Aefle & Giesla Read online

  She sat up. Maybe that was it. Challenge him to a duel. Well, not a duel, actually, but to that re-do of their wedding.

  Her mind buzzed with possibilities.

  What if she got it into Buck’s head that she’d had a change of heart and she’d be open to a new wedding ceremony? Would he jump at the chance to turn the tables on her and leave her at the altar?

  She shook her head at the wildness of the scheme. Her stomach roiled at the thought of Buck taking the offer seriously and going through with another wedding until the last “Amen.”

  But what if she were able to stage manage the whole thing -- planting the idea with a mutual friend that she’d be open to a reconsideration, and then even suggesting that the best revenge for Buck would be for him to leave her standing at the altar holding the bag.

  Her fingers thrummed on the receiver of her office phone. Kelly. Her husband knew Buck fairly well. Well enough to play spy.

  Taking a deep breath, she picked up the phone and dialed.

  ***

  By late that night, Tom had finished a rough draft of an abstract on his new findings. With a little tweaking, it would be good enough to present to his colleagues.

  Eagerly, he opened his new email account and was gratified to find an email from “Gisela.”

  “Thinking of you” was all it said.

  He quickly sat down and cribbed another poem from Aefle:

  Your hand on mine

  Is God’s breath on my cheek

  Your voice

  The sound of angels singing.

  After he hit “send,” he waited for a response, but she must have been away from the computer because a full ten minutes passed with no reply.

  Finally, after he’d rummaged in his fridge for the makings of a sandwich and downed a beer as a chaser, he was pleased to see she’d written back: “Stop it. You make me feel dumb,” followed by a smiley face. “Scratch that. Keep it up. It makes me feel good,” came next.

  He smiled. Before he could type another answer, the phone rang, and he pulled his cell from his pocket chagrined to see Megan’s number on the LED.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “I managed to clear my schedule for the rest of the week. I was wondering if you’d go with me to Oyster Point. To see Dad.”

  Hmm… commencement was coming up, and professors were supposed to attend. But this was important, taking care of his father, especially if Gentle Seas was overmedicating him.

  “Sure!” He’d get to see DeeDee. He hadn’t counted on a reunion so quickly. He could surprise her.

  “You feeling okay? That was an awfully fast and happy response. I figured on at least a quarter hour to persuade you. Now what will I do with the time?” Megan chided.

  “It works out with my schedule,” he said. “I just finished a project, and summer session doesn’t start for another three weeks.”

  “And DeeDee McGowan is in Oyster Point,” Megan added.

  When he didn’t respond to her probe, she continued: “I spoke with Dad’s doctor finally, and he confirmed that Gentle Seas had indeed called asking for a prescription, which his office provided on condition Dad was brought in for a thorough evaluation within two weeks. He’s supposed to go to the doc later this week. We can both go with him.”

  “Okay. I’m on board.”

  “Good. I hope you’re on board with this, too -- I have a list of about five different facilities in the surrounding area. A couple we looked at already, but a second visit isn’t out of the question. The others we need to give the once-over to.”

  “By ‘we,’ I take it you mean ‘me,’” Tom said.

  “Well, buddy, you did just say you were free for a few weeks. I’ll have to return to Baltimore sometime this weekend. Yours is not the only case on my docket.”

  “Look, I really appreciate you handling it for me. If I could compensate you in some way…”

  “Actually, maybe you can.”

  He was surprised she agreed and listened to her explanation.

  “Not pay me,” she said. “I’m talking consider a monetary settlement with Mr. Bewley.”

  “What?!”

  “Here’s my evaluation of the situation, bro -- Buck Bewley is a confrontational ass who doesn’t seem to mind spending money on making other people’s lives miserable. Unfortunately, he has a lawyer who’s enjoying dipping his toes into litigation outside of boring real estate closings. They’re both having too much fun. It’s a bad combination. This could go on for some time, unless someone steps in to stop it.”

  “What kind of settlement?” Tom asked, already feeling uneasy. How would DeeDee feel if she learned he’d settled?

  “Not sure yet. I need to look into some comparable cases and evaluate just how much pain and suffering poor Mr. Bewley was afflicted with. But, Tom, I suspect it won’t be much. I suspect that even a small amount will be enough. It’s not about money. It’s about ego.”

  “Yeah. I know,” he muttered. But DeeDee’s ego was involved, too.

  “Think about it.”

  “Will do.”

  They made plans to meet in Oyster Point the next afternoon, and when he got off the phone, he immediately set to packing. As his mind and heart raced thinking of seeing DeeDee again, another Eastern Shore contact came to mind: the St. Mary’s professor who’d agreed to write him a letter of support. Among an army of driven academics willing to tread on the bodies of their compatriots to get to the top, he’d stood out as kind and affable. Tom decided he should take him up on his offer to drop by.

  He hurried to his email program to send off a note telling the professor of his quickly scheduled trip. After pressing “send,” he looked at his inbox. Something from Heather.

  “Dear Tommy,” she wrote. He'd never been called that by his colleagues before; she was deliberately referring to the article in which his nickname had surfaced. “Good news -- the guest lecturer I mentioned to you at Q.T’s is going to be in town on his way to New York next week. He’s agreed to give us some time to do a preliminary overview of our interdisciplinary approach. He only has about an hour to spare, so we should use it wisely. Could you handle some snacks and notify the committee? I’ll arrange to have copies of our materials for him.”

  As Tom looked over the man’s C.V., he was glad not to have to attend the meeting.

  W. James Farley, III, was his name, a senior prof of education policy at Columbia. His latest book, published by a small New England press, was The New Principlocracy: Replacing Merit with Empathy and Rediscovering America’s Lost Values. Although Tom had not heard of it, apparently it was a bestseller in the academic world and had been reviewed glowingly by the New York Review of Books. The professor himself had been a guest on Charlie Rose, Bill Moyers, NPR and countless other shows.

  “So sorry I’ll miss this,” Tom wrote Heather back. “I’ve been called out of town on a family emergency -- my father’s health. Won’t be able to make graduation either.”

  Then he dutifully notified the rest of the committee of the meeting, summarizing Dr. Farley’s work, and making food and drink assignments for each participant. “Wish I could be there,” he concluded, and repeated the reason for his absence that he’d already provided Heather.

  As he finished that inter-office communiqué, another idea hit him. He had his abstract on Aefle’s latest ready to roll. Why wait for the next meeting of the department, sure to be sparsely attended in these between-session months and surely to be dominated by the likes of Belcamp and Beewater, who’d do everything in their power to belittle his project? Why not do a mass sending of the material to his department and the interdisciplinary committee? It would put Beewater and others on notice that he was a force to be reckoned with.

  He sat back down in the chair and composed another note, easily rhapsodizing about his find of Aefle’s love life and poetry, the thrill of his original moment of discovery returning. He attached his abstract, sending it to every professor on campus he could think of who might be i
nterested -- or who would be a handy witness should Beewater try to sink him. He even sent it separately to the PR office, suggesting he’d be available to talk in the near future about publicity possibilities. He copied the university president’s office on that one. Finally, he sent a separate note to Beewater, telling him he knew he (Q.T.) would be just as happy and proud as he himself was over the discovery and mentioning how he was going to have the opportunity to discuss it with a colleague at St. Mary’s while in Oyster Point, one of his tenure supporters.

  Feeling happy and drained, he rose to finish his trip preparations, his mind now blissfully clear of anything except anticipating seeing his own golden-locked and blue-eyed Gisela.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THAT THURSDAY morning, DeeDee McGowan waited nervously at home for a phone call.

  Yesterday, she’d talked to Kelly about Buck, tiptoeing up to sharing her idea of letting Buck turn the tables on her and publicly reject her in a do-over of the wedding. First, she’d asked a few strategic questions, gathering information on Buck’s state of mind.

  No surprises there. Kelly had easily volunteered that her husband, Ron, had talked to Buck a few times over the past week, and the fellow had shown no signs of calming down. If anything, he just got madder and madder whenever he talked about being jilted.

  “Jilted,” DeeDee had said. “Did he use that word specifically?”

  “I actually heard him say it,” Kelly had responded, “over at Chick ’n' Ribs the other night.”

  “He’s still stung that I rejected him,” DeeDee had prompted.

  “Yeah, funny thing that,” Kelly had said, “since he’s not exactly waiting around to move on, if you know what I mean.”

  That had been the capper -- hearing that Buck was still involved with Gretchen, despite still being royally pissed at DeeDee. Kelly had even told her that she’d heard Buck was serious enough to get her some kind of pre-promise ring. What were they, middle schoolers?

  Even though DeeDee was glad to be rid of Buck, she had to admit to herself that hearing of his “thing” with Gretchen hurt. Not because she was jealous, but because it made her feel so stupid. Buck had never loved her. How dumb could she have been, to agree to Buck’s proposal?

  She shook her head. That was over and done with now, and she’d corrected her mistake. Now she needed to correct the correction.

  Once Kelly had spilled the beans about the continuation of the Gretchen fling, DeeDee had confided in her that she sometimes thought that Buck would let his anger go if he could just publicly reject DeeDee the way she’d rejected him.

  “You know, like walk away from me at the altar,” DeeDee had said to her friend, cringing as she’d waited for a response to her crazy notion.

  But Kelly hadn’t thought it crazy at all. Kelly, in fact, had thought the very same thing. Buck, Kelly had mused, had a big enough ego that he wouldn’t care what folks thought of him if he left DeeDee at the altar. He’d be proud of the stunt.

  “How on earth would you arrange such a thing, girl?” Kelly had asked after figuring out DeeDee’s intentions. “I know you’re good at organizing stuff, but this would take some world-class powers.”

  “I’m motivated,” DeeDee had responded, happy to hear her friend had made the same observations about Buck that she had. “I need a little more intel, though…”

  And that’s what she was waiting for. The intel. She’d asked Kelly to get Ron to talk to Buck about what he’d do if he could get DeeDee at the altar again -- assuming he’d want to. And she’d asked Kelly to continue to probe the seriousness of Buck’s relationship with Gretchen. She had to be sure of that.

  Her phone rang. With nervous fingers, DeeDee answered it, seeing immediately it was Kelly.

  “What have you got?” she asked, feeling like a conspirator.

  Kelly giggled. “You sure don’t waste time, do you? As it turns out, I have a lot.”

  “Spill.”

  “My darling hubby shot some pool with Buck last night. And just as I prompted him, he turned the conversation to you and your wedding. He said Buck was angrier than a cat on the wrong side of a screen door when mice are having a house party. He said he used every cuss word in the devil’s dictionary to describe how he felt about that day. He called you a --”

  “That’s okay, Kel, you don’t need to give me that material. I’m familiar enough with it already. What about his reaction to the idea of doing it again -- the wedding, I mean?”

  “Well, I was real proud of my guy. He said he told Buck that maybe the thing to do was to sweet-talk you into walking down the aisle again just so’s he could turn the tables. Maybe even get the local newspaper there and the TV gal over from Baltimore.”

  “And?”

  “And Buck didn’t hesitate. He said he’d imagined that scene a hundred times, and that it was exactly what you deserved -- a big, fat helping of humble pie thrown in your face in front of all the town.”

  DeeDee smiled. So she was right. Buck hadn’t scorned the idea of getting together with her even for a joke at her expense. Hell, he’d dreamed about it himself. This might be easier than she’d thought.

  “What about the other part?” DeeDee asked, biting her lower lip. There was a critical piece she needed to hear before taking this risky path.

  “About whether he still carries the torch for you? No worry on that, dearie. He started talking about how he’d like to do it for real -- a wedding, that is -- with Gretchen, and how he should have asked her in the first place, but he’d fallen for your business potential -- the dealership -- and let that blind him.”

  Good. Buck, too, had by now realized their union would have been a mistake. There was no danger he’d get to the altar and want to go through with the vows. He just wanted vengeance in a public way.

  Kelly continued. “I did my own spy work on this one, too. I stopped by the salon yesterday afternoon. Gretchen was off, but Ellen Papersmith, her best buddy, gave me an earful as she gave me a trim. As soon as I mentioned the words ‘Gretchen’ and ‘Buck’ she lit off like a horse at the races. She said Gretchen’s heart was broken when Buck decided to marry you, and she almost didn’t take him back, but now she’s flashing that pre-promise ring all over the place, the one from Buck, and said they’ll be setting a date soon as he resolves his legal issues with you.”

  More good news. Buck wanted to move on with his life, too. He was just stuck in his stubborn need for retaliation. Fine, she’d give it to him.

  “Now what?” Kelly asked, clearly eager to do more sleuthing and conspiring.

  “Now I need you to call Buck,” DeeDee said softly. “And tell him how I’ve been thinking I made a horrible mistake.”

  ***

  In the end, Kelly didn’t call Buck, but she did get her husband to do it. Ron called Buck to talk about a car he was thinking of trading in, and in the course of the conversation, he mentioned how DeeDee was having some “buyer’s remorse” in that she bought the wrong course of action on their wedding day. “Oh yeah, she’s been a basket case,” he’d told Buck -- according to Kelly -- “crying like a river and wishing she could just, you know, do it over.”

  Buck had thanked Kelly’s husband for the information on DeeDee, even going so far as to say, “maybe he could make things right by her, poor little lady.”

  “The pump is primed,” Kelly reported. “Now what?”

  “Now I wait for Buck to call me.”

  “You’re not going to call him?”

  “Mmm… only if it takes him too long. I suspect he’ll have to let Gretchen know of the plan before he gets to me.”

  “That’ll be the test of your theory!” Kelly exclaimed. “If Buck asks you to try again at the altar and Gretchen’s a happy clam in the next few days, we’ll know what he’s up to.”

  “Good point.”

  “I’ll keep my eyes on Gretchen,” Kelly said. “Let me know when you hear from Buck.”

  ***

  DeeDee decided to spend the entire day a
t home, just checking in with her dealership from time to time and working on her computer. But it was hard to concentrate as she waited for the phone to ring. She was certain Buck would act quickly, now that he knew she’d entertain a “reconciliation.” The very word made her gag, but she reminded herself that this plan would ultimately bring her gagging to an end for good.

  At a half past four, her doorbell rang, and she sprang up from her laptop in the kitchen, filled with nervous anticipation. Buck! He must have decided to come see her in person.

  She checked her hair in the hall mirror and raced to the front door, reminding herself to replace her grin with a frown so that Buck would assume she’d been moping about him.

  “Hell--” Buck didn’t stand there, but Tom did. “--o.” Now her frown was real. Looking both ways up and down the street, she grabbed his arm and dragged him inside, slamming the door shut behind her. “Where’d you park? You didn’t leave your car near the house, did you? Did anyone see you come in?”

  “Whoa -- and a welcome to Oyster Point to you, too,” he said, pulling her to him and bestowing on her a warm kiss. She melted in his embrace, immediately feeling safer in his arms. Her comfort was quickly followed by distress, though, as she thought about her plans falling apart should Buck come upon them.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” she said.

  “I know. But I was careful, as I said. I had to come in to town to help out with my dad. I just came from seeing him. Megan’s still there, reaming out Buck Bewley’s sister over the medication order. She’s threatening to sue them.”

  “Good for her.”

  “We’re probably going to move Dad,” he said.

  “Good for you.” As much as she wanted him to be here, as much as she wanted to commiserate over his father’s poor treatment, she kept looking at the front window and listening for her phone.