Undo by Joe Hutsko (best book club books of all time .txt) 📖

whispered. “She’s a pretty lady.” He dropped a big wink.

“I know it,” Peter agreed, looking out at the water. There was a stirring in his chest, and he quickly turned his thoughts to other things.

“Come on,” Byron said, pushing away from the table. “Let’s get some air while the ladies fuss and giggle.”

Peter had to laugh at that one. The thought of Kate “fussing” about with Grace in the kitchen made Peter both happy and sad at the same time. It was what he wanted now, yet it was what she would not be for him. How could she be so sure they weren’t ready to settle down? As far as children were concerned, they could adopt. Talking about kids, and knowing that there were none in his and Kate’s near future, had turned his dark mood of late even darker.

As they headed out onto the deck, Byron pulled a small pouch from his pants pocket, and from his shirt pocket he produced a briar pipe. He filled the pipe in silence as they strolled along the dock. When they reached the end, Byron lit up. The glow of his match reflected back in the black water. That is just what I need, Peter thought, a spark to go off inside my head.

“You know, boy,” Byron said, shaking out the match, “I like you.” He inhaled on the pipe, regarding Peter for a moment.

“Thanks,” Peter said. “You’re a good guy, too.”

“That’s what my wife tells me,” Byron said, exhaling a cloud of blue smoke. “You and I ought to take a float out on this baby,” he said, poking his pipe at his boat, the “Net Work.” He sat down, dangling his feet above the low tide, and Peter sat down beside him. “Listen, I’m gonna tell you something, and I want you to promise me you’ll think about it. Okay?”

“Sure.”

“You’re a bright fella. But you’re walking around like a little boy who lost his old dog and hates the world for it,” he said.

Peter exhaled, his breath forming a faint mist in the cool air, and looked down into the water.

“Son, everything dies. It’s how life goes on. Your pooch, he’s gone. It’s time to go pick a new puppy, and train it, and love it, and make it great.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You’ve done it all and it lasted longer for you, most of your life, and you have a wife now and you’re happy.”

“Poppyshit!” Byron said. “Do you think the 990 was the only thing I ever did with ICP? No way. I did all sorts of things with them, but the difference is that I stayed on board, and times were different then. I was trained to do the things I did. You’re different.”

“How so?”

“You’re a rebel. I was too, but in a different sort of way. You’re a real risk-taker, but not for the sake of taking risks. You do it because it’s the only way you know how to be.”

Peter nodded.

“You’ve got to understand and accept that it just takes a little healing, over time. Time. I can tell you this because I’ve been through it myself. I almost died once, had that heart attack I mentioned to you the other day. Got it from not letting go. Almost lost my life. But worse, after I got out of the hospital, I almost lost my wife. Ah, I don’t want to get into all that. Just understand something mister, that this isn’t the last time it’s going to happen to you. You have to know that now, while things are germinating up here.” He tapped a finger to his head. “When the next thing comes, when you start out all clumsy and getting into it all over again, even if it’s way back in the back of your heart, you have to accept that someday it’s going to change, end, and then you start all over again. And again and again. You keep doing it. Over and over. And it gets better and better with age. Just like they say.”

Peter felt choked up listening to Byron so candidly share his experience. “But,” Peter started with a little more than a quiet puff from his lips. “But it hurts.”

“Of course it hurts,” Byron said. “But you pick up, dust yourself off, and go at it again. Where do you think all this age-old advice comes from? It’s truth, friend, that’s why you’re hearing it from me. Sure thing.”

“I don’t know. It’s not all the same, you’ve got more that matters,” Peter said, hitching his thumb absently in the direction of Byron’s home.

“Hah, boy’s blind, too. I see a lady in there who looks at you with real fancy in her eye. She’s standing by you strong, I know it.”

Byron took his pipe from his mouth and looked thoughtfully into its bowl. “I’ll give you something to think about, and you let it roll around in your head a bit.” He sniffed. “Thing is, is I’ve been bored lately. Yeah, I love it here, and our home in Connecticut, and Gracie, and we’ve been talking about maybe traveling again this winter,” he said, waving his pipe in the general direction of everywhere in the world, “but I’ve been feeling sort of itchy. Like I gotta do something. You ask me, I think there was a reason for us running into each other the way we did.”

“How’s that?”

“I don’t know why. Not yet, anyway. I suspect it has something to do with our difference in thinking. I mean that in a good way. We come from different worlds, yet we we’re not such different beings. If you and I put our heads together, I bet we could really show the rest of ‘em a thing or two.”

“Think so?”

Byron winked. “I know so,” he said, patting Peter on the leg. “Now come on,” he said, rising to his feet. “Let’s go get us a slice of that apple pie.”

 

*

 

She set the dirty dishes in the sink, wrapped the leftovers in foil. On the counter, there sat a cranberry and apple crumble she had made for dessert. The bourbon sauce, which was to be warmed and drizzled over the piping dessert, sat in a saucepan on the stove, a gloppy mess. She dumped it down the drain and left the dishes in the sink for Marie to deal with in the morning.

Matthew was back in his office working, and Greta stood with the last of the wine in her glass gazing out the kitchen window at the valley beyond.

When was it going to end, she had asked him. But she knew the answer to that question. There were two answers, really. The first was that it was never going to end, and the second was that it already had. She had tried - for the last time? - to break through the wall he had over the years erected between them. But she knew now, after tonight’s dinner, that the wall would only grow higher, thicker. After Matthew turned Wallaby into what he wanted, then sold it to ICP, it would be no different when he was promoted to a higher rank within ICP, perched atop his ever-growing blockade. Maybe they would stay in California, but probably they would have to go back to New York, to ICP’s headquarters. Though she sometimes missed New York, the thought or returning held little appeal. There her friends were all wives of the other International Foods executives, and out here, regardless of all she had heard about the nice people in California, the women were still the same, robots who yessed their husbands at social occasions and dinner parties, while behind their backs they, and their husbands, engaged in extramarital affairs.

That wasn’t how Greta wanted to end up living her life. But would she?

She finished her wine and set the glass on the counter - a little too firmly. The crystal base shattered into little bits with a high resonating tinkle, yet the bowl of the glass remained intact in her hand.

“Shit,” she cried, the sound breaking a dam in her, releasing a flood of tears. She tossed the unbroken half into the sink, which echoed the same tinkling sounds, even louder this time. She held her breath, wondering if he had heard, wondering if would come to see if she had injured herself. She waited, holding on to this fragile hope with all of her breath.

If he had heard, he wasn’t letting her know. She let out a great sigh. Jesus, was that her life with Matthew? Shattered, broken beyond repair? It was too much to consider at this moment. She needed to get out of the house for a little while, to go for a walk in the pretty night and clear her head.

She snatched her windbreaker from the coat hook beside the door to the garage and stepped outside into the evening’s coolness. She wandered down the sloping hill to the high, solid gate. She stepped through the gateway and hiked down the trail to the edge of the pond with its narrow dirt path.

Eventually, if she followed it, the path would lead her to the horse stables. Sometimes she rode Mighty Boy along here, circling the entire pond and back around to the stable, passing her own home on the way. Quickly and steadfastly she strode through the twisted, tree-lined path in the moonlight. The stables lay a half-mile ahead.

It was supposed to have been her night to celebrate the memories of her marriage, but now she found herself thinking about the scene that had taken place in Mighty Boy’s stall the other day. For better or worse, she had stopped him. She had admitted to him that she and Matthew were having problems, but they were still married, and even though she had desperately wanted him to go on, she said she could not let herself be with him. He had released her, and assured her that it would not happen again. Unless, he said, she came to him. Since that day she had not gone back to the ranch.

She slowed for a moment, then stopped. She absently stroked her left hand with her right hand as she examined her present state of mind. What was she going to do, just knock on the door of his cottage? She turned and looked back up the hill to her home. A few lights glowed - Matthew’s office. She swallowed, and her left hand throbbed some more.

Yes, she decided, that was exactly what she was going to do.

She moved on, her pace quickening, her heart pumping. Shortly the stables came into view, illuminated by both the light of the moon and by the floodlights surrounding the property. Trailing along the border of light, just beyond its edge, she grew excited and reckless, like an inexperienced burglar. Her brisk walk had warmed her and she unzipped her jacket as she stealthily slipped around the stable.

She passed the main house, where the ranch’s owner lived alone. Purple-blue light flickered from an upstairs window. About fifty yards from where she stood were two small cottages. She had passed them many times while riding. Jean-Pierre lived in one of those cottages, and though she had never been invited inside, she knew which one was his because he had mentioned once that it afforded a beautiful view of the pond from his bedroom window, through which he could see her home and its rear upstairs light glowing late at night. Though her home was too high and far away for him to see inside, she was excited by the thought of him lying in his dark bedroom, fixated on her bedroom window. Had he ever glimpsed