Untrue Love Read online

  “Really? Full speed all the way?”

  Ellie took just enough of a sip from her wine to wet her tongue. Paul had ordered a big, fruity red—not usually her style in wines, but she was enjoying it. “OK, there have been a few detours along the way. A big one, actually, back in California. But things are better now.” She paused, surprised at herself. She hadn’t intended to share that last bit of information.

  Paul leaned forward, interested. “What happened in California?”

  Ellie smiled self-consciously. “I was at a school I liked, and living in a city that I liked, but it didn’t work out. So now here I am, making the best of it.”

  He looked at her closely. She felt as if his eyes were boring into hers, and reading the secrets that were hiding in the back of her mind. “Is that why you want to put on an academic conference? To make the best of things?”

  At first Ellie’s mind scanned for a clever lie, but finally she decided to trust him with a version of the truth. “I see it as a win-win. It works for me, sure, to be teaching at an institution that has a better reputation than this one currently does. I don’t mind admitting it, that would be nice. But it can be a big deal for the school, too. Everything in academia hinges on reputation, from the quality of faculty we can attract to the number of students who want to enroll here. Alumni who feel proud of their alma mater are more likely to give money to the school. It all starts with reputation, and I sincerely believe that a quality conference is an excellent way to kick-start that process.”

  Paul leaned back in his chair, and Ellie sensed that he was forming counter-arguments, so she changed the subject before he could speak them out loud. “But I really don’t want to talk shop tonight. I’d like to get to know you better as a person. I’m new in town, and I’m not very good at making friends.”

  He smiled at her, amused. “Let’s be friends, then.”

  She smiled back. “Friends,” she agreed.

  37

  THE SHOPPING CENTER was not what Ellie was used to, certainly, but she had to allow that it had a certain charm. A wide brick lane festooned with trees and a fountain—shut off now for the winter—was lined by a series of small shops, each decorated with signs so distinctive that she half-imagined that they had each been painted by hand. With her teaching assistant at her side, she scanned the storefronts for something that looked promising.

  “Where do you buy clothes here?” she asked absently.

  “I don’t,” Donna admitted. “I mostly stock up on things when I’m visiting my parents in Chicago. I don’t do a lot of shopping during the school year.”

  Ellie looked her up and down critically. “You don’t say,” she replied with the least amount of sarcasm she could manage. Finally her eye settled on a store window that was decorated with two presentable dresses. She marched off towards the entrance, Donna trailing behind. “We’re going to get you a few things you can wear every day, and then at least one thing for going out on a date,” she declared.

  Donna sighed audibly. “A date,” she muttered.

  Ellie looked back over her shoulder. “What’s the matter? You don’t go on dates during the school year, either?”

  Donna was visibly uncomfortable. “I…it’s just…there’s a guy.”

  Ellie stopped abruptly. “Really!” she said, intrigued. “Tell me about this guy.”

  Donna crossed her arms over her chest. The down parka she was wearing made her look like a shapeless blob, and mentally Ellie added that to the list of things she intended to fix in the girl’s wardrobe. “He’s a friend. Well, a friend of a friend, really. And he won’t leave me alone!”

  Ellie looked at her quizzically. “So you want him to leave you alone?”

  Donna sighed. “Maybe. I don’t know. I just don’t see how it’s going to work. We barely know each other.”

  “It sounds like he wants to know you better.”

  “But what are we going to talk about?”

  “The weather. Professors you hate. Professors you love, such as me. Whatever comes up. That’s how conversation goes, you just start somewhere and let the rest follow.”

  Donna looked gloomy. “It doesn’t go that way for me. I don’t know how to talk to people. Especially guys.”

  Ellie took her arm and steered her toward the store. “And that right there is your problem. The mere fact of thinking that you don’t know how to do something makes it harder to do that thing. So you show up for your first date with someone thinking that it will be a disaster, and guess what—it’s a disaster!”

  “Was that supposed to cheer me up?”

  Ellie laughed. “We’re going to work on your self-confidence, girl. You’re a smart, funny, vivacious, powerful woman. Your only problem is you don’t realize it.”

  Donna sniffed. “Easy for you to say.”

  Ellie stopped and looked closely at her. “What do you mean?”

  Donna gestured at her with a look of hopeless despair on her face. “You’re beautiful. You’re thin, and pretty, and I always thought my eyes were my best feature but yours are so much better! I look at you and see all the things that I’ll never be.”

  Impulsively Ellie gathered her into a hug. “None of that is true, but I can only imagine how terrible it must be to feel those things. Let’s find you something that makes you feel beautiful. And for what it’s worth,” she added, “I think your eyes are beautiful.”

  Together they walked on, arm in arm, Ellie with new-found awareness of how fragile this young woman was.

  38

  JOE’S TAVERN HAD a few windows, but they were as filthy as they were small, and inside there were a few scattered light bulbs that only succeeded in casting deep shadows across the interior. The place was dingy and dark, and it had a musty smell of unknown origin, but Karen loved it like an old friend. She wasn’t much of a drinker, so when she came on one of her regular visits she would order a cup of tea that the bartender brewed from a box of mint tea bags that she was pretty sure they kept just for her. She was comfortable here. No one called her by name, but even so she felt like she was surrounded by friends.

  This time she was across the table from a new friend, or at least a man who seemed to want to be her friend.

  “I like it here,” he said, putting down his beer after a sip. There was a trace of foam along his upper lip.

  “You do? It’s not too dark?”

  “All the best bars are dark. I remember one place I used to go when I was in college. It was like this. The regulars sat at the bar, and the bar tender had an eye patch.”

  Karen snorted in amusement. “Seriously? Was this a pirate bar?”

  “No, it was just hardcore. Well, as hardcore as things got in Wisconsin back then.”

  “That’s where you’re from?”

  He shrugged and took another sip. “Sort of. I grew up in Indiana, so it wasn’t far from home. I wanted to get away from my parents, but not too far away, you know?”

  She nodded. “Were you one of those guys who send their laundry home for their mother to do?”

  “Nah, but whenever things got rough I could hop in a car and be there inside of three hours. As bad as things got, I always had the option of eating dinner with my folks. That felt nice.”

  “I’m jealous.”

  “You didn’t have that?”

  She shook her head. “No. First because I grew up in Idaho and went to college at Harvard.”

  “Wow!” he said, visible impressed.

  She waved him off. “It’s not that big of a deal. I met a lot of morons at Harvard.”

  “You must be really smart, to think of a Harvard student as a moron.”

  “No, it’s more that I’ve learned there are morons everywhere. Some people get to Harvard by merit, some people get there by luck, and others buy their way in. It’s a range, and not everyone is equally deserving.”

  “I guess. But you were telling me about your parents.”

  “Oh, right. I was three thousand miles away, so there was
no driving home for Sunday dinner. And honestly, I wouldn’t have done that even if I could. My mother and I weren’t really speaking at the time.”

  “That must have been rough.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know that I had it much worse than anyone else. Most girls have trouble with their mothers at one time or another.”

  He nodded. “I suppose. There was about a ten-year period when the only thing my Dad ever talked about was sports.”

  Karen glanced away from his gaze and focused instead on the bartender, who was polishing his glasses. She was becoming uncomfortable with how personal this conversation was getting. She didn’t make it a practice of opening up to people right away, but somehow it felt different with this man.

  “So,” she said, looking for a way to move the conversation to less vulnerable areas, “you’re new to town?”

  “New, and not long for the town. I’m visiting, but I’m already a little sick of sleeping on someone else’s couch. It’s probably time for me to be getting back to my own life.”

  Karen was surprised at how disappointed she felt. “Where is home for you, then?” she asked brightly.

  “I have a place in Oregon. It started out as a vacation home, but now I pretty much live there full-time now.”

  “That sounds nice.”

  “It can be. Other times, you remember that a nice place to visit isn’t necessarily a great place to live year-round. But enough about me. The reason I wanted to get together, and the reason I bought you that glass of wine that you’ve barely touched, is I want to learn more about you. Tell me about your life here.”

  Karen sighed. She could see that, no matter what she did, she was not going to be able to keep the conversation in safe areas. “I teach at the university, but you already know that. I’ve been here for more than twenty years.” She chuckled.

  “What’s funny about that?”

  She sighed again and took a sip of her wine. “I never dreamed I’d be here so long. This was just supposed to be a stop along the way, on my meteoric rise to the top. Now it looks like it’s the last stop.”

  He looked sympathetic. “So you’re disappointed to be here? I’m sorry.”

  “Not disappointed, really. Mostly it’s just that I can’t get past my awareness of all the things I never did and never saw. When I was younger, I was sure my life would be fuller than it’s been, and now I don’t think I have enough time left to make things better.”

  “So, in a word, you’re disappointed.”

  She laughed. “Yes, fine, I’m disappointed. Is that bad? Sometimes I think I have the smallest problems in the world, and I need to just stop whining and get on with my life.”

  He smiled warmly at her. “From here it looks like you have a good job with lots of security when a lot of people don’t. This town isn’t Manhattan or anything, but it’s quiet and the trees are pretty when the leaves change.”

  Karen shrugged. “All those things are true. And believe me, I feel guilty every time I catch myself forgetting how lucky I’ve been. But—” She drifted off, looking for the words, until he finished her sentence.

  “But you’re alone.”

  The statement might have seemed presumptuous, even offensive, but instead Karen found herself misting up, with a tight knot of pain in her chest. She took a sip from her wine to buy some time and compose herself. “My husband died. We came here together and thought we would leave together, but then he died. And I’m not very good at making friends, so it’s been a long way back from that.”

  He reached over the table and took her hands between his. “It’s been a hard time for you,” he said.

  She nodded, misting up again. She didn’t want to cry in front of him. She couldn’t remember the last time she cried in public, not even when Harry died. Something in his manner cut through all of that and affected her deeply.

  He gave her hands a gentle squeeze and then released them. “When my wife died, I felt lost. And I hated myself for every time that I could remember wishing, when we were married, that I could be single again and free.” He laughed, a short and bitter sound. “‘Free.’ As if freedom is better than being with someone who loves you. And when she was gone, I didn’t have a Plan B. I’d always assumed that I’d be the first to go. I’d never even imagined what it would be like to live in that house without her. As it turns out, it was almost more than I could handle.”

  “What did you do?”

  He shrugged, took a deep breath, and let it out in an audible sigh. “I got out of bed in the morning. I made myself eggs and coffee and got on with the day, and the next day I did the same. After a while it started to seem normal. Not good, not right away, but normal.”

  “Have you dated since then?”

  “I have. I haven’t been in love since then, but I have enjoyed the company of a few extraordinary women.”

  Karen found herself smiling again. “I’ll bet they enjoy your company, too.”

  He gave her a conspiratorial smile. “I’m pretty sure they do. Until they get sick of me, that is, and then they kick me out. Which is how I end up in places like this.”

  “Talking to women like me?”

  His look grew serious. “No. I’ve never spoken to anyone like you.”

  She gave him a long, silent look, wondering whether this was just one of the lines he used on his other women. She had never found it easy to trust, least of all to trust men who showed signs of interest in her. A part of her wanted to trust this man, though. She wondered whether she was responding to something in his character, or whether she was merely afraid that, after him, there might be no one else.

  For an endless instant Karen hovered on the balance point between two decisions. She breathed in, and when she breathed out she was ready for a new direction.

  “Thank you,” she said, smiling, and reached out her hand to his.

  39

  “USHER! USHER! DON’T eat that!”

  Even as the words escaped her mouth Ellie knew that it was futile. In the past few weeks she’d learned to her disgust that the dog would—and did—happily eat anything he came across on the ground, the more smelly and nasty the better. And once he had something in his mouth, there was no prying his jaws open again until he had chewed and swallowed whatever that horrible thing happened to be. Ellie was just about to stomp over to the corner of the dog park where he was and put him back on the leash, when she heard a familiar voice from behind her.

  “I forgot that one of your truths was that you had a cat and a dog. This is the dog, I presume?”

  Ellie turned around to find Paul standing behind her, his hands stuffed into the pockets of a black wool overcoat. “Hi! I didn’t see you there,” she said in surprise. “You have a dog?”

  Paul shook his head. “No, I just have an unusual fetish. I like to have my crotch sniffed, and this is a good place to get that done legally.”

  Ellie stared at him blankly until he broke out laughing.

  “I’m kidding. And it hurts me deeply that you didn’t realize it until I told you so. Yes, I’m here with that brown pit bull over there.” He gestured at a portly creature with a stick in its mouth that was trying to bait the other dogs into chasing him. “But actually he’s not mine. A friend of mine is out of town and I’m taking care of his dog.”

  “Oh,” Ellie answered blankly. Inwardly she was still trying to come to terms with the idea that this man was the sort to take care of someone else’s dog. She pointed at a black beast sniffing at the grass alongside the fence. “That one is with me. He isn’t mine, though. There’s a lady in my building who’s having some health problems. I’m taking care of her pets until she’s feeling better.”

  “So you were lying,” Paul said flatly.

  “Excuse me?”

  “When we were playing the game. You said you had a cat and a dog, as one of your truths. But it’s not actually true. They’re not your pets.”

  Ellie gave him an irritated look. “It’s true in the strict sense. I do h
ave a cat and a dog. It’s just they happen to belong to someone else.”

  Paul chuckled and looked away, shaking his head. “I can see that you have a flexible definition of the truth. I’ll try to remember that.”

  Ellie might have replied with some irritable remark, but she remained mindful that her long-term goal was to stay on his good side. She decided to let it go. “I’m glad I found this place,” she said finally. “He has too much energy just to walk around the block, and I’m not about to start jogging just to give him some exercise. So I bring him here and he chases after the other dogs until he’s worn out, while I answer email on my phone. It’s a win-win.”

  Paul nodded. “Plus, it’s fun.”

  “Fun?”

  He gestured at a particularly rambunctious tangle of dogs wrestling over some prize. “I like to watch them play. Dogs are always so enthusiastic. I really like that about them.”

  Ellie looked at him with a half-smile. “That’s funny, coming from a not-so-enthusiastic man.”

  He gave her a wounded look. “I’m enthusiastic,” he said without enthusiasm.

  Ellie snorted. “If you were any drier, you’d require irrigation,” she teased. “So you’d say you’re a dog person?” she asked, steering the conversation into less touchy areas.

  He shrugged. “I suppose so, but I haven’t had a dog in years.”

  “Why not?”

  “I got a dog my senior year in college, and I had her for more than ten years. But then she died, and it took me a while to get over that.”

  She looked at him in surprise. “That’s so sweet.”

  “Don’t sound so surprised.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just didn’t expect it.”

  “Because of my unenthusiastic nature?” he asked with a half-smile. “No matter who you are,” he said, glancing away, “when another creature is a part of your life for so many years, you miss her when she’s gone.”

  “That’s true,” she said over a sudden lump in her throat. She was thinking of Jackson, and her sister, and her mother, and the other things she loved that were now either far distant or lost to her forever. “That’s very true.”