Too Good to Be True - Kristan Higgins [119]
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-and-breakfasting 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 naked 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.