CHAPTER 29 - CARDS ON THE TABLE

            After we left the restaurant and on the way back to Michael's house, I noticed a subtle change in his demeanor. He seemed to retreat behind a wall of polite small talk, once again assuming the role of cordial acquaintance. Those brief moments of intimacy we'd shared over dinner seemed to have evaporated, leaving me wondering whether I had imagined a greater connection between us than actually existed.

            Oh, Michael was scrupulously polite and friendly, even charming and engaging. He regaled me with stories of his classroom experiences, speaking much, but saying relatively little. He seemed to be avoiding the serious questions that were foremost in my mind, and I had thought would surely be foremost in his. Perhaps I had been mistaken. Perhaps I had misread the situation entirely.

            I felt sadly relieved when it was time to retire and I made my way up the stairs to my room. Alone. Even before I lay down, though, I knew sleep would probably not come easily. I always found it difficult to sleep in a strange bed, regardless of how comfortable it might be, and I was keyed up from the day's events on top of everything else. As I expected, all I could do was lay there in the darkness, listening to the antique regulator clock hanging on the wall outside my room. The steady tick-tock of the swinging pendulum would lull me to the point of just dozing off when the striking of the quarter hour would jolt me wide awake again.

            Midnight. One o'clock. Two. The sleepless hours crawled slowly past. And, in those wee, small hours between midnight and dawn, I had nothing to do but stare at the ceiling while the ghost of every mistake I'd ever made came trooping past my bed to haunt me. As chance would have it, the specter of this trip was leading the procession. Okay, maybe this visit wasn't the fiasco that it could have been, but it was certainly not turning out anything at all as I'd hoped. Oh, well, I'll tell Michael that I have to go in the morning. Let's just put an end to this charade now, while there are still a few shreds of dignity left to both of us.

            As I was about to turn over yet again in the hopes of wooing sleep more successfully in a different position, I heard the first softly plucked notes from a classical guitar. The music wasn't being played loudly at all, but due to the peculiar acoustic quality of the stairway, it sounded as though it was coming from right outside my door.

            I sat up in bed, listening as Michael began singing in a voice that was scarcely a whisper, The violets were scenting the woods, Maggie, displaying their charms to the breeze, When I first said I loved only you, Maggie, and you said you loved only me.

            Donning my caftan and slippers, I crept out of my room and up to the balustrade that looked down on the living room below. I leaned my elbows on the wrought iron railing and listened. The song was called When You and I Were Young, Maggie. Though, oddly enough, Michael never sang that particular song to me when we were actually young. I'd learned the song years later from friends on the renaissance festival circuit. How many times has he sung this song, I wondered, and does it always make him think of me?

            Light from the full moon streaming through the picture windows on both floors provided ample light to illuminate the scene. Michael, obviously finding sleep as elusive as I had, was sitting on the couch looking attractively rumpled in sweat pants and a tee shirt, softly strumming and singing to himself.

            I closed my eyes and listened as the music washed over me and the years washed away. Just for a few minutes, I allowed myself the luxury of imagining what it might have been like if the last thirty years hadn't taken us down such different roads. Would we have married? Would there have been children? I thought back to the pictures of his stepchildren, and wondered what our own children might have looked like. Would I have been a good mother? Would I have been a good wife?

            By the time Michael reached the final refrain, there were tears rolling down my cheeks. Our dreams, they have never come true, Maggie, our hopes they never were to be, Since I first said I loved only you, Maggie, and you said you loved only me.

            I hastily wiped my eyes on my sleeve and softly cleared my throat in an effort to clear away any lingering tears in my voice. "I'd forgotten how much I missed the sound of your guitar," I said quietly.

            Michael didn't look up. He'd either known I was there, or he didn't startle easily. "I'm sorry. I didn't think I'd disturb you."

            "You've been disturbing me since I was 16," I retorted archly as I came down the stairs and sat beside him on the couch. "But I wasn't asleep."

            "I couldn't sleep either," he admitted, setting his guitar on a stand at the end of the sofa. Apparently he spent a lot of time here in front of the fireplace playing his guitar.

            I sighed. There was no point in dragging this out any longer than necessary. "I really am sorry for dropping in on you like this after all these years. I didn't have any right to just show up and complicate your life. I'll leave as soon as it gets daylight."

            He tensed, "Please don't," he whispered without looking at me. "Please don't. Please stay." In the moonlight it was hard to read the expression on his face, and he was speaking so softly that it was hard to identify the emotion in his voice.

            Turning to face me, he confessed, "Of all the things I've ever wanted in my life, the one thing I wanted the most, and the one thing I never dared dream of was that I might one day look up and see you standing in front of me just the way you were on the day we met."

            "Well, maybe not exactly like the day we met," I observed. "I don't know if you've noticed this, and I hate to burst your bubble, but I'm not 16 anymore."

            He smiled slightly and shook his head, "It doesn't show."

            I chuckled softly and placed my hand over his, giving it an appreciative squeeze. "That's a very gallant lie, Michael Donovan."

            "You still look the same in my eyes," he assured me as he clasped my hand in both of his.

            "And you look even better in mine," I replied, once again admitting more than might be prudent, but it seemed easier to talk like this, shrouded in the semi-darkness.

            "Would you tell me something?" Michael asked, releasing my hand. "Did you love him very much?"

            "Who?" I asked innocently, pretending that I didn't already know very well to whom he was referring. If my past was what had been bothering him, then I wasn't about to make this easy. Make him admit what's really on his mind.

            "The musician," he answered.

            "Oh, Alex?" I asked, still feigning blissful unconcern.

            "Was that his name?" Michael asked. "You said you were depressed after he left. Did you love him that much?"

            "It wasn't really love," I stated flatly, becoming serious now. "It was more like spontaneous combustion," I said wryly, an admission that probably offered Michael very little reassurance. "He was very attractive and very talented, but he wasn't very nice. I was really looking for you, and Alex was not you. In fact, he was so different from you that he might just as well have come from a different planet." I shook my head at the memory. "I was depressed when he left because I was sure he'd been the last waltz on my dance card. When it ended so badly it just emphasized how much I'd lost when I lost you."

            "Are you implying that you might still have feelings for me after all these years?"

            I sighed with barely contained exasperation. Men could be so obtuse sometimes! "Michael, I never stopped having feelings you," I said gently. "But I thought you were gone for good. I just did what I had to do to cope. Yes, there were others, but not many. You could count them on one hand with fingers left over. I've learned, rather unfortunately I'm afraid, that there's no such thing as a second choice. You spoiled me for anyone else." If I hadn't admitted too much before, I surely had now.

            "I never stopped caring for you, you know."

            He'd asked about my past. Well, tit for tat. I wasn't about to let him off the hook quite so easily. "What about your wife?"

            "Sharon?"

            "Pretty name. How'd you meet?"

            "We were collaborating."

            "Is that what they're calling it now?" I asked innocently, unable to resist goading him just a bit.

            "On a paper," he added, and I could hear just a hint of exasperation in his voice. "We were spending a lot of time together, and we were friends, colleagues. We served on a lot of the same committees and attended a lot of department functions together. We had our work in common, and everyone just assumed we were a couple. She had two teenagers from her first marriage - she was a widow - and her kids liked me. We enjoyed doing things together. When it came to spouses, we both knew we could've done a lot worse, so we decided to give it a try."

            "Now there's a love story that'll get you right in the heart," I opined with just a touch of sarcasm. "We got married because it seemed like a good idea at the time!"

            "Okay, maybe it won't go down in history as one of the all-time greatest love stories," he admitted, "but it was practical, and it filled a need for both of us. Well, for a while, anyway."

            "So what made the two of you decide to call it quits?"

            "It wasn't any one event. We finally realized that we'd both gotten more involved in our work than each other. One day we came to the mutual conclusion that we were only going through the motions and had been for most of our marriage. That's when we decided that we ought to go our separate ways. Instead of being upset, I was actually rather relieved."

            "Michael Donovan," I declared reproachfully, "that has got to be the saddest thing I have ever heard." In a strange way, I think I meant it. I couldn't imagine being so cavalier about what was supposed to be a romantic relationship.

            "Do you know what she told me when we signed the papers?"

            "What?"

            "She said that I was in love with another woman. Well, I was shocked, of course. I promised her that I'd never been unfaithful. She said she knew that, but she also knew I was still in love with someone from my past, and until I got over that relationship, I'd never be able to really love anyone else."

            "Am I supposed to infer that I was the other woman who broke up your marriage?"

            "I certainly don't blame you for that," he said hastily.

            "Well, then, I guess that begs the question, Where do we go from here?"

            He looked at me intently, searching my face in the moonlight. "Where do you want to go from here? Is there any chance at all that we might be able to try again?"

            I was terrified and elated at the same time. "You mean just pick up where we left off? I don't know if that's possible, Michael. It's been a long time, and we're not exactly the same people we were then."

            He moved closer to me. "No, I don't really want to pick up where we left off. When we left off last time, I got my butt kicked." He looked into my eyes. "No, I want to start over. Do it right this time."

            I reached up and caressed his cheek. "I think I'd like that, too," I whispered. Then, cradling his face in both my hands, I leaned forward and placed a kiss on that small scar above his eye. As I sat back, he slid his arms around me and drew me forward again into his lap and held me close once again as though he couldn't bear the thought of letting me go.