Shadows At The Window

“Is…” he asked cautiously “…is everything all right with your health? Is that what this is about, Lilly? I was talking with Bridget. Um…” He licked his lips, swallowed.

My health. That would be the easy way out. I could tell him I was dying and that I had to say goodbye and go live with my parents. And then I could pack my suitcases and disappear. For a quick second, I thought about that. But it wouldn’t work. Bridget already knew I wasn’t really sick.

More than anything, I wanted to reach across and touch his cheek, tell him how much I loved him. At that precise moment, our perky, smiley waitress came and poured us coffee, chattering happily about the daily specials. We ordered. And then Greg and I were left alone again. I looked down at my coffee cup and couldn’t think of what to say.

“Lilly?” He looked at me.

I was shredding the paper napkin in my lap. I said, “I’m not sick. I lied to you about that. I’m just so unsure of things, Greg. I mean about us. I’m just—I don’t know where to begin. I had a pretty rough life before I came to Boston. There are so many things I hid from you, so many things about my past. I’m just thinking that, maybe, I don’t know…” I ran my finger down the length of my spoon. Then I placed it beside my coffee. At a big square table beside us, a business meeting was forming. I heard cheerful hellos, saw hearty handshakes. People in suits. People with computers. People drinking coffee. I looked at the short, stocky man who seemed to be leading it. He reminded me of an actor whose name I couldn’t place.

“I know there’s more to your story, Lilly. And I wait and wait for you to feel comfortable enough to share it with me, but that time never comes. I know you’re dealing with a lot of issues, but are these issues insurmountable?”

“I don’t know, Greg.” They’re bigger than you could ever imagine, I thought, looking past him. “With what I’ve been through, it’s going to take time.”

Our bouncy waitress plunked sandwiches down in front of us. I looked at my chicken panini. The sight of it made me feel slightly nauseated. She left after assuring us that she’d be back, and saying if there was anything we wanted, just give her a holler. How about a new life? I thought.

“I was just wondering,” I said, playing with my spoon again, “if we could just be friends for a while.”

“Friends?” Greg pushed his own plate away, reached forward, put my spoon on the table and took my hand. “Lilly, what are you saying?”

“I guess—” I swallowed “—I don’t want to break up. That’s not what I’m saying.”

“But you want us to be just friends,” he said.

I nodded. I kept my gaze on my chicken sandwich, memorizing the way it looked on the plate, with the edges curled. It didn’t look like food to me.

“There’s so much about me you don’t know,” I said.

“I know.” He kept his gaze steady. “Lilly, we’ve shared a lot with each other these past few months. I know all about the relationship you were in with an incredibly abusive boyfriend, and then how you escaped, how you managed to find your way up here, how you came to faith and how faith in God changed you. I know you’ve come from a hard place. I probably know more about you than you do, in some ways.”

I doubted that, but I let it slide.

“And whatever it is,” he continued, “you can trust me. You need to trust me. I love you. I’ve never met anyone like you before.”

I looked across the table and saw the pain in his eyes. I looked down into my coffee. The silence between us lengthened. Someone at the meeting table laughed out loud. I still didn’t say anything.

“So,” he said. “Are you going to tell me or not?”

I shook my head. How do I tell him that knowing more about me could put him in danger?

“I can’t,” I said. “I thought I could but I can’t. I’m not ready. Could we just—um, be friends?”

Now it was his turn to shake his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I really don’t think so.”

We ate the rest of the meal in silence.

I didn’t want it to be like this. I wanted us to be engaged and meeting for lunch to plan our spring wedding. I’d told him a lot, yes, but never once had I mentioned the name Mudd to him. Nor had I told him anything about Moira.

FOUR

Days went by. First one. Then the next. When after the third day, I hadn’t received a follow-up e-mail, I dared myself to believe that God had answered my prayer. Maybe whoever sent the e-mail did get their laptop stolen at Starbucks. Maybe their hard drive crashed. And maybe, just maybe, Mudd was really dead, like I’d always believed. And then I had another thought. Could the e-mail have come from Moira herself? Was Moira simply wanting to reconnect?

Maybe there had been an accompanying cheery e-mail and Moira, who was never very computer savvy, had lost it, or it just hadn’t come through. I was working up all sorts of scenarios in my mind, but the fact was, after four days with no follow up, I was beginning to allow myself to relax. Just a bit. Maybe.

“I think I’m ready to commit to Greg,” I told Bridget on the evening of the fifth day. “I think I’m ready to say yes now.”

“Well, it’s about time, hon! I think that’s great.”

I put two individual pizzas into the microwave, plugged in the kettle and cut up an apple. “You want a pizza? I’ve got two here.”

Bridget looked up from her knitting. “Lilly, you should eat better. I could make you something nutritious.”

“Chicken soup?”

“Don’t knock it.”

I grinned at her. “Oh, Bridget, you are such a mother.”

“Well, I worry about you is all.” She went back to her knitting.

I stood at the window and looked down into the darkened backyards and said, “I don’t think I’m afraid anymore. It was just all the stuff from before I came here. When I thought of commitment, it all started coming down on me like a landslide. Plus, I had this scare. I thought someone from my former life was trying to contact me.”

“What happened?” She talked without missing a stitch. “You thought you saw someone?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t see anyone. I got a weird e-mail. But it was nothing.”

As I looked out the window, I noticed that someone had been gardening at the ground-level apartment directly behind ours. The flowers that had been there all summer had been dug up and laid to the side. I knew that whoever lived there was a fastidious gardener. I often looked down at the flowers neatly arranged around the small bricked-in area. Perhaps they were putting in a new deck.

The microwave dinged. Despite the fact that Bridget didn’t think microwave pizza was very nutritious, I put one on a plate for her. She ate it quite happily while we watched the news.

On the morning of the sixth day with no more strange e-mails, I decided to let Greg back in. I came up with a plan. I called Neil for help.

“Can you do this for me?”

“For you, Lilly, of course. I may even get Tiff to help. She’d be good at that.”

I said, “I’ve got all the songs on my flash drive. I can drive that over to you.”

“No need,” he said. “They’re on my hard drive.”

I phoned Primo’s and made reservations for Greg and me for the following evening. I told them it was special.

“We were so sorry when you had to cancel last week.” I recognized Maria’s voice. She and her husband, Peter, ran Primo’s.

“Consider this the official reschedule,” I said.

“But,” she paused, “I don’t know.” She seemed hesitant and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why—unless they were booked solid, but that seemed unlikely. She went on, “This was going to be a surprise for you, no?”

Ah, so my theory was right. Greg had been planning on proposing. “Not anymore. Now the very same surprise is for him.”