My disguise was good; Susan didn’t notice me until I’d actually sat down across from her in her booth. I saw that she’d already gotten a drink for me, my usual Scotch and water.
She blinked at me in surprise.
“Alice?” she whispered.
“Yeah, it’s me,” I said.
“Your… your hair!” She sounded horrified. I pushed the curls that had slipped free from my cap back inside.
“Yeah, I needed to change it,” I said.
“What – what did you do?” she stammered. I shrugged.
“I bought hair dye at the drug store. I colored it in my bathroom. It’s a little more, uh, purple than I’d expected.”
She leaned back in her seat, looking as though she may need medical attention.
“You did it… yourself… in your bathroom…” she muttered to herself, shaking her head.
“Susan, did you really ask me to come here so you could talk to me about my hair?”
She sighed and sat up straighter.
“No, of course not,” she said.
“Then what do you want?”
“I needed to look you in the eye, Alice,” she said. “I… These past two weeks, I just keep asking myself how I could have misjudged someone so badly. I warned Harvey, at the beginning, that this thing he wanted to do could end just like this. But then I met you, and I generally have pretty good instincts about people. I just didn’t see you doing something like this. I thought it was going to be okay.”
“Susan, I don’t know what Harvey told you,” I said.
“Harvey won’t tell me anything,” she said. “He hardly leaves the house. He’s just… shut down.”
“Oh, god,” I groaned.
“So, I just have to know,” she said. “How much worse are you going to make this for us, Alice? Can we expect to see you talking to Barbara Walters soon on prime time TV? Maybe a bestselling tell-all book?”
“No, Susan!” I said. “I’m not talking to anyone!”
“You talked to someone.”
I looked down, ashamed.
“Yes, I did,” I said. “That was at the beginning, before I knew you, before I really knew Harvey. I found out who he was, realized what he’d done to my family… And I just reacted. I was angry, and that’s when I talked to Rose. But I changed my mind, Susan! I told her it was all off. I was going to finish the job, and that was going to be it. I swear.”
She looked at me for a long moment.
“God, I want to believe you, Alice,” she said. “Does Harvey know this?”
“I told him. I don’t know if he believes me or not.”
She was quiet, stirring her drink with her straw.
“I guess, if you were going to tell your story, we would have heard something about it by now,” she said at last.
“That will never happen,” I said. “I… I hate what happened to him. God, if you know how sick it makes me, remembering that night…” I picked up my napkin and wiped at my eyes.
“It wasn’t a lot of fun for us, either,” she said. She took a big breath, and looked me in the eye. “Okay, Alice. Maybe this is a stupid mistake, but for the sake of my own sanity, I’m going to believe you.”
“Thank you,” I said. I hesitated a moment, then reached across the table and squeezed her hand. She squeezed back, once.
“So,” she said, her tone the business-like clip that I’d come to expect from her. “What are you going to do now?”
I shook my head.
“I have no idea. I can’t work, at least not around here. I have some money, but that won’t last forever. I’m probably going to have to relocate, maybe take a different stage name, start all over.” The thought was depressing. I hadn’t exactly been a household name before working with Harvey, but the connections I had, I had worked hard for. Now all that would be gone.
She nodded.
“Well, at least he isn’t suing you for breach of contract,” she said.
“Oh god,” I said. “He could do that, couldn’t he?”
“Certainly. No one was more surprised than me when he didn’t,” she said. “I think… I think he wasn’t the only one of us who had a hard time believing the worst about you.”
Her words both soothed and hurt me.
“Susan…” I shook my head. “I know it’s nuts, but I miss him. Not the lifestyle, all of that, just him. I hardly even know why.”
“Alice, if you are telling me the truth about all this, then I truly am sorry that this happened to you. I’m sorry that working for my family has caused such problems for you. The fact is, when all is said and done, you’re the one who will be hurt by this the most, particularly if you really aren’t going to sell the story. Harvey and I, we’ll be fine. As obnoxious as they are now, reporters have a notoriously short attention span. They’ll have something else to write about soon, and we’ll still have our money, our empire. We’ll release a more advanced CAT scan machine or processing chip, and this story will be gone, just a footnote that polite company never mentions in our presence. When you have money and power, you’ll always have friends, or at least a good imitation of them.” She chuckled to herself. “It’s funny. They’re condemning you now, but the fact is, they do just as much pretending as you did, if not more. And… I’m not entirely convinced that the two of you were always just pretending.” She tilted her head and looked at me speculatively.
“None of that matters now,” I said. “I wish…” I shook my head. “But it doesn’t matter.”
She sighed, took a few bills from her wallet, and dropped them on the table for the drinks.
“Well, that’s a damn shame,” she said. “In my life, I see so little that isn’t pretend, that isn’t just put on. Finding something real... That’s a rare thing. Seems like a damn waste to me.”
“Susan…” I began.
“You take care of yourself, Alice,” she said. “I’m glad that I came to see you. I’m glad that I wasn’t so wrong about you.”
“Thanks,” I said. “For everything, Susan.”
She smiled and quirked one eyebrow at me, suddenly looking more like herself than she had since I’d come in.
“If you really want to thank me, for god’s sake do something about your hair. Honestly, Alice. Incognito or not, that is just not okay.”
She walked out of the bar shaking her head, her stilettos clicking against the linoleum floor.
~ ~ ~
Susan was right about one thing: the press do have a short attention span. In the days following my meeting with her, I ran into fewer and fewer of them outside my apartment. By the third week after the gala, I found I was able to live almost normally. I did still get some comments in public, and the requests for an interview continued to come in, but I was at least able to leave home without being followed.
As I’d expected, though, my work prospects hadn’t improved. I was only a novelty, a name to be remembered for pop trivia. I couldn’t get any leads for legitimate work. Finally, I gave up and started looking into relocating. I picked up some travel books about some cities out west, and even a couple for cities in Canada and Australia, somewhere where almost no one had heard of Alice Clarke.
It would be hard being so far away from my parents. Visiting them would be harder than ever, since they would no longer be a few hours’ drive away. They would understand, though. There had been no hiding this scandal from them, and once they got past their initial shock and disappointment, they’d been nothing but concerned and supportive, for both Rose and me. I guess it’s easier, when you’re the parent, to forgive things like that.
I still didn’t feel ready to forgive Rose. So, when I heard a knock on my door one sunny fall morning and saw her face through the peephole, I felt a twist of indecision. Part of me very much wanted to ignore her, to pretend that I wasn’t home (even though she always seemed to know when I was home). I still hadn’t found a way to justify her actions in my mind. Putting her out of my life for good, something I’d never consider
ed before all of this had happened, was something that I had realized I might need to do.
But, as much as all of that might make sense, Rose was my only sister, and she was my best friend.
Sometimes good sense just can’t stand up to the simple force of missing someone.
I unchained and opened the door. Rose was holding a small birthday cake. There was a huge, hopeful smile on her face.
“Hi, Allie,” she said, her voice uncertain.
I sighed. “Come in,” I said.
She brought the cake in and put it on the table. There was one candle on the cake. She took a lighter out of her pocket and lit it.
“Happy birthday, baby Alice…” she sang. I tried to keep my face serious, but I wanted to laugh. My parents had introduced me to her as “baby Alice” when I’d been born, and it had stuck long past my baby days.
When she got to the end of the song, she bent over and blew out the candle.
“Hey, isn’t that supposed to be my job?” I asked.
“Yeah, technically,” she said. “But I needed to take your wish this year. Sorry. My birthday isn’t until March.”
“What do you need my wish for?”
“Well, I sort of lost my mind a few weeks ago. My therapist could explain why to you better than I can, but, basically, I got stuck on some bad memories and got obsessed. And I did something terrible, and I hurt a lot of people, including my favorite sister.”
“I’m your only sister,” I pointed out.
“And even though she always corrects me and never lets me finish the apology that I paid $120 an hour to practice with my therapist in a really uncomfortable role playing session, I really do care about her and I need to wish that she’ll forgive me, even though I totally get why she might not.”
I only lasted a few more seconds. Then I was hugging her, and laughing, and somehow still feeling angry at the same time. And it wasn’t perfect, but it was us, and it was good enough.
“God, this is stupid of me,” I said, holding onto her and blinking back tears. “Yes, I forgive you, Rose. But next birthday, you owe me your wish.”
“Deal.”
~ ~ ~
Rose had to leave for work not long after she brought the cake. She apologized repeatedly and promised to make up for it with dinner and drinks over the weekend. I agreed, and by the time she’d gone, things were okay again. Not exactly as they had been before, and they may never be like that again, but, for now, we were okay.
I sat down and cut a piece of the cake, feeling somehow lighter than I had in weeks.
The cake was a little too dry and a little too sweet (Rose had many talents, but baking wasn’t among them; this had definitely been store-bought), but cake on your birthday is about more than dessert. The taste of the frosting and the smell of the burnt candle wax meant that someone had remembered my birthday and had cared enough to let me know it. When I’d woken up this morning, I had thought I would be spending my birthday alone. Even if it was just ten minutes with my crazy sister and a piece of day-old grocery store cake, it meant something.
I chewed and swallowed the cake, fighting against a growing sadness.
As much as I wanted to, I hadn’t been able to forget talking about this birthday with Harvey all those weeks ago. I remembered the smell of the grass, the sounds of children in the park that day, when I’d made that silly, romantic plan with him. It seemed like a lifetime ago, that little pocket of time where some small, hopeful part of me thought that something between us, something real, might actually be possible.
I glanced at the clock. It was just before eleven.
Don’t even think about it, a voice inside me warned.
That voice certainly made sense. So far, my day had been pretty good, a better day than I’d had in weeks. I could go to a movie or a museum, maybe even see if I could find a friend to meet up with who wouldn’t be weird about my dubious fame. Yes, any of those things would be better ways to spend my twenty-fifth birthday than crying in a park over a man that was never really mine.
But, even as I had those thoughts, I was putting on my shoes. I knew that it was going to hurt, but I just had to know. I’d never gotten to tell Harvey goodbye, and I probably never would, but maybe seeing that empty bench would at least give me a real ending to our story. Maybe seeing with my own eyes that he wasn’t there would finally quiet the part of me that still half expected to see a message on my phone or hear a knock on my door and have it be him. Maybe then I could stop wondering, stop wishing, and move on.
I didn’t trust my car to make it across town, and there wasn’t time for the bus, so I called a taxi. I watched for the cab nervously, first from my apartment window, and then from the street in front of my building. When it hadn’t shown up fifteen minutes later, I called the company again and found that there had been a mistake and my car hadn’t been dispatched. They promised me the cab was now on its way. It was another ten minutes before the car finally arrived. By the time I climbed into the cab at half past eleven, I was trying hard not to panic.
What if I was late, and he wasn’t there, and I’d still never know if he’d shown up?
I tried to tell myself that it was stupid to think that way. I tried to remind myself that this man hated me. I’d betrayed and humiliated him; there was no way he’d show up, and going out there was just a pointless, masochistic compulsion on my part. But something in me, something dangerous and hopeful, refused to accept that. Something in me dared to believe that it was possible for him to forgive me. After all, I’d forgiven him for hurting my family all those years ago, and I’d forgiven Rose for the terrible thing she had done. Forgiveness wasn’t easy, but sometimes, with love, it could really happen.
I checked the time on my phone. It was ten minutes to twelve, and we still weren’t close to the park. I wanted to cry.
When the cab finally pulled up at the edge of the park, my phone read 12:08. I paid the driver quickly, hardly paying attention to the bills I thrust at him. I didn’t stick around to hear his thanks for my generous tip, but made a beeline for the path I’d last walked down with Harvey.
I rushed along its twists and turns, almost running, until that bench came into view.
There was no one there.
Even though I’d known it was a long shot that I’d find him there today, I was heartbreakingly disappointed. I looked around, asking myself if I was sure this was the right bench.
It was no use. Of course this was the bench. This was where we’d sat together, when he’d held my hand and stroked my hair and said my name. I’d never be able to forget any detail of that day.
I stood for a moment, trying to pull myself together, trying to find the bright side. Finally, I gave up. I decided that I deserved to sit alone on that bench and have a good cry, the cry I’d never allowed myself to have for the man I’d barely dared to hope for.
As I walked toward the bench, tears already rolling down my cheeks, I saw something sitting on the bench. It was a small, black box – the kind that holds jewelry. Puzzled, I approached the bench and picked up the box. I opened the box, my heart pounding, and found inside…
A key?
I took the key out, confused, and turned it over in my hand. It looked like an ordinary house key.
“Alice.”
His voice came from behind me; for a moment I thought I’d imagined it. My head whipped around, and he was real, standing behind me wearing slacks and a wrinkled button-down shirt. His hair was tousled, and he looked terrible, and he looked more beautiful than anything I’d seen before in my life.
“You came,” he said, walking toward me. He took my hands, still holding the box, in both of his.
“Yes,” I said. “So did you.”
“Yes,” he said. He glanced back behind him. “When I got here, you weren’t here… I thought, I mean, I hoped that maybe I remembered the wrong bench, so I was looking for a different one. That’s where I was. God, Alice. You’re really here.” He cupped my cheek in his ha
nd.
I looked down at the key I was holding.
“Harvey, what is this?”
“It’s your house, Alice,” he said. “207 Chariot Hill, Bay City, Michigan.”
“What? Harvey, do you mean…?”
“It wasn’t hard to find, once I knew that it’d been a Western Trust property. I found it and managed to convince the owners to sell. They didn’t want to at first, but I didn’t know how else to make this right with you, so I made them a ridiculous offer.”
I was stunned.
“Harvey, you bought my parents’ house back?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s yours now, or theirs, whatever you want to do with it.”
“I… I don’t understand. I thought you hated me, Harvey. I mean, after what happened. You said—”
“I was angry, Alice,” he said. “I don’t do well with losing control, and what happened at the anniversary event… That certainly was a mess.”
“It wasn’t me, Harvey,” I said. “You’ve got to believe me.”