“I try.”
“So is that why you came back? Am I a job you left unfinished?”
“I came back to deliver the letter of agreement along with your signing check for fifteen thousand.”
“You never heard of Federal Express?”
“I wasn’t sure a carrier would deliver to St. Anne.”
He gave her a look that said he knew better, and she got busy picking at the crust on her bread. “Okay, we’re being honest. I wanted to make sure you were writing, Parker, and if you weren’t, to prod you along. My dad advised it.”
“Oh, so you came back because your daddy thought it was a good idea.”
“Not exactly.”
“Then why, Maris? Exactly.”
She looked over at him, opened her mouth to speak, reconsidered, and began again. “We had quarreled before I left. I wanted to clear the air between us. Otherwise our working relationship would—”
He bleated a sound like the buzzer on a TV game show. “To you this might look like the backwoods, but believe it or not, we’ve got telephones, e-mails, faxes, various methods of communication.”
“But you wouldn’t take my calls or answer my e-mails and faxes.”
“Eventually I would have.”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“Yes, you were.” He ended the parley there by holding up his hand and stopping her next argument. “You hopped that jet plane because you wanted to see me again. Admit it, Maris.”
Her chin went up defiantly, and he thought she might deny it. But she surprised him again. “All right, yes. I did. I wanted to see you.”
Folding his arms on the tabletop, he leaned toward her. “Why? Not because of my natural charm. We established early on that I have none.” He stroked his chin. “So I’m wondering, did you and your hubby have a spat? Afterward, you thought, I’ll show him. I’ll trot myself down to Hicksville and have a fling with
a gimp. Is that why you came back?”
He figured she would storm from the room, retrieve her things from the guest cottage, then hightail it to her golf cart and leave him in a wake of epithets. But, again, he guessed wrong. She remained where she was and addressed him in a remarkably calm voice.
“Tell me, Parker, why do you insist on being cruel? Does being mean to people make you feel stronger and more manly? Do you use meanness to cancel out the wheelchair? Or do you deliberately piss people off in order to keep them at arm’s length? Do you hurt them before they have a chance to hurt you? If that’s the case, then I’m truly sorry for you. Indeed, for the first time since I met you, I pity you.”
When she did leave the table, her pace and posture were dignified. Her back was straight, her head high, and as Parker watched her disappear through the kitchen door, he felt like the lowest life-form on earth.
He had accused her of using him to get to Noah, when precisely the opposite was at play. He was using her to get to Noah.
Afraid she would leave before he could apologize, he backed his chair out of the kitchen and quickly rolled it down the central hallway and through the front door. He was relieved to find her on the veranda, leaning into one of the support columns, staring out at the giant live oaks that stood sentinel on both sides of the front path.
“Maris.”
“I’ll leave in the morning.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
She laughed softly but without humor. “You don’t know what you want, Parker. To write. Not to write. To be famous. To be a recluse. To have me here. To send me away. You don’t even know whether or not you want to go on living.
“Whatever the case, I shouldn’t have come back. My reasons for returning were muddled at best, even to me. I should have stayed in New York where I belong and left you alone to luxuriate in your anger and bitterness and to keep boozy company with a ghost. You can get back to your pathetic pastimes tomorrow after I leave.”
He rolled his chair directly behind her and placed his hands on either side of her waist where it flared into hips. “Don’t leave.”
Leaning forward, he pressed his forehead into the small of her back. He rolled it to the left and right of that shallow depression while his fingers flexed, tightening his grasp on her.