Thinking the truck was Ryan’s, since he was coming up for a few days, Rosie went out the kitchen door and around the house. She didn’t see the man or the truck until it was too late to turn around without being seen.
Andy Miller looked her in the eye and then, instead of doing the decent thing and pretending he didn’t see her, he walked directly toward her. Rose wanted to turn and run, but, by God, this was her home and she was no coward.
“It’s been twenty-six years, Rose,” he said. “And Earle’s been gone the last fourteen of them. How long are you going to hate me?”
Whether or not to answer was a struggle. She’d managed to go twenty-six years without speaking to the man, but he’d asked her a direct question this time and ignoring it would be more rude than she usually cared to be.
“Longer than twenty-six years, I guess,” she told him.
“I’m sorry. You know, you’ve never given me a chance to tell you that.”
“Because I don’t care.”
“You’re a hard woman, Rosie Davis.”
She turned on him, fighting the urge to reintroduce the flat of her hand to the side of his face. It had been a long time since she’d slapped him, but she’d never lost the urge to do it again. “Don’t you dare call me that. Only people who care about me call me Rosie.”
He shook his head, his expression sad and his shoulder slumping a little. “I didn’t make him do anything he wasn’t willing to do. He was a grown man and he made his own choice.”
She almost did hit him then, because it was the truth and she didn’t want to hear it. It was a lot easier to blame Andy for what Earle had done. “I want you to leave now.”
For a long moment she thought he might argue with her, but then he walked past her and disappeared around the house.
Though she thought she was done shedding tears over the situation, a few gathered in her eyes and she swiped at them with the back of her hand as she walked halfway around the lodge in the opposite direction to get to the front door.
Damn him. Damn Andy Miller and his too-late, not-enough apology. And damn Earle Davis, too.
They’d gone over to New Hampshire snowmobiling, just the two guys. It was something they did every couple of years, just to see some new scenery. Earle had come home a different man and it wasn’t but a few days before guilt drove him to confess he’d cheated on her.
They’d been at a restaurant, having steaks and a few beers after the mileage was done for the day, and Andy had met up with a couple of pretty women at the bar, one of whom tripped his trigger in a big way. The only way she’d go back to their motel room, though, was if her friend could go, too. A few more beers and a hot young thing jealous her friend was getting some action, and Earle had broken his wedding vows.
She hadn’t left him. They had a seven-year-old and a home and she knew, at heart, Earle was a good man. But their marriage was never the same after that. His confession was like a spot of tarnish on a piece of heirloom silver. You could treasure that heirloom and shine it up and show it off, but that bit of tarnish was always there, a sore spot you couldn’t rub away.
And she blamed Andy Miller for it. Not that she didn’t blame Earle, but she believed in her heart her husband would never have strayed if Andy hadn’t put him in the position he’d been in. The man became as good as dead to her and, if Earle and Andy continued their friendship after that weekend, she didn’t see or hear evidence of it. And her husband was never gone overnight again.
Rose pulled out a chair and sat down at the kitchen table, feeling a little shaky. She couldn’t put the sorrow and regret she’d seen in Andy’s eyes out of her mind, and that made her even angrier. When she was being honest with herself, she knew that blaming and hating Andy had made it easier for her to live with forgiving her husband. Nothing Andy—or the woman—could have done would make Earle cheat if he wasn’t of a mind to already.
And she had to begrudgingly respect the fact nobody in Whitford ever found out Earle Davis had cheated on his wife. She and Earle certainly hadn’t told anybody. But she knew if Andy had told even a single soul, everybody in town would have eventually heard, and that would have made it a lot harder to pretend everything was fine during the long months—or years, really—it took for the pretense to eventually become reality again.
Because she wasn’t quite ready to admit it was unfair to blame a guy who hadn’t even done anything wrong back when he was young, single and stupid, Rose went back to the cleaning closet and grabbed the big basket of supplies and a pair of rubber gloves. Any dirt or stray toothpaste with the audacity to hide in one of the Northern Star’s bathrooms was about to bear the brunt of her frustration. Some women indulged in retail therapy. Rose scrubbed.