Jennifer Greene - Cupid’s Confederates

Where had that horrible lump in her throat come from? Darn it, she was exhausted. And confused. She switched off the lights in Zach’s study and the lights in the kitchen and headed for the stairs. And then didn’t go up. The house suddenly seemed smothering to her. Mindlessly, she grabbed a coat from the front hall closet and let herself out the front door.

Cold wind snatched at her hair and whipped around her cheeks; she gulped it into her lungs. Her legs were in a terrible hurry, walking nowhere. Just down a farm road. A few snowflakes fluttered down, blurring her vision. The uneven earth set obstacles in her path, just small stones and ridges and hollows, but she could barely see in the darkness. She stumbled, yet didn’t slow her headlong pace.

It helped, the rush. Anger bubbled up inside of her, shunting aside the unbearable fear. Zach had asked Elizabeth here; she hadn’t. Did he think there’d be no piper to pay, having someone else in the house with them full-time?

For Bett, there’d always been a piper to pay where her mother was concerned. Resentment and love came in the same package. She’d thought that Zach understood. Just as he’d said, for once in their lives she’d wanted to relate successfully to her mother. Now, when Elizabeth needed her. And that’s all I’ve been doing, Bett thought furiously. Being good to Mom. Loving her. Caring for her. So where exactly was the crime?

She walked and stumbled, walked and stumbled. Out of nowhere, Zach had turned selfish. Men were the pits. Husbands were the worst. She was not Wonder Woman. She was so damned tired she could barely see straight. Exactly what more was she supposed to do?

She walked through the orchards, over the clover hill, past the woods, and finally stopped at the pond, out of breath. The full moon was partially shrouded by clouds, but that faint silver circle still glistened on the icy waters. The cattails were brown now; frogs and crickets had gone to sleep for the winter. Her fingers were so cold she could barely feel them; she jammed her hands into her pockets.

Zach was clearly being a bastard. Unfair, unreasonable, callous, insensitive. Yet that whisper of fear shivered again through Bett’s bloodstream. Fear that came from nowhere. From the wind and the night.

She was so totally different from her mother. She’d tried, so often, to be a Brittany. She’d been trying for almost three months. She’d been miserable most of that time. Just once, she thought fleetingly, she had wanted her mother to say that she understood. The farm, her chosen lifestyle, the zillions of things that made up the person that Bett was. The woman she was.

Winning approval was a game that children played. There must still be some of that child in her, because Bett suddenly saw all too clearly how much she had sacrificed in the past three months, trying to win it. Mothers were such very powerful people. Love wasn’t the only thing that made up that blood tie; there was the intrinsic definition of femininity, of everything it meant to be a woman. A mother spelled out her version of that definition first, before anyone else had a chance.

Tears burst from her eyes suddenly, shocking her, choking her. They kept on coming. She’d tried so damn hard. Damn Zach. How dare he think she hadn’t minded the changes in the household, the loss of their privacy? How could he accuse her of not valuing the love they had? Couldn’t he understand the impossible position she’d found herself in, trying to please her mother, her husband and herself? It was a no-win situation. What on earth did he expect her to do?

What she’d been doing was walking a tightrope, trying to live by her mother’s standards, trying to appease Zach. He was the one who was angry? She was the one who’d gotten totally lost in the meantime.

So who let that happen, Bett? nagged a most unwelcome voice inside of her. Zach? Your mother? Or you?

The night was frigidly cold. She could not remember ever feeling a wind quite like this one, so unforgiving, so fierce and icy and eerily silent.

Thanksgiving dawned with four inches of crystal-white snow on the ground. At six in the morning, dressed in a long flannel robe, Bett awkwardly pulled the twenty-pound turkey from the refrigerator. The unwieldy bird was certainly more than big enough to feed six. Two weeks before, she and Zach had mentioned to Elizabeth that they always took in lonely strays from the neighborhood on the holiday. That they’d found three unattached men in the age bracket of forty-five to sixty was purely accidental, they’d let Elizabeth believe. But then, two weeks ago, Bett and Zach had been confederates in the gentle conspiracy of finding someone for her mother to love.

Who could have guessed they’d risk losing their own love in the process?

Humming “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” Bett burrowed into the back of the pantry for the huge roasting pan she only used twice a year. For five long days, up until now, she’d been humming funeral dirges instead. For five very stupid days, she’d let anger hum between herself and her husband, a silent song. Two of those days she’d still been furiously angry with Zach. Two more days had been wasted being furiously angry with herself. The one productive day out of the five was yesterday, when with far too painful clarity Bett had tried to put her emotional house in order.

That was done, and battle hymns were now appropriate. It seemed she had a few bridges to mend, none of them small ones. Both careful and immediate mending was called for, and that was not going to be easy, when this Thanksgiving had already been set up as yet another day revolving around her mother. Which was not, Bett was finally beginning to understand, her mother’s fault, but her own. The last thing she and Zach needed was yet another day interrupted by strangers, which was why she was humming. Humor was armor against fear-fear that her husband was out of both patience and compassion-and Bett had a great deal to put right and now, chaotic day or no.

With a cup of steaming coffee on one side and the turkey on the other, she started slicing tiny slips of mushrooms and celery for the dressing. She’d measured a cupful of each when she heard the quiet footstep in the doorway. Zach.

“Morning,” she said brightly, suddenly so busy she could barely think. Where exactly was it that she kept the mugs, the coffee, the spoons…a freshly brewed cup was set in front of him almost before he’d slid into the chair.

“Morning,” he echoed back.

Her nervous system registered a little chill emanating from him, a little startled stare at her exuberance, and about five miles of distance.

“Want some breakfast?”

“Just coffee. You’re up early.”

When one intended to rebuild an entire life in a day, one could hardly sleep late. “Yes.” He wasn’t encouraging any more conversation. She took a deep breath and then turned her back, searching for a skillet. He was getting scrambled eggs and ham. He loved scrambled eggs and ham. Whether he wanted them or not was irrelevant.

She stole a few surreptitious glances at him. She loved the look of his hair all tousled from sleep, the softness of his mouth framed in a morning beard, the sleepy-lazy blue of his eyes before he really awakened and took on the world. He’d managed to be out of the house a great deal these past few days. Early to rise, late to bed, and around as little as possible. It was up to her to break the silence; she knew that. Only they’d never had an argument like this one before, where they’d actually hurt each other very badly, where something had broken down that they’d both assumed had a lifetime warranty.