His Cinderella Next Door Page 14

  Not just by Oscar.

  But by herself.

  Then, she glanced at the clock, and frowned.

  She was really turned around. It was afternoon, nearly four o’clock. She didn’t sleep in the afternoon.

  It was jet lag, she told herself.

  But another part of her whispered that maybe she was...

  She leaped from the bed and threw on the shirt Oscar had taken off earlier. She’d take that pill, right now.

  She did up the buttons on his shirt, loving how it felt on her, how it touched her thigh, and reminded her of the differences in their sizes, how perfectly their differences melded together, made them fit together.

  The shirt smelled of him, and it increased that sense of belonging here and to each other.

  Hadn’t he even said that?

  It seemed so long ago. On their first shopping excursion. There was only one time a woman should wear a man’s shirt.

  And this, she realized, with a sigh, was that time.

  “Oscar?”

  She padded out of his bedroom. The apartment was empty. She found her purse, tossed on the couch—as if she lived here—and picked through it for the pills. She realized, when she found them, and confirmed that she had missed starting again on the appointed day, that she didn’t know a very important fact. If you were pregnant, and then resumed taking pills, could it harm the baby?

  Baby.

  The very thought made her go weak with longing.

  She thought of that couple with their baby and Golden Retriever that she had seen on the picnic blanket that long-ago day.

  To have a baby with the man you loved...

  But fear rocketed through her. It would be so wrong. Backward. Oscar was a traditional kind of guy. He had even said it, and recently. He felt weddings should come before babies.

  If she were pregnant, Oscar was that guy. The one you could trust to do the right thing.

  She frowned. Did she want to be with Oscar because he was doing the right thing? She realized she was making all kinds of assumptions because of what had unfolded over the last few days.

  But neither of them had said it.

  The words were missing.

  The feeling was there, Molly told herself firmly. She knew him.

  But caring about someone and being their best friend was quite different than a declaration of love. Waking up with a sensation of belonging and completion was not a substitute for the kind of commitment that was needed to bring a new life into the world.

  Molly nearly jumped out of her skin when the doorbell rang. Somehow, this apartment had felt like a small oasis, disconnected from the rest of the world. She hadn’t even known it had a doorbell. The building was so secure. Somehow, she didn’t think the girl guides were allowed in to go door-to-door with cookies.

  She got up and tiptoed to the door and put her eye to the peephole.

  Molly felt the thing she so rarely felt in her life. She swung back from the door, then told herself it couldn’t be, and made herself look out the peephole again.

  No, no doubt about it. It was Oscar’s mother—perfectly coiffed, in a coral Chanel suit, her face suspiciously wrinkle-free—standing outside the door. Mrs. Clark rang the bell again.

  “Yoo-hoo, darling,” she called quietly. “I know why you called. I knew you wouldn’t want to be alone today.”

  Molly shrank against the wall beside the door, not even daring to breathe. After her last encounter with Mrs. Clark six years ago, she didn’t want Oscar’s mother to see her here, and she particularly did not want to be caught running around Oscar’s apartment in one of his shirts and nothing else.

  She closed her eyes. A sound forced them open. Please, she whispered inwardly, don’t be what I think it is.

  Which was a key being inserted in the door. But under her horrified gaze, Molly watched as the lock turned.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THE DOOR SQUEAKED OPEN, and Mrs. Clark swept into the room in a cloud of perfume. Georgie, who had been sleeping on the couch, startled awake, glared at the intruder and then, with an indignant yowl—Molly was not sure if it was recognition—leaped from the couch and marched from the room, tail in the air.

  Mrs. Clark watched the cat with naked dislike and then saw Molly, still tucked against the wall beside the door. Her mouth formed a perfect, surprised O. But her surprise didn’t last very long. Her eyes narrowed.

  “Molly Bentwell,” she said, managing to load Molly’s name with enough disapproval that Molly cringed inwardly, though she let nothing—she hoped—show outwardly.

  “Mrs. Clark,” she said evenly.

  “I thought you were half a world away,” Mrs. Clark said, disparagingly. “Taking pictures of monkeys, or something.”

  A whole career dismissed in one hateful sentence.

  “I do wildlife photography,” Molly said, keeping her tone level, despite the fact she was seeing red. “It’s a little more complex than taking pictures of monkeys.”

  Mrs. Clark waved a hand, as if a fly had landed on her nose. “Really, it’s exactly the kind of work I always expected you would find.”

  How was she making a perfectly respectable profession seem as if it were somehow lacking respectability?

  Of course, respectability in Mrs. Clarks’s world would be very narrowly defined.

  “Can I ask what you are doing trotting around my son’s apartment in an outfit like that?”

  There was her narrow definition of respectable, right there. Molly could feel her cheeks burning. How dare Mrs. Clark cast the situation with Oscar in that light? As if it were cheap, and impulsive and base?

  And yet, by appearances alone, would it not seem as if Mrs. Clark were correct.?

  “Always the train wreck, Molly,” Mrs. Clark said, with a sad shake of her head. “Hardly a week went by without you leading my poor Oscar on some kind of misguided escapade. Police, arrests, hospital visits, mischief reports from school. We just aren’t the kind of people who enjoy that kind of activity and attention.”

  We.

  With Molly Bentwell on one side of the great divide, and the Clarks on the other. All the Clarks. Did it hurt so much because there was truth in it?

  “I’d ask again you what you’re doing here,” Mrs. Clark said, her gaze sweeping Molly, “but now it’s perfectly obvious. You’ve started up right where you left off, it would appear. Why would you horn in to our family at a time like this, though? Especially today. It’s unbelievably cheap and insensitive to insert yourself in our pain over Ralph. Of course, I wouldn’t expect you to know some events are sacred within families.”

  “What does that mean?” Molly asked, even though she knew she was going to be sorry she had.

  Mrs. Clark sighed. “I’m not without sympathy for you, Molly, I’m really not. I mean your father...” Her voice drifted off. “You really were like a child raised by a wolf. It’s no wonder you have so few skills. It’s no wonder you look at what we have and would go to any length to get it.”

  “My father did the best he knew how,” she said tersely.

  “Of course he did, dear,” Mrs. Clark said, her soothing tone belying her total insincerity.

  “I remember my childhood with extreme affection.”

  “What child wouldn’t? The lack of rules, no structure, bad behavior encouraged. Your father thought it was hilarious when the two of you were arrested.”

  “For breaking into a swimming pool, after hours,” Molly reminded her.

  “One thing does lead to another.”

  “But it didn’t.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Then he broke his arm. Riding horses he did not have permission to ride.”

  Who saw adolescent hijinks through this lens?

  “I did not horn in on your grief for Ralphie. Oscar invited me here.”

  In fac
t, she could see that one line of his email. Come. She wanted to cling to it, as if it were a lifeline.

  “Don’t you know when someone is merely being polite?”

  Suddenly, Molly saw there was no sense trying to convince Mrs. Clark of her worthiness. That boat had sailed a long time ago. It was not helped by the fact she was now standing barefoot in front of her lover’s mother in a state of undress.

  “I’ll just go get dressed,” she said woodenly.

  When she reappeared a few minutes later, she was caught up short as she entered the living room. Mrs. Clark was sitting on the sofa.

  And she had Molly’s phone in her hand.

  Her mouth was twisted in a sneer of complete contempt. “Your search engine was open,” she said. “It seems you were researching pregnancy.”

  “It’s extraordinarily rude to snoop through other people’s phones,” Molly said.

  Mrs. Clark appeared unchastised. “It’s just as I feared all those years ago. You were intent on trapping him then, and you are intent on trapping him now.”

  There was, of course, the desire to explain, the need to be respected, and accepted. She loved Oscar. Naturally, she wanted the approval of his mother.

  But she could see in those hardened features that was the one thing she would never get from Mrs. Clark.

  “What will it cost me this time?” his mother said with a sigh.

  To get rid of her.

  It would be insulting, except that Molly had allowed herself to be bought all those years ago. And now, she had risked a pregnancy, the very thing she felt she had been falsely accused of.

  Maybe there was the awful possibility Mrs. Clark saw her more clearly than she saw herself.

  Her need for everything Oscar offered. Stability. Security. Protection. Acceptance. Love.

  But Mrs. Clark already saw that Molly would never fit in his world. Never. That would be the price for him if he accepted her love.

  And now, because she might be pregnant, she would never know. She had been reckless, careless, just like her father... Everything that this woman sitting before her despised.

  She would never know if Oscar would have turned his back on his world for love of her.

  Or if he would have done it only because there might be a baby.

  Either way, she could not ask that kind of sacrifice of him. She loved him. And she didn’t want him to have to give up anything, let alone the respect and acceptance of his whole world, because of her.

  Without a word, Molly went and held out her hand. Mrs. Clark placed the phone in it.

  “It won’t cost you anything to get rid of me,” Molly said quietly. “I don’t want anything to do with you or from you. I find it funny that you think I would want anything you have. I always felt sorry for Oscar and Ralph, being part of your soulless world that always had to look so good. And that always felt so bad.”

  “You felt sorry for my children?” Mrs. Clark said, something satisfyingly shrill in her voice. “Why, you little...upstart.”

  Allowing herself the satisfaction of that tiny victory, Molly went back to her room and packed her bag. She put only the things in it she had come with. Assuming his mother would be in the guest room, she carefully made the bed, and took everything else. She went into his room and stuffed it way in the back of his closet.

  This time together with Oscar was going to be hard enough to get over without reminding herself of him every time she put on her underwear.

  It would only serve to remind her, too, of who she had become when she was with him.

  Georgie was in the middle of his bed. Molly went and sank down just briefly, held her cat to her, and felt the deep purr calm her and give her the strength she needed. She set the cat down.

  She would not cry. She would be the girl her father had always wanted her to be: proud, fierce, independent.

  Bentwells were not sissies.

  Not even if their hearts were breaking in two.

  Putting her bag over her shoulder, she took a deep breath, and put her chin up. She sailed out through the living room and out the door without a single glance back at Mrs. Clark.

  Oscar burst back into his apartment. It had taken longer than he expected to find the ring. He wanted it to be perfect.

  And for Molly, that would mean nothing garish. Nothing too large. Nothing ostentatious. It had taken him three jewelry stores until he had found exactly the right one, a beautiful simple band, with a single small solitaire, multifaceted and brilliant—just like Molly—winking at its center.

  Tonight, after dinner, he would ask her. He went over it in his mind. In the restaurant? Maybe he could have the ring hidden in a dessert dish, or a rose. Or would she’d like it better if, as they were walking home, hand in hand, he just fell down on one knee? And after she said yes, they’d come back here to the apartment, and he’d show her how to dance. Maybe on the deck, beside the pool, under the stars.

  It could give new meaning to dancing with the stars. He couldn’t wait to make her laugh by saying that to her.

  “Molly!” He stopped in the doorway. Some strange fragrance tickled his nostrils. For a moment, he thought, I know that scent. Definitely not Molly...but his desire to see her made him dismiss anything that was not her.

  “Molly!”

  His voice rang back at him. Surely she wasn’t still sleeping? He went into his bedroom. The bed was rumpled, and the cat was there, but Molly wasn’t. He raced to her room. Empty. The bed was neatly made. She clearly hadn’t slept in it for a while. He cocked his head, listening for the shower. Nothing.

  He raced through the apartment and out to the pool.

  But Molly wasn’t anywhere. He went back to the spare bedroom. It struck him, suddenly, that it felt empty. He didn’t see her bag. He went and opened a bureau drawer. Empty.

  Where was Molly? It felt as if that was all that mattered to him. He took out his cell phone and texted her.

  Maybe he hadn’t been abandoned. There was probably an explanation. She had gone to get something to surprise him tonight, just as he had her.

  And she took her travel bag with her to do it? a cynical voice inside of him said.

  It hit him then, and it hit him hard.

  It was his brother’s birthday. Molly was gone. He didn’t think he could get through the next hours, days and weeks carrying the burden of the loss.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  MOLLY SAT IN the airport lounge, waiting for a flight. The pings started coming on her phone, fast and furious.

  All of the messages were from Oscar.

  Where are you? What happened? What’s going on?

  Obviously, there was no point in honesty here. She couldn’t exactly say your mother thinks I’m a tramp, and that I’m trying to entrap you. And I might be pregnant, so maybe she’s right.

  She could discern the frantic worry in each of his messages, so she texted back.

  So sorry to leave on such short notice. I’ve had some business things come up that I have to look after. It was urgent.

  Are you kidding me? No goodbye? Just out the door?

  You know me...a little lacking in social graces. Don’t get me wrong, I had a glorious time.

  It’s his birthday.

  For a moment, weakness nearly doubled her over. It was Ralphie’s birthday. They had to be together. That had been the plan, all along.

  Her father had been right. His entire life he had scorned plans.

  And this was why. They went awry. Tentatively, she responded.

  Your mother suggested I was intruding on a private family moment.

  He didn’t answer and her phone began to ring instantly. She suddenly felt weary, emotionally wrung out.

  Just like last time, his mother had given her an excuse to do what she wanted to do, anyway. Run from the terrible complexities, the potential for
pain, of loving someone the way she loved Oscar.

  Her phone began ringing again and then went to voice mail.

  Oops, there’s my plane. Till next time.

  She shut off her phone. She laid her head on the back of the chair. And she wept. And when she was done, she wiped her eyes, blew her nose and vowed that was it.

  It was not as if she had not done this before. Left him when it felt as if it would tear her in two to do it.

  And if her father had given her a gift, it was this one: she was tough, and she was resilient. She could outrun anything if she had to.

  She filled the days that followed by moving. Moving was always an excellent antidote for pain. Changing countries made it even more complex. She threw a dart at a map.

  Oslo, Norway.

  Why not? What did it matter? Her father would have approved.

  The pregnancy test came back negative, but warned her it could give a false negative if she took it too early.

  She went on assignment in Africa. No nausea, no headaches, no exhaustion, despite moving and jet lag.

  She took the test again, still negative.

  Her new neighbors in Oslo had a baby. She took photos of it. Their friends wanted a session. And then their friends wanted a session. And then their friends wondered if she would think about doing a wedding...

  Her period came.

  Molly didn’t feel relieved. Not at all. Her sense of loss and grief intensified.

  She started canceling assignments to do baby pictures. She thought the babies might be a trigger, but in fact, she loved immersing herself in baby smiles, and baby fat, and baby toys, and baby smells.

  Slowly, it dawned on her that while leaving Oscar had broken her in two, something about those days with him had made her better.

  When she looked at her work, Molly saw a new dimension to it. Something in her was more open than it ever had been, and it showed in her photos.

  They were warmer, kinder, softer.