“How so?” he asks in a gentle voice that makes me long to explain it to him, even though I’m not certain that I can.
I focus on the expanse of bluish gray that stretches before me seemingly without end. “The ocean is so vast–fathomless—just like a person. I could know you for years and you would never see all the moments that made me the woman I am today. The ones that are forming me into who I’ll be tomorrow or five years from now. No one can ever truly know another person. We’re all mysteries just like the sea.”
“Do you really believe that?” A harsh current undercuts his words. “Your sister? Grandmother? No one knows you? Not even Max’s father?”
“Definitely not him.” My laughter is hollow as I consider that. “They might have known me once but they’ve been gone too long to know me now.”
“And Max?” he asks gruffly.
“He only knows the best parts of me, I hope.” It hurts to say it to someone who comprehends what I mean. I haven’t had to profess my shortcomings to Jude. He’s known them since the moment we met and judging from how his eyes close briefly, he understands all too well.
When Jude opens his eyes he doesn’t turn them to me, rather he stares outward, looking beyond the waves into his own past. “It’s nearly four.”
I don’t need another reminder that I belong somewhere else and to no one at all.
Chapter 5
I get Max situated with his iPad in the corner of my office before I dare to look at the stack of invoices waiting on my desk. The end of the month always brings all the accounts payable and nothing is worse than when it coincides with group day. It hardly seems fair that the post office can’t deliver before three in the afternoon. As it was I’d sat around all morning looking for something to do and now I had too much–and even more weighing on my mind.
“I’ve decided to quit cooking.” Amie appears with her usual flair for the dramatic. Dropping onto a corner of the desk, she tugs off her bandana and sticks it into her paisley chef’s jacket. “Don’t you want to know my back-up plan?”
By my count she’s had about a dozen back-up plans in the time I’ve known her. She still cooks on the line everyday.
“Sure.” I sift through the envelopes beginning to mentally filter them by priority.
“I’m going to host a cooking show.”
“Food Network?” I ask off-hand.
“Travel Channel or maybe PBS to start.” She starts to unbraid her hair as she continues. “I suppose if Food Network offered the right amount…”
“Mmm-hmmm.” I bet Jude never has to decide which bills get paid at the end of the month. Meanwhile I get to gamble on whether or not our vegetable guy likes us enough to keep delivering if we’re late. It’s one of life’s more annoying phenomenons: how few of us exist in the middle. There’s the have-plenty’s and the have-not’s and a football field in between.
“You aren’t listening to a word that I’m saying.” Amie’s accusation breaks through my bitter inner-diatribe.
“I was actually.” I repeat back her thoughts on Food Network. Maybe I’m wrong. There is something in the middle. It’s where the dreamers exist, people like Amie. No one has ever told her she can’t achieve exactly what she wants and that’s why she has a restaurant at thirty. It’s why she’ll probably land her own TV show. Some people just know how to make things happen. They aren’t weighed down by the fear the rest of us carry.
“You’re using that mom voodoo?” she says and her words strike too familiar of a chord.
I suck in a breath and shake my head vehemently. “No such thing.”
“Well, you’re obviously listening but thinking about something else entirely.” Her eyes narrow and I want to remind her that she’s the one with the creepy knack of getting into people’s heads. “Or someone. Maybe a hot, tattooed bad boy with a heart of gold.”
I refrain from screaming and shoot her a thin-lipped smile. “It’s the end of the month. Bills and nursing homes are the only thing on my mind.”
“Oh shit!” Her attitude instantly shifts and she pats my arm softly. “Do you need anything? I can take this over if you want to head out.”
“No.” What I need right now is to work and focus and forget whatever weirdness going on between me and he-who-must-not-be-named. “I got this. I’m heading out to see her tomorrow. It’s supposed to be gross out anyway. I might as well spend Saturday in the car.”
It’s not as if we have real weekends off, but I know she tries to give me as much time as possible with Max on Saturday and Sunday. But even I have been too distracted this week to plan for my monthly trip to see Nana. I’ve never told Amie that I dread it, because I don’t have to. Who would enjoy visiting someone who doesn’t remember who you are?
“I’ve got the weekend,” she says this as if it’s no big deal that she constantly sacrifices her life for the sake of mine.
“I can come in on Sunday.”