Ties That Bind. Marie Bostwick
the perfect match for you. I was only trying to help.”
“I don’t want that kind of help. I’m perfectly happy being single.”
Abigail put the cap back on her tube of lipstick and closed the visor. “Of course,” she said flatly. “Anyone can see that. You positively radiate joy and contentment.”
“I’m fine. I have a nice home, a good job, and most of my friends are lovely people. Let’s just leave well enough alone, all right?”
Abigail looked shocked. “Why? I’ve never left well enough alone. Not when I saw the possibility of getting something better. And I want something better for you, not me. What’s so terrible about that?”
“Nothing,” I said, feeling guilty for snapping at her. Abigail really does mean well, but she’s so … insistent. “But I believe I’ll be a lot happier if I just embrace myself and my life as it is and get over the idea that I need a man to be complete as a woman.”
“Well, of course you don’t! What a silly idea. Is that how you’ve felt? Truly?”
I nodded sheepishly as I turned my car onto Commerce Street.
“Really,” Abigail said, in a slightly disbelieving tone. “Well, then I applaud your enlightenment—however recent it may be. That whole ‘you complete me’ bunk is just that, a lot of sentimental hoo-hah invented in Hollywood. Or some such place.
“If a man alone can make you happy, then my first marriage should have made me the happiest woman on earth. Woolley Wynne was handsome, very rich, and very generous, a rare combination, and he adored me. At first. But I wasn’t happy with myself. I was forever regretting my lost love, the man who’d made me truly miserable, which, for a lot of young women, seems to be an incredibly magnetic quality in a man.
“Why is that, do you suppose? Why should a young, attractive, intelligent, and interesting woman, as indeed I was at the time, scan a horizon thick with potential suitors only to say, ‘Aha! Another opportunity to suffer!’ and then run headlong toward the man best equipped to ruin her life?”
“I don’t know.”
“Nor do I,” Abigail said. “But that’s exactly what I did. Thank heaven I’m past that stage. You couldn’t pay me to be twenty-five again, Margot. You really couldn’t.”
Abigail is so rich she doesn’t need anybody to pay her to be anything, but I do understand her point. There are plenty of things bothering me about this birthday, but I truly would not wish to be younger. I like knowing what I know now, the assurance and resolve that a full log of life experience brings. I only wish I’d had this … wisdom, I suppose you might call it … back before I had closed quite so many doors and wasted so much time. Maybe everyone feels this way at forty. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be. If time and breath were infinite, we wouldn’t value them like we do. Looking at Abigail, beautiful and energetic and full of life in her middle sixties, a troublemaker in the best sense of the word, makes me think that there is still time for me to get it right.
“I think the reason Franklin and I are happily married,” Abigail continued after pressing her lips onto a piece of folded tissue, leaving two mauve half-moons on the white paper, “is because we were happy before we married. We were two satisfied, fully formed individuals before we fell in love. Being married has just enhanced that. Maybe that’s what you need, Margot, to find a man who can be a friend first and a lover later.”
“I’ve had men friends, Abbie. Lots of them. Every time I develop a romantic interest in a man, he backs off and tells me that he just wants to be friends.”
“And then you never see them again?”
“Usually,” I said, thinking of Arnie. New Bern is a small town so, of course, we run into each other. But it’s always awkward.
“Well, then those men weren’t really your friends, were they? ‘Let’s be friends’ is one of those things people say to get themselves out of a relationship without looking bad. What they really meant is that they’d assessed the possibility of a romantic relationship with you, thought better of it, and decided to move on, getting as far away from you as fast as possible without breaking your heart,” Abigail said matter-of-factly.
“Which they managed to do anyway.”
Abigail patted my shoulder sympathetically. “I know. They were stupid. Complete idiots. I’ve so often heard you jest that you’re not looking for Mr. Right anymore, that you’d be willing to settle for Mr. Good Enough. But Mr. Good Enough isn’t good enough. Not for someone as special as you.”
“Oh, Abbie. You’re sweet.”
“Ha! Well, we both know that’s not true. But I do admire you, Margot, and I’d like to see you happy. I did have matchmaking on my mind when I volunteered you to welcome the new minister, but now I think romance may not be the best thing for you, not just now. At the moment, I think you’d be better off to find a friend. A real friend, someone whose interests and passions match your own, who understands how you think, who can offer you sound advice and take it too, is one of the greatest gifts on earth. That’s what Franklin and I have. And that, more than anything, is what holds us together.”
I pulled the car into Abigail’s driveway. All the lights were off.
“So,” she inquired, “do you have time to go over to the parsonage and greet Reverend Clarkson? If you’re too busy with your family, I can …”
“No. That’s all right. I’ll do it. I don’t mind.”
“Thank you.”
“You and Franklin are lucky.”
“We are. And,” she said, reaching into the depths of her purse and pulling out a blue box tied with white satin ribbon, “my birthday wish for you is that, someday, you will be just as fortunate.”
“You didn’t buy me a present from Tiffany’s, did you? Oh, Abbie. You shouldn’t have.” I turned the key in the ignition and the engine stopped.
“Open it! You didn’t suppose I’d forgotten, did you?”
Inside the box, on a bed of pale blue satin, was a necklace, a sterling silver key pendant decorated with a pink enamel heart, hung on a long silver chain. “Oh, Abigail! Oh, it’s beautiful! I just love it. Thank you.”
“Take good care of that. It’s the key to your heart and very precious. Mustn’t be given to anybody who is anything less than your soul mate. Oh, I almost forgot. There’s a card that goes with your present.” She rustled through her handbag. “Hmm. I must have left it in the house. Come inside and I’ll give it to you.” She opened the car door.
“That’s all right, Abbie. Give it to me at the quilt circle.”
“It’s a very funny card,” she said, climbing out of the car. “I spent a lot of time picking it out. Come along, Margot. I insist.”
She started walking toward the house, not looking back because it would never occur to Abigail that anyone, particularly me, would fail to follow her instructions once she insists upon something.
I got out of the car. Abigail knows me too well.
5
Margot
We went in the side door. Abigail snapped on a light and we walked through an orderly anteroom with winter coats and hats hung on pegs and boots—garden boots, hiking boots, riding boots, snow boots—standing at the ready in tidy pairs on grooved trays designed to catch mud or melting snow. Three open cupboards on the opposite wall held an assortment of sports equipment—tennis rackets, golf clubs, and cross-country skis. Abigail is very athletic.
The kitchen was just as well organized, with gleaming copper pots hung on a rack over the stove, a long wall of cream-colored cabinets with dishes lined up like museum collectibles behind doors of beveled glass. Of course, Abigail has much more storage space