Read Online An Unexpected Grace by Kristin von Kreisler - Free Book Online Page B

Cristina’s hand. As Lila watched the van’s taillights travel down the hill, become red specks, and disappear, tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. Loneliness engulfed her. That was how she’d felt four months before when she had learned the truth about Reed.
    He was tall and blond and handsome in a craggy, weathered way. His skin was ruddy; his nose, sharp. When a friend had introduced him to Lila in the grocery store, she liked his faded jeans and blue work shirt—the same clothes she wore to paint—and his tan from working as a contractor on construction sites.
    She wished she’d known. She wished she’d seen the train wreck waiting down her track. The pro bono carpentry Reed did for St. Anthony’s Shelter, or the cups of tea he brought her, in bed with the German measles, were only a cover-up for future betrayal.
    The tee shirt Lila found wadded up behind the passenger seat of his Ford pickup last September should have tipped her off. As she and Reed were driving to Berkeley for dinner with friends, she held up the shirt by the shoulders. “Whose is this?”
    â€œMust be yours.”
    â€œIt’s not mine.”
    â€œShould be. You’d look great in it.” His stroking of her thigh had been like hot buttered rum on a cold winter night.
    Lila told herself that the shirt must have been one of the many she bought for a quarter each at the Turnaround Shop to use as turpentine rags for her brushes. But she could not explain away the picture at the PhotoMat.
    She was standing in line behind a woman whose Chanel Allure perfume wafted from her body in sultry waves. The skin on the back of her neck was porcelain white, and she swept her chestnut hair back from her face with gold barrettes, curved in the shape of satisfied smiles. When she got to the counter, she pulled a five-by-seven color photo from her purse and said she wanted an eight-by-ten for a silver frame she’d bought.
    Curious, Lila looked over her shoulder at the photo. The woman was sitting behind Reed on his new motorcycle. Her arms were wrapped around him, and her siren-red polished nails spread out on his chest like two small fans of exclamation points. The siren of her nails matched her moist lips, which, like his, were parted in a smile that could have run New York City air conditioners for an entire summer.
    Lila felt as if someone had jumped on her stomach with both feet. In two seconds, the photograph had broken her life into pieces; she could never crawl around on the floor, find them all, and glue them back together. Later, however, she realized that putting her life back together with Reed wasn’t what she wanted anyway. For years she’d considered breaking up with him, as you’d work up the resolution to quit a bad habit, like smoking.
    Her mismatch with Reed had gone on too long; their relationship was worn out, a fizzless Coke. Still, that rational conclusion could not cancel her anger at him and her shock that he’d found another woman without having the decency to break up with Lila first. And Reed had nicked her self-esteem. Perhaps something about her had not been enough. Was she not pretty enough? Pleasing enough? Easy enough to get along with? Had her father been right that she was too stubborn?
    Cristina had said that what Reed did was about him, not Lila, and she was better off to have learned he was a weasel before marrying him and staring divorce in the face. But Lila’s confidence was tarnished. After wasting five years with Reed, she was thirty-five without a partner. For all she knew, she’d missed out forever.
    Her mother had always told her, “Look for character in a man.” On the subject of boyfriends, her father had kept up his crusade for independence. “Make sure you don’t need a man,” he’d told Lila. “Nobody can make you happy but yourself. It’s up to you to make your life the way you want it.”
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