Matchmaking for Beginners(76)
I feel awful. Here’s Jeremy in my head: You’re doing this to me again?
I close my eyes. During the day, I tell myself to stop. I tell myself that this is simply my need to resolve the past before I truly can accept my grown-up life with Jeremy. And maybe this is a little moment in time—closure, that’s it—and I’ll get Noah completely out of my system and I can move on.
The fact is, this is just a thing I’m doing right now.
I’m sleeping with my ex.
And like the job at Best Buds, like the house in Brooklyn, like the way the sun slants through the trees that are rapidly losing their leaves—it’s all only temporary.
A time out of time.
I may have forgotten to wonder what Noah’s motivation is.
And then one night when I’m nearly asleep, he asks me if he can see the letter Blix wrote to me—you know, just out of curiosity. I am suddenly wide-awake, on alert. Little prickles go off behind my eyes, like the beginning of a headache, and I say no. So that’s what he’s after—Blix’s letter? The thought that he may try to use it against me flits across the landscape of my mind.
“But why not?” he says. He’s propped up on one elbow, trailing his fingers down my arm, tickling me slightly. “I just want to read it. See what my great-aunt and my wife had in common.”
“No. It’s private. It was only to me. And please don’t forget that I’m your ex-wife.”
“But she was my great-aunt, and she didn’t leave me a letter. I feel like—well, I wish I’d gotten to know her better. I’m having a moment, that’s all.”
I sit up in the bed. Sleep has vanished.
He laughs, seeing my face. “Okay, forget it! Forget I even said anything. Go back to sleep.”
But of course I can’t. He closes his eyes, but I stare at him for so long that he finally opens his eyes and lets out a loud, exasperated sigh. “Marnie, for God’s sake. What’s with you? I merely asked if I could—”
“I know what you asked. But it’s intrusive. And disturbing. You want this house, don’t you? That’s what this is really about. You think if you read the letter, you can find out something that might mean I shouldn’t get the house. That’s what’s going on.” I put my face right down next to his, eyeball to eyeball.
He moves back, batting my hands away from him. “Stop it! I don’t know what you’re even talking about.”
“Yes, you do.”
He flops over on his back and puts his hands behind his head. “Okay, stop being a lunatic and I’ll tell you.” He takes a deep breath. “My parents are really perturbed about the way the will worked out. As you know. So my mom—it was my mom’s idea—she thought that as long as I’m here, one avenue we should check out is what Blix said to you in the letter. That’s all. She asked me to ask you if I could read it, you know, just to see.”
“One avenue? One avenue? See? I knew this wasn’t all aboveboard.”
He gets up on one elbow. “Well, what’s it to you, really? I mean, you’re going to sell this place. You don’t really care anything about it. And I’m not defending my mom because you know I am not one hundred percent in agreement with Wendy Spinnaker about anything, but she said to me that there’s at least a chance you’re not going to want to stay here the whole three months since you’re a Flah-ridian, so they should be on the watch for ways to keep the house from going to a charity. And she wondered if I might just ask you if I could see the letter. Okay?”
“Uh-huh,” I say. “Right. Sure. I’m surprised she’s not rigging the place with booby traps to get me to move out.”
“Don’t give her any ideas. Now could we go back to sleep, please?”
I flop back down on my pillow and spend the next ten minutes tossing and turning.
Finally I say, “Noah, I think I need to sleep alone tonight.”
“Fine,” he says. He gets up and goes back to his own room, and I close the door behind him and lock it. Then I get the letter out of my purse and sit on the floor reading it again.
The letter, Blix’s voice, pulls at my heart.
I told you when we met that you are in line for a big, big life . . . Darling, this is your time.
I sit there for a moment trying to figure out why I feel so violated. Then I roll up the letter and hide it in the sleeve of my sweatshirt way at the back of my underwear drawer.
THIRTY-ONE
MARNIE
One morning later that week the doorbell rings at just past eight. Surely not more lobsters! I have the day off from the flower shop, so I’m still in my bathrobe, losing my daily fight with the coffee press thing, and Noah is choking down a piece of toast and reading the messages on his phone, getting ready to go to class. Of course we argue about who has to answer the front door. I say he should since he’s dressed; he says I should since he has to leave in a couple of minutes.
So I go, and Lola is standing there, wearing her marvelous red sneakers and a gray sweatshirt, carrying coffees in a cardboard holder and a bag of something that I’m thinking could possibly be scones. Or doughnuts. She looks up at me with a huge grin.
“Wow, are you the coffee fairy?” I say. “And does this mean that today I don’t have to vanquish the evil spirit that lives in that coffee press? Please, please, come in!”