Roads of the Heart by Christopher Tilghman

Author:Christopher Tilghman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781588363923
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2004-07-13T00:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

What is forgiveness? Is it choosing to ignore and overlook? Water under the dam? Is it a test, or an embrace?

Gail was waiting for him at the gate, and it felt as if he had been away for weeks. She was wearing a short red-flowered skirt, and she looked as tanned, healthy, and radiant as a girl appearing for cocktails on the deck after a day at the beach. Eric’s clothes were rancid from his initial sweat bath in Houston, and his hair felt crusted by bad airplane air and grimy seat backs. She seemed not to notice, or not to mind, as she hugged him, so he hugged back hard: her body felt wonderful; she smelled like lilies.

They had parted four days ago with a kiss and a hug that implied their fights and disagreements were about the trivial stuff, that their hearts were pure; it had been in a spirit of denial, at that time. But that was four days ago, a long time ago. Now they seemed to him nothing more or less than a married couple with no more hurt than many, and with more intimacy, at times, than many with no hurt in their past. They would get home and after getting settled they would make love; she had said on the phone yesterday that she was missing him, and that was what they meant when they used that word to each other. Still, through all this, through the wait at the baggage carousel, she seemed tense.

“Is anything wrong?” he asked, finally.

“No. I’m glad to see you.”

Things felt a little better when they got into the car, with her driving. She loved to drive, used to redline his delicate old Triumph TR3 in college, and she drove the same way now that she had a Taurus station wagon; she often scared him and Tom out of their wits.

“Liv called today,” she said.

“Uh-huh,” he answered. “It’s about time someone in the shop remembered me.”

“He wanted to come out and see you this afternoon.”

That wasn’t like him, but FruitOut was a big account, potentially the biggest one they’d ever had, and maybe Liv wanted to bring the boards along and map out the meeting.

“I told him no,” she said.

“No? You’re kidding.”

“Whatever it was, I thought it could wait.”

“I hope you said it nicely?” He could see Liv’s eyes rolling now, hurt and angry. He’d always felt wary of Gail, easily wounded by her, as if she thought he was a shill. Whenever he mentioned her, he called her “your wife.”

“I told him you were getting home late and you’d be tired and we needed to spend some time together. I’m glad we have this time.”

“So am I,” he said.

When they got home she left him to look through the mail while she got a couple more plants into the ground. He took his shower, long enough to exhaust the hot water, and toweled his body off carefully. He was proud of his body, lucky that it had

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