If Not for You Read online

  “There’s a reason for that,” Rocco reminded her. “I have a woman now and she takes up my time.”

  “Same here,” Sam said.

  “You, too?” Cherise sounded shocked. “I thought, you know, that the two of us…”

  “Sorry, Cherise, but it wasn’t meant to be.” It’d been a mistake to get involved with this woman, even on a casual basis. Fool that he was, Sam knew it and he’d done it, anyway. She was another of the several regrets he lived with. Well, he was on another path now and he was glad of it.

  The two men drank their beer, chatted with a few of their friends. Sam was surprised to find he didn’t have nearly as much in common with the guys as he once did. Someone suggested a pool game, something Sam and Rocco used to enjoy. Sam probably would have agreed if he wasn’t so anxious to see Beth.

  She’d spent part of her day relaxing and getting ready for the next school week and had promised him dinner. He didn’t want her overworking herself and was eager to get to the apartment. He’d written a song he wanted to play for her. It was his first attempt at writing music, and he’d spent hours working on the lyrics. He wasn’t a great wordsmith and had struggled to put his thoughts down on the page and then match them with chords on his guitar. He was interested to see if Beth, with all her musical talent, would be able to pick up the tune on the piano.

  Sam and Rocco left The Dog House no more than thirty minutes after they arrived. The tavern didn’t hold the same appeal it once had, and they both seemed to recognize it. Their lives had moved in other directions and that suited Sam. He realized his friend felt the same.

  Sam’s Song for Beth

  I’ve been broken

  For such a long time

  And love

  Wasn’t much a friend of mine

  It took everything I had to give

  But God

  Must have had sympathy

  And suddenly

  God gave Beth to me

  CHAPTER 19

  Sunshine

  Sunshine had been in a blue funk ever since her dinner with Beth. She blamed the fish tacos. She knew better than to order them. Her memories of Peter were invariably tied to their favorite Friday-night date at the Mexican restaurant. The plate came with three tacos, she recalled. Peter would eat two while she ate one. Even after all these years, she could still taste the delicate spice-coated white fish served on warm homemade corn tortillas with finely chopped onion, tomatoes, and cilantro. The little café never charged them extra for sharing a plate. She ate the rice and Peter loved the refried black beans. Their food was none of the Tex-Mex that was so popular these days. This was as authentic as it got.

  As authentic as their love.

  Peter was in art school with her at Columbia College Chicago; his medium was sculpture. He was gifted beyond anyone she’d ever known. He was as passionate about his art as she was about her own. The difference was that Sunshine had her family’s love and support. Peter didn’t. He’d defied his father, who had refused to finance his schooling. Peter’s father was a corporate attorney and expected his only son to follow in his footsteps. When Peter chose art school over his father’s objections, it caused a rift in their relationship that rivaled that of the Grand Canyon. The only way Peter was able to attend was due to his mother, who funded his schooling. She’d returned to the workforce as an art/history teacher in order to pay his expenses. The marriage was on tentative ground because she’d stood up to her tyrannical husband.

  Sunshine first saw Peter at the campus library, and he immediately piqued her interest. He sat at the table across the room from her. Her immediate thought when she laid eyes on him was that he was gorgeous. His dark brown hair was long and always in his eyes. He constantly brushed it aside. In retrospect it was probably the motion of his hand as he pushed away the curls from his face that first attracted her attention. He looked up then and their eyes met. His were as blue as an Alaskan glacier. Dark hair. Blue eyes. She was lost.

  Embarrassed to be caught studying him, she quickly looked down and dutifully continued her research. When she glanced up again a few minutes later, he was gone and her heart sank.

  She returned the next night and Peter was there, too, sitting one table closer to her. They eyed each other several times. Then, as he had the night before, he left before she did, and again she swallowed her disappointment.

  By the third night she decided if he didn’t make a move, then she would. Sure enough, he was at the library when she arrived. She wasn’t nearly as bold or as outgoing then as she was now. Wanting to meet him and tired of waiting for him to do something, she plopped her books down on the table next to him and pulled out her chair.

  —

  “I’m Louise,” she said.

  “Peter.”

  “My friends call me Sunshine.”

  “What should I call you?”

  “What would you like to call me?”

  He smiled and it felt as if someone had turned up the lighting in the library. The entire area seemed to be brighter, sunnier. “I’d like to call you for a date.”

  —

  Sunshine had laughed, garnering glares from other students.

  They pretended to study. Sunshine’s assignment had been finished the first night she saw him. The only reason she’d returned to the library was with the hope of seeing Peter again. Instead, they passed notes to each other.

  Caught up in the memories, Sunshine made herself a cup of tea and ventured into her art room, finding comfort there as she remembered Peter. After all these years, everything was still fresh in her mind.

  They fell in love quickly. He was her first love, and in reality her last. Her heart had never completely belonged to another. It was always Peter and it would forever remain so. They did everything together. They met in the mornings, walked each other to classes, and studied together. They rode their bikes around town, as neither could afford a car. Sunshine repeatedly reminded Peter that he was talented and he shouldn’t give up on his art to satisfy his father’s plans for his life. He needed that reassurance, and she was happy to supply it because it was the truth.

  For her entire senior year, they were together nearly every day. Then Sunshine had the opportunity to study for three months in Italy and had been thrilled. Peter had been invited as well but couldn’t afford to go. He wanted her to give up the trip and she refused, which was the first serious disagreement they’d ever had. She thought he was being selfish and he said she was being insensitive.

  They were both right.

  They were both wrong.

  For six months they’d lived in their own world, and Sunshine was convinced nothing would ever be strong enough to penetrate it. They’d talked of getting married as soon as they graduated and found work that would support them. Because she was young and naïve then, she believed the power of their love would see them through anything. How wrong she’d been. How foolish.

  —

  “Peter’s cute,” Ellie said when Sunshine brought him home to meet her family. Ellie had spent a year abroad, so this was the first chance her little sister had to meet him. Sunshine had written plenty about him to Ellie in the year she was away in France.

  Peter rarely visited his family home, which had become a battlefield. For his mother’s sake, he avoided confrontations with his father.

  “I think so, too,” Sunshine agreed, a bit wary of Ellie’s interest in Peter. And his in her sister. Sunshine saw the looks the two exchanged.

  “You two serious?” Ellie asked.

  “Very. We’re going to be married,” Sunshine told her sister.

  “Really?”

  “We’re talking about it,” Peter said.

  Sunshine should have known then. Should have suspected.

  “We’re in love.” She looked at Peter and saw his gaze was on her sister. “Right, Peter?” she pressed.

  “Right,” he echoed.

  Ellie was beautiful, but Sunshine wasn’t concerned.

  She should have
been.

  —

  When Sunshine left for those three months, she was convinced that their love would remain solid. By this point she’d been dating Peter for nine months. She’d met his mother but not his father. His mother, Anna, was a delicate woman with refined tastes. She was close to her son and nurtured his desire to support himself with his talent as a sculptor. His father wouldn’t allow any of Peter’s work to be displayed in their home. Sunshine appreciated how difficult it was for this sensitive, brilliant young man to stand up to his overbearing father. Despite his talent and passion, Peter suffered serious doubts when it came to his art and was in constant need of validation. Sunshine tried not to worry what would happen while she was away, but it was only three months. Surely he’d be able to be without her for that long.

  Ellie promised to be there for him, and in the weeks before Sunshine left, she became their shadow. As a joke, Sunshine started calling her Mary after the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Because wherever she and Peter went, Ellie was sure to go.

  Peter and Ellie went to the airport with her. Even now Sunshine could remember waving to them as she went through security. Both promised to keep in touch. To be fair, Sunshine had her doubts. Peter had seemed more and more withdrawn, and she’d assumed he remained upset that she had this wonderful studying opportunity in Florence and he didn’t.

  The first week they wrote each other every day. Sometimes two and three times a day. She shared with him what she was learning, sent photos and notes, and counted down the days until her return. His responses continued but were short in comparison. Then gradually they came infrequently.

  At the end of three months when Sunshine returned home and saw them, she knew. No one needed to spell it out for her. Peter and Ellie were in love. They each felt guilty, were remorseful, begged her forgiveness.

  —

  “Sunshine, listen, please,” Peter begged her. “I’m sorry, so sorry. Neither of us planned this; it just happened.” She’d been back from Italy less than twenty-four hours when they sat down with her. They held on to each other and faced her together, both with sad, mournful eyes.

  “We’re in love,” Ellie said, and to her credit her sister did look contrite. If Sunshine didn’t know her sister better she might have believed her. But Ellie had always wanted whatever Sunshine had, and this time it was Peter.

  Peter looked down, unable to meet her gaze. “I’m sorry.”

  “Do you want Ellie?” Her heart was breaking just asking the man she loved this question.

  Peter remained silent.

  “Answer me,” she cried out, holding back the tears that burned like sulfur. “For the love of heaven, have the decency to at least answer me.”

  Apparently, Peter didn’t know.

  The tears came then, and Sunshine swiped them from her face as she turned and walked away.

  The next time she saw Peter and Ellie she made the decision for him. “I…I’m going to attend graduate school in California. I have an offer…I wasn’t going to accept, but it seems that would be for the best.” Remaining in Chicago and seeing him with her sister would have killed her.

  “No,” Peter protested. “You have an offer here, too…”

  Sunshine shook her head, unwilling to even consider his plea. “Do you seriously think I could remain here with the two of you?”

  “Let her go. It’s for the best,” Ellie advised, tightening her grip on Peter’s arm.

  “Yes,” Sunshine agreed, as she turned away.

  —

  Three months later Sunshine was in California. She’d left without a word and shunned all contact with them. She buried herself in her studies and her painting, and after a year had a show in a well-known gallery. The first piece that sold, created in a frenzy of pain, anger, and emotion, was titled Betrayal.

  The oil painting showed a loving couple walking with their arms around each other with a lamb following closely behind. On closer examination the eye would eventually see that the lamb wasn’t so lovely or innocent. Cleverly woven into the walkway were thin lines of twine wrapping around the man’s legs like vines, securing him to the lamb. In the man’s hair was another face looking back longingly at the lamb. It was the first painting she did with a picture inside a picture that told a story beyond initial impressions. If Sunshine had anything to thank her sister for, it was inspiring her to try this technique.

  A few months after she landed in California, Peter wrote, but she returned his letter unopened. She didn’t speak to her sister again until her mother begged her to make peace for the sake of the family.

  Six months after she was in California, Peter phoned. The only way he could have gotten her phone number was from her mother.

  —

  “You returned my letter.”

  “Yes.”

  “If you’d opened it, you would have learned that Ellie and I broke up. She’s dating someone else now.”

  It probably wasn’t the most forgiving thing to do, but Sunshine laughed. “I didn’t need to read your letter to figure that out. The only reason Ellie wanted you was because I loved you.”

  “Past tense?”

  “Why are you surprised?”

  “Your sister—”

  “You don’t need to tell me anything about my sister that I don’t already know, Peter.”

  Dead air said more than if he had shouted across the line. Finally he spoke. “I was a fool.”

  “Yes.” He wouldn’t get an argument from her.

  “I love you, Sunshine.”

  She bit down on her lip so hard she tasted blood. “I love you, too,” she whispered, broken, “but it’s too late. I’ll never get over what you did. You might as well have stabbed me in the heart. I should have known the minute I told Ellie I wanted to marry you…” She stopped talking. It was useless to continue, useless to relive the pain of her sister’s treachery.

  “I was human,” he argued.

  “Well, I’m human, too,” she returned heatedly. “You should know I’m dating someone else now.”

  Her words appeared to stun him, as though he found it hard to believe she could have feelings for anyone other than him. It seemed he knew her better than she realized.

  “Do you love him, too?” he asked after another tense silence.

  She lied because she wanted to hurt him the same way he had hurt her. “Yes,” she said, “very much.”

  He didn’t say anything for a long moment. “I see…I want you to be happy, Sunshine.”

  “I am…I’m very happy.” She forced a cheerful note into her voice.

  “I appreciate that you answered the phone.”

  She smiled at that. Had she known he was on the other end of the line, she would never have picked up. “Sure. No problem.”

  “You’re a wonderful artist, Sunshine. I have no doubt you’re going to be a huge success.”

  At the time she’d been working on that first painting that caused such a sensation. “If I am,” she said coolly, “I have you and Ellie to thank. I paint with passion now, something my teachers once said I lacked.”

  He didn’t comment. “Good-bye, my love.”

  It was on her lips to remind him she was no longer his love, but she decided against it and silently ended the call.

  —

  Using a number of excuses, Sunshine refused to return to Chicago for the holidays. It was better that she remained in California, and her mother begrudgingly accepted that she was right.

  A year passed before Sunshine heard anything about Peter again. A Christmas card arrived from his mother. At the bottom of her holiday greeting, Peter’s mother wrote a single line.

  Peter is in law school.

  Sunshine’s chest tightened, and for a moment she found it impossible to breathe. He would hate every minute of it. For days afterward she moped around her tiny apartment, restless, agitated, and overwhelmingly sad.

  A year later Anna sent her another Christmas greeting with another line, one equally de
vastating to Sunshine.

  Peter is engaged to the daughter of my husband’s law partner.

  Sunshine never got another Christmas card from Peter’s mother after that, and frankly she was relieved. It hurt too much to know he had given up the one thing in his life that brought him joy.

  The two of them were more alike than she was willing to admit, because she, too, had given up the one thing in her life that gave her joy and love. She gave up Peter.

  CHAPTER 20

  Beth

  Noah Folgate waited for Beth after school on Friday afternoon. She was pleased to see he’d taken her advice and hadn’t dropped out of the music class. Neither had Bailey.

  “Ms. Prudhomme?”

  “Yes, Noah?” she said as she gathered books and papers off her desk. She glanced up and saw him standing just inside the room. “I wanted you to know that I’m glad you’re back.”

  “Thank you. I’m glad to be back.”

  “Do you remember that you asked me not to drop this class?”

  “I do remember. I asked you to give it a week.”

  “I did. The only reason I even signed up was because of Bailey, and then we broke up and I thought, you know, classical music wasn’t really my thing. I didn’t know Bailey had asked to drop the class, too. When we heard about your accident, Bailey and I talked and I asked her to homecoming and she cried, she was so happy. We stayed in your class and I’m glad we did. You were right. I liked learning about Mozart. He was one cool dude. I’ve learned a lot and now I…” He paused as if he was embarrassed. “I want to thank you.”

  “Noah, I’m the one who should be thanking you. You made my day.”

  He lowered his voice, as if he was afraid someone might be listening. “You’re a better teacher than Mr. Englehardt.”

  “If you don’t mind, I won’t tell him you said so.”

  Noah smiled. “Yeah, it’s probably best that you don’t.”

  They walked out of the school together. Beth was almost to her car, one Sam had helped her choose, when her phone rang. Thinking it was Sam, a happy feeling came over her. On Friday afternoons he spent an hour or more with the guys from the garage and he usually didn’t phone until he was home. The number that showed wasn’t one she recognized, though.