“Only if you’re having something.”
Ed sat down in a chair across from her.
“I’m not.”
She looked at him closely. Now she could more clearly see the rough outlines of both sons in his face, his build. The mother was there too, though more in Michael than in John. Ed started to light up a cigarette and then stopped.
“You can smoke if you want. It’s your house.”
Ed replaced the pack of smokes in his pocket and slid the lighter back in his pants pocket. “Gladys wouldn’t let me smoke in the house, just outside. Old habits are hard to break.” He crossed his arms, waiting for her to start talking.
“Michael and I were very close friends.”
“I’m not sure how close you could’ve been after what I saw the other night.” Ed’s face started to flush.
“The fact is, Mr. Fiske — ”
“Look, just call me Ed,” he said gruffly.
“All right, Ed, the fact is we were close friends. That’s how I saw it, but Michael wanted more than that.”
“What do you mean?”
Sara swallowed hard, her own face reddening. “Michael asked me to marry him.”
Ed looked shocked. “He never said anything to me.”
“I’m sure he didn’t. You see” — she hesitated for a moment, very nervous about what his reaction would be to these next words — “you see, I told him no.” She shrank back a little, but Fiske just sat there, trying to digest this.
“Is that right? I take it you didn’t love him.”
“I didn’t — not like that, anyway. I’m not sure why I didn’t. He seemed perfect. Maybe that’s what scared me, sharing my life with someone like that, trying to keep my standards up that high for a lifetime. And he was so caught up in his work. Even if I had loved him, I’m not sure there would have been room for me.”
Ed looked down. “It was hard raising those two boys. Johnny was good at most everything, but Mike . . . Mike was flat-out great at anything he wanted to do. I was working all the damn time and didn’t really see it that good when they were growing up. I see it a whole lot better now. I bragged a lot on Mike. Too much. Mike told me Johnny wouldn’t have nothing to do with him, and wouldn’t really say why. Johnny really keeps to himself. Hard to get him to talk.”
Sara looked past him, out the window, where a cardinal flitted by and settled on the branch of a weeping willow.
She said, “I know. I’ve spent a lot of time with him the last few days. You know, I always thought I’d be able to tell, almost instantly: This is the person I want to spend my life with. I guess that notion seems silly. And unfair. Doesn’t it?”
A tiny smile creased the man’s face. “The first time I saw Gladys, she was waitressing at this little diner across from where I worked. I walked in the door with a bunch of my buddies one day and from the moment I saw her I didn’t hear a word they said. It was like it was just me and her in the whole damn world. Went back to work and made a mess of a Cummins diesel engine. Couldn’t get her out of my head.”
Sara smiled. “I’m well acquainted with the stubbornness of John and Michael Fiske. So I doubt if you just left it at that.”
Ed smiled too. “I went back over to that diner for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next six months. We started going out. Then I got up the courage to ask her to marry me. I swear to God I would’ve done it that first day, but I thought she’d think I was crazy or something.” He paused for a moment and then said with finality, “We’ve had a damn good life together too.” He studied her face. “Is that what happened to you when you saw Johnny?” Sara nodded. “Did Mike know?”
“I think he figured it out. When I finally met John I asked him if he had any idea why the two of them didn’t seem to be close. I thought that might have been part of it, but they seemed to have drifted apart before then.” Sara tensed. “So that night in the boat, what you saw was me pushing myself on your son. He had been through the most hellish day imaginable and all I could think about was myself.” She looked directly at him. “He turned me down flat.” She thought of last night, the tenderness she and John Fiske had exchanged, both in and out of her bed. And then the morning after. She thought she had figured it all out. That had been a good feeling. Now she was close to overwhelmed by the sense that she knew nothing about the man or his feelings. She let out a troubled laugh. “It was a very humbling experience.” She pulled a tissue from her pocketbook and dabbed at her eyes. “That’s all I came to tell you. If you want to hate anyone, hate me, not your son.”