Whiskey Beach(149)
“But he would have.”
Abra retrieved the cane, and as she watched Eli carry Hester downstairs, understood completely why she’d fallen in love.
Twenty-seven
A GOOD DAY, ABRA THOUGHT WHEN THEY SAID GOOD-BYE to Hester. She reached for Eli’s hand to say exactly that as they walked to the car. Then spotted Wolfe leaning against his across the street.
“What is he doing?” she demanded. “Why? Does he think you’re going to suddenly walk over there and confess all?”
“He’s letting me know he’s there.” Eli got behind the wheel, calmly started the engine. “A little psychological warfare, and surprisingly effective. It got to the point last winter where I rarely left the house because if I went for a damn haircut, I couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t walk in and take the chair next to me.”
“That’s harassment.”
“Technically, and yeah, we could’ve filed charges, but at that point he’d have gotten a slap. Wouldn’t really change anything, and the truth is I was too damn tired to bother. It got easier to just stay put.”
“You put yourself under house arrest.”
He hadn’t thought of it that way, not at the time. But she wasn’t wrong. Just as he’d thought, in some corner of his mind, of his move to Whiskey Beach as a self-imposed exile.
Those days were finished.
“I didn’t have anywhere to go,” he told her. “Friends eased away or just vanished. My law firm let me go.”
“What about that ‘innocent until proven guilty’ tack?”
“That’s the law, but it doesn’t hold much weight with important clients, reputations and billable hours.”
“They should’ve stuck by you, Eli, even if only out of principle.”
“They had other associates, partners, clients, staff to consider. Initially they called it a leave of absence, but I was done, and we all knew it. Anyway, it gave me the time and the reason to write, to try to focus on that.”
“Don’t turn it into them doing you a favor.” Her voice snipped, sharp as scissors. “You did yourself the favor. You did the positive.”
“I grabbed a lifeline with writing, and it’s more positive than letting go. When they didn’t come to arrest me, and believe me that was something I waited for every day, it gave me the chance to go to Bluff House.”
A kind of purging, Abra thought. A hulling out that had left him tired and tense and, to her mind, entirely too willing to accept the hand dealt him.
“And now?” she asked.
“Now, the lifeline’s not enough. I can’t just hold in place, wait for the fall. I’m going to fight back. I’m going to find the answers. When I have them, I’m going to stuff them down Wolfe’s throat.”
“I love you.”
He glanced at her with a smile, but it faded into a look of wary surprise when he saw her eyes. “Abra—”
“Uh-uh, better watch the road.” At her gesture, he tapped the brakes before he rear-ended a hatchback.
“Terrible timing,” she continued. “Not romantic, not convenient, but I believe in expressing feelings, especially the positive ones. Love’s the most positive feeling there is. I like feeling it, and I wasn’t sure I would. We’ve got such crap behind us, Eli, and we can’t help that some of it’s still sticking to the bottom of our shoes. Maybe it helps make us who we are. But the bad thing is it makes us hesitate to trust again, reach out again, take those risks again.”
Amazing, she thought, just amazing that saying the words out loud made her feel stronger, freer. “I don’t expect you to take those risks just because I did, but you should feel good, and you should feel lucky that a smart, self-aware, interesting woman loves you.”
He navigated the tricky traffic to squeeze his way onto 95 North. “I do feel lucky,” he told her. And panicked.
“Then that’s enough. We need better tunes,” she decided, and began to search and scan his satellite radio.
That’s it? he thought. I love you, let’s change the channel? How the hell was a man supposed to keep up with a woman like that? She was a lot harder to negotiate than Boston traffic, and even more unpredictable.
As the miles passed, he tried to think of something else, but his thoughts kept circling back to it like fingers seeking out a nagging itch. Eventually he’d have to respond, somehow. They’d have to deal with the . . . issue. And how the hell was he supposed to think clearly, rationally, about love and all it implied when he had so much else to deal with, to work through, to resolve?
“We need a plan,” Abra said, and tossed him straight back into panic mode. “God, your face.” She couldn’t stop the laugh. “It’s a study of barely restrained male terror. I don’t mean an Abra-loves-Eli plan, so relax. I mean a Justin-Suskind-risked-sneaking-up-to-the-third-floor-of-Bluff-House-and-why plan. We need to systematically go through what’s up there.”