Ellen didn’t believe him. She’d never had a meaningless fling, but she’d been watching Jamie have them since puberty, and she knew what they looked like. His affair with Carly was different. He didn’t see it, but that was only because he was kind of an idiot.
“I don’t buy that.”
“You should. Carly doesn’t love me. She thought I was cute, and now she thinks I’m a hassle. But if you’re seeing love everywhere you look, maybe you’ve got more romance left in you than I thought.”
“No, don’t worry, I had my romance gland removed.”
More like assassinated. Marriage to an adulterous alcoholic poet would do that to you. On the plus side, it turned out to be full of useful life lessons. Downsides of Codependency 101. By the time Ellen had filed for divorce, she’d been more than ready to try her hand at self-reliance. Her life was finally hers, and that was the way she liked it.
“I want you to be happy,” she said. “You deserve it.”
Jamie looked at her with the earnest intensity he usually reserved for head shots and turned the statement around. “What about what you deserve?”
“I’m all right.”
He made a derisive noise, half laugh, half exhale. “When did you last do something self-indulgent? Like, say, get a massage?”
In fact, she planned to be self-indulgent today. A red envelope containing the best movie Bogart and Bacall had ever made was gathering dust on top of her DVD player. Ellen had promised herself that if she got through all her client e-mails and returned her calls, she could sit in her bedroom in the dark and eat Nutter Butters dipped in a big glass of milk while she watched elegant people snipe at each other.
Just the thought of ducking her responsibilities made her feel like tap dancing. It would be her first treat in … God, she didn’t even want to think about it. It made her go all martyr mommy, and then even she got bored with herself.
But she knew better than to tell Jamie about her plan. He wouldn’t understand that knocking off work after six or seven hours counted as spoiling herself rotten.
“Normal people don’t get massages. That’s a
rich-people thing.”
“Okay,” Jamie countered, “when did you last kick back on the couch for an hour with a beer and a good book?”
“I do that every night.” This was true only if you substituted the word wine for beer and the word contract for book.
“Bullshit. All you do is play with Henry and rescue artists from their mistakes and mow the lawn and cook. It makes me tired just being around you. You’re going to burn out soon, and then I’ll have to pay to have you sent to one of those really cushy spas where you can get facials and sleep in late and drink smoothies all day long.”
“If you sent me to a spa, you’d have to come out here and live with Henry.”
“I could handle Henry for a few weeks.”
“Please. The two of you would sit around in your underpants watching cartoons all day, and you’d feed him candy and juice boxes until he puked.”
“Ouch.” Jamie grinned, and she smiled back at him. Her wonderful, adorable, irresponsible brother. The biggest fan she’d ever had.
“Seriously, though, you need to take it easy,” he said. “I worry about you there all alone. If you guys aren’t going to move out here and live with me—”
“We’re not.”
“—then you need to at least hire a housekeeper or a nanny or something. I’ll pay for it if you’ll get off your high horse and let me. Just take a night off now and then. Find yourself a boyfriend who will squire you around to all the finest dining establishments Camelot has to offer.”
For the second time in two minutes, she saw Caleb’s face in her head. Posttraumatic shock, no doubt. Adrenaline had imprinted him on her brain.
Except that dumping tea on the photographer hadn’t been traumatic, it had been pleasurable. And so had talking to Caleb, right up until she found out he intended to turn her life upside down in the guise of keeping her safe.
“There’s only the two dining establishments.”
Jamie’s lip curled, but it was jokey disdain. Her adopted hometown had grown on both of them since she’d moved here six years ago. Back when Camelot College had hired Richard to teach creative writing, the village had seemed too slow and isolated to Ellen, accustomed as she’d been to Chicago. When Maureen had been so charmed by the town that she’d decided to relocate and spend her retirement closer to Richard, the decision had astonished Ellen. Why would anyone voluntarily give up Michigan Avenue for the cornfields of central Ohio?
But Ohio had charmed Ellen when she wasn’t paying attention. Something about the quiet, and about the way she noticed every seasonal change in the trees and the plants instead of the presence or absence of sewage smells.
The roots of small-town life had twined around her feet gradually, until one morning in the bleary early months of Henry’s life, she’d woken up and looked out her bedroom window and thought, I’m never going to leave. And then astonished herself by smiling.