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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
It took five hours before Ellie could get away. Five hours of panic and irritation. Art hadn’t turned up to supper, and she had to be grateful for that. She didn’t think the two men would start anything with their children looking on, but why risk it? Even so, having Dan there had felt like an intrusion. He’d tried to make small talk all through dinner, turned on the charm big time with her mum and Toto, and for the first time ever Ellie had realised exactly how self-serving and shallow Dan’s charm was.
Even when she’d known he was cheating on her, even during that last conversation in Orchard Harbor, when he’d told her about Chelsea’s baby and she’d told him she wanted a divorce, he’d still had a strange sort of hold on her. She’d made excuses for him – convinced herself that in some ways his infidelity was as much her fault as his. Let him talk her into being the one to tell Josh.
But now, she could see what a phoney he was.
All those practised moves, the easy flattery, the way he pretended to listen and laughed in all the right places. Josh had hung on his every word, but neither Toto nor her mum had been taken in by it. And this time, neither had she. She’d take Art’s strong steady silences, even his surly moody moments, over Dan’s fake razzamatazz any day.
The privileged, indulged youngest child and only son in a family of over-achievers, Dan had been born not to take responsibility for anything. But she’d once loved that the most about him. As a compulsive fixer, she had found it wildly attractive that Dan could look at any problem and say ‘screw that, let’s go party instead’. So it made perfect sense for her to handle all the details Dan couldn’t be bothered with during their marriage: like calling the plumber, or doing the IRS returns, or hiring a nutritionist for Josh when he couldn’t stop comfort eating, or a couples therapist for them both when Dan couldn’t stop cheating.
But it had eventually left her as the only one who had invested any energy in making their marriage a success.
She’d discovered this afternoon the full extent of all the challenges, all the emotional curveballs Art had been thrown in life and how much he’d had to endure and overcome to survive. It was hard not to compare the two of them now – Dan’s pampered patrician beauty and hollow charm to Art’s sturdy, solid, blue-collar strength and subtle humour – and find Art the much hotter of the two.
But was it really wise to make choices based on her libido again?
After waiting for Dan to take Josh up to bed, she dashed to her room to shower and change. It was a warm night so she slipped on a dress emblazoned with sunflowers that she’d bought in Gratesbury a few weeks ago but hadn’t had a chance to wear. The bias cut flattered her figure. She took a bit of extra time with her make-up, adding eyeliner and a quick layer of lip gloss. She’d caught the sun today, her cheeks given a healthy glow.
She left her room as soon as she heard Dee’s tread disappear do
wn the corridor.
Maybe it was reckless to go and see Art before everyone had gone to bed. But she couldn’t wait any longer to talk to him. And she did not want to have the conversation here.
She left the house, the sun setting behind the back barn. She went to Art’s workshop first, just in case he was still finishing the commission, but felt relieved when she found it empty.
She wanted to talk to him in the caravan, because it felt like their safe place. Maybe they’d never had any proper conversations there, because they’d always been way too busy making love, but it felt like the right place to take this next step. To actually discuss their relationship. Such as it was.
Maybe it was foolish and romantic to want to tell Art about her relationship with Dan. He’d never asked her about her husband and she’d never divulged anything, partly because it embarrassed her to know what a spineless coward she’d been all those years in Orchard Harbor. But still she wanted Art to know that Dan had come here uninvited and that she wasn’t convinced they could ever be a couple again, no matter how much sex therapy he had.
Dan would still be Josh’s father, and for that reason he would always have a place in her life. It wasn’t as if she would ever try to change that relationship. But Dan had never been a hands-on dad. And Josh had settled so well here during the summer. As had she. There were all sorts of possibilities that she hadn’t even considered before tonight that she wanted Art’s take on.
She walked through the woods, the dusk giving the flowers and trees a reddish glow. And her heart leapt and stuttered as she made her way through the gathering darkness and spotted the light shining at the top of the rise.
Art was waiting for her.
She hesitated for a moment as she came out of the trees. Remembering another time, another place not far from here, when she’d once made a similar clandestine dash to see Art in the sunlight of a September weekend afternoon. The memory of what had happened when she’d thrown herself at Art that day still had the power to make her cringe. But she’d been hyped up on teenage hormones then, and her own confused feelings. She’d totally misread that situation. She wasn’t that naïve girl any more. She wasn’t here to put pressure on Art, to make emotional demands that he had no hope of fulfilling. She just wanted to let him know that Dan’s being here hadn’t been her idea… And then go from there.
She tapped on the door and pulled it open.
Art sat on the bed, wittling a piece of wood with a wicked-looking knife she’d seen him use before. Her heart leapt at the sight of those large competent hands on the wood, the long scar she’d seen sewn up three months ago. A yearning ache pulsed deep in her abdomen.
He dumped the knife and the piece he was carving on the bedside table. But didn’t move towards her.
‘Ellie? What are you doing here?’ he said.
He sounded surprised to see her. Her heartbeat leapt, but she ignored it.
She was here now, and he didn’t look unhappy to see her, that was the main thing. ‘I thought we had a date?’ she said.
He got off the bed, but instead of approaching her, or smiling, he sent her the same blank look he’d sent her that afternoon before he’d stalked off after Dan’s arrival.
‘I didn’t think you’d keep it,’ he said.
Why did he look so tense? Of course, Dan. The fact of Dan, she had some explaining to do about that, which was precisely why she was here.
Get on with it then.
