Rainshadow Road (Friday Harbor #2)(5)

Her obsessive work habits had caused trouble in her previous relationships. Although she made a variety of pieces such as mosaics, lighting fixtures, and even small pieces of furniture, what she loved most was to make stained-glass windows. Lucy had never found a man who had fascinated her half as much as her work did, with the result that she had been a much better artist than a girlfriend. Kevin had broken the pattern. He had taught Lucy about sensuality, and trust, and they had shared moments in which Lucy had felt closer to him than any other person she had ever known. But even now there was still a small but untraversable distance between them, preventing them from knowing the essential truths of each other.

A cool April breeze slid through a half-open window into the converted garage. Lucy’s art studio was filled with the tools of her trade: a cutting and layout table with a built-in light box, a soldering station, sheet glass storage racks, a kiln. A cheerful glass mosaic sign hung outside, featuring the silhouette of a woman on an old-fashioned plank swing against a celestial background. Beneath it, the words SWING ON A STAR had been etched in a swirly gilded font.

Sounds drifted in from nearby Friday Harbor: the cheerful squabble of seagulls, the blare of an arriving ferry. Even though San Juan Island was part of Washington State, it seemed like another world entirely. It was protected by the rainshadow of the Olympic Mountains, so that even when Seattle was shrouded in grayness and drizzle, sunlight fell on the island. The coast was rimmed with beaches, the inland lush with forests of fir and pine. In spring and autumn, puffs of water vapor broke the horizon as pods of orca whales chased after salmon runs.

Carefully Lucy arranged and rearranged pieces before pressing them into a tabletop covered with thin-set bonding mortar. The mosaic mix was a jumble of beach glass, broken china, Murano, and millefiori, all of it arranged around a cut-glass swirl. She was making a birthday gift for Kevin, a table with a swirl design he had admired in one of her sketches.

Intent on her work, Lucy forgot all about lunch. Some time in mid-afternoon, Kevin knocked at the door and came in.

“Hey,” Lucy said with a grin, drawing a cloth over her mosaic to keep him from seeing it. “What are you doing here? Want to take me out for a sandwich? I’m starving.”

But Kevin didn’t answer. His face was stiff, and he had trouble meeting her gaze. “We have to talk,” he said.

“About what?”

He let out an unsteady breath. “This isn’t working for me.”

Understanding from his expression that something was seriously wrong, Lucy went cold all over. “What … what isn’t working for you?”

“Us. Our relationship.”

A rush of bewildered panic caused her mind to go blank. It took several moments for her to gather her wits. “It’s not about you,” Kevin was saying. “I mean, you’re great. I hope you believe that. But lately it hasn’t been enough for me. No … ‘enough’ isn’t the right word. Maybe it’s that you’re too much for me. It’s like there’s not room in this for me, like I’m being crowded. Does any of this make sense?”

Lucy’s stunned gaze fell to the shards of scrap glass on the worktable. If she focused on something else, anything but Kevin, maybe he wouldn’t go on.

“… need to be really, really clear about this, so I don’t end up being the bad guy. Nobody has to be the bad guy. It’s just exhausting, Luce, always having to reassure you that I’m in this relationship just as much as you are. If you could put yourself in my shoes for just a minute, you’d realize why I need to take some time off from this. From us.”

“You’re not taking time off.” Lucy fumbled for a glass cutter and dabbed the tip of it in oil. “You’re breaking up with me.” She couldn’t believe it. Even as she heard herself saying the words, she couldn’t believe it. Using an L-shaped ruler as a guide, she scored a piece of glass, barely aware of what she was doing.

“See, this is what I’m talking about. That tone in your voice. I know what you’re thinking. You’ve always been worried that I’d break up with you, and now I’m doing it, so you think you were right all along. But that’s not what this is.” Kevin paused, watching her grip the scored glass with a pair of running pliers. An expert clamp, and the sheet of glass split neatly along the scored line. “I’m not saying it’s your fault. What I’m saying is, it’s not my fault.”

Lucy set the glass and pliers down with excessive care. She had the sensation of falling, even though she was sitting still. Was she a fool, to be so astonished? What signs had she missed? Why had she just been blindsided?

“You said you loved me,” she said, and cringed at the pathetic sound of those words.

“I did love you. I still do. That’s why this is so tough for me. I’m hurting as much as you are. I hope you get that.”

“Is there someone else?”

“If there was, that would have nothing to do with why I’m taking a break from us.”

She heard her own voice, like the edge of something torn. “You’re saying ‘take a break’ like you’re going out for coffee and a bagel. But it’s not a break. It’s permanent.”

“I knew you’d be pissed. I knew this would be a lose-lose situation.”

“How could it be anything but lose-lose?”