Too Good to Be True

Natalie shot him a surprised glance, but he ignored it, smiling insincerely at Cal. Who didn’t smile back. Well, well. Andrew was jealous. How pleasing. And how classy of Cal, not to rise to his bait. Still, I could feel him tensing next to me.

“Such a shame to waste your education, though, son,” Dad continued. Oh, God. He was doing his “Earn a Decent Wage” speech, one that I’d heard many times. And by decent wage, Dad didn’t mean the simple ability to pay your own bills and maybe sock a little away. He meant six figures. He was a Republican, after all.

“Education is never wasted, Dad,” I said hastily before Cal could answer.

“Are you from around here, Calvin?” Andrew asked, tilting his head in owlish fashion.

“It’s Callahan,” my guy corrected. “I’m originally from Connecticut, yes. I grew up in Windsor.”

“Where’d you live before you moved back?” Andrew asked.

Callahan glanced at me. “The South,” he said, his voice a little tight. I tried to convey my gratitude by squeezing his hand. He didn’t squeeze back.

“I love the South!” my mother exclaimed. “So sultry, so passionate, so Cat on a Hot Tin Roof!”

“Control yourself, Nancy,” Mémé announced, rattling her ice cubes.

“Don’t tell me what do to, old woman,” Mom muttered back, knowing full well that Mémé was too deaf to hear.

“So why’d ya leave accounting?” Dad asked. Cripes, he was like a dog with a bone.

“Maybe we can stop interrogating Cal for now, hmm?” I suggested sharply. Cal had grown very still next to me.

Dad shot me a wounded look. “Pudding, I’m just trying to figure out why someone would trade in a nice secure job so he could do manual labor all day.”

“It’s an honest question,” Andrew seconded.

Ah. Honest. The key word. I closed my eyes. Here it comes, I thought. I was right.

Callahan let go of my hand. “I was convicted for embezzling over a million dollars,” he stated evenly. “I lost my accounting license and served nineteen months at a federal prison in Virginia. I got out two months ago.” He looked at my father, then my mother, then Andrew. “Any other questions?”

“You’re a convict?” Mémé said, craning her bony neck to look at Cal. “I knew it.”

BY THE TIME THE GALLERY SHOW was over, I had managed to tell my family about Cal’s situation. Granted, I did a piss-poor job, given that I was completely unprepared. I’d been planning to figure out something a bit more convincing than It’s not as bad as it sounds…Plus, Margs had abandoned me, saying there was an emergency at work and she wouldn’t be home till midnight at the earliest.

“Happy?” I asked Callahan, getting into the car and buckling myself in with considerable vigor.

“Grace, it’s best to be honest right up front,” he said, his face a bit stony.

“Well, you got your way.”

“Listen,” he said, not starting the car. “I’m sorry if it was uncomfortable for you. But your family should know.”

“And I was going to tell them! Just not tonight.”

He looked at me for a long minute. “It felt like lying.”

“It wasn’t lying! It was introducing the idea bit by bit. Going slow. Considering the feelings of others, that’s all.”

We sat in the idle car, staring ahead. My throat was tight, my hands felt hot. One thing was clear. I was going to be spending a lot of time on the phone for the next day or so.

“Grace,” Callahan said quietly, “are you sure you want to be with me?”

I sputtered. “Cal, I shot myself in the foot for you this week. I told the headmaster of my school that I was dating you! I’m taking you to my sister’s wedding! I just don’t think you need to walk around with a scarlet letter tattooed on your forehead, that’s all!”

“Did you want me to lie to your dad?” he asked.

“No! I just…I wanted to finesse this, that’s all. I know my family, Cal. I just wanted to ease them into the idea of your past. Instead, you went in with guns blazing.”

“Well, I don’t have a lot of time to waste.”

“Why? Do you have a brain tumor? Are there bloodhounds tracking you at this very moment? Is an alien spaceship coming to abduct you?”

“Not that I’m aware of, no,” he answered drily.

“So. I’m a little…mad. That’s all. I just…Listen, let’s go home. I have to make some calls. And I should stay at my place tonight,” I said.

“Grace,” he began.

“Cal, I probably have twenty messages on my machine already. I have to correct the final essays for my sophomores and post all my classes’ grades by next Friday. I still haven’t heard about the chairmanship thing.

I’m stressing. I just need a little alone time. Okay?”

“Okay.” He started the car, and we drove home in silence. When we pulled in my driveway, I jumped out of the car.

“Good night,” he said, getting out.

“Good night,” I answered, starting up the walk. Then I turned around, went back and kissed him. Once. Another time. A third. “I’m just a little tense,” I reminded him in a gentler voice, finally pulling back.

“Okay. Very cute, too,” he said.

“Save it, bub,” I answered, squeezing his hand.

“I just couldn’t out and out lie, honey,” he added, looking at the ground.

Hard to be mad at a guy for that. “I understand,” I said. Angus yarped from inside. “But I really do have to work now.”

“Right.” He kissed my cheek and walked over to his place. With a sigh, I went inside.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

A FEW HOURS LATER WHEN my parents had been called (if not soothed) and my schoolwork was done, I found myself once again staring over at Cal’s house from my darkened living room.

When I told Dr. Stanton about Callahan this week, I’d done it with the idea that Callahan would be part of my future. It was funny. A couple of months ago, when I pictured the man I’d end up with, I was still picturing Andrew.

Oh, not his face…it wasn’t that obvious. But so many of his qualities. His soft voice, gentle sense of humor, his intelligence, even his flaws, like how inept he was at changing tires or unclogging a sink. Now, though…I smiled.

Callahan O’ Shea could change a tire. He could probably hot-wire an entire car.

I stroked Angus’s head, earning a little doggy moan in response and a love bite to my thumb. When I was alone with Callahan, I was crazy about him. When his past came into my narrow little world of teaching and family …things were a little harder. But as Cal had pointed out, at least it was done now. Everyone knew. No more parceling out of information. There was something to be said for that.

A soft knock came on my front door, and I glanced at the clock. Eight minutes past nine. Angus had fallen too deeply asleep to go into his usual rage, luckily, so I tiptoed to the door, turning on a light as I went, figuring it was Callahan.

It wasn’t.

Andrew stood on my porch. “Hey, Grace,” he said in his quiet voice. “Do you have a minute?”

“Sure,” I answered slowly. “Come on in.”

The last time Andrew had seen the home we were going to live in together, it had been only half-Sheetrocked, wires and insulation exposed, the kitchen just a gaping hole. The floors had been rough and broken in places, the stairs stained and dark with age.

“Wow,” he said, turning in a slow circle. Angus popped up from the couch. Before he could maul Andrew, however, I picked him up.

“Want a tour?” I asked, clearing my throat.

“Sure,” he answered, ignoring Angus’s purring snarls. “Grace, it’s beautiful.”

“Thanks,” I said, bemused. “Well, here’s the dining room, obviously, and the kitchen. That’s my office, remember, it was a closet before?”

“Oh, my God, that’s right,” he said. “And wow, you knocked down the bedroom wall, didn’t you?”

“Mmm-hmm,” I murmured. “Yup. I figured…well, I just wanted a bigger kitchen.”

The original plan was that there’d be a downstairs bedroom, you see. We were planning to have at least two kids, possibly three, so we planned on both upstairs bedrooms being theirs. Then, later, when our clever children went off to college and Andrew and I got older, we wouldn’t have to worry about schlepping up and down the stairs. Now what was once going to be a bedroom—our bedroom—was my office.

My Fritz the Cat clock ticked loudly on the wall, tail swishing in brittle motion. Tick…tick…tick… “Can I see upstairs, too?” Andrew asked.

“Of course,” I said, holding Angus a little tighter. I followed Andrew up the narrow stairs, noticing how he was still so scrawny and slight. Had I once found that endearing? “So this is my bedroom,” I said tersely, pointing, “and there’s the guest room, where Margaret’s staying, that’s the door to the attic—I haven’t done anything up there yet. And at the end of the hall is the bathroom.”

Andrew walked down the hall, peeking in the various doorways, then stuck his head in the loo. “Our tub,” he said fondly.

“My tub,” I corrected instantly. My voice was hard.

He gave a mock grimace. “Oops. Sorry. You’re right. Well, it looks beautiful.”

We’d found the old porcelain claw-foot tub in Vermont one weekend when we’d gone antiquing and bed-andbreakfasting and lovemaking. It had been in someone’s yard, an old Yankee farmer who once had his pigs use it as a water trough. He sold it to us for fifty bucks, and the three of us had practically killed ourselves getting it into the back of Andrew’s Subaru. I found a place that reglazed tubs, and when it came back to us, it was shiny and white and pure. Andrew had suggested that, while it wasn’t yet hooked up to the plumbing, maybe we could get na**d and climb in just the same. Which we had done. A week later, he dumped me. I couldn’t believe I’d kept the thing.

“It’s amazing. What a great job you’ve done,” he said, smiling proudly at me.

“Thanks,” I said, heading downstairs. Andrew followed. “Would you like a glass of water? Coffee? Wine? Beer?”

I rolled my eyes at myself. Why not just bake the man a cake, Grace? Maybe grill up a few shrimp and a filet mignon?

“I’ll take a glass of wine,” he said. “Thanks, Grace.”

He followed me into the kitchen, murmuring appreciatively as he noticed little details—the crown molding, the cuckoo clock in the hall, the cluster of heavy architectural stars I’d bolted to the wall behind the kitchen table.

“So why the visit, Andrew?” I asked, carrying two glasses of wine into the living room. He sat on the Victorian sofa that had cost so much to reupholster. I took the wing chair, handed Angus a misshapen hunk of rawhide to discourage him from eating Andrew’s shoes and looked at my sister’s fiancé.

He took a deep breath and smiled. “Well, this is a little awkward, Grace, but I felt I should…well, ask you something.”

My heart dropped into my stomach, sitting there like a peach pit. “Okay.”

He looked at the floor. “Well, I…this is uncomfortable for me.” He broke off, looked up and made one of his goofy faces.

I smiled uncertainly.

“I guess I’ll just blurt this out,” he said. “Gracie, what are you doing with that guy?”

The peach pit seemed to turn, scraping my insides unpleasantly, and my smile dropped from my face as if it was made from granite. Andrew waited, a kindly, concerned expression on his face. “What do you mean?” I asked, my voice quiet and shaky.

Andrew scratched his cheek. “Grace,” he said very softly, leaning forward, “forgive me for asking this, but does this have something to do with Natalie and me?”

“Excuse me?” I asked, my voice squeaking. I reached for my dog and lifted him to sit protectively on my lap.

Angus dropped the rawhide and growled obediently at Andrew. Good dog.

Andrew took a quick breath. “Look, I’ll just come right out with this, Grace. That guy doesn’t seem, well, right for you. An ex-con, Gracie? Is that really what you want? I…well, I never met the other guy, Wyatt, was it? The doctor? But from what Natalie said, he sounded great.”

I closed my eyes. Natalie never met him, you dope. I never met him. But God knew Natalie had a lot dependent on me dating Wyatt Dunn, so perhaps her imagination had gotten the better of her. As mine had with me.

“Grace,” Andrew continued, “this guy…I have to ask myself if you’re doing this out of…well…”

“Desperation?” I suggested with a bite.

He winced slightly but didn’t correct me. “You’ve been…well, generous, Grace,” he said. “I’m sure the whole situation with Natalie and me has been…uncomfortable. It has been for me, anyway, so I can only imagine how it’s been for you.”

“How kind of you to consider my feelings,” I murmured. The peach pit scraped deeper.

“But—what’s his name again? The embezzler?”

“Callahan O’ Shea.”

“Well, Grace, to me it just seems like he’s not for you.”

I smiled tightly. “Well, you know, Andrew, he does have this one really wonderful quality. He’s not in love with my sister. Which, you know, I find quite refreshing.”