Breathing Room

13

Tracy reveled in the luxury of waking up without being poked by a five-year-old or lying in a damp spot from Connor’s leaky diaper. If he didn’t potty train soon, she was putting him in Depends.

She heard a catcall from Jeremy followed by Steffie’s shrill scream. He was teasing her again, and Brittany probably running around naked, and Connor got diarrhea if he ate too much fruit at breakfast, but instead of getting up, she buried her face in the pillow. It was still early. What if Harry hadn’t left yet? She couldn’t bear the thought of watching him drive away.

She closed her eyes and tried to force herself back to sleep, but the baby was stomping on her bladder, so she dragged herself out of bed and made her way to the bathroom. The moment she sat on the toilet seat, the door flew open and Steffie burst in.

“I hate Jeremy. Make him stop teasing me.”

Brittany appeared-dressed for once, but with Tracy’s lipstick smeared over her mouth. “Mommy! Look at me!”

“Pick me up!” Connor demanded, padding in, too.

And then Harry was there, standing in the doorway gazing down at her. He hadn’t made it to the shower yet, and he wore jeans with one of his sleeping T-shirts. Only Harry Briggs could have T-shirts he’d specifically designated for sleeping, old ones he considered too worn for regular daytime wear but too good to throw out. Even in his sleeping T-shirt he looked better than she did, sitting on the pot with her gown bunched at her waist.

“Could I have a little privacy, please?”

“I hate Jeremy. He called me a-”

“I’ll talk to him. Now, leave. All of you.”

Harry stepped back from the door. “Go on, kids. Anna said breakfast would be ready in a minute. Girls, take your brother.”

The kids reluctantly filed out, and she was left with Harry, the person she least wanted standing around right now. “Everybody means you, too. Why are you still here?”

He regarded her through his glasses. “Because my family’s here.”

“Like you care about that.” She was never at her best in the morning, and today she felt particularly shrewish. “Get out. I have to pee.”

“Go right ahead.” He sat on the edge of the tub and waited.

Sooner or later pregnant women were robbed of every shred of dignity, and this was one of those times. When she was done, he handed her a precisely folded stack of toilet paper. She rumpled it just to make the point that everything in life couldn’t be as neat as he wanted. She wiped, flushed, and stood up to wash her hands, all without looking at him.

“I suggest we talk now while the children are eating breakfast. I’d like to be on the road by noon.”

“Why wait until noon when you can go right now?” She squeezed toothpaste onto her brush.

“I told you yesterday. I’m not leaving without the children.”

He couldn’t work and care for the children at the same time, they both knew that, so why was he doing this? He also knew she wouldn’t let an army of stone-hearted husbands take her kids from her. He was trying to manipulate her into going back to Zurich.

“Okay, take them. I need a vacation.” She began brushing her teeth as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

In the mirror she saw him blink behind the lenses of his glasses. He hadn’t expected that. She noticed that he’d found time to shave. She loved the smell of his skin in the morning, and she yearned to bury her face in his neck.

“All right,” he said slowly.

In a fit of sadomasochism she laid down her toothbrush and cupped her belly. “Except this one. We agree. As soon as this one’s born, it’s all mine.”

For the first time he couldn’t meet her eyes. “I’m-I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Apology not accepted.” She spat in the sink and rinsed. “I think I’ll take back my maiden name-for me and for the baby.”

“You hate your maiden name.”

“You’re right. Vastermeen is a terrible name.” He followed her from the bathroom to the bedroom, giving her a chance to devastate him as he’d devastated her. “I’ll go back to Gage. I always liked the sound of Tracy Gage.” She shoved a suitcase out of her way. “I hope the baby’s a boy so I can name him Jake. Jake Gage. You can’t get much stronger than that.”

“Like hell.”

She’d finally managed to pierce his wall of indifference, but the fact that she was hurting him didn’t give her satisfaction. Instead, she felt like crying. “What difference does it make? This is the baby you don’t want, remember?”

“Just because I’m not happy about this pregnancy doesn’t mean I won’t accept the baby.”

“Am I supposed to be grateful?”

“I’m not going to apologize for my feelings. Damn it, Tracy, you’re always accusing me of being out of touch with my emotions, but the only emotions you want me in touch with are the ones you like.” She thought he was finally going to lose a little of that self-control, but then he reverted to the cool, unemotional tone that drove her wild. “I didn’t want Connor either, but now I can’t imagine life without him. Logic says I’ll feel the same way about the new one.”

“And thank God for logic.” She snatched her swimsuit from a pile on the floor.

“Stop being so childish. The real reason you’re upset is that you haven’t been getting enough attention, and God knows you like attention.”

“Go to hell.”

“You knew before we left Connecticut that I’d be working most of the time.”

“But you neglected to mention that you’d also be screwing around on me.”

“I wasn’t screwing around.”

The overly patient note in his voice set her teeth on edge. “Did you explain that to your little hottie at the restaurant?”

“Tracy…”

“I saw you with her! The two of you cuddled up in that corner booth. She was kissing you!”

He had the gall to look annoyed. “Why didn’t you come rescue me instead of leaving me with her? You know I’m not good in awkward social situations.”

“Oh, yeah… it looked real awkward.” She grabbed her sandals.

“Come off it, Tracy. Your drama-queen routine’s getting old. She’s the new VP for Worldbridge, and she drinks way too much.”

“Lucky you.”

“Stop being a spoiled brat. You know I’m the last man on earth who’d have an affair, but you had to invent a Greek tragedy out of a drunken woman’s slobbering because you’ve been feeling neglected.”

“Yeah, that’s right. I’m just having a little sulk here.” Somehow it had been easier to deal with the idea of infidelity than his devastating emotional abandonment, but she’d probably known all along he hadn’t been having an affair. “The truth is, Harry, you started freezing me out months before we left home. The truth is, Harry… you’ve bailed out on our marriage, and you’ve bailed out on me.”

She wanted him to deny it, but he didn’t. “You’re the one who left, and you’re not turning this on me. And where did you go running? Right to your party-boy ex-husband.”

Tracy’s relationship with Ren was Harry’s only insecurity. For twelve years he’d dodged meeting him, and he got frosty when she talked to him on the phone. It was so unlike him.

“I ran to Ren because I knew I could count on him.”

“Is that so? Well, he didn’t look like he was all that happy to see you.”

“You couldn’t understand what Ren Gage is feeling in a million years.”

She finally had him at a disadvantage, so he naturally decided to change the subject. “You’re the one who insisted I take the job in Zurich. And you also insisted on coming with me.”

“Because I knew how much it meant to you, and I wasn’t going to have it thrown back in my face that I’d sabotaged your career because I got pregnant again.”

“When have I ever thrown anything back at you?”

Never. He could have blasted her with a long list of grievances from the early days of their marriage, when she was still figuring out how to love someone, but he’d never done it. Until she’d gotten pregnant with Connor, he’d always been so patient with her. She desperately wanted that patience back. Patience, reassurance, and, most of all, the love she’d always thought was unconditional.

“That’s right,” she said bitterly. “I’m the one who holds grudges. You’re perfect, which is why it’s a shame you got stuck with such an imperfect wife.” She threw her swimsuit over her shoulder, grabbed her cover-up, and fled to the bathroom. When she came out, he’d disappeared, but as she headed for the kitchen to check on the children, she heard him call out to Jeremy in the garden. They were playing catch.

Just for a moment she let herself pretend that everything was all right.

“You saw a what?”

“A ghost.” Isabel took in Ren’s sweat-soaked T-shirt. It was a deep navy, and it turned his eyes a particularly ominous shade of silver. She gazed at him for a moment too long before she began putting away the plates Marta had left on the drainboard after she’d come down from the villa to clean up. “Definitely a ghost. How can you run in this heat?”

“Because I got up too late to run when it was still cool. What kind of ghost?”

“The kind that throws pebbles at my window and runs around in the olive trees wearing a white sheet. I waved.”

He wasn’t amused. “This has gone on long enough.”

“Agreed.”

“Before I went running, I called Anna and told her you and I were going to Siena today. That should give everybody plenty of warning that the house’ll be empty.” He grabbed the glass of freshly squeezed orange juice she’d foolishly left unguarded, downed it, and headed for the stairs. “I need ten minutes to shower, and then I’ll be ready to leave.”

Twenty minutes later he returned in jeans, a black T-shirt, and his Lakers cap. He stared suspiciously at her gray drawstring knit pants, sneakers, and the charcoal T-shirt she’d reluctantly filched from him. “You don’t look like you’re dressed for sight-seeing.”

“Camouflage.” She grabbed her sunglasses and headed for her car. “I changed my mind and decided to go on the stakeout with you.”

“I don’t want you with me.”

“I’m going anyway. Otherwise you’ll fall asleep and miss something important.” She opened the driver’s door. “Or you’ll get bored and start pulling the legs off a grasshopper or setting butterflies on fire or-what was that thing you did in Carrion Way?”

“I have no idea.” He moved her aside and climbed behind the wheel himself. “This car’s a disgrace.”

“Not all of us can afford a Maserati.” She walked around to the other side and slid in. The incident with the pseudoghost last night indicated an uncomfortable degree of desperation, and she had to see this through, even if it meant being alone with him in a place where those mind-shattering kisses wouldn’t be interrupted by grape growers, children, or housekeepers.

Only the two of them. Just thinking about it made her blood pound. She was ready-more than ready-but first they needed to have a serious conversation. Regardless of what her body was saying, her brain knew she had to set limits. “I brought some things for a nice picnic. They’re in the trunk.”

He shot her a disgusted look. “Nobody but girls brings a picnic to a stakeout.”

“What should I have brought?”

“I don’t know. Stakeout food. Cheap doughnuts, a thermos of hot coffee, and an empty bottle to pee in.”

“Silly me.”

“Not a pop bottle either. A big bottle.”

“I’m going to try to forget that I’m a psychologist.”

Ren waved to Massimo as he pulled up the drive, then swung toward the villa. “I need to see if the script’s arrived yet from Jenks. I’ll also make our pending absence known.”

She smiled as she watched him disappear into the house. She’d laughed more in these few days with Ren Gage than in all three years she’d spent with Michael. Her smile faded as she poked at the leftover wounds from her broken engagement. They hadn’t healed yet, but they hurt in a different way. It wasn’t the hurt of a broken heart, but the hurt of wasting so much time on something that had never been right from the beginning.

Her relationship with Michael had been like a pool of stagnant water. Never any churn or hidden eddies, no rocks jutting up to force either of them to change direction or move in new ways. They’d never quarreled, never challenged each other. There’d been no excitement and-Michael was right-no passion either.

With Ren it would all be passion… passion churning through an ocean full of rocks. But just because the rocks were there didn’t mean she had to let herself run into any of them.

He returned to the car looking luscious and harried. “The little nudist found my shaving cream and squirted herself a bikini.”

“Inventive. Was the script there?”

“No, damn it. And I think I have a broken toe. Jeremy found my hand weights and left one on the stairs. I don’t know how Tracy puts up with them.”

“I think it’s different when they’re your own.” She tried to imagine Ren with children and saw gorgeous little demons who’d tie up baby-sitters, set off stink bombs, and prank-call the elderly. Not a pretty picture.

She gazed over at him. “Remember that you weren’t any prize as a kid.”

“True. The shrink my father sent me to when I was eleven explained that the only way I could get either of my parents’ attention was by acting up. I perfected misbehavior early on to keep myself in the spotlight.”

“And you carried that same philosophy into your career.”

“Hey, it worked for me as a kid. Everybody remembers the villain.”

This wasn’t the time to talk about their relationship, but it might be a good time to put a gentle rock in his path-not to capsize him, merely to make him more aware. “You understand, don’t you, that we develop dysfunctions as children because we see them as essential to our survival?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Part of our maturity process is getting past that. Of course, the need for attention seems to be a common factor with most great actors, so in this case your dysfunction became highly functional.”

“You think I’m a great actor?”

“I think you have the potential, but you can’t be truly great as long as you keep playing the same part.”

“That’s bull. Every part has its own nuance, so don’t tell me they’re all the same. And actors have always loved playing villains. It gives them a chance to pull out the stops.”

“We’re not talking about actors in general. We’re talking about you and the fact that you’re not willing to play any other kind of part. Why is that?”

“I already told you, and it’s too early in the morning for this discussion.”

“Because you grew up with a distorted view of yourself. You were emotionally abused as a child, and now you need to be very clear about your motivation for choosing those parts.” Another small rock to toss in his direction, and then she’d leave him alone. “Are you doing it because you love playing those sadists or because on some level you don’t feel worthy to play the hero?”

He slammed his fist against the steering wheel. “As God is my witness, this is the last time I am ever dating a fucking shrink.”

She smiled to herself. “We’re not dating. And you’re speeding.”

“Shut up.”

She made a mental note to give him a list of the Healthy Relationship Rules of Fair Combat, not one of which advocated yelling “shut up.”

They’d reached town, and as they drove past the piazza, she noticed a few heads turning to watch. “I don’t get it. Despite all your disguises, some of these people must know by now who you are, but they haven’t been pestering you for autographs. Don’t you think that’s odd?”

“I told Anna I’d buy some new playground equipment for the local school if everybody left me alone.”

“Considering the way you cultivate attention, hiding out must feel odd.”

“Did you wake up this morning planning to irritate the hell out of me, or did it just happen?”

“Speeding again.”

He sighed.

They left the town behind, and after another few kilometers they turned off the main road onto a much narrower one, where he finally condescended to speak to her again. “This leads to the abandoned castle on the hill above the house. We should have a decent view from there.”

The road grew more rutted as they got closer. Finally it ended at the mouth of a trail, where Ren pulled off. As they began the climb through the trees, he grabbed the grocery sacks from her. “At least you didn’t bring one of those sissy picnic baskets.”

“I do know a few things about covert operations.”

He snorted.

When they reached the clearing at the top, he stopped to read a battered historical marker at the edge of the site. She began to explore and discovered that the castle ruins weren’t just those of a single building but a fortification that had once held many buildings. Vines curled over the crumbling walls and climbed up the remains of the old watchtower. Trees grew through fragments of arches, and wildflowers poked through what might once have been the foundation stones of a stable or a granary.

Ren abandoned the historical marker and joined her as she gazed over the vista of fields and woods. “This was an Etruscan burial site before the castle was built here,” he said.

“A ruin on top of a ruin.” Even with the naked eye she could make out the farmhouse below, but both the garden and olive grove were empty. “Nothing’s happening.”

He peered through the binoculars he’d brought. “We haven’t been gone long enough. This is Italy. They need time to get organized.”

A bird flew from its nest in the wall behind them. Standing so close disturbed the peace of this place, and she moved away. Her feet crushed some wild mint. The sweet scent enveloped her.

She noticed a section of wall with a domed niche. As she moved closer, she saw that it was the apse of what must have been a chapel. Faint traces of color were still visible in what was left of the dome-a russet that might once have been crimson, dusty shadows of blue, faded ocher. “Everything is so peaceful. I wonder why they left.”

“The sign mentioned a plague in the fifteenth century combined with overtaxing by the neighborhood bishops. Or maybe they were driven away by the ghosts of the Etruscans buried here.”

He sounded irritable again. She turned her back on him and gazed up into the dome. Churches generally calmed her, but Ren was too close. She smelled smoke and spun around to see him light a cigarette.

“What are you doing?”

“I only smoke one a day.”

“Could you do it when I’m not around to watch?”

He ignored her and took a deep drag, then wandered toward one of the portals. As he leaned against the stone, he looked moody and withdrawn. Maybe she shouldn’t have forced him to poke around in his childhood.

“You’re wrong,” he said abruptly. “I’m perfectly capable of separating real life from the screen.”

“I never said you weren’t.” She sat down on a section of wall and studied his profile, so well proportioned and exquisitely carved. “I was only suggesting that the view of yourself you formed in childhood, when you were seeing and doing things no child should be exposed to, might not fit the man you’ve become.”

“Don’t you read the papers?”

She finally understood what was really bothering him. “You can’t stop brooding about what happened with Karli, can you?”

He inhaled, not saying anything.

“Why don’t you hold a press conference and tell the truth?” She plucked a stem of wild mint and crushed it between her fingers.

“People are jaded. They’ll believe what they want to.”

“You cared about her, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. She was a sweet kid… and, God, so talented. It was hard watching all that go to waste.”

She wrapped her arms around her knees. “How long were you together?”

“Only a couple of months before I figured out how bad her drug problem was. Then I got suckered into a rescue fantasy and spent another few months trying to help her.” He flicked an ash, took another drag. “I arranged an intervention. Tried to talk her into rehab. Nothing worked, so I finally walked.”

“I see.”

He shot her a dark look. “What?”

“Nothing.” She lifted the mint to her nose and wished she could let people be themselves without trying to fix them, especially when it was becoming increasingly obvious that the person who needed the most fixing was herself.

“What’s that ‘I see’ crap? Say what you’re thinking. God knows that shouldn’t be hard for you.”

“What do you think I’m thinking?”

Smoke curled from his nostrils. “Suppose you tell me.”

“I’m not your psychiatrist, Ren.”

“I’ll write you a check. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

“What’s on my mind isn’t important. It’s what’s on yours that counts.”

“It sounds like you’re judging me.” He bristled with hostility. “It sounds like you think I could have done something to save her, and I don’t like it.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing? Judging you?”

He tossed down the cigarette. “It wasn’t my fault that she killed herself, damn it! I did everything I could.”

“Did you?”

“You think I should have stuck around?” He ground out the butt. “Should I have handed her the needle when she wanted to shoot up? Scored some blow for her? I told you I had drug problems when I was a kid. I can’t be around that shit.”

She remembered the joking reference he’d made to snorting cocaine, but he wasn’t joking now.

“I cleaned up when I was in my early twenties, but it still scares the hell out of me to think how close I came to screwing up my life. Since then I’ve made sure I stay as far away from it as I can.” He shook his head. “What happened to her was such a goddamn waste.”

Her heart ached for him. “And if you’d only stuck around, you might have been able to save her?”

He turned on her, his expression furious. “That’s bullshit. Nobody could save her.”

“Are you sure?”

“Do you think I was the only one who tried? Her family was there. A lot of her friends. But all she cared about was her next fix.”

“Maybe there was something you could have said? Something you could have done?”

“She was a junkie, damn it! At some point she had to help herself.”

“And she wouldn’t do that, would she?”

He stubbed his toe into the dirt.

Isabel rose. “You couldn’t do it for her, Ren, but you wanted to. And you’ve been going crazy ever since she died trying to figure out what you could have said or done that would have made a difference.”

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and gazed off into the distance. “There wasn’t anything.”

“Are you absolutely certain?”

His long sigh came from someplace deep inside. “Yeah, I am.”

She moved next to him and rubbed the small of his back. “Keep reminding yourself.”

He gazed down at her, the furrows between his eyebrows smoothing. “I really am going to have to write you a check, aren’t I?”

“Consider it barter for the cooking lesson.”

His lips curved ever so slightly. “Just don’t pray for me, okay? Freaks me out.”

“You don’t think you deserve a few prayers?”

“Not when I’m trying to remember what the person who’s praying for me looks like naked.”

Something hot leaped between them. He lifted his hand and took his time tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “It’s just my luck. I stay on my good behavior for months, but then, when I’m finally ready to raise some hell, I get marooned on a desert island with a nun.”

“Is that the way you think of me?”

He toyed with her earlobe. “I’m trying, but it’s not working.”

“Good.”

“God, Isabel, you send out more mixed signals than a bad radio.” He dropped his hand in frustration.

She licked her lips. “It’s… because I’m conflicted.”

“You’re not conflicted at all. You want this just as much as I do, but you haven’t figured out how to work it into whatever your current life plan is, so you’re dragging your heels. The same heels, by the way, that I’d like to feel propped on my shoulders.”

Her mouth went dry.

“You’re driving me nuts!” he exclaimed.

“And you think you’re not doing the same to me?”

“The first good news I’ve had all day. So why are we standing around?”

He reached out, but she jumped back. “I-I need to get my bearings. We need to get our bearings. To sit down and talk first.”

“Exactly what I don’t want.” Now he was the one who stepped back. “Damn it, I’m not getting interrupted again, and the minute I put my hands on you, someone’s guaranteed to show up at the farmhouse. How about you grab that picnic lunch, because I need a distraction in a big way.”

“I thought my picnic was too girly for you.”

“Hunger’s put me in touch with my feminine side. Sexual frustration, on the other hand, has put me in touch with my killer instincts. Tell me you didn’t forget the wine.”

“It’s a stakeout, you pansy, not a cocktail party. Go use those binoculars while I put out the food.”

For once he didn’t argue, and while he kept watch, she unpacked her purchases from the morning. She’d bought sandwiches with wafer-thin slices of prosciutto set between rounds of freshly baked focaccia. The salad was made of ripe tomatoes, fresh basil, and farro, a barleylike grain that frequently appeared in Tuscan cuisine. She set it all on a shady section of wall that provided a view of the farmhouse, then added a bottle of mineral water and the remaining pears.

They both seemed to realize that they couldn’t endure any more verbal foreplay, so they talked about food and books while they ate-everything but sex. Ren was intelligent, amusing, and better informed than she on a variety of subjects.

She’d just reached for one of the pears when he grabbed his binoculars. “Looks like the party’s finally started.”

She found her opera glasses and watched as the garden and olive grove gradually filled with people. Massimo and Giancarlo appeared first, along with a man she recognized as Giancarlo’s brother Bernardo, who was the local poliziotto, or policeman. Anna took her place at the top of the wall with Marta and several other middle-aged women. All of them began to direct the activity of the younger people as they arrived. Isabel recognized the pretty redhead she’d bought flowers from yesterday, the good-looking young man who worked in the Foto shop, and the butcher.

“Look who else is putting in an appearance.”

She turned her opera glasses in the direction of Ren’s binoculars and saw Vittorio enter the garden with Giulia. They joined a group that had begun taking apart the wall, stone by stone. “I shouldn’t be disappointed in them,” she said, “but I am.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

Marta shooed one of the younger men away from her roses.

“I wonder what they’re looking for? And why did they have to wait until I moved in to try to find it?”

“Maybe they didn’t know it was lost until then.” He set aside the binoculars and began stuffing their trash into the bags. “I think it’s time to play a little hardball.”

“You’re not allowed to use anything with a blade or trigger.”

“Only as a last resort.”

He kept his hand on her arm to steady her as they made their way down the trail to the car. It took only a moment to toss everything inside and set off. He pushed the Panda hard. “We’re making a sneak attack,” he said as he circled Casalleone instead of taking the most direct route through town. “Everybody in Italy has a cell phone, and I don’t want anyone at the farmhouse tipped off that we’re heading back.”

They abandoned the car on a side road not far from the villa and approached through the woods. He picked a leaf from her hair as they stepped out into the olive grove and walked toward the house.

Anna was the first to spot them. She set down the water pitchers she’d been carrying. Someone turned off a radio that had been playing pop music. Gradually the buzz of conversation stopped, and the crowd shifted. Giulia stepped to Vittorio’s side and slipped her hand into his. Bernardo, dressed in his poliziotto uniform, stood beside his brother Giancarlo.

Ren stopped at the edge of the grove, surveyed the mess, then surveyed the crowd. He’d never looked more like a natural-born killer, and everyone got the message.

Isabel stepped back so he had plenty of room to work.

He took his time, letting his actor’s eyes move from one face to the next, playing the bad guy as only he knew how. When the silence grew unbearable, he finally spoke. In Italian.

She should have realized that this conversation wouldn’t be in English, but she hadn’t thought about it, and she was so frustrated she wanted to scream.

When he stopped, they all began to respond. It was like watching an army of hyperactive symphony conductors. Gestures toward the heavens, the earth, toward heads and breastbones. Loud outbursts, shrugs, eye-rolling. She hated not knowing what they were saying.

“English,” she hissed, but he was too busy sandblasting Anna to pay attention. The housekeeper moved to the front of the crowd, where she responded to him with all the drama of a diva performing a tragic aria.

He finally cut her off and said something to the crowd. When he was done, they began to disperse, muttering to one another.

“What are they saying?” she demanded.

“More nonsense about the well.”

“Find their weak point.”

“I already have.” He stepped farther into the garden. “Giulia, Vittorio, you’re not going anywhere.”