Secrets of a Shoe Addict (35 page)

“That’s unthinkable.”

Abbey shrugged. “I can’t really blame her. I was selfish. Hedonistic. Reckless, even, because I remember thinking I didn’t care if I lived or died. I was all about the moment. Until the moment came that I wrapped my best friend’s Honda around a parked BMW on M Street.” Abbey met Brian’s eyes with sincere sorrow. “She died at the scene. I suspect part of her parents did, too, they were so close.” The pain that had thrummed dully in Abbey’s chest for all these years hammered hard, threatening to punch a hole in her chest.

“I’m sure it wasn’t your fault,” Brian began.

“Oh, it was completely my fault.” She took his hands and looked into his eyes. “Make no mistake on that, it was my fault. I’d had at least a bottle of champagne to myself, in addition to three or four lines of coke. Yes,” she said, in answer to an expression she expected but he did not make, “I was using cocaine too.”

“You’re not the only one who’s done that.”

“I was the only one doing it in the car that night. It was absolutely my fault. I didn’t even know Paulina was dead when the ambulance came. I was
still
out of it. I remember bits and pieces of the ambulance ride, but the next thing I remember is waking up in Washington Hospital Center two days later and they told me I’d died on the
operating table.” She gave a humorless laugh. “They told me how
lucky
I was to be alive.”

“You were.”

Abbey looked into his eyes and waited a moment before saying, “Don’t you want to ask me?”

“Ask you what?”

“What I saw.
Who
I saw.” She tried to keep the bitterness from her voice. “Which childhood pets came gamboling over the expanse of green meadow to greet me?
Everyone
wants to know that stuff.”

“Okay,” Brian said slowly. “So tell me. What and who did you see?”

“Nothing.” She met his eyes. “Absolutely nothing. No loved ones, no light, no meadow, no angels, no goddamn dogs.” She stopped herself and said, “I’m sorry.”

“Please don’t apologize to me at a time like this.”

“I have to, Brian, don’t you see? I didn’t see heaven, because I wasn’t going to heaven.
Everyone
has stories about the white light and the feeling of peace. You never, ever hear anyone say they died on the operating table, or in an accident, or whatever, and came back with no memories at all. No demons, no angels, nothing whatsoever to indicate I rated any sort of afterlife.” Tears were burning her eyes now. “Just blackness. Just . . . nothing.”

“So what?” Brian asked. “Maybe that just meant it wasn’t your time. Or it happened and you didn’t remember.”

“Or maybe it meant I was damned for all time. And maybe when I met the pastor of the local church, I could save myself by attaching myself to him, marrying him, having his child. . . .” She was crying now, although the last thing in the world she wanted was Brian’s pity. “Maybe I compounded a lifetime of sins by making a calculated effort to take the easy way out by marrying a man of God.”
She tried to catch her breath. “Maybe that, more than anything else, damned me.”

Brian looked at her for a long time, though she could not tell what was behind his expression. It was almost as if he were examining some new specimen of dolphin or something, looking at her with curiosity but without feeling.

Then he said, “If that’s the case, I’m damned, too.”

She looked at him incredulously. “Why?”

“Because when I met you, I wanted to save you.”

“You want to save everyone.” She didn’t understand his implication.

“I wanted to save
you
,” Brian said. “And I don’t think it was part of my job.”

She looked at him.

“I’ve had a secret or two of my own,” Brian went on. “I know about your accident. I was in the hospital for other reasons that night and they were looking for a priest but no one could be found, so I guess I was better than nothing. They told me what had happened and called me to your bedside to pray for you. They didn’t think you’d make it. But as soon as I saw you, I knew you would.” He gave a labored sigh. “I should have mentioned this a long time ago, but, you must know, it never really came up. It would have held so much weight if I’d brought it up out of the blue, like you were lying to me—”

“I
was
!”

“No, you weren’t. I know who you are. I knew who you were when we got married. What you did two months ago or two decades ago wasn’t relevant.”

She frowned. “And yet—”

“And yet.” He said it definitively. As if nothing else mattered.

But it did. “So my life before—”

“Didn’t matter,” Brian pronounced. “
Doesn’t
matter. I’m glad to hear anything you want to tell me, but I don’t want you to tell me anything out of guilt or out of a misguided belief that you have to fess up and do some sort of penance before I can accept you.” He put his arm up around her shoulder and drew her closer. “I accept you, I
love
you, no matter what.”

“Even if I married you as a sort of buoy for my soul?”

He laughed, then winced, as he was still in some pain. “I would have taken you under whatever circumstances I could get you. But I’m not stupid, Abigail. I know we have a great marriage. So I don’t care
how
it began.”

He was right. They did have a great marriage. Even in the beginning, it had been a good marriage. It wasn’t as if she’d made some huge sacrifice to be with him in order to save herself. Granted, she hadn’t married for love, but she also hadn’t married while plugging her nose and swallowing her distaste.

Brian was cute, smart, kind, and he loved her. It had been easy to marry him.

And it had been easy to fall in love with him.

Which was why she had to make sure he knew the whole truth now. So she told him about Damon, about meeting him in Las Vegas, where he tried to blackmail her, telling her she owed him money, and how she had had to join a phone sex operator business—she didn’t say whose—in order to pay him off.

When she was finished, Brian was—she almost couldn’t believe it—laughing.

She wasn’t sure what to make of his laughter, so she refrained from joining in.

“That’s incredible,” Brian said. “Really great.” He splayed his arms, then drew her in again. “My hat’s off to you. Not many people would have the nerve to do that.”

“You think so?” She was so encouraged by his words, she almost couldn’t believe it. “Really?”

He laughed again, really sincerely. “Yes. Come on, Abbey, you know I’m not one to get pious over things.”

“Well, no, not when they involve something other than your wife.”

“I love my wife,” he said sharply. “Make no mistake. I’m not so stupid that I could live with someone for eleven years and not know who they are.” He looked so deeply into her eyes, she felt like he could see her spleen. “I know who you are,” he said, in a commanding voice. “I should have said something a long time ago. If this mess is anyone’s fault, it’s mine.”

“No, Brian.” It just wasn’t true. “No.”

“You know what?” he asked. “I don’t care whose fault it is. I’m married to the most beautiful, wonderful woman in the world, and I’m happy with her.” He eyed her. “Are you happy with me?”

She considered a moment, before answering with the same words she would have said automatically. “Yes. Happier than I ever dreamed I could be.”

“Then forget the past. Forget the business with dying on the operating table. You know, in my business we like to preach that that is significant, but the scientific truth is that it’s
only
a trick of the mind. So forget it. You weren’t dead. You came back. You have no idea what it’s like to
really
die.” He cupped her face in her hands and spoke emphatically. “But I’m positive that when you eventually do, around the age of a hundred and twenty, I hope, you’ll see all the lights, loved
ones, and pets you want to. Though honestly, I’m not even sure that’s how it goes. It’s hard to take the word of a living person on what it’s like to die.”

“So it doesn’t matter to you that I lived that way, that I hung out with Damon, and that I ended up having to do phone sex to pay Damon off for a debt?” She was challenging him, putting things in the worst possible light so he’d have almost no choice but to dump her.

Almost
no choice.

“No.” Brian looked thoughtful for a moment, then shook his head for the second time. “No, it really doesn’t. I can’t get worked up over that.” He cocked his head and lowered his chin. “I’m not interrupting some big, significant confession, am I? You’ve told me the worst? There aren’t a bunch of bodies buried in our basement?”

She laughed finally. “No, I’ve told you the worst. No skeletons in the crevices of our house anymore. Unless they’re yours.”

“Mine? But you know I’m practically a saint.” There was humor in his eyes, and in his voice, despite the fact that both were marred from the accident.

She clung to the joke, not the bruises. “Not if I blackmail you about some of the things you’ve told me tonight.”

“See? There’s the resourceful woman I’ve come to know and love.”

They spent the next hour sitting there on that bed, joking and laughing and talking about things that neither ever thought the other would understand. At the end of it, Abbey felt as light as a cloud, floating over the conversation without one worry to weigh her down.

Finally—
finally
—the weight was lifted.

Until Brian, toward the end of the evening, made one final request.

“I’m thinking,” he said, “that maybe you should stop the phone sex business now.”

“Well, I’d already figured that. It’s not exactly something I thought you’d approve of.”

“It’s not that I don’t approve.” He gave a sly smile. “The truth is, I just want you all to myself.”

Chapter
      
22
  

L
oreen had just gotten Jacob to sleep on Thursday night, after about twenty unnecessary post-bedtime stall tactics, ranging from
“one little glass of water”
to
“I can’t find my LEGO Darth Vader.”
She was sitting on the sofa, watching some depressing recap of the days’ events on MSNBC, when there was a light knock at the door.

She looked at the clock. It was 10:15. Ever cautious, she grabbed the portable phone from between the sofa cushions—she already had 911 programmed in, just in case—and went to the front door to look through the peephole.

It was Robert.

She opened the door with a sigh of relief. “What, your cell phone doesn’t work? You could have warned me you were coming—you scared me to death.”

“I tried to call. The phone’s off the hook.”

She looked at it. Sure enough, the
TALK
button was lit. She must have sat on it. “Come on in,” she said, tossing the phone aside. “Can I get you something?”

“No, thanks. Actually, I have something for you.” He held up a cardboard tube, like the kind he (and Mike Brady, she happened to know) used to store and carry plans around.

“Did you get a new contract?” She sat down on the sofa and watched him as he came and sat down next to her.

“Well, it’s a new project, but it’s not a new contract. I just hope the client likes it.”

“So you want me to look it over first?”

“Exactly.” He brushed some magazines aside on the coffee table and took some large sheets of paper out of the tube. “Now, here’s the main house.” He spread the paper out.

Loreen looked. Then did a double take, assessing the rooms. “Hey, that’s
this
house.”

He gave a quick nod, his face growing a little pink in the cheeks. “It is for now. But I was thinking maybe we could expand this closet—” He pointed to a linen closet that never contained more than a bottle of Tylenol and a small pile of washcloths she didn’t know what else to do with. “—and bump it out to make a proper office for you.” He laid a transparent sheet over it, as she’d seen him do a thousand times before, but this time it was
her
house. “You always said the one in the basement was too cold and dark.”

“It is.” She hated going down there. “I love this, but—”

“Good, because . . . I had another idea, as well.” He carefully pulled another transparent sheet from the tube and laid it over the existing plans.