LITMIR.BIZ

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frowned and shifted between the sheets. Admittedly he was curious.

      Tomorrow he’d try to find out more about Marlow, something reassuring to report to the board. Maybe tell them he’d ask her to ease up. Worth a try. With Wellington Stores’ grand reopening on the horizon, he needed the board one hundred percent behind him. Even a small glitch was more of a glitch than he wanted.

      Because the sooner he could turn the company around, the sooner he could hand the running of it back to his father, and leave again.

      LUCY MARLOW SLIPPED out of the bed she shared with Link in their beautiful Cambridge condo and tiptoed out of the room. Three in the morning and she hadn’t even managed to close her eyes. Insomnia wasn’t new to her, but lately she’d been bursting into tears for no apparent reason, and she couldn’t stay in bed and cry. Link would waken, he’d want to know what was wrong. And how often could she say “nothing” or “I don’t know” without him rolling his eyes as men had been rolling their eyes at those answers for centuries, maybe millennia?

      She went into their living room, chilly with the heat turned down at night, and curled up on the window seat, looking out at the parked cars on Garden Street. This time of year was always tough, when the calendar said ho ho ho, merry merry, happy happy, and somehow her mood and stress levels never quite made it there. Gifts to buy for Link, for Mom and Dad, for Krista, for Link’s relatives, her relatives, friends, coworkers. She made it harder on herself, she knew that, and Link was always telling her as if he thought she didn’t. Having to find the perfect presents, having to decorate the house, having to make cookies and volunteer and organize the office party…

      An old Volkswagen van putted by, like the relic her parents had when she was very young. That seemed to be enough to trigger the insane tears that were her all-too-regular visitors these days.

      Was this simple unhappiness? She didn’t feel unhappy, necessarily. She had a lovely home in a beautiful city. She was engaged to a man she loved, though he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get married or buy her a ring.

      They weren’t ready for children, Link said, and what difference did a piece of paper make in how they felt about each other?

      Logically? Intellectually? No difference.

      But emotionally…

      Well, women were the emotional ones, weren’t they. He’d marry her if she insisted, she knew that. But she couldn’t bring herself to insist. She didn’t ever want to be standing up at an altar without being one hundred percent sure the man next to her would rather be there than anywhere else in the world. Marriage should be entered into gladly and with light hearts.

      These days her heart was about as light as a brick.

      The beautiful, sad tears turned to fairly unattractive sobs she fought hard to keep as silent as possible. Link slept like a rock, but you never knew.

      Everything else about her life was going fine. She had a nice job as an administrative assistant in a law firm downtown. She’d chosen the work deliberately, to keep her mind and energies fresh for performing, though these days she’d made friends with her limitations there. Lucy’s natural reserve was her enemy on stage—people like Aimee would always get ahead. While Krista would cheerfully disembowel the poor woman, Lucy understood the casting decision.

      In retrospect, she’d taken the audition more to please Krista than herself anyway. Krista had enough ambition to spare for everyone. Lucy was a creature of habit, of routine. Unlike her sister, she wasn’t comfortable or happy constantly searching for new heights to scale.

      What was really important to her? Family, friends and Link. Not in that order of course. She had a close family, a lot of friends locally. The people in the law firm were wonderful and kind. Her boss, Alexis, was fair and pleasant. One of the lawyers, Josh, had even been flirting with her lately, and that was harmless fun.

      A thrill ran through her and she curled the fingers of her left hand, feeling the missing ring keenly tonight. Josh knew about Link, he knew about their so-called engagement, but he kept coming around, and lately she hadn’t done enough to discourage him. A ring would make her feel more taken, show the world she belonged to Link in a way she wasn’t sure the world knew right now. And maybe not her either.

      Because she was taken. Thoroughly. Just because Josh turned her insides over and around and upside down when he smiled at her…

      She spun suddenly to face the room. So? Plenty of happily married—or involved—people developed crushes which had no significance and faded. She’d had them, too, once or twice in the years she and Link had been together.

      The intensity of this one stemmed from it hitting when she was particularly vulnerable. When she and Link were having a particularly bad time. When she was not at all sure why or how to go about fixing whatever had gone wrong. Relationships inevitably encountered rough patches, but this one seemed…ominous. Lately she’d been wondering how much longer she could go on without listening to the doubting voices in her head, without looking at the discouraging signs along the way.

      Tonight she’d come home from singing at Eddie’s to find the dinner dishes still stacked in the sink, Link sprawled in front of the TV. She’d gone to him, kissed him, he’d mumbled a question about how the show had gone, and had barely noticed her response. Then she’d gone into the kitchen, cleaned up, made her lunch for the next day, hearing the canned laugh track mingle with Link’s occasional laughter, louder than his usual. It was hard not to feel as though he was rubbing it in that he was enjoying himself while she slaved.

      But she couldn’t think that way. Link worked hard, too—most architects did, long hours and often late—and she wanted him to have his wind-down time, his leisure.

      She just wanted him to need her with him enough so that maybe one day he’d turn off the TV and come in and help her. Really talk to her and really listen. The way he used to.

      But those things she had no control over. She wanted him, but she couldn’t make him want her.

      Lucy sighed and pulled her feet up on the window seat, arms around her knees. Big sister Krista would tell her to get therapy or go on antidepressants or kick herself out of it.

      Krista would tell her to leave Link and start a relationship with Josh.

      Krista had never been in love. Though what Lucy called love, Krista called codependency—or had once in a particularly bitter argument in the ongoing series of arguments they’d been having about Lucy’s relationship.

      Everything in Krista’s life was crystal clear, black or white, right or wrong. She knew unswervingly how everyone around her was supposed to behave in every situation she and everyone else found themselves in.

      Sometimes Lucy thought nothing would make her happier than for Krista to fall passionately, inextricably in love in a situation so complicated and hopeless that her world would turn upside down and she’d be reduced to angsting uncertainly over every aspect of her existence for hours at a time.

      But then, that wasn’t particularly sisterly or charitable of her, was it.

      Mom would say she was going through a stage, that love was hard and life had its yin and yang and she needed to buckle down and chin up and get through it.

      Dad would chuck her under the chin and wish fervently that his little girl would be happy, then go back to watching the Celtics.

      Link would look at her like why was she making such a big deal out of everything? With the implied “again” at the end. Life is beautiful, he’d say. You wake up, you do stuff you enjoy, you go to bed.

      Wake up. Do stuff. Go to bed. Every day. Yes, but there used to be more magic, even in that.

      The tears slowed; she sniffed and wiped them away with the back of her hand.

      A slight sound made her jump; she turned to see Link, bed-ruffled, puzzled, half-asleep, swaying in the doorway, his tall, beautifully muscled body illuminated by the white light from the street behind her.

      “Lucy.”

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