The Girl in the Glass (5 page)

I’d been extremely fond of Miles, especially in the beginning. And when he asked me to marry him, his devotion awed me. It wasn’t until the multitude of wedding plans were finalized, and I had a distraction-free moment that I realized if Miles suddenly called off the wedding, I wouldn’t be devastated. I didn’t know what I would be, but I knew
devastated
didn’t describe it.
Relief
was the more apt word. At that moment I knew I couldn’t go through with marrying him.

Telling him was an agonizing affair. He said little, but the look on his face communicated his hurt and surprise. It was a full week before he was ready to talk with me about how to put the brakes on the wedding machine.

Kara, my best friend from high school, said I broke off my engagement because Miles wasn’t like my father.

“Miles just isn’t like your dad, so deep down, Miles seems all wrong for you. Lots of women pick men who remind them of their dads,” Kara said the evening I called off the wedding. I had gone to her place after breaking
the news to Miles, needing moral support and one of Kara’s famed herbal teas. Kara’s navy pilot husband, Tom, was on a two-week exercise, and their infant son was asleep in his crib. Her house was quiet.

“That doesn’t make any sense.” I held the hot mug to my forehead to melt the tension headache that was swelling under skin and bone. “Why would I be looking for a man like my dad? He left my mother for another woman.”

“But that’s just one of only a few things about him that disappointed you—”

“That’s a pretty big thing.”

Kara leaned in over the kitchen table. “Everything else about him, you kind of admire.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Okay, well, maybe it’s not admiration, but it’s what you are comfortable with.”

I lowered the mug. “One of your psych professors tell you this?”

“Doesn’t matter if one of them did. You measure every man against your dad. Even the not-so-great qualities you measure up against your dad’s not-so-great qualities. Miles isn’t anything like your dad.”

“Which is a good thing.”

“It actually shouldn’t matter, right? It shouldn’t be a good or bad thing how much or how little the guy a girl marries compares with her dad. Except for you, it does seem to matter. I’ve been watching you date since high school, Meg.”

I had sat back in my chair, dumbfounded. “Not that I agree with you, but if you had doubts about me marrying Miles, why didn’t you say something?”

Kara shrugged. “I thought it was a good thing you decided not to hold Miles to a standard he couldn’t meet. And shouldn’t have to. But if you don’t love him, Meg, you shouldn’t marry him. And that’s what you’re telling me, right? You don’t love him?”

I took just a moment before answering, to reassess the reason I’d just called off my wedding. “I don’t miss him when he’s away. Shouldn’t I miss him when he’s on a business trip? Don’t you miss Tom when he’s not here?”

Kara reached out to squeeze my hand. “Like my heart is missing from my body.”

I winced now at the memory of those words and drained my tea to wash it away.

I had done the right thing.

I stepped back inside the cottage and set my cup on the kitchen counter next to files I had brought home from work. The printed pages of Sofia Borelli’s first two chapters peeked out of the Manila folder I put them in just before leaving. I had originally thought maybe I’d read the chapters before dinner. I stared at the folder now, though not truly seeing it, my thoughts in a jumble. Alex, on the oval throw rug by the back door, stretched and blinked, acknowledging my presence with a closed-mouth murmur. Then he curled back into a wheel of fur and closed his eyes.

I grabbed my keys and purse and left.

A cerulean twilight was falling across the coast as I maneuvered my car up North Torrey Pines Road toward the Melting Pot.

As I waited at the traffic light by the university, I pondered whether or not I should tell my mother that Dad seemed deeply troubled about something. Maybe I should wait until I knew what it was and if he even wanted my mother to know.

The light turned green, and I turned onto La Jolla Village Drive. A cascade of crimson taillights glimmered on the boulevard as it spread downward toward the interstate and the rest of upper La Jolla. As I joined the display of gleaming lights, I had the uncanny feeling that everything was about to change.

My father never knew his parents. He was born Paolo Orsini, the first and only son, a few months after his father’s sudden death. When his mother remarried, as young titled women do, she left behind my father and his older sister. His mother died not long after her second marriage. An uncle, a cardinal my father barely knew, saw to his unbending upbringing as a future duke.

Sometimes I comfort myself with this knowledge of where he came from. When I think of the life my father knew before he became a man, I can imagine why I seldom saw him smile.

Anguish is a tutor, just as privilege is.

5

I handed my keys to the parking valet at the Melting Pot and pulled my linen jacket around my shoulders. A chilling breeze had cooled the air, and I couldn’t remember if I had closed the bathroom window. I laughed as I considered how my mother would react if I’d said that out loud and in her hearing. We’d be in the car and headed back to the cottage to make sure. An open window didn’t just let chilly air inside; it also provided access for a would-be burglar. Never mind that the window was only big enough for a six-year-old to fit through. A resourceful robber could easily finagle a six-year-old into crawling through the window and opening the front door for him for five bucks. Not that he
would
, but that he
could
, and that made all the difference. She’d be unable to enjoy her fondue until I had made sure the window was closed.

Mom had become cautious after the divorce—about everything. And I guess I became a dreamer. There had been this secure life that I knew, where I lived in a house near my nonna and her Florentine echoes, where I had a mom and a dad, and
custody
was a word only policemen used. After the divorce I liked to dream about my old, safe life, and my mother liked to protect her new one. In that one tiny way, we were the same. At some point I stopped dreaming, but she never seemed to drop her caution. She wore it comfortably like a favorite hairstyle.

My mother’s cautious life has kept her looking young; she eats sensibly, watches her weight, wears sunscreen even on rainy days, and gets a good
night’s sleep every night. I have wondered more than once what my father thinks of how gracefully his former wife has aged in the years since the divorce. She is still very pretty. And they had been in love once.

Inside the restaurant I told the hostess I was meeting my mother and that the reservation was under the name Elaine Pomeroy.

“Yes. They are already seated. Right this way.”

They?

I opened my mouth to comment, but the hostess was already walking away. I fell in step behind her, ready to make a course correction. But then I saw my mother’s head at a booth near a wall. And another head across from her.

A younger man.

I closed my eyes for a second, incredulous. My careful mother was no fan of blind dates or online pairing. The risk of finding yourself being stalked by a psychopath—or at the very least pestered incessantly—was enough to keep her out of both camps and advising me to do the same. But she wasn’t above a little maternal matchmaking from time to time, since eligible men she deemed suitable had obviously already passed her scrutiny. She had offered a time or two to introduce me to so-and-so’s nephew or son or personal trainer. I had declined. I don’t need or want my mother’s assistance in finding a husband, as she puts it. She knows this.

So I opened my eyes to reward my mother with a dagger look before the man turned his head at my approach. But she missed it.

I arrived at the booth, and the man looked up. He was nice looking, a few years older than me. Late thirties, perhaps. Dark hair fashionably cut
and gelled into wavy submission. Tufts of premature gray at the temples. Nickel-hued, rimless glasses. Kind face. Ringless left hand. A bit stocky. He smiled at me.

“Here we are,” the hostess said, turning her head to me, looking for direction as to which side of the booth to seat me.

“Here, sit by me, Meg.” My mother scooted over and patted the empty space next to her.

I hesitated, waiting for my mother to make eye contact and get the full effect of my wordless annoyance. But she just smiled up at me and again patted the seat. She looked calm and elegant in a silky Indian-print blouse and silver jewelry.

I slid into the booth.

“I’m so glad you could come tonight, sweetheart,” my mother said brightly. She turned her attention to the man across the table. “Devon, this is my daughter, Meg. Meg, Devon Sheller.”

Devon Sheller reached across the table to shake my hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Meg. I’ve heard so much about you.” His teeth were perfectly straight and glistening white.

I took his hand and shook it lightly. “Uh, yes. Nice to meet you as well.”

“Devon’s a pharmacist. He works at Rady Children’s Hospital. He’s been there for what, five years?” My mother raised a glass of water and took a sip.

“Just about,” Devon replied.

“That must be very interesting,” I said woodenly. Again I turned to my mother, but she was waving a waitress over.

“Could you bring us a bottle of Pinot Grigio? The one from Australia? I liked that one last time.”

The waitress smiled, nodded, and walked away.

“Your mother tells me you’re an editor with a publishing house in La Jolla,” Devon said.

“Yes. Yes, that’s right. Crowne and Castillo. They publish travel books.”

“She’s quite a wordsmith,” my mother said. “They made her an editor after only four years. I’m so proud of her.”

“You probably have the more interesting job, then,” Devon said politely. “I suppose you get to travel a lot?”

A common misconception. You don’t need to go to Morocco to line edit a book about sightseeing in Marrakesh. “Um. Not as much as I’d like, actually.”

My mother patted my hand. “I, for one, am glad she doesn’t have to travel to all the places her authors write about. The world is so uncertain. Every time you turn around, it seems another nation is at war. I don’t think it’s very safe to travel these days. Look, here’s the wine.”

As the waitress poured, I chanced a peek at Devon. He was looking over the rims of his glasses at my mother, a thoughtful look on his face. He had probably just figured out my mother hadn’t told me that she had set this up. It was a rather awkward position in which to put a nice man, I thought. Asking him to dinner to meet me and then not telling him that I would have no idea he’d be there.

The waitress walked away, and my mother raised her glass. “To good food and great company!”

Devon smiled at her, a bit uneasily, and raised his glass.

In spite of my frustration with my mother, I felt bad for him. He was clearly sensing the tension in the situation. And he seemed a nice enough guy. She should’ve told him. She should’ve told us both.