LITMIR.BIZ

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Troy with dismay. “For a while I might be missed. But not for long. No one’s irreplaceable.”

      “Not even Lucy?” she flashed with the first show of temper he’d seen.

      Her question flicked him on the raw. And, of course, he had no answer for her. “Shall I chop all these onions?” he said evenly.

      “Half would be plenty.” Whisking the eggs vigorously, she added, “I’ve never married, Troy. I’m beginning to feel it’s time I did. Particularly if I want a child.”

      The knife in his hands didn’t even falter. “You’re an exceptionally attractive woman. Any number of men would find it a privilege and an adventure to be married to you.”

      “But not you.”

      “No, Martine. Not me.”

      She banged the bowl of eggs down on the counter so hard that the yellow liquid swirled to the rim. “Later on I’ll no doubt be grateful that we had this conversation. That you didn’t take me to bed. But for now I feel anything but grateful.”

      Troy was damned if he was going to feel guilty; as far as he was concerned he hadn’t done one single thing to encourage her to fall in love with him. Quite suddenly the stark, efficient kitchen, the perceptive and beautiful woman glaring at him across the expanse of countertop, the false domesticity of the scene, were all too much for him. He said, “Martine, why don’t we skip the omelette? I suspect neither one of us is in the mood for food or small talk—and we seem to have said anything else there is to say.”

      “Fine,” she snapped. “You can see yourself out.”

      He stood up and said truthfully, “If I’ve done anything to hurt you that wasn’t my intention, and I’m sorry. Goodnight.”

      Grabbing his jacket and tie on his way through the living-room, he flicked the lock on the door and stepped out into the corridor. The door shut smartly behind him. He chose the stairs rather than the elevator, taking them two at a time and feeling rather like a little boy let out of school.

      He’d learned one thing this evening. He wasn’t ready for any kind of emotional involvement.

      

      It wasn’t until Troy unlocked his own front door and stepped into the house where he’d lived with Lucy that his new-found sense of freedom evaporated. Although Lucy’s clothes were gone from the front closet, although her scent no longer lingered in the hallway and her voice didn’t call a welcome from upstairs, her stamp was everywhere—in every corner of the house.

      He walked across the hall and stood in the doorway of the living-room. It wasn’t an elegant room, like Martine’s, but it was full of color and unexpected treasures—ranging from the seashells Lucy had collected in the Virgin Islands, where they had met, to a collection of Tibetan singing-bowls they had found in a bazaar in India. She had had a brief craze for embroidering cushions, the rather uneven results of which were lying on every chair, and the vibrant, Impressionistic watercolor she had fallen in love with in Provence, and which he had taken enormous pleasure in buying for her, hung over the fireplace.

      Nothing matched; Troy knew that—an interior decorator would have thrown up her hands in despair. But somehow the room was redolent of Lucy’s warmth and love of life.

      He didn’t want Martine. Or anyone else like Martine. He wanted Lucy.

      In his mind’s eye he could picture the rest of the house very easily. The kitchen had never been Lucy’s favorite room, although she could make cheesecakes that melted in the mouth and she liked stir fries because no two ever came out the same. She had never used the copper pans that hung from the ceiling; rather, she had loved the way the sun shot turquoise fire from them late in the afternoon. The bathroom she had decorated in forest-green and scarlet as soon as they had moved in, because, she had said, every day with him felt like Christmas Day.

      The bedroom, for the sake of his sanity, he had stripped of all her touches.

      Reluctantly Troy came back to the present, to the reality of a house empty but for himself and his memories. As though pulled by an unseen hand, he walked upstairs and into the den. The photographs that had been in the bedroom were now in here. Lucy’s face laughed at him from within a gold frame on the bookshelves and in the informal snapshot on the pine desk her arms were wrapped around him, the blue waters of the Virgin Islands tingeing her eyes with the same vivid blue, her tangled mahogany curls standing out from her head like an aureole. Tall, beautiful Lucy, who, when she had married Troy, had made him happier than he had thought it was possible to be.

      And then, side by side on the shelf, there were the photos of Michael.

      Michael, their son. Who had died when he was seven months old, a year and a half ago. Who was the reason Lucy had left Troy alone in the big house on the bay.

      Blond curls, eyes the same color as Sarah’s, and a toothless grin that bespoke Michael’s delight in the world in which he had found himself.

      Troy turned on his heel and left the room, passing the door to the nursery as he went—a door that remained closed all the time. He walked downstairs again, his footsteps echoing in the hall, and in the kitchen took a pizza out of the freezer and thrust it in the oven. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he went to stand by the window, where the trees’ serrated black edges cut into a starspattered sky, and was achingly aware of the silence of the house, of his solitude and his loneliness.

      He was in limbo. Nowhere. Alone yet unable to be with anyone. Divorced from laughter and the small, cumulative pleasures of living with the woman he loved. Cut off from his sexuality and the deep erotic joy he had found in Lucy.

      He was thirty-seven years old.

      He wanted another child. He had loved being a father, and the thought of remaining childless filled him with a nameless dread. All too well as he stood there he could recall Sarah’s tiny movements, and her miniature perfection as she had lain trustingly in his arms. He wanted a family. Like sex, this was a normal enough human urge. Yet Lucy was denying him both of them.

      He moved his shoulders uneasily. The job he’d been offered today wouldn’t interest him nearly as much if Lucy were still living with him. He knew that as well as he knew that the sun would rise in the morning. He loved his present job—was more than fulfilled and challenged by it in every hour he spent in the hospital.

      So yet another thing that had been stolen from him was decisiveness. He was allowing his future career to depend on Lucy. He’d never sold the house they’d lived in because he kept hoping she’d come back to it. He couldn’t even take a lover, for God’s sake.

      What kind of a man was he?

      An empty shell, like the whelks and angel wings Lucy had scattered round the living-room.

      So what the hell was he going to do about it? Eat frozen pizza in a house that held nothing but memories for the rest of his life? Stay celibate because no other woman was Lucy?

      It was five months since he’d seen her. Last April he’d flown to Ottawa, where she was living, and pleaded with her to come back to him. White-faced, she’d refused. And like a beaten dog he’d crawled back home, only wanting privacy to lick his wounds.

      Dammit, he thought, that’s not good enough. Once, years ago, she’d told him that there was no use begging anyone for anything. So why had he wasted his time begging her for something she didn’t want to give? He’d never do that again. Never.

      His mind made another leap. Maybe, Troy thought, he was kidding himself that he was still in love with her. If he saw her again he might realize that he was clinging to something that existed only in his imagination: a prettified notion of undying love, a romantic fantasy that had no basis in reality.

      Like a limpet glued to its rock, he was still clasping the words he’d said on their wedding-day, and had meant with all his heart. “Til death us do part”. Death had parted them, all right. Though not quite in the way the marriage ceremony had pictured it.

      Could it be true?

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