to know about his father’s interview with the police, but that could wait. I didn’t want anything to break the mood, and he seemed to feel the same way. We sat at the table on the screened porch, eating in the fading light. I talked about what it was like growing up in Westfield, and he talked about learning carpentry as a teenager. Listening to him talk, I felt relaxed for the first time in weeks. I wanted to stand up, lean across the table and kiss him. I wanted to unbutton the buttons on his blue plaid shirt.
I made it through dinner and was carrying plates to the sink when Ethan came up behind me, put his arms around me and kissed my neck. My insides melted and I barely managed to set the dishes on the counter without dropping them.
“I’m so glad you’re back in my life,” he said, his lips against my ear.
I briefly remembered my mother’s words entreating me to disregard his “overtures.” Sorry, Mom, I thought, as I leaned back against him. I lifted his hand to my lips, letting his forearm brush against my breast.
“Let’s go upstairs,” I said.
We made love for what seemed like hours. I’d had no lover other than Glen for the past thirty years, and although the newness of being with Ethan was alluring, so was the familiarity I felt with him, the sense of having known him for a very long time. It wasn’t until afterward, when we lay comfortably in each other’s arms, that we finally broached the topics that weighed heavily on each of us.
“So,” I said, smoothing my hand across his chest, “tell me about your father’s talk with the police.”
Ethan pressed his lips to the top of my head, and I pulled closer to him. I loved the feeling of being cradled in his arms.
“He didn’t seem all that upset, actually,” he said. “I was relieved. But you know, he’s an amazing guy. He can still turn this switch and get back in his old judge-and-lawyer mode to handle a situation. He said he’s sure he satisfied their doubts about Ned’s alibi.”
“That’s good,” I said. I would not mar the moment with my own thoughts about Ned’s guilt. What mattered most to me right then was that Ethan no longer seemed worried about his father.
“I think they went easy on him,” he said. “And they would probably go even easier on your—” He stopped talking, lifting his head from the pillow. “Did you hear something?” he asked. I raised my own head to listen. There might have been some movement in the hallway outside my room, but I wasn’t sure.
“Mom?”
I was up in an instant. “Oh, shit!” I whispered, using a word that rarely passed through my lips. “It’s Shannon,” I said, uncertain whether to reach for my jeans or run to my closet for my robe. I opted for the jeans, balancing on one foot as I pulled them on.
“Mom?” Shannon knocked on my door.
“Just a minute, Shannon,” I said. “I’ll be right out.”
Ethan was up and dressing, too.
“Stay here, please,” I whispered to him as I pulled my T-shirt over my head. I opened the door and walked, braless, into the hallway.
I found Shannon in her own room sorting through her bookshelves, putting some of the books into a cardboard box on her bed.
She looked over at me. “Were you asleep?” she asked. “Your hair’s a mess.”
“Yes, I took a little nap.” I combed my fingers through my hair. I felt winded as I sat down on the corner of her bed. “It’s good to see you,” I said.
“Did you have friends over for dinner?” she asked. “I smell tomato sauce.”
“Yes,” I said. “I made stuffed shells and there’s plenty left if you want to take some with you.”
“Maybe I will, thanks,” she said. She looked at the hardcover book in her hand. “I came over to start packing,” she said.
“Packing?”
“For my move.” She didn’t look at me as she returned her attention to the bookshelf. “It’s still a few weeks away, but I thought I should start going through my stuff.” She pulled out a book, looked at the title and slipped it back onto the shelf again. Her belly seemed to have grown enormously in the past few days.
“Shannon,” I said, “have you really thought this move through?”
“It’s all I’ve been thinking about for the past few months, Mother.” I hated it when she called me Mother.
“Please don’t go, honey,” I pleaded. “Please. At least stay here until after you’ve had the baby.” I was not going to let this happen. I wondered if there was something I could do legally to keep her here.
“I want to be with my baby’s father, Mom,” she said, pulling out a book and dropping it into the box. “That’s the way it should be.”
“When can I meet him?” I asked. Maybe I could reason more easily with him than I could with my daughter.
“I was thinking about that,” she said. “It might be better if you didn’t meet him right now, since you’re so—”
There was a slight thud from the direction of my bedroom, as if Ethan had bumped his knee on the dresser in the darkness.
“Daddy?” Shannon looked up, her eyes suddenly those of a hopeful child. She started for the hallway and I quickly grabbed her arm.
“Daddy’s not here,” I said, shocked that she might think that was a possibility.
“Then who’s in your bedroom?”
I thought of lying, of pretending she had imagined the sound, but I knew that was not going to work.
“Mother,” she said. “Who is in your bedroom?”
“I have company,” I said awkwardly. “Ethan Chapman.”
I thought she was going to hit me. The look she gave me was nothing short of murderous.
“How could you do that?” she asked. “I leave and you start screwing around? You and Dad haven’t even been apart that long. You’re not giving getting back together a chance!”
“There is no chance of us getting back together, Shannon,” I said. I felt terrible that she’d been nursing that fantasy for the past two years and I hadn’t known. “Ethan is an old friend, someone I feel very close—”
“Shut up!” She put her hands over her ears. “Just shut up.”
She pushed past me and ran down the hall. I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall as I listened to her race down the stairs and out of the house, and I only jumped a little bit when the front door slammed shut behind her.