A Life Without Water

by Marci Bolden

  “Finish school? Caroline, you’re pregnant.”

  “All the more reason to push through now.” She tugged his hand until he followed her to the table and sat beside her. “I already talked to an advisor at school. We figured it all out. I’ll go back to medical school in a few years. Being a nurse will keep me in the field. I won’t lose any ground. In fact, I’ll gain some. I’ll have actual working experience to take to medical school. I’ll be ahead of the game when I go back.”

  He shook his head. “No. No. You should be at home. With our kid. Like a real mom.”

  She gawked at him, not sure if she should laugh or smack him for his closed-minded, sexist comment. “Like a real mom? Women work, John. That doesn’t make them any less of a mother than a man working makes him less of a father.”

  “Yeah, I know that,” he said, but clearly didn’t believe it. His mother had never worked. “It’s just… I want you home. With the baby.”

  “I want to be a doctor. I’ve always planned to be a doctor. You know that.”

  “But this changes everything.”

  “No. It doesn’t. It changes how I’m going to get there, but it doesn’t change the end game. I’m going to medical school, John. I’m going to be a pediatrician.”

  He opened his mouth, likely to argue, but didn’t. “Okay. Sure. If that’s what you want. But we are getting married.”

  “John, we’re not ready for marriage.”

  “Hey,” he said, his voice and eyes unwavering, “I’m not caving on this. Not this. If you want to work, okay. If you want to go to school, we’ll figure it out. We are getting married.” He knocked his knuckles against the table in his signature rhythm. “Don’t move.”

  She sat back while he went into his bedroom. Maybe he was right. Not because the baby should be born to married parents, but because he had better insurance than she could get. She’d have to go on public assistance to cover the cost that John’s insurance would if she were his wife. Insurance didn’t seem like the best reason to get married, though.

  John pulled her from her internal debate when he sat at the table, wearing that half-grin that always melted her heart. She gasped when he held up a gold band with a tiny diamond perched on top. The gem wasn’t big, but neither was his salary. If she had to guess, she’d say he’d saved up a long time to buy that ring.

  “See that?” he asked. “I was planning to marry you anyway. Not because you’re pregnant, but because I love you. More than life itself.” He pushed the ring onto her finger and kissed her hand. “Fits and everything.” His smile grew, causing her reservations to fade.

  Okay. Okay. They’d get married. They’d get married and have a baby.

  She’d figure out the rest later.

  Carol’s chest burned, reminding her that she’d been sprinting longer than her body could handle. Slowing the treadmill, she eased her heart rate down and stretched before taking a quick shower.

  As she approached the RV, she saw that John was sitting in one of the lawn chairs she’d packed in the storage section. He’d set both of them out, but she had no intention of occupying the other. The sun had set, and clusters of stars littered the inky sky. Several people had small fires going in their fire pits, but John was illuminated only by the streetlight high above their parking spot. The scene seemed sad to her somehow, like the amber glow highlighted the solitude of the life he’d made for himself. Her sympathy was short-lived as she reminded herself of his shitty attitude earlier.

  The crunching gravel under her feet announced her arrival.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hey.” She opened the bin to put her bag away.

  He suddenly appeared at her side. “I didn’t mean to snap at you,” he said as she closed the door. “It’s the headache.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged one shoulder and let it fall. “I shouldn’t have said what I did. I’m sorry, too. I know you’re in pain. I’ll try to be more patient.”

  He gestured up at the sight he’d been admiring. “Have you ever seen a more beautiful sky? There’s gotta be a million stars up there.”

  She tilted her head back to look at the twinkling display set against the near-black backdrop. Tobias loved sitting out like this, looking up at the night. He said seeing the universe staring back kept him humble. It had always made her feel insignificant. Even so, she couldn’t deny the beauty of it. “Wait until we really get away from it all. It’s amazing.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Not much. You?”

  “I ate a sandwich. I can make you one.”

  “I can do it,” she said as she started for the door. “Thanks for offering, though.”

  He followed her into the motorhome, standing by the entrance as she got a plate from the cabinet. “You haven’t asked how I’m doing.”

  She managed to stop her hostile laugh before it left her. Seriously? After his temper tantrum? “You didn’t seem to want me to, John.”

  Another few heartbeats of quiet passed between them. “We shouldn’t fight. Katie hated it when we fought.”

  She opened the fridge. “We’re not fighting.”

  “Oh. I guess your cold shoulder gave me the wrong idea.” His voice was light, as if he were trying to tease her.

  She wasn’t in the mood to be teased. She slammed the door and met his stare. “I didn’t ask how you are doing so I’m giving you the cold shoulder?”

  The look in his eye immediately changed to barely contained anger. “The temperature dropped about twenty degrees when you got back.”

  She didn’t care. Let him be pissed. Let him get pissed enough to storm off and leave her there. She’d jump in the driver’s seat and disappear without another word to him. “What would you like me to do, John, hmm? How would you like me to be?”

  “A little less bitter would be nice.”

  She focused on untwisting the tie around the bread. “You know, you show up in my life out of nowhere, dredging up memories better left alone—”

  “You mean our daughter?”

  She scoffed. “I’m not doing this.”

  “You’re pissed because I made you remember Katie?”

  She dropped the bread as she met his gaze again. “No. I’m pissed because you made me remember you and all the bullshit I tolerated to try to keep the peace between us.”

  Returning her attention to making her dinner, she ignored him until he put his hand on hers, stopping her from spreading a dollop of olive-oil mayonnaise. Shaking her head, she dropped the bread and knife. “Do you remember that night I told you I was going to divorce you? I got suspended without pay because you’d made me late for work, yet again. You had a bad day and instead of coming home to take care of Katie, you sat in that pub drinking. I was about to lose my job because you never seemed to be able to come home on time. I packed your bags. I was going to make you leave but you talked me out of it. You always had this way of making me believe you could change.” Narrowing her eyes, she seethed, “Do you know how many times I’ve thought if only. If only I hadn’t given you one more chance. If only I’d been stronger. If only I’d listened to my parents. If only this. If only that. If only you hadn’t been such a selfish bastard.”

  She pushed her plate away and stormed outside, inhaling the muggy night air in a futile attempt to calm her anger. Hell. Maybe she’d be the one to vanish into the night. Let him take the RV and all these damned memories with him. She could walk into the darkness and disappear for good. That’d be okay. As long as this hell ended, that’d be perfectly okay.

  She stood staring at the stars, trying to calm her racing heartbeat. She wasn’t sure how long she stood there, but she’d talked herself out of a suicide mission across the emptiness of West Texas when a plate appeared in front of her face.

  “You should eat,” John said.

  She accepted his offering. “Thanks.”

  “I wouldn’t have given up that easy.” He stuffed his hands in h
is pockets. “That’s why when you finally did leave me, you disappeared in the middle of the night without a word. Because you knew I’d never give up that easy.”

  “And I’d never stop accepting your lame apologies.”

  “I’ve thought that, too. If only… There are a million if-onlys that have played through my mind. We can’t change the past. That’s something I’ve had to learn to accept. I can’t change what I’ve done, and I’ll never know what would have happened if I’d done things different. Maybe she’d still be dead. Maybe she was always meant to die. Maybe nothing I could have done would have changed that.” He nodded toward her dinner. “Eat. I’m going to get some sleep. We have another long day tomorrow.”

  She stared at the sandwich, far too large for her appetite, then up to the stars.

  He was wrong. Everything would be different if he’d left that night. Katie wouldn’t have died. She would have lived. She would have grown up. And Carol would have still been able to hold her daughter.

  Carol’s defenses immediately spiked when John said, “This suits you.” His words cut the silence that had filled the motorhome for the last hundred miles, and though his tone wasn’t malevolent, she sensed his unspoken judgment. She hadn’t slept well the night before. His comment about how maybe Katie was meant to die had played over and over in her mind and twisted her emotions inside out as she remembered far too many things that were better left forgotten.

  “What suits me?” she asked, trying to keep her tone from sounding clipped.

  “The fancy house. The fancy clothes. The overpriced motorhome. You always were too good for me. Remember how your parents blamed me for you not finishing medical school?”

  “Well, I did drop out to have your baby.”

  His smile spread, apparently proud that her unexpected pregnancy had forced her to give up her lifelong ambitions. “We were the ‘it’ couple, you know. Everyone wanted to be like us. We had it all.”

  She creased her brow at his assessment of the life they’d shared. “No, we didn’t.”

  “Come on,” he said, his gaze skimming over her face. “We had a nice home. A beautiful daughter.”

  “We also had an enormous amount of debt. You were a drunk. And all we did was fight.”

  He shook his head as if her points weren’t valid. “There were good times, too. You don’t remember them, but I do. We laughed all the time. We had good friends. Remember how we had parties every weekend?”

  Amazement at how differently he saw the past rolled through her. He’d have a better chance at convincing her the Earth was flat. “You had parties every weekend, John. I cleaned up the messes that you and your friends left behind.”

  “You enjoyed those as much as I did.”

  She cast him a glance, letting the unamused look on her face dispute his observation.

  “You liked our friends,” he said with quiet insistence.

  “They were your friends.”

  “That’s not how I remember it.”

  Pressing her lips together, she tried to stop herself, but she couldn’t let this rest. “You drank so much, I don’t know how you remember anything.”

  Turning in his seat, he pinned her in place with a vexed stare. “We were together for almost eight years. Not all of it was bad.”

  He unbuckled and pushed himself up, moving back to the kitchen. She exhaled some of her frustration, debating whether it was too late to turn the RV around and go home. The sound of the fridge door slamming made her wince. She was about to call back and tell him to take it easy on her RV when he dropped back into his seat. She chafed inwardly at how it bounced in response.

  “You know,” he said, cracking open a bottle of water, “I get that you hate me. I don’t blame you, but fuck you for acting like we never had anything worth remembering.”

  “Fuck you for acting like you ever did anything worth remembering. My God, John, I spent our entire relationship mothering you. It was cute in the beginning, you know. Look how much he needs me. He wouldn’t last a day without me. That got old pretty damn quick when I had a child to take care of. Nursing a grown man’s hangover isn’t nearly as adorable when you have spit-up in your hair, swollen tits, and a screaming newborn in your arms.”

  “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “Where were you when Katie and I were released from the hospital?”

  “I had every right to celebrate becoming a dad.”

  “Yeah, you did, and I had every right to leave the hospital with my husband. I waited for you for hours. I had to call your father to come get us because I was too ashamed to call my father. It’s a damn good thing considering you were passed out on the couch when we got there.”

  He took a long drink from his water bottle. “I don’t deny that I had some growing up to do.”

  “No, John. You had some sobering up to do. I made excuses for you like I always did. I told your dad you’d stayed up late preparing for the baby to come home. I told him we’d be fine. I told him to go home, not to worry. Then I sat in the bathroom and cried because I knew we weren’t going to be fine. I knew we were going to be a disaster. I didn’t know how to stop it.” She swallowed hard. “I didn’t know how bad it was going to get.”

  “I may not have been perfect,” he snapped, “but neither were you. Nothing was ever enough for you. Nothing I did was right. Do you know how much that beats a man down? To know his wife is miserable and nothing he does can make it better? I remember how you used to look at me. You blamed me because you had to give up medical school. Well, newsflash, Nurse Bowman, you participated in making our daughter. You were there, too. You were as much to blame for getting knocked up as I was.” He grunted as he shook his head. In true John fashion, he didn’t know when to stop. Instead of shutting his mouth, he pressed on. “We had good times. The first Christmas after we were married. We had that ugly little tree, remember? But we worked hard to make it beautiful. We didn’t have a lot of money, but I got you that necklace with little booties on it. You loved it. We had good times.”

  She gripped the steering wheel, irritated as hell that he was missing the point. “A few good times doesn’t balance the scale of what happened to Katie.”

  He focused out the window at the flat topography. There was nothing for miles and miles except dry land and bright blue sky. There weren’t even any clouds to try to interpret as something else. Just brown dirt and blue sky.

  “You should have stayed. I would have stopped drinking. I would have been more committed. Losing Katie was a wakeup call.”

  “One that you didn’t take.” She glanced at him. “When did you say you got sober? Four years ago?”

  “Nine.”

  “Nine years ago, John? Katie had been gone for fifteen years. It took fifteen years for the lesson to sink in?”

  “The fifteenth anniversary of her death hit me hard. I did try to crawl into a bottle then. What’d you do, Carol? Go on a road trip with your new husband, living your new life, acting like we never existed?”

  Actually, she’d spent that day in bed. Taking more sleeping pills than any bottle or physician would recommend. Not enough to overdose. Enough to sleep through the day. And part of the next. Tobias had forced her to see a counselor after that. She’d smiled and nodded and faked her way through the appointment, and never went back again. She didn’t need Tobias or a doctor to tell her how to feel about Katie dying. She sure as hell didn’t need the man responsible for her death to give her pointers. “I’m not comparing my grief to yours, John. I mourn every day for my daughter, and you are not going to make me feel guilty for not falling apart enough to suit you.”

  “You didn’t fall apart at all,” he said. “You turned to stone. Then you walked away like we meant nothing to you.”

  Grinding her teeth, she took a moment to constrain her response. “You don’t get to be angry that I left you. You don’t get to judge me for moving on and trying to find some happiness in this life. You don’t get to tell me that I didn’t hurt enough f
or Katie.”

  “You didn’t even give us a chance to recover. You just left.”

  “Yeah. I did. You are correct. If I’d left the hundred times before when I wanted to…” Though the shoulder wasn’t sufficient to park the RV, she steered off the road and threw the gearshift into park. “I lay there last night listening to you snore and thinking of all the times I debated slipping out with Katie. All the times I talked myself out of leaving you. You were her father. We were a family. We were married. Wives don’t leave without trying. Mothers don’t take their daughters away without a really good reason. I had a good reason, John. I had a thousand good reasons. They were never enough to make me walk away. But then you killed her,” she whispered. “And I let you. I knew you weren’t responsible enough to care for her. I knew you drank too much. I knew you weren’t attentive enough. Still, I convinced myself that you’d never let anything happen to her.”

  “I was asleep.”

  “You were passed out.” Her voice cracked as she emphasized the last words, as she let the accusation hang between them. “I saw the beer cans when I walked in the house, John. The counter was full of them, every one empty. She is dead because you were a drunk and I enabled you. I let you kill her.”

  Her eyes widened at the shock her own words inflicted. The reality of what she’d said was like a slap to the face. Katie was dead because John was an alcoholic. And because Carol had made a thousand excuses to allow him to be. She’d played as much of a role in Katie’s death as John. She was as guilty.

  Jesus.

  She’d killed her baby. By being a doormat, by making excuses, by lying to herself about how bad things really were. The role she’d played had been passive, but she’d played it all the same.

  She’d killed Katie, too.

  “Caroline,” he whispered, as if he could read her train of thought.

  “Oh my God.”

  “You weren’t even home,” he said as if to stop the next words from leaving her lips.

  “I killed her, too.”