Page 63 of Clean Sweep
“What about your ex-wife?” I asked. “What’s the story there?”
Over the phone, the question would have felt risky. In person, with his expressions to gauge, it seemed simple. While I scraped mayo and paprika out of a bowl, he turned his back to the fire and faced me.
“Her name is Whitney,” he said. “We were young and stupid.”
“How young?”
“Twenty-two when I married her. Twenty when we met. I would have married her sooner but she was busy with a growing modeling career.”
Landon was only twenty-three, and Starla appeared even younger. I had been twenty when I married Ethan.
Maybe we were all fools for love.
“That is young,” I said.
He shrugged. “Felt like I had plenty of life experience at the time, thank you very much.”
I laughed. If that didn’t describe Landon, nothing else did.
“We’d gotten married because it pissed off her family, and then realized that we weren’t really old enough to understand what that kind of a commitment called for. Right when she decided that her pride would recover from the blow of her parents sayingI told you so, she found out she was pregnant.”
I continued to peel the hard-boiled eggs, grateful to have something to do with my hands. There wasn’t any pain in his voice, mostly a sense of history. Maybe a dash of nostalgia and resignation.
Was there ever any trueletting go of a marriage?
Failed or not, abusive or not, difficult or not, ties formed in the back-and-forth exchange of signing your lives over to each other. Commitment created a bridge you couldn’t truly break. To close a door through divorce meant tomakea different path, but different paths didn’t erase scars.
“Did you stay together for Celeste’s sake?”
“We tried for several years and it was a good thing. We were able to tag-team and worked well that way, but we weren’t in love. We were . . . roommates, at most. Our resentment of each other started to get between us. Whitney was two years younger than me and wanted to travel and live her life and work on her career. What she could salvage of it after having a child, anyway.”
“So did she?”
He nodded. “A little, yes. I gained custody of Celeste and Whitney went off to find herself. She’d come back and visit, but for a couple of years, she had wild oats to sow. I let her, because I wanted Celeste. Now, they have a good relationship. Whitney settled down with her current husband years ago and they moved close to be near Celeste. Had a few other kids. Whitney seems happy, and I’m glad because it wouldn’t have happened with me.”
“Thanks for telling me,” I said as I glanced up.
He smiled, a lopsided, quiet thing that was more boy than man.
“Sure.”
“Celeste is amazing.” I scraped crumbling yolk off the cutting board and into a bowl. “I genuinely look forward to seeing her when she comes to the shop.”
“She feels the same way about you.”
While the chicken rewarmed under the broiler in the oven, I grabbed two plates.
“This dinner is not exactly a Christmas ham with piping hot mashed potatoes, all the drippings, and spiked eggnog, but it will be delicious. There are pastries from JJ in the fridge. Trust me, you want his pastries.”
He accepted the extended plate with a grin. “Sounds like a perfect Christmas Eve dinner.”
Tanner kept me entertained with stories about Christmas dinners gone wrong in the past, when Celeste and he were on their own and he was still learning the subtle art of holiday cooking.
After loading up our plates, I motioned toward the table, not far from the crackling fire that had gently warmed the house.
While we ate, I became a little too wrapped up in watching his expressions. The way his white-streaked hair scooped away from his face and stayed there. The laugh lines around his eyes, deep and attractive. Firelight danced a gentle glow across his features.
Thankfully, the food forced my eyes away from him often enough that I didn’t actually drool, but my heart was ready to.
