Unforgivable Read online

  Alice laughed, so it didn’t seem like there could’ve been an emergency. “No, I’m actually in bed, believe it or not. That’s what happens when you get old, I guess. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, too, because Mom asked me about it. For the kids, right? Yeah. Yep. No, that’s okay, I told her that one was fine. Yes. One block to the beach. Yeah, it’ll be fun! Okay, talk to you later.”

  She disconnected and put her phone back on the nightstand, then snuggled back next to him with a yawn. She kissed his shoulder. He pressed his lips to her still-damp hair.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah. My mom was sending my sister links for this house they’re renting for the beach, and she wanted to make sure I was cool with sharing a bathroom with the kids. Usually Mom and Dad rent the same house, but this year we decided to get a little closer to the ocean. I guess she hadn’t really paid attention a few months ago about the bathroom situation when they rented it. But it’s no problem for me.” Alice yawned again.

  Mick shifted to relieve some of the pressure on his arm. “You’re going to the beach?”

  “Yeah, they get a place down in Rehoboth Beach every year over the Fourth.” She sounded sleepy, but Mick was suddenly wide awake.

  “The Fourth? Of July?”

  Alice chuckled softly. “Um, yeah.”

  “As in, next week?”

  She paused before answering, her tone cautious. “Yes.”

  “Well . . . shit, Alice.” Mick sat up.

  Alice sat, too. “What?”

  “I thought you were going to go to Bernie and Cookie’s house. I mean, we’re all going. Jay’s not going, I guess, because of Paul, but . . .”

  “Yeah, I know.” She didn’t reach to turn the light on, and in the shadows all he could see were curves and silhouettes. “I told Bernie months ago I’d be going to my parents’ for the Fourth. I’ve been going there with my family for the past five years.”

  Shit. Dammit. Mick turned on the lamp on his side of the bed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I guess it didn’t occur to me. It’s my family thing. I planned it long before you and I . . .” She hesitated. “Look, you’ve known for weeks, at least a month, about this Fourth of July thing. I know you have, because I got the invitation, too. You didn’t say a word about it. If you had, I’d have told you that I already had plans, but you didn’t say anything. I figured maybe you had plans, too.”

  “I did. Plans with you.”

  “Then maybe,” Alice said icily, “you should have told me about them instead of assuming I could read your mind.”

  All his euphoria faded. “When were you going to tell me about this thing with your family?”

  “I don’t know, Mick. When were you going to ask me about going to Bernie’s?” Alice said. Just that. Nothing else, though clearly by the way her mouth thinned, she had other words that wanted to come out.

  Mick frowned. “I didn’t know I had to ask. You never said anything about it.”

  She was pissed off. He knew it by the way she turned on her side, facing away from him, even though it wasn’t her normal side of the bed. By the way she punched her pillow and shifted away when he dared to come an inch closer.

  He hated it when she stewed.

  He clicked off the light. On his back, he made sure not to touch her. He listened for the sound of her breathing to slow, meaning she’d fallen asleep, but all he heard was the soft huff of her breath, in and out. Ragged.

  Alice sat up. Mick tensed. Bring it, he thought. Come on, then.

  “Things really haven’t changed. Have they?”

  Mick sat, but didn’t turn on the light. Somehow this seemed like a conversation better held in darkness. He wished he could get up and find his briefs, but something told him it was wiser to stay put.

  “Of course they’ve changed, Alice.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Not really. You still want to slide through this thing like it’s some kind of game. What, do you get bonus points for fitting the pieces together all last second, like Tetris or something?”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Alice cleared her throat. “It means that unless I specifically lay out what we’re going to do, we never make plans. I never know what, exactly, is going on. Sometimes I swear you have conversations in your head where you tell me things and then you act like I should just know them, but I have no clue what you’re talking about!”

  “Like what?” he demanded.

  “Like last week, when you said, out of the blue, Mary had finally decided to go back to school and she was going to quit working to do it, and her husband was being an ass about it.”

  Mick paused. “. . . Yeah?”

  “You said it to me like I had any idea that your sister had ever been considering going back to school. But here’s the thing, Mick, it was the first time you’d mentioned it. I’ve met your sister like, three times. I don’t know what’s going on in her life.”

  “But I told you about it. So then you knew.”

  Alice sighed. “Yeah, but then there was the time you called me to find out why I was late, and I had no idea you’d meant the CinemaEight instead of the CinemaCenter we usually go to.”

  “Why would you have assumed it wasn’t? It’s the one closest to you.” He remembered that conversation. She’d been mad then, too. “What difference does it make, you got to the movie on time.”

  “It’s not the one closest to where I work. And yes, I made it on time, but that’s not the point.”

  “What is the point, Alice?” Mick cried, frustrated.

  She sighed again and was silent for a few seconds. “For you, this is fun. That’s all. Right? So it doesn’t much matter where we go or do, it’s all just . . . fun.”

  “It should be fun. Shouldn’t it?” He took a chance and moved closer to her. He didn’t touch her, but he was close enough to see her in the dark. “I’m not sure what the problem is. What’s wrong with fun?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with fun,” she said in a defeated, helpless tone he didn’t understand at all. “Fun is great. Fun is fun.”

  He tried again to hug her, and this time, she let him. Her body didn’t mold itself to his the way it usually did, but after a second or so she did put her arms around him. Mick buried his face in her hair, breathing deep. When her shoulders heaved, his heart sank.

  “I don’t want to make you cry, Alice. I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t answer him with words, but the shaking of her body told him more than he wanted to know. Mick held her closer, and again, she let him but it wasn’t the way it had been before. He pushed her gently away, gripping her upper arms, and tried to see her face through the shadows.

  “Don’t cry. Please.”

  She drew in a snuffling breath. “I’m okay.”

  “You’re not. C’mon, I don’t want to fight,” he said.

  “No. Me neither.”

  “That’s no fun,” he continued, trying to make a joke, to make light. Anything to keep this from going south.

  Her chuckle was halfhearted and waterlogged and a little strangled. “Right. Fun. This all should just be fun. Only fun.”

  It didn’t sound like she was agreeing with him, but he took it. “Yep. All fun, all the time. Okay?”

  “Sure,” Alice said. “All of this is just fun.”

  And then she hugged him hard enough to make him believe things were going to be all right.

  Mick to Alice

  Have fun at the beach without me. I’m going to miss you. You should have told me you had other plans, I would have changed mine.

  —Mick to Alice, unsent

  Chapter 44

  Perfect beach weather. Sunny, bright, warm enough to make running into the still-chilly Atlantic waters worthwhile, but not hot enough to make you wish you were in hell, where it would be cooler. With a book and a beach towel and a new bikini, Alice was all set.

  The only thing missing, of course, was Mick.

  She�€