The Invitation Read online

  “And when she couldn’t, that was it,” Kane said. “No one else in the family besides Mike attended my wedding. It was as though they’d dismissed her because of some stupid legend.”

  He didn’t say anything after that, so I said, “You liked her, though?” I was praying he wasn’t going to tell me that the legend had been right, that he’d fallen out of love with her two weeks after the wedding.

  “Yeah, I loved her. I loved her madly. We were perfectly suited. It was as though we were two halves of a whole. If she had a thought, I had it at the same time. We liked the same food, the same people, wanted to do the same things at the same time.”

  If I lived with somebody like that, I’d be crazy in a week. In fact, once I had a boyfriend like that. The girls in the dorm all said I was so lucky, but I thought I’d go out of my mind. One night I said I wanted Italian for dinner, and when he said he did too, I attacked. “What if I wanted Chinese? What if I wanted Peking cat?” I yelled at the poor guy. “Don’t you have any thoughts of your own? Don’t you ever want a good ol’-fashioned argument about where we’ll eat tonight?” Need I say that that particular young man never called me again?

  I’d learned long ago that most people aren’t like me, so maybe most people would enjoy living in complete peace and harmony. Personally, I’ve never experienced tranquillity, but my intuition tells me that it’s not something for which I have any natural talent.

  One minute Kane was telling me about his dead wife and the next, he was telling me about his brother’s wife, and for a while, from the tone of his voice, I thought he was in love with her. But he was explaining how his family had accepted Mike’s wife, Samantha, into the family but not his wife. There was anger in his voice, but I’m glad to say there was no jealousy.

  So now what do I do? I thought. Say, Hey, I can tell the twins apart? I’m not much of a believer in magic—magician shows put me to sleep—so I’m sure there are hundreds of women in America who can tell Kane from his very different brother. Next time Kane got married, he should pick one of them and make his family happy.

  He went on talking to me, telling me in detail about his paragon of a wife. I refrained from making snide remarks about how “perfect” the two of them sounded—how perfectly boring, that is. Perfect conversations, perfect sex, perfect children. If she’d lived, would they have had a perfect divorce? Maybe they wouldn’t have divorced and maybe I’m just being cynical, but every marriage where I’ve heard the wife say, “My husband is a darling. We never fight,” ends in divorce. The marriages that last have a wife who says, “My husband is a pain in the neck,” then elaborates on the subject. Maybe it has to do with telling yourself what you hope is the truth and facing what actually is.

  Kane went on to tell of his loneliness after her death and how he had not been allowed to grieve for her. Everyone in his family seemed to have the same attitude: Buck up and think of your sons. He’d wanted to sit in a dark room and cry for days, but his wife’s mother had been the one to cry while Kane had to be the strong one and listen to everyone else’s grief. How could they mourn her death, he wondered, when they’d never celebrated her life?

  In the end he didn’t get to cry. Everyone seemed to think that it was the boys who were important, who were going to need their mother. Kane wasn’t the type to shout that he needed her too, so he’d kept his tears inside and carried on as before, except that there was no longer anyone waiting for him at the end of the day. No one to laugh at his jokes and rub his tired shoulders, no one to bounce ideas off—no one to make love to.

  I don’t know why people tend to tell me their most intimate secrets. Maybe it’s because I’m interested, but then, maybe it’s because I’m an empath.

  I saw a “Star Trek” episode where a woman was an empath; she felt other people’s joys and miseries. That’s what I do. I think it has to do with my being a fixer and listening so hard that I try to solve people’s problems for them. If I want something, I go after it. I have tunnel vision. Nothing distracts me; nothing discourages me.

  It took a really rotten secretary to teach me that everyone isn’t like me. Hildy told me that what she wanted most in the world was to write children’s books. In fact, she had written one and now all she needed was a publisher.

  I don’t know what’s wrong with me: I believe what people tell me. Hildy said she wanted a publisher, so I called in some favors and arranged for her story to be read by one of the top children’s book editors in New York. I then spent three days on the phone trying to reach Hildy. When I finally got her, late on a Sunday night, she told me angrily that since I hadn’t called her as I said I would, she’d mailed her manuscript in to the slush pile at another house. Of course she received a rejection, and she felt that it was my fault.

  It took me a long time to figure out that what Hildy really wanted was to tell people that someday she wanted to write children’s books.

  Since I listen to people so intently, following their angst-ridden sighs with offers of help—all of which I carry out—I figure that’s why people talk to me about their problems.

  But I didn’t know what to offer Kane in the way of help. Maybe I could gather his family together and bawl them out. Maybe I could take his boys for a year or so and let him go away and grieve. Somehow, though, I didn’t think he’d let me have them. Maybe I could say, “Kane, I can tell you and your brother apart. Therefore I must be more suitable for you than your perfect wife was.”

  Yeah, right. A big good-looking cowboy whose idea of a good time was scraping horses’ hooves, and a smart-mouthed city girl. Was I supposed to marry him, move onto a ranch, and show sheep at the state fair? Or maybe Kane would move to New York, become Mr. Cale Anderson, and fetch me cold drinks at autograph parties.

  On the other hand, if we got down to hard, cold truth, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to live with me. Not to make a melodrama out of it, but if your own parents don’t like you, you never actually believe that anyone likes you.

  Chapter Ten

  To say that it was awkward between Kane and me after the sex and the talk is this century’s understatement. I don’t know how long we would have stayed there, safe, holding each other, if Sandy hadn’t arrived with the boys. The moment we heard voices, the spell was broken, and we suddenly looked at each other in horror, then in embarrassment. As quickly as possible I pulled on my clothes, wincing because my knees were raw. When I tried to put my boots on, I found the laces had been slashed. So that was how he got them off, I thought, then had to clump down the loft ladder in loose boots.

  Sandy, standing behind the boys, took one look at the two of us and I knew he knew what had happened. I couldn’t meet his eyes or Kane’s, so I concentrated on the boys.

  Sandy had brought horses, so I got to ride back, which was good considering the state of my boots. When we were back at camp, I didn’t look at Kane, and when he held out a ball of heavy cotton twine and said he was going to tie my boots for me, I snatched the ball away from him and said I’d do it myself. I knew he stood there for a moment looking at me, but I wouldn’t look at him.

  The night before, I’d slept outside, near the men and boys, while the other women slept inside the old house, but that night I went inside with the women. What had happened between me and the dumb cowboy was an accident, and I didn’t plan to add to the mistake. Tomorrow I’d start back to Chandler if I had to walk.

  Thinking of accidents made me wonder if I had just gotten myself pregnant. I didn’t seem to remember any form of birth control being used.

  “I can get an abortion,” I said into the darkness.

  Like hell I would kill my own child. I hadn’t thought much about children in my life, but right now I could imagine myself sitting in a rocking chair at three A.M., a black-haired baby at my breast, writing notes for my next book. I could imagine bandaging a three-year-old’s knee and kissing away baby tears. I could imagine a maid washing dirty diapers and cleaning strained carrots off the kitchen wall. (Hey, I’m a r