18
They’ll get better?Had he really just said that to Sam? Her mother had been murdered.
Pete was waiting to hear back from his lawyer. Everyone said Mac Green was one of the top defense attorneys in Connecticut, but Pete found him incredibly annoying. He didn’t have the courtesy to return Pete’s calls in a timely manner. In fact, if Nicola hadn’t insisted Pete engage a lawyer, and if Lee Ackerley hadn’t asked around and gotten a referral to Mac, Pete would have been happy handling the situation on his own.
One thing Pete hated was someone telling him what to do and how to do it. Mac was an old-school, old-boy, white-haired Yalie who had rules for his clients. One was no taking a lie detector test, no matter what. Pete stared at his phone, pissed off that it wasn’t ringing. As soon as Mac deigned to call, he was going to hearPete’srules. He had a few of his own.
Beth had died angry at him, and she had had every right to feel that way. Waiting gave him too much time to think, and his mind kept racing through all the things he could have done differently, starting with letting Nicola stay in Beth’s grandmother’s house. It had been a horrible, disrespectful thing to do. His mother would be even more ashamed of him if she knew—at least Beth had left that detail out when she had called to tell her about the affair with Nicola. She had run straight to his mother, knowing that would hurt him more than anything.
Maybe he deserved it. He literally could not bear to think about what he had put Beth through. And Nicola, too, for that matter. Nicola had loved being at Cloudlands at first, but even that had changed. He couldn’t believe she had actually taken Tyler home to her mother’s. What a slap in the face that had been. It had made him feel he didn’t matter. That she could leave so easily, even though she had returned, was disturbing. He wouldn’t forget it.
Lately, she kept saying she wished she could feel clean again. She had had an affair with him while he was married, gotten pregnant, and had his child. Now it seemed she wanted to go back to the easy piety of her days as a Catholic girl. Obeying God and the capitalCChurch was easier than existing in moral ambiguity and let her feel as if she was a good girl. Pete, a lapsed Catholic himself, knew that guilt had been drummed into her from the start.
There was so much about Nicola he understood. They had similar backgrounds. He had sensed her nervousness when she had first started working at the gallery—although she was brilliant and beautiful, it was daunting to be around all that old money. He knew because he had felt it himself. His mother had worked her fingers to the bone to send him to private school, but the kids at Saint George’s—Episcopal, of course, the high-class religion—would ask him how the other half lived. They’d meant from the wrong side of the tracks. His mother would have been furious if she’d known how they’d treated him.
He had shown Nicola compassion, knowing it would move her. He had a special gift for knowing what women needed—not just wanted. She began to find ways to be near him at the gallery. At first, she was just scholarly and pretty, and then she was scholarly and sexy. It wasn’t that she changed the way she dressed—she wore a near uniform, slim black pants and a white silk blouse, sometimes with a black blazer. It was more a shift in attitude. They gravitated toward each other.
Beth never would have believed this, but Pete had grappled with his desires for a long time before giving in to Nicola. He enjoyed the act of seduction, getting someone to want him. He craved knowing a woman felt passion for him, but acting on his own was another story.
He had been a good husband. He had had plenty of opportunities too. Women would stop by the gallery, divorced women from town or visiting their summer places, pretending to look at art but so obviously lonely, seeking what everyone wanted: someone to love.
Sometimes the women would pretend to consider buying a painting; occasionally they would actually do so. At openings, when there was wine, they would stand a little too close, link arms with him to lead him across the gallery and ask about the provenance of this Hassam, that Morrison.
The affair with Nicola began in the least romantic of places—down in the gallery basement, damp from the water table, recent rains, and shades of the Woodward family horrors. Pete had been framing a little jewel of a painting by Malcolm Grant, a lesser-known Black Hall artist. It was a tiny oil of a frozen stream at dawn, bright with breaking light.
He stood at the workbench, measuring segments of wood. A harsh overhead lamp illuminated particles of sawdust in the air. Nicola walked over to him. He could picture the painting as if it were in front of him right now, he could feel the sawdust stinging his eyes, but he couldn’t remember the words she said. Suddenly his mouth found hers, her arms were around his neck, and he swept all the framing materials and that valuable little picture aside, lifted her onto the table, his cheek against hers.
Six months later, six months of passion, they were in the basement again.
“I’m going to ... ,” she said.
“Going to what?”
“Have your baby. Love you.”
“I love you to death,” he said, putting his hand on her belly, already starting to get slightly round. He knew he should be upset—they hadn’t planned on her getting pregnant, and when Beth found out it was going to be hell for everyone. But he had never felt love like this, so pure and true.
“I want to be with you forever,” she said.
Her words filled him with such emotion. “I want that too,” he whispered.
“Just one little problem. You’re married to someone else,” she said.
He hadn’t liked her saying that. It made her sound callous, and he knew she wasn’t. She cared about Beth. That was what caused them exquisite pain—they both had Beth on the mind, but their desire was so great it overrode their consciences. Too often the institution of marriage became one of convenience and habit; he and Beth had let that happen. He would have to extricate himself as kindly as possible—take care of Beth and Sam. He would not fall into habit, into the mundane, when he and Nicola were finally able to marry. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again with her.
“Besides, we don’t have a choice,” she said. He had removed his hand, but now she placed it back on her belly, as if he needed reminding. Every time he touched her he felt emotional.
“I want this so much,” he said.
“Tell me.”
“A life with you.”
“Yes,” she said, her voice beautifully warm and sweet. “We will be so good together. I’ll make you so happy, Pete.”
“You already do.”
“I want to wake up next to you every day. Live as a family. I know I shouldn’t ask you for that, and I won’t. Not now. When you’re ready, you’ll tell me, won’t you?”
