Page 91 of Rainshadow Road

Lucy brought herself to smile at him. “It’ll be over soon. Then you can relax.”

Kevin began to pace around the studio, which was familiar territory to him. He had been in there countless times when they had lived together. He had even helped to install the vertical storage racks for the glass. But Lucy felt uneasy as he intruded farther into her studio. Kevin didn’t belong there anymore. He no longer had the right to wander through her workplace in such a cavalier way.

“The weirdest part of all of it,” he said, inspecting a shelf of finished lampshades, “is that the closer the wedding gets, the more I find myself trying to figure out what happened with us.”

Lucy blinked. “You mean… you and me?”

“Yes.”

“What happened was that you cheated on me.”

“I know. But I need to figure out why.”

“It doesn’t matter why. It’s over. You’re getting married the day after tomorrow.”

“I think if you’d just given me a little more space,” Kevin said, “I would never have gone to Alice. I think the relationship with her started as my way of showing you that I needed more room.”

Her eyes widened. “Kevin, I really don’t want to go there.”

He came back to her, standing even closer than before. “I felt like there was something missing between you and me,” he said, “and I thought I would find it with Alice. But lately I’ve realized… I had it with you all along. I just didn’t see it.”

“Don’t,” Lucy said. “I mean it, Kevin. There’s no point.”

“I thought you and I were too settled, and life was getting boring. I thought I wanted excitement. I was an idiot, Luce. I was happy with you, and I threw it away. I miss what we had. I—”

“Are you crazy?” she demanded. “You’re having second thoughts about the wedding?Now,after all the plans have been made and the out-of-town guests are arriving?”

“I don’t love Alice enough to marry her. It’s a mistake.”

“You made promises to her. You can’t back out! Do you get some kind of sadistic thrill out of making women fall in love with you and then dumping them?”

“I’ve been pushed into this. No one’s asked me what I wanted. Don’t I get to decide what makes me happy?”

“My God, Kevin. That sounds like something Alice said to me. ‘I just want to be happy.’ Both of you think happiness is thisthingyou have to chase after, like a child with a shiny toy. It won’t happen until you start finding ways to take care of other people instead of ways to please yourself. You need to leave, Kevin. You need to live up to the commitment you’ve already made to Alice. Take some responsibility.Thenyou might have a shot at being happy.”

Judging from Kevin’s scowl, he found her advice condescending. There was a mean, raw edge to his tone. “What makes you the fucking expert? You, who’s going out with that D-class poser, Sam Nolan. Mr. Wine Expert who comes from a family of trailer-trash drunks and is going to end up just like them—”

“You have to leave now,” Lucy said, going to her worktable, putting it between them. In the spectrum of self-pity to rage, he had swung from one extreme to the other.

“I talked him into going out with you. It was asetup,Luce… I was the one who did it. He owed me a favor. I showed him your picture on my cell phone, and asked him to take you out. It was Alice’s idea.” Now Kevin was smiling as if at a macabre joke. “To stop you from acting like the victim. Once you were going out with someone, once you moved on, it would get your parents off our case.”

“Is that what you came here to tell me?” Lucy shook her head. “I already know that, Kevin. Sam told me about it at the beginning.” She reached down to the worktable until her fingers encountered the soothing flat coolness of glass.

“But why did you—”

“It doesn’t matter. If you’re trying to cause problems between me and Sam, there’s no point. I’m leaving the island right after the wedding. I’m going to New York.”

Kevin’s eyes widened. “Why?”

“I’ve got an art scholarship. I’m going to start a new life.”

As Kevin took in the news, a bright flare of excitement appeared in his eyes, and his color rose. “I’ll go with you.”

Lucy stared at him blankly.

“Nothing’s keeping me here,” he said. “I can move my business—I can do landscaping anywhere. God, Lucy, this is the answer! I know I hurt you, I know I fucked up, but I’ll make it up to you. I swear it. We’ll start a new life together. We’ll leave all this shit behind.”

“You are insane,” Lucy said, so astonished by his behavior that she could hardly find words. “You’re… Kevin, you’re getting married to my sister—”

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