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“You gave up on Christmas?” Sebastian held his cigarette to the window, but turned briefly.
“My husband was a practicing Jew.” Tilly watched a streak of smoke leak out through the open window. “And since we have a liberal rabbi, Isaac’s been raised in the Jewish faith. He thinks Jesus lives at the North Pole with twelve reindeer, don’t you, Angel Bug?”
Isaac rolled his eyes. “Mom! I haven’t believed that since I was young.”
“I converted after David died. It made sense for Isaac.” Which was true. A five-year-old could hardly go to synagogue alone. At the time she had told herself she was giving David a final gift, and maybe, back then, she’d believed it. But today she saw her conversion for what it was: an act of atonement. No. She shoved the thought aside, but there it was again, coiling in her gut: guilt, the universal motivator for every major decision she had made in the past three years.
They crawled around the curve of the church wall and passed the yew trees that marked the mass graves of medieval plague victims. Beyond, fields dotted with chestnut trees and grazing sheep tumbled over the horizon. Tilly held her breath and waited. Nothing must taint this happiness percolating in her heart, because any minute…yes! She exhaled as they emerged on a small rise. Waves of pink and red valerian poked out from the foundations of the ironstone cottages hugging the High Street, their thatched roofs spilling toward strips of garden stuffed with lupines, delphiniums, fading roses and gangly sweet peas. Tilly’s eyes scooted over every plant. How she had missed the gardens of Bramwell Chase, with untamed perennials rambling into each other and lawns dotted with daisies and clover. These were real gardens, not the landscaped yards of Creeping Cedars with squares of chemically enhanced grass, rows of shrubs lined up like marines awaiting inspection, and the gag-inducing smell of hardwood mulch.
“Now, dear heart,” Rowena said to Isaac. “Name your outing. But not Legoland again. That gift shop bankrupted me last time. What about the Tower of London? You can see where they chopped off heads. And the crown jewels are good for a quick look-see.”
“How about Woburn Safari Park?” Sebastian gave a shrug. “Archie and Sophie—” aha, that was his daughter’s name “—love it. Monkeys climb on your car, parrots take nectar from your hand.” Isaac sat still, mouth open. “And the gift shops are terrific.” Sebastian gave Rowena that smile, the one that was more of a twitch at the right corner of his mouth. Tilly twisted her legs around each other.
“Fab idea. I—” A mechanical rendition of “Rule Britannia” chimed from Rowena’s lap. “Bugger. Phone.” Rowena rootled around in the folds of her skirt. “Sebastian? Take the wheel.”
Cigarette dangling from his mouth, Sebastian shook his head in disapproval, but reached across and grabbed the steering wheel while Rowena chattered into her cell phone. Sebastian had grown up fawned over by women—his grandmother who had lived with the family, his mother, his two older sisters—and yet he’d always been oblivious to sexual cues, incredulous when confronted by lust. His effortless movements, however, suggested that he was finally comfortable with his sexuality. Which was good for Sebastian—Tilly gulped—bad for her. Life was so much easier when she had thought of him as dead. God, she needed out of this car.
“Cool,” Isaac said. “Rowena can drive without any hands.”
“Not cool.” Tilly raised her voice. “Dangerous and illegal.”
“That was Daddy. Thanks, Sebastian.” Rowena snapped her phone shut and reclaimed the steering wheel. “Sends oodles of love. He and Mother are scheming to open a rest home for aging ex-pats. Think we should invest, Haddy? You could wheel me around in my bath chair while I find us a couple of geriatric Adonises. So many men, so little time.”
Flashes of Rowena’s ex-lovers whizzed through Tilly’s mind. Poor Ro, she could never find enough love, whereas Tilly had had more than her share.
“But Isaac’s my main squeeze.” Rowena fired off a string of air-kissses. “Aren’t you, poppet?”
“Yes. I. Am.” Isaac thrust out his chest with eight-year-old machismo.
Tilly stretched and yawned.
“Feeling icky?” Rowena asked.
“Bit tatty round the edges.”
“Rats. So you won’t want to join us for lunch. Well I did say—didn’t I, Sebastian—that you’d be too tired. We’ve a table for two booked for noon at The Flying Duck. I could easily make it four. But I can see you’re both pooped.”
Isaac sprang up and down silently as if to contradict her.
Tilly rubbed her temples. A table for two?
“Nope, much better plan!” Rowena thumped the center of the steering wheel, and the horn sounded. Tilly and Isaac jumped. “Come to Sunday lunch at the Hall! Tilly, bring your mother. Sebastian, bring the children. Isaac? It’s time Aunty Ro taught you croquet. Croquet? What am I saying? Ever played cricket?”
“No. But isn’t it the same as baseball? I’m good at that.”
Sebastian doubled over and appeared to be choking.
“Poppet, we need to educate you in the ways of cultural diversity. And it just so happens that this man sitting next to me, the one who’s about ready to pop his clogs—” Rowena smacked Sebastian between the shoulder blades. “Which, by the way, is an excellent reason for never taking up smoking, filthy habit.” Rowena grabbed Sebastian’s cigarette and sucked on it. “This man was the youngest pupil in the history of Rugby School to make the first X1, which is V.I.S.”
“Very Important Stuff!” Rowena and Isaac squealed in unison.
Tilly didn’t join in the laughter. She was chewing on her thumbnail, wondering why she had forgotten about Sebastian and the first X1, and why Rowena had remembered.
Chapter 9
Tilly watched the Discovery tear out of the driveway and tried not to feel like the duped heroine in an episode of The Twilight Zone. Ro and Sebastian were locked in some conspiracy, and her mother? They hugged, and Tilly’s fingers touched bone. Her mother had lost more than weight since Christmas. She had shrunk in on herself; she had aged.
“You look washed out,” her mother said.
“And you look tired. The life of leisure too much for you?”
“You know me. I rarely sit. Having this much time—” Her mother cleared her throat. “Makes me feel old and dependent.”
The shrill cry of magpies accompanied by a throaty cuckoo-cuckoo sneaked up from the paddock. As a child, nothing delighted Tilly more than the first cuckoo of the season. And everything in Tilly’s favorite garden was as it should be. The cherry tree was wrapped in stockings to keep birds from the fruit, the herbaceous border was a mass of pinks, blues and lavender, and clusters of white rambling rector blooms smothered the stone wall. Her father had planted that rose. How he loved his roses! How her mother interfered when he tried to tend them. But today, Woodend was a flat canvas; it didn’t soothe.
In Tilly’s mind, her mother was always forty years old, plowing through the black waves off the coast of Cornwall with her neck rigid and her hair dry. This morning, however, Mrs. Haddington looked less like a woman defying the Atlantic Ocean and more like an old dear who hadn’t noticed that the left side of her silk blouse hung over the waistband of her skirt.
“I was so bored yesterday, I attempted to knit a tea cozy for the church bazaar.” Her mother tucked in her blouse, then puffed up her thick, white bob. “Which is utterly ridiculous, given this.” She waved her bandaged hand. “How was it, seeing Sebastian again?”
“Mum.” Tilly issued a warning.
Her mother nipped a leaf from the Lady Hillingdon rose that snaked around the back door. “Black spot.” She tutted. “You’ll have to spray. Marigold says it’s a nasty separation. Between Sebastian and Fanny.”
“Fiona.” Tilly watched a pair of sparrows frolic in the stone birdbath. “And Marigold knows this how?”
“She heard it from Sylvia, who heard it from Beryl, who has the same woman-that-does as Sebastian—Mabel Dillington. There’s more.”
Tilly had always wanted eyes like her mother’s. Eyes you couldn’t ignore. Eyes that were the bright blue of a Carolina sky. Tilly’s eyes were pale and translucent, the color of porcelain brushed with a robin’s-egg wash. They made her look ethereal, when she yearned to be an Amazon.
“There’s evidence of a relationship.” Her mother had yet to blink.
Tilly scuffed her Doc Martens boot through round, evenly sized pebbles in coordinating sand tones. Unlike Tilly’s gravel, which was made up of lumps of quartz and splinters of gray rock, her mother’s driveway was perfect. “I’d forgotten how rumors fly in this place. Shame on you for listening.”
“Hardly rumor. And there’s no need to be sanctimonious. Mabel saw the Discovery parked outside Manor Farm yesterday at 6:00 a.m. Now. Where did Isaac and Monty disappear to?” Her mother hobbled up the stone step and through the back door.
Tilly raised her face into the damp, morning air. The sun had vanished, replaced by a fine Scotch mist. So they’re having sex. Big whoop. I just need to figure out how to avoid them for six weeks.
An empty truck rattled along the High Street. Empty trucks—when did she stop calling them lorries?—sounded different from heavily loaded ones. It had to do with the way they hit the dip on the corner. She gazed through the gateway, the place where she had met David. And then she stared back at the house, the place she had longed to run to after he died. After he died because of her. She’d grown used to the guilt, but it was always lurking. And when she was tired, as she was now, it thudded inside her skull like a migraine.
“Tilly! Phone!” her mother called from the kitchen. “A James Nealy?”
* * *
“Good flight?” James grabbed the rail on the treadmill, let go and repeated. Six times. Would she shriek? Accuse him of being a two-bit stalker? But despite what the voice had told him yesterday—over and over—he wasn’t a stalker. Although he had memorized the state harassment laws just to make sure.
“Are you an insomniac?” Tilly said. “It can’t be much later than 5:00 a.m. your time.”
He had prepared for incredulity or hostility, nothing else. And yet she’d asked about his sleep habits. What did that mean?
The treadmill whirred beneath him. “I exercise every morning from four-thirty to six-thirty.” That was probably more information than she needed.
“You get up at four-thirty? Are you crackers?”
What the hell did crackers mean? Who knew, but it didn’t sound good. So yes, clearly he had given her too much information. She was probably freaking out at this very moment, dialing 911 on her cell phone to report him for infringing the state harassment law that included: To telephone another repeatedly, whether or not conversation ensues, for the purpose of abusing, annoying, threatening, terrifying, harassing or embarrassing any person at the called number. Was he annoying her?
“Have you made a decision?” He spoke quickly, a preemptive strike in case she was considering hanging up.
“James.” Her voice dragged with exhaustion. He should’ve waited another hour at least, given her a chance to unpack. But it had taken all his restraint to not call her at 4:30 a.m. “I promised you an answer in September.”
“Can’t wait that long.”
“You’re worse than a child. Isaac was never this demanding, even at three.”
His pulse slowed as her accent, soft and warm, soothed him. He actually thought about crawling into bed and going back to sleep. After he’d showered, of course. “Do you talk to all your clients this way, or just me?”
“I have wholesale customers, not clients, for this very reason. And no, I haven’t given your project one iota of a thought. I just walked in the door after twelve hours of traveling, and all I care about is where I packed my toothbrush and whether there’s a pair of clean knickers nearby.”
“Is that so?” An image assaulted him, of Tilly wearing nothing but a scarlet thong and gardening gloves. He shook back his hair and upped the speed on the treadmill.
“How did you track me down?” Tilly asked.
Sari ratted you out. Once he discovered her sons were fans, he had all the leverage he needed.
“You can find anything,” he said, “if you’re determined.” That wasn’t a lie, even though the voice told him it was.
“I’m trying to be patient. Really. But I’m dangerously close to telling you to jump off a pier. Only with a few choice expletives thrown in.” She paused. “How’re the silent hiccups?”
“You really want to know?” His voice was almost a whisper.
“Sadly, yes. I do.”
“Worse.” The treadmill creaked an indignant rhythm as he upped the speed a second time. He’d never taken it this high.
“So you’re going to keep calling me?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Time for a deal, Mr. Nealy. You get an answer in one week—if, and only if, you agree to abide by my decision. And no calling in the interim.”
Was that a yes? Or a no? Or a nothing? He hated nothings. But it could turn into a yes, right? “Agreed.”
“And—”
“Addendums?” He panted. “Already?”
“I’d like the adult explanation of your hiccups.”
“Will it…affect your…decision?” He was running hard now. Racing against the voice, which was stuck doing a circuit of: If you tell her, she’ll think you’re a fucking weirdo. James tried to drown out the thought with the lyrics of “Psycho Killer,” but he couldn’t get past the line that basically said, leave me the hell alone because I’m a live wire.
“Labels are merely a way of lumping people together like plants on a stall,” Tilly said. “I don’t much care what yours is.” She was smiling. He could hear it in the pitch of her voice. “Okay, gloves-off honesty. I’m curious.”
“What’s…your…label?” His sneakers pounded the treadmill belt.
“I thought we were talking about you.”
“I’m not…all that…interesting.” Once you edit out the crazy bits.
“Okay, fine. I’m game for a little transatlantic show-and-tell.” She gave a huge sigh. “I’m a guilt-ridden widow. No, that’s too strong. I’m not drowning in guilt. It’s just there, in the background.”
James blew out a couple of breaths and slowed down to a fast walk. “You have to be careful with guilt.” So, Tilly understood the horror of a damaged mind, which couldn’t be good either for her, or for Isaac. “Guilt can become an intrusive thought. And that’s my world. Thoughts that drag you back and under. Thoughts that never let go. Obsessive thoughts that lead to compulsive actions. Look up OCD on Wikipedia and read about cognitive-behavioral therapy. It’s a way of redirecting unwanted thoughts. You might find it helpful.” He shut the treadmill. At 5:16 a.m. the day was already too long. “I’ll call one week from today. Same time.”
James hung up and crumpled across the front of the treadmill. He had told her! Told her he was crippled by an anxiety disorder that popular culture equated with people to ridicule or fear: a television detective incapable of navigating life without a wipes-carrying assistant; a monster driven to murder by odd numbers; a billionaire recluse who couldn’t touch doorknobs and died in squalor. James banged the heels of his hands into his temples. Bang, bang. Bang, bang. Bang, bang.
He never told anyone he had OCD—not family, not lovers, not close friends. His buddy Sam guessed years ago, but it was understood, not discussed, which was what James wanted. It was no one’s business but his own, because to say those words out loud was to brand himself. Tilly was right—OCD was a label, and with labels came stigma, and weakness, and pity. Everything that James detested, everything that reminded him how it felt to be ten years old, standing by his mother’s grave, scared of the future, terrified of the thoughts unraveling in his brain, and desperate not to be the object of people’s stares. Desperate to blend in and disappear, to be the person you never quite remembered, when he was more likely to be the person you wished you could forget.
She hates you, she’s scared of you, she thinks you’re a kook.
No, no. James pressed down with his palms. He was done with doubt. It would not pull him under again. He would not revert to the person he had been before he had decided to sell the business, the apartment, the farm. Before he had decided to save himself.
Besides, Tilly? Scared of anyone? He didn’t think so. And yes, he was weird. He was weird! So what? He should be able to shout to the world that he was obsessive-compulsive, to do so without dreading other people’s reactions. Maybe opening up to Tilly was the first step, and no different from his dad attending an A.A. meeting just so he could announce, “I’m a drunk.”
That was a good theory and one James desperately wanted to believe. Acknowledging weakness gave you strength, but he’d slipped up, released personal information without having intended to, and that was out of character. Other people said things they shouldn’t; he didn’t.
But when he’d hinted at the truth that day at the farm, hadn’t a small part of him dared to trust, dared to believe that he had met someone, finally, who might understand? How would Tilly treat him now that she knew? Would she look at him and see the OCD, not James? Was it even possible to separate the two?
His psychologist always said, “It’s the OCD, not you,” but the lines weren’t distinct for James. OCD may have twisted up his mind, but it had crafted him, made him James, pushed him to succeed and bequeathed the only gift that mattered: the ability to perceive pain in others. He didn’t always act on that knowledge, didn’t always want to, but he was drawn to people in dark corners, could empathize with them. So now he was being altruistic. Truthfully, you enjoy living alongside people who are more fucked-up than you. That wasn’t true of most of his friends, but it had been his M.O. in love.
His thoughts circled him back to Tilly. She would take him on. She would. But once they started working together, once they had regular contact, he would have to be more careful. Because if she saw behind the label, if he revealed the biggest truth of all, she would never understand. The end. The end.
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