Love, Accidentally Read Free Page A

“How long, exactly?”
    She hadn’t asked about Elise before, though she’d been curious. Grif had mentioned his ex, casually, on their very first date while they sat on the beach and talked. She knew their history was tangled and their breakup recent—recent enough that a shadow had passed over his face when he’d mentioned it. But that was all she knew.
    “On and off since we were fifteen,” he said. “Mostly on.”
    She blinked hard. “So . . . almost fifteen years?”
    “Yeah, I guess,” he said. “We’ve known each other forever. Since kindergarten.”
    “Is she . . . does she live nearby?”
    He shook his head. “She moved to San Francisco when we broke up.”
    She took a deep breath. “Oh,” she said.
    She found herself suddenly wondering what Elise looked like. And why had Grif ended things with her? They’d been together for half of his life, she realized as her hands mechanically tore the lettuce into a wooden bowl. Ilsa thought back to the family photos scattered on a table in Grif’s living room. She’d smiled at the picture of him graduating from high school, and teased him about how long his hair was at his brother Jake’s commitment ceremony with his partner. Now she realized with a jolt that Elise was probably there, just outside the edges of the pictures, witnessing those events as they occurred.
    “We’re still friendly,” Grif said. “I mean, we don’t talk a lot. But we e-mail sometimes. I told her I met someone.”
    “Yeah?” Ilsa asked, her voice sounding small.
    “Yeah.” He moved closer, took her in his arms.
    “Okay?” he asked, and she knew the single word encapsulated multiple questions: if she was okay knowing what a big role Elise had played in his history, okay with him not mentioning it before, okay with Grif calling her by the name of a woman he used to love.
    She tilted up her chin to look at him. It was over between him and Elise, she reminded herself. She was the one Grif had chosen.
    “Okay,” she whispered.

     
    THE HOLIDAYS SNUCK up on them. Ilsa and Grif were in his Lexus hybrid, driving to Sonoma County for a weekend of bike riding and wine tasting, when “Jingle Bells” began playing over the radio.
    “I can’t believe Christmas is next month,” she said. Grif’s hand was warm on her bare knee, and she’d deliberately left her BlackBerry in her apartment. “Are you going home to see your family?”
    “Actually,” he said, “I was thinking of coming home with you to meet yours.”
    He glanced over when she didn’t respond right away. “Too soon?”
    “No!” The word burst out of her. “I just . . . really like that idea.”
    “Cool,” he said. “I want to see where you grew up. Plus I kind of miss snow. Maybe we can get in a little cross-country skiing?”
    She and Grif now spent five or six nights a week together, and they’d officially adopted and shared custody of Fabio, but this, more than anything, revealed how serious their relationship had grown. She’d never brought Jones home—she couldn’t imagine his oversize personality fitting into her family’s cozy little ranch-style house. There hadn’t been anyone before him, either, whom she’d felt strongly enough about to introduce to her parents. Grif was the first guy they would meet since her high school boyfriends.
    She put her hand on top of his, feeling her heart soar as they sped down the highway. “Corrine and Bruce are coming, too. We’ll have a full house. It’ll be great.”
    But the day before their scheduled flight, Corrine phoned. Her voice sounded thick and uneven, and for a minute, Ilsa had the wild thought that her sister was drunk at eleven o’clock in the morning.
    “We’re not going to make it home this year after all,” Corrine said. “There’s just . . . a lot of stuff going on.”
    “Corr?” Ilsa felt something cold stabbing her gut. Fear, she realized. “What’s wrong?”
    “I don’t know,” Corrine said. Ilsa thought she