Kathleen took all of this in. She’d known that the woman Ben had loved had died, but she hadn’t realized there had been any sort of fight.
“Why were they fighting?” she asked.
The three women exchanged a look.
“He never told you?” Destiny asked.
“Not really. I just knew that he felt horribly guilty,” she said.
“Oh, please,” Destiny said. “Of course it was tragic, but Ben has absolutely nothing to feel guilty about. Not only was she far too drunk to get behind the wheel that night, but they fought in the first place because he’d caught her cheating on him. It wasn’t the first time, either, just the first time he’d seen it with his own eyes.”
“Oh, my,” Kathleen whispered. It was even worse than she’d thought. Ben had suffered not only a loss, but a betrayal. It was little wonder he didn’t trust anyone.
They’d all fallen silent then, Beth munching thoughtfully on chips while Melanie ate the last of the chocolate fudge ice cream from the half-gallon container. Kathleen picked disconsolately at her third slice of cheesecake. She was pretty sure if she finished it, she’d throw up, but she couldn’t seem to stop eating.
“I don’t think there’s anything any of us can do,” Kathleen ventured after a while. “Ben has to figure out for himself that I would never betray him. He has to want this relationship enough to get past his fear of loss. He has to see that either way he’s going to lose and at least if we’ve tried, he’ll have had something good for a while.”
“Good?” Beth asked in a mildly scolding tone. “Extraordinary. He’ll have had something extraordinary. Don’t lose sight of that, Kathleen. This isn’t just some happy little diversion. It’s the real deal.”
It was still hard for Kathleen to see herself in that kind of glowing light. She’d felt that way in Ben’s arms. She’d had a hint of it when he’d praised her painting, when he’d gone into raptures over her cooking. But those feelings of self-worth were new and fragile. It would be far too easy to retreat into the more familiar self-doubt.
“Thank you for reminding me of that,” she told Beth. “You have no idea how hard it is for me to remember that, especially this morning, but it’s coming back to me. I owe Ben and all of you for that.”
Beth gave her a curious look. “Is there a story there?”
“Yes,” she admitted. “But it’s not worth repeating ever again. I am finally going to put it where it belongs, in the past.”
“Good for you!” Melanie cheered.
“Does Ben know?” Destiny asked, a frown knitting her brow.
“Yes.”
“And he still walked out of here and left you feeling abandoned?” she said indignantly. “What is wrong with that man? Obviously I need to have another talk with him. In fact, right now I’d like to shake my nephew till something stirs in that thick head of his.”
“Don’t,” Kathleen pleaded, but her request fell on deaf ears. She’d seen the determined glint in Destiny’s eyes and known Ben was in for a blistering lecture. She tried to work up a little sympathy for him, but in the end she’d concluded he was only getting what he deserved. She had a few choice words she’d like to say to him herself. Too bad they hadn’t come to her before he’d slunk out of the gallery.
Now, though, with the hours crawling by and no word from Destiny or Ben, she had to wonder if Destiny had failed to get through to him, if it wasn’t over, after all, simply because Ben had decreed that it was. They said you couldn’t make a person fall in love with you, but she didn’t believe that was Ben’s problem. He had fallen in love with her. He was even willing to admit it. He just wasn’t willing to act on it, not in the happily-ever-after way she’d begun to long for. And in the end what difference did the admission make, if it wasn’t going to go anywhere?
She sighed and tried to concentrate on tallying up the day’s sales, but the numbers kept blurring through her tears. She needed to get out of the gallery. She needed to walk or maybe run.
She needed a drive in the country.
She sighed again. That was the last thing she dared to do. Going to Ben’s—going anywhere near Ben’s—was beyond self-destructive. It was stupid, foolish, pitiful. The list of adjectives went on and on.
None of them seemed to prevent her from getting into her car and driving out to Middleburg, but when she reached the entrance to the farm, her pride finally kicked in. She drove on past, then turned around, muttering another litany of derogatory adjectives about herself as she drove. She hadn’t done anything this adolescent and absurd since high school.