Die Before I Wake

Not that I would have left Tom behind, not for an instant. But I had myself halfway convinced that we’d gotten it backwards, that I wasn’t supposed to uproot myself and move to the end of the earth. That instead, it was Tom who was supposed to be moving his medical practice to some thriving metropolis nestled snugly in the heart of the sunbelt.

Then, finally, we left the highway. And all my doubts vanished in an instant. Because Newmarket, Maine was enchanting.

I grew up in Los Angeles. But not in the glamorous part of town where the movie stars hang out. We lived in one of the seedier neighborhoods, the kind of place where hookers plied their trade on the sidewalk two stories below my bedroom window. A zillion years ago, my dad used to be Somebody. But when the mighty Dave Hanrahan tumbled with the momentum of a California landslide, nobody even noticed. My dad’s life was one cliché after another. The bigger they come, the harder they fall. When he fell, it wasn’t pretty. Not that it was his fault. Life just goes that way sometimes. It’s that old story about the windshield and the bug. When you get up each morning, you never know which one you’re going to be that day. Here’s another cliché. Nothing lasts forever. Take that one apart and analyze it. Does losing it all hurt worse than never having possessed it in the first place?

I don’t know the answer to that question. I just know that, growing up the way I did, I used to dream about getting out of there, about leaving it behind for something better. Just like Audrey in that movie, Little Shop of Horrors, I wanted to leave skid row and move someplace that was green. Newmarket, Maine, was that green place I’d spent my childhood fantasizing about.

It was like a postcard from Currier & Ives, or a painting by Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light. The village green, shaded by elms and flanked by white-steepled churches. The picturesque little downtown shops with their mullioned windows and wooden signs. The old-style faux-gas lampposts that lined the brick sidewalks. All of it softened by raindrops on the windshield and the blurred reflections of brake lights on wet pavement.

“This place is lovely,” I said.

“It’s home,” Tom said, the first words he’d uttered in a half hour.

I turned around. Behind me, Tom met my gaze and shot me a wink. I relaxed. Whatever it was that had sent him into a snit, he was over it now. Obviously, there was some kind of long-standing sibling rivalry going on between my husband and his brother, but over the course of the drive, Tom’s customary good nature had been restored.

We left the downtown area and drove down a side street of manicured lawns and dignified Victorian homes. Just as Riley turned the car into the circular drive of a massive white house, the sky opened up, and the drizzle became a pounding downpour. There were several cars parked in the drive, including a silver Land Rover and a powder-blue Caddy of indeterminate vintage. Riley pulled up behind the Land Rover and parked opposite the front steps.

A movement at a second-story window caught my eye. The curtain was drawn aside and for just an instant, a face peered out, pale and chalky against the storm’s dark backdrop. Then the curtain dropped back into place, leaving me to wonder if I’d imagined it.

“This is it,” Tom said. “Home, sweet home.”

The house was exquisite. Even through the driving rain, I could appreciate its beauty. I’d taken a course at UCLA in the history of art and architecture, so I recognized the spindles, the balconies, the stained glass and the graceful turret as classic Queen Anne–style architecture. Set back from the street behind a wide swath of green lawn and embraced by a broad veranda, the house was flanked by ancient elms and one enormous pine tree. Hung at precise intervals from the ceiling of the veranda, baskets of pink and purple fuchsias danced madly in the wind kicked up by the storm.

“Damn crazy weather,” Riley muttered. “When I left a few hours ago, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.”

“You know what they say about Maine.” Tom fumbled on the floor by his feet and came up with a black umbrella. “If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.”

He opened his door, popped open the umbrella, and stepped out of the car. The wind immediately caught the flimsy nylon and aluminum device and did battle with it. Tom danced and ducked like a champion fencer, the umbrella twisting this way and that, before he won the battle. He opened my door and reached in a hand. “Hurry,” he said, rain streaming off his shoulders. “This can’t last long. We’ll get the luggage after it stops.”

Together, we sprinted around the nose of the pickup, skirting the broken pine branches that littered the driveway, and pounded up the steps to the veranda with Riley close behind us. As the rain hammered down on the roof above our heads, Tom closed what was left of the umbrella while I took quick inventory. My feet were drenched, my simple canvas flats probably not salvageable, but the rest of me was relatively unscathed. Except for my hair, which was famous for behaving perfectly fine until the first sign of humidity, at which point I could have been mistaken for Don King’s slightly paler twin sister. I’d hoped to meet my new mother-in-law under more favorable conditions, but there was little I could do at this point.

Besides, it could have been worse. I could’ve looked like Riley. In the twenty-five feet between the car and the porch, Tom’s brother had taken on more water than Lake Michigan during spring runoff. His hair was plastered to his head. Rivulets of water trickled down his cheeks and his neck. He swiped at his wet face with a coat sleeve that only made it worse. Then he shrugged, pulled off the aviator glasses, and shook himself dry like a golden retriever who’d just returned from a dip in the duck pond.

Behind us, the front door creaked open. “Better get inside,” said the woman who stood there, “before the wind blows you away.”

Either I’d misunderstood, or Tom had greatly exaggerated his mother’s imperfections. It wasn’t possible that the graying, matronly woman who greeted us could be the dragon lady he’d described. Nothing about her—from the tightly permed salt-and-pepper hair to the pink pantsuit adorned with rhinestone kittens—fit with the image of the she-devil that I’d been carrying around inside my head. This was Tom’s mother, the terror of the town? The woman who was so hardheaded and difficult? The one who’d blown me off by sending Riley to meet us in her place?

No way.

Over her shoulder, I shot Tom an inquiring glance. He just shrugged. Jeannette Larkin stepped back to study me, and I tried to imagine what she saw when she looked at me: a young woman nearly a decade younger than her son, a little too tall, a little too thin, with dark, frizzy hair and bony knuckles. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that I fell far short of Jeannette’s expectations of a daughter-in-law. Still, I boldly returned her assessment, hoping she’d find me acceptable. For Tom’s sake, if nothing else.

“How was your flight?” she asked.

Relief coursed through me. I’d apparently passed the initial inspection. “Rough,” I admitted. “Very rough.”

“Jules doesn’t like to fly,” Tom said, moving smoothly to my side, “and this storm didn’t help her nerves any. Here, honey, let me take your coat.”

“I’m a bona fide phobic,” I clarified, shrugging off the jacket and surrendering it. “Flying’s at the top of my phobia list, followed closely by anything that slithers.”

Footsteps sounded overhead, and two little girls in matching white sundresses thundered down the stairs. Amid cries of “Daddy! Daddy!” they flung themselves at Tom.

He scooped up the youngest and tossed her over his shoulder. She squealed in protest. The older girl buried her face against his side and clung to him with both arms, as though fearful he’d disappear if she loosened her grip.

Tom lowered the little one to a more comfortable position against his hip and said, “Did you really miss me that much?”

“You were gone forever, Daddy. Did you bring us any presents?”

The older girl pulled her face away from her father’s side just far enough to peer up hopefully at him.

“Presents?” he said, wrinkling his brow as if in puzzlement. “Well, gee, I don’t know. We’ll have to check my luggage. Maybe somebody dropped something in there while I wasn’t looking.”

The younger girl giggled, but the elder daughter narrowed solemn eyes and said, “Oh, Daddy, stop being silly.”

“Guess I can’t put anything over on you two, can I?” He adjusted the little girl against his hip, placed an affectionate hand atop the older girl’s head, and turned to me with a grin. “Jules,” he said, “I’d like you to meet my daughters, Taylor and Sadie. Girls, this is Julie.”

I’d thought meeting Tom’s mother was nerve racking, but this was ten times worse. So much was riding on it. I’d already heard a great deal about his daughters. Like any proud father, Tom had talked nonstop about his girls. Whenever he mentioned their names, his eyes lit up and his voice softened. A blind and deaf person could have seen that these two little girls were his life. If we were going to have any kind of successful marriage, Taylor and Sadie needed to accept me.

“Hi, girls,” I said. “I’m so glad to finally meet you.”

Taylor just stared at me, clear challenge in her eyes. Seven years old, she was the spitting image of her father. She had Tom’s dark hair, his narrow face, and his blue eyes, which right now were studying me with a wariness I understood better than most people would. It was the same wariness I’d shown toward the various women my father had brought home over the years. Not quite welcoming, not quite trusting. The word stepmother had such negative connotations, and Taylor was no fool. She’d adopted a “wait and-see” attitude that I found totally understandable.

Four-year-old Sadie, on the other hand, was as guileless and open as a six-week-old pup. There was no trepidation in her eyes, just avid curiosity and a willingness to accept me for what I was, her dad’s new wife. The two girls couldn’t have been more different if they’d come from different parents. Not just in attitude, but in looks. Although I searched Sadie’s face for any trace of resemblance to Tom, I didn’t find it. Taylor might have inherited her father’s dark good looks, but Sadie, with her peaches-and-cream complexion and her blond curls, must have taken after Tom’s late wife.

She smiled shyly and buried her face against her father’s shoulder. “Hi,” she said.

Life hadn’t been easy for these little girls. They’d been so young when they lost their mother. According to Tom, Elizabeth’s death had hit both girls extremely hard. Even now, two years after their mother’s death, Sadie still had nightmares, and Taylor had trouble trusting new people. It hadn’t been easy on Tom, either, playing both mother and father while trying to maintain his medical practice and his sanity. He’d freely admitted to me that without his mother’s help, he wouldn’t have made it through.

That was one of the things that had drawn me to Tom. After the initial attraction, of course, when I first saw him sitting in the next chair at the dinner table and felt the jolt all the way to the marrow in my bones. But it was the subsequent conversation, the hours we spent together, that cemented my feelings. They say every woman seeks out a man like her father to marry. On the surface, Tom Larkin and Dave Hanrahan were as far apart as the poles, but there were a few things they did have in common. I’d lost my own mother at a young age, and I’d spent my childhood watching Dad struggle to raise me alone. I believe it takes a special kind of man to do that. So I knew where Tom was coming from. And I respected him for it.

Because I’d been through it myself, I knew I needed to tread carefully with Tom’s girls. I couldn’t expect to just jump in and take over where their mother had left off. Sadie might let me get away with it, but Taylor would never allow such a thing. She was old enough to remember, old enough to resent anyone who tried to take Elizabeth’s place. If I hoped to win Taylor over, if I hoped to mold us into a family, I’d have to practice patience.

But I didn’t have to rush. There was plenty of time for that. After all, we had the rest of our lives.

Wind battered the house in a relentless siege. Pine cones and debris rapped at the windows. Somewhere at the rear of the house, a loose shutter banged. But the place held fast. It had been built during an era when homes were designed to withstand a little wind, a little rain. That was a good thing, because we already had three inches of rain, and it was showing no signs of letting up. With wind gusts up to seventy-five miles per hour, the ancient pine that towered over the house creaked and moaned like an arthritic old man. I hoped to God it stayed upright; according to the radio Jeannette kept running in the kitchen, trees had been uprooted all over the county, and if it fell, that pine tree would go straight through the roof. Power lines were down everywhere. Twelve thousand people in the state were already without electricity, and that number was expected to rise.

But indoors, we were cozy and warm. Although we hadn’t lost power, Tom had brought out the candles, the matches, the flashlights, and he’d lined them up on the kitchen counter, just in case. Dinner was roast pork, with steamed asparagus and tiny red potatoes swimming in butter. After an initial hesitation, I forgot manners and just chowed down with my customary enthusiasm. I have what people euphemistically refer to as a healthy appetite. The first time Tom witnessed it, at the buffet table aboard the Island Princess, he’d been floored by the amount of food I was able to ingest without gaining an ounce. He actually found it charming that I have the appetite of a stevedore. I find it annoying that no matter how much I eat, I still look like Olive Oyl, Popeye’s seriously anorexic girlfriend.

Conversation around the dinner table was light and innocuous; Tom and I were asked about the cruise, about how we’d met, about our moonlight wedding and how we’d known so quickly that we were meant for each other. I was just reaching for my third potato when his mother dropped the bomb.

“You haven’t told us anything about your family, Julie,” she said with a smarmy smile. “I’d love to hear about them.”

I hesitated, my fork hovering over the serving dish, and met Tom’s eyes. My husband knew it all. I’d told him everything, the good, the bad and the ugly, and I wondered whether I should regale his mother with the whole sordid truth or a slightly sanitized version thereof.

Beneath the table, Tom slid his foot over to touch mine. His reassuring smile gave me strength. I glanced around the table at all the expectant faces, all these people waiting with bated breath for the life story of the anonymous woman who’d quite literally blown into their lives on the winds of a hurricane.

I speared the potato and put it on my plate. “Well,” I said as I sliced it in two and slathered it with butter, “I’m pretty much alone in the world. Or I was, until I met Tom.” I gave him a shaky smile, and he returned it full force. “I was divorced about a year ago. Before I married Jeffrey, there was just my dad and me. My mother, in her infinite wisdom, left us when I was five years old. Dad died six months ago. Liver cancer.”

I didn’t bother to elaborate. I didn’t tell them that Dad had died of a broken heart and too much boozing. Let them read between the lines if they wanted to. I’m all for honesty, but some skeletons are better left in the closet.