The Ring on Her Finger (35 page)

She stuck her foot between the door and the jamb to stop its motion. “Don’t be daft. Of course you don’t want it, you great git. It was only an excuse for me to come up here. I want to talk to you.”

He gave the door a halfhearted shove against her foot, then sighed and pulled it open. Rosemary strode to the kitchen and put his supper in the fridge, then returned to the living room, where he had slumped like a blob onto the sofa. His jeans and T-shirt were exceedingly rumpled and all the worse for wear. Much like Max himself.

“I’m only going to say this once,” she told him. She positioned herself in front of him, crossing her arms over her midsection to indicate she would brook no nonsense from him. “Are you listening, Max? It’s very important that you hear what I have to say.”

He looked up grudgingly. “Are you going to tell me I’ve got it all wrong? That I’m being unfair? That I should give Lucy a chance to explain? And I should forgive her for lying to me from the first second I met her?”

“No. I’m going to tell you something else. Are you listening?”

“Yeah.”

“Fine. Then here it is. Two weeks ago, I found out a man I fell in love with had sex with me because someone else wagered with him, on a horse, no less, that he couldn’t. A horse, Max. Someone bet this man a horse that he couldn’t bed me within a month’s time. And the man did. Bed me, I mean. For a horse. A horse, Max,” she repeated, just in case he missed that part.

His mouth dropped open, as if he couldn’t quite believe what she was saying. “Some guy tricked you into having sex with him so he could win a horse?”

“Essentially, yes. It was actually for a good deal on a horse, but it was a horse, nonetheless.”

“A horse,” he repeated.

“A horse,” she confirmed.

“Well, that sucks.”

“Yes, it was appalling.”

“You must want to kill the guy.”

“I did when I first found out what he had done. Of course I did.”

When she didn’t elaborate, he asked, “So then...did you kill him?”

“No, I told him I’d marry him.”

Max blinked several times in rapid succession. Then he said, “Huh?”

“I told this man who bedded me in exchange for a good deal on a horse—a horse, Max—that I loved him and would be his wife.”

He said nothing, only continued to stare at her as if she’d lost her mind. Which perhaps she had, since she was crazy in love, but there it was all the same.

“I told him that, Max,” she continued matter-of-factly, “because, after I talked to him this morning, I realized I had it all wrong. That I was being unfair. That I should have given him a chance to explain, before I concluded for myself that he was a despicable human being.” She let those observations sink in for a moment before adding, “And I realized I should forgive him for lying to me from the first second I met him, since everything—everything, Max—changed between him and me from that first moment to the last.”

She dropped her hands to her sides and seated herself on the sofa beside him. He was still pretty much a blob, but he seemed to be listening, which was all Rosemary could ask of him.

“I realized this morning,” she said more gently, “that, even though this man I love did a terrible thing, he wasn’t a terrible person. He deserved my forgiveness. It would have been unfair to him had I not given it.” She paused another moment before concluding, “And I realized something else, too. That I should have known from the outset, that, at his core, he was a decent man all along. Otherwise, I never would have responded to him in the first place.”

Max turned to look at her, as if only now considering the possibility of such a thing. His expression didn’t seem quite as hard as it was before, and there was something in his eyes that made her think he was mulling over what she said. What conclusions he might draw, however, remained to be seen.

“Sometimes, Max, people do things they know they shouldn’t, because they don’t think those things through. Then they realize what they’re doing is wrong because it’s hurting other people. But by then, they don’t know how to go back and start over again, or they don’t have the opportunity. Sometimes, they need—and deserve—a second chance. And sometimes they need a little help getting it.”

His expression changed again, to one she couldn’t decipher. But she told herself not to be troubled. Max was a decent man, too.

“Lucy will come back to Harborcourt,” she said. “She’ll come back for a lot of reasons, but mostly she’ll come back because she loves you. She told me herself that you were important to her, and I got the feeling from my conversations with her that there hasn’t been much in her life that she’s considered important. She spent two days trying to find Sylvie, Max, because she knew you deserved to be happy. But she needs to know she’s important to you, too. She needs to know she is a part of that happiness, or she won’t even try.”

At this, his expression went slack, something Rosemary took to be a good sign.

“Don’t blow this, Max,” she said. “Yes, you made a mistake once, and a bad thing happened. But something good came out of that bad thing, at least for Sylvie. Now it’s your turn to find something good. It’s been five years,” she added. “It’s time to get on with your life. Don’t let your stupid self-pity get in the way of what you know, deep down, you deserve. Don’t be such a coward.”

At her last words, Max’s eyes narrowed, sparking with something akin to anger. Good. Anger was better than self-pity and cowardice. It was more active. Max needed to be active now. He needed to take charge. It was long past due.

Having said her piece, and feeling confident of his response, Rosemary stood and made her way out of his apartment. She’d done what she’d come to do, had said what she’d needed to say. Max was smart enough to connect the rest of the dots by himself. She only hoped he would be brave enough to do the right thing.

After the door clicked shut behind Rosemary, Max pushed himself off the sofa and began to pace. What did she know about his situation? Her devastation was nothing compared to his. Hell, Rosemary had a happy ending for hers. Women. They didn’t understand a damned thing about treachery. What Max needed was another bad, warm beer, to dull the edges of the cold misery that had sunk so deep inside him. Then he decided a bad, warm beer wouldn’t be enough for that. What he needed was something really bad. Something that would make him feel really miserable. Something that would punish him harder and allow him to...to...to...

...to wallow in his self-pity and cowardice for the rest of his life.

He stopped short as Rosemary’s words echoed in his head, then fell back against the sofa with a heartfelt “Oof.” Was that really what he was doing? Yeah, he’d known he was making himself miserable for the last five years to punish himself for what he’d done to Sylvie. But had there been more to it than that? Had he really been driven as much by self-pity as he had by guilt? By a fear of moving forward with his life? If that was the case, then he really was a lame excuse for a human being. Sylvie’s loss had been far greater than his, and look how she turned her life around. She’d had to overcome infinitely more obstacles than Max, and she did it with tremendous success.

Oh, man...

Maybe what Rosemary said—well, some of it, anyway—made sense. Maybe his efforts to punish himself for what happened to Sylvie had been mixed with a fear of racing—of living—again. By giving away everything he owned, he’d made himself penitent, but maybe he’d also been trying to abandon responsibility for anything, or anyone, again. While he was castigating himself for his former excessive lifestyle, maybe he’d swung too far the other way and become just as excessive at living an ascetic lifestyle. In trying to make restitution for the way he’d lived his past life and the way he’d hurt Sylvie, maybe he’d been hiding from life instead, for fear of hurting someone else—including himself.

And maybe by giving up on Lucy so quickly, he was ensuring he stayed hidden and hurt forever. His twisted subconscious had drawn the twisted conclusion that by pushing her away, he didn’t have to risk losing her. So he sabotaged the relationship before it became too important.

Which just showed how stupid his subconscious was, because Lucy became important to him the minute he met her. Now he could lose her because he was too scared to take a chance.

Ultimately, though, ironically, it wasn’t Rosemary’s speech that made Max rethink his convictions about his relationship with Lucy. It was two little words he had spoken himself. Before everything fell apart that day, Lucy told him he wouldn’t like what she was going to tell him, but that he had to let her explain. She said he would have to remember she loved him and would never do anything to hurt him. She made him to promise he would do those things. And how did Max respond?

He said, I promise.

He promised to remember she loved him. And really, he did remember that. It was the reason he was having so much trouble dealing with everything else. He knew Lucy loved him. He just couldn’t understand why she would love him and still find it necessary to keep secrets from him, especially since she knew he loved her, too.

She did know that, didn’t she?

His thoughts halted right there. Lucy must know he loved her. He had told her often enough, hadn’t he? It had been easy to tell her he loved her, because he knew she loved him, too. He knew that because she had shown him, by hunting down Sylvie and getting her to contact him to tell him how she’d rebuilt her life. And he, in turn, had shown Lucy how much he loved her by...by...by...

Okay, so maybe he hadn’t done anything to show her how much he loved her, but she must know. He had told her. Lots of times. Then he remembered what she said about her mother that one night. About how her mother never noticed or cared when Lucy was embarrassed or uncomfortable. He remembered other things she said over the past two weeks, too. About her dyslexia and how her family had always refused to acknowledge it, instead preferring to think she was stupid and lazy. About how her mother and father both placed more importance on superficialities than they did on what was inside a person.

It didn’t take a genius to conclude that Lucy’s parents hadn’t shown much affection to a child they considered an imperfection. No one in Lucy’s life had really shown her how much they cared for her. So maybe she had a little trouble believing it when someone said they loved her.

Man, bad, warm beer sure did make a person philosophical.

Maybe he’d been too quick to make assumptions about Lucy—and himself—that afternoon. Maybe he should have remembered a few things about her—and himself—before jumping to conclusions. Maybe he had been, you know, unfair to her. Maybe he should have given her a chance to explain. Though, handcuffed and surrounded by G-men, her explanation probably wouldn’t have been the best one she could offer.

So maybe he should do something. Maybe he shouldn’t wait for her to come back to Harborcourt. Maybe he should go find her instead. Show her how much he cared about her. How much he loved her.

He had opened his closet door, pulled down his tattered weekender and unzipped it before he even realized what he was planning to do. The good thing about living the life of an ascetic was that it was really easy to pack for a trip. The bad thing was having absolutely no money to pay for that trip, even if the nuns in Rome always found a good use for his paychecks.

Three days ’til payday, he calculated. And it would probably be just enough for a bus ticket and provisions to get him to Rhode Island. Surely, the nuns would understand this once...

Less than a week after her arrest, Lucy had been restored to the bosom of her loving family, reinstated in her room at the Hollander homestead, returned to her job driving copies of In the Kitchen with Bitsy and Friends to viable receptacles, and relieved of all charges against her. In other words, her life had reverted to exactly what it was before the Archie fiasco.

In other words, Lucy was miserable. Funny how the whole time she was living a lie, her life felt more honest and genuine than it had ever felt when she was living the truth. Or maybe that wasn’t so funny. Maybe that just, you know, sucked.

Still, for the first time in weeks, she was free to do as she pleased without having to worry about being found out. As luck—or some other strange and mysterious force with absolutely no sense of humor—would have it, Archie did indeed turn out to be a genius at designing technology. Really sophisticated, really tiny technology. He was still a moron, though, as evidenced by his decision to sell said miniature technology to the highest bidder, instead of turning it over to his employers—the United States government—as he had sworn an oath to do when hired to design it. In fact, he exceeded his moronic potential by selling it not just to the highest bidder, but to any bidder who made a halfway decent offer. Even though he told all bidders he was giving them an exclusive. And even though he sold the technology to some bidders for less than he sold it to others. Not surprisingly, he sold it to the wrong people—lots of them—and they all took exception when the exclusive arrangement he’d promised turned out to be not so exclusive after all.

One group that was particularly offended sent a man to hammer home a message to Archie—literally, since he was a hired assassin known as “The Hammer,” and came armed with a ball peen model he planned to use on Archie’s moronic head. Just in case the hammer failed, however, the assassin—who went by many monikers on the street, including “Georgie Jakes”—also brought along a Saturday night special. And a boning knife. And arsenic. And a brick. Archie, however, in a momentary lack of moronity, somehow sensed danger—probably because of all the death threats he’d been receiving on a regular basis—and armed himself with a Glock 9 mm. Which, it turned out, came in handy when Georgie showed up at his house.

Long story short, Archie wasn’t killed, Georgie was, though at the time of the body’s discovery, the police hadn’t known the particulars of the situation. Upon arresting Archie, hearing his version of things, and checking them out, they were forced to conclude that his biggest crime might very well be Failure to Have a Functioning Brain—not that he wouldn’t be doing time for a variety of other things, too. It helped considerably that he kept tapes of the death threats against him, as well as video of the altercation at his home—in addition to being an exceptional moron and a technological genius, he was also a colossal paranoid who had long ago installed security cameras in his apartment.