by Claire Kent
Erin waited for him to return, feeling oddly hard and numb. It felt like she was mourning something, but she wasn’t close to tears. The brief rush of pleasure at her husband’s return seemed totally drowned now beneath the flood of everything else.
In some ways, it had been better before he’d returned. Now…now she was going to have to do something about what she’d finally acknowledged as wrong.
Seth returned in a few minutes and finished getting undressed in the dark. When he got back in bed, he remarked, “Anna’s in Mackenzie’s room.”
“Yeah. She’s been sleeping there for weeks.” It seemed impossible that he hadn’t known that.
“Why?” He rolled over behind her again, pressing himself into her back and adjusting her so he could embrace her from behind.
“She’s been having bad dreams.”
“She has? For how long? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Erin shrugged. She thought she had told him, but she could have forgotten. “You weren’t here.”
Seth didn’t respond to that, but he wasn’t as relaxed as before. She could almost feel him watching her, observing her, assessing her behavior and putting the clues together into some kind of precise interpretation of the situation.
For some reason, it annoyed her. That he would try to so coolly and rationally figure out something that even she didn’t fully understand.
They lay in silence for several minutes, Seth occasionally massaging her belly or shoulder. After a while, however, Erin felt him begin to harden behind her, his arousal starting to rub against her ass.
After one instinctive jolt of answering desire in her own body, all of Erin’s tangled emotions drowned the spark of arousal into nonexistence. She shifted uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, Seth. I just don’t think I’m in the mood to…”
“That’s fine. We don’t have to.”
He was still semi-hard behind her, though, and Erin felt self-conscious for no reason she could understand. This was her husband of four years, after all. Yet in some way it felt like he’d transformed, at least in part, into someone she didn’t really know.
Or maybe she was the one who’d transformed.
Seth seemed to sense her unease. “Is it all right if I hold you?” he asked diffidently.
She knew she had hurt him. He’d come home after a long, hard trip expecting to be welcomed completely—to be safe and cherished and loved by his family. And she had failed him in that. Felt guilty because of it. But there was something inside her that resisted. That kept preparing her for what she knew would follow.
“I know I was gone for too long, Erin,” he began, his head resting behind hers on the pillow. “There were a lot of—”
“Let’s talk about it tomorrow,” she interrupted. She knew how hard the conversation was going to be, and she just didn’t have the energy tonight.
“All right.” He brushed another kiss into her hair. Nestled her more snugly against him.
Then she felt his body almost immediately relaxing. His breathing shifted into slow inhales and exhales.
He was asleep in less than five minutes.
And even that bothered Erin unreasonably. That he could fall asleep so easily when it felt like her world wasn’t quite holding together.
She knew it was probably the first time in weeks he’d had a good night’s sleep. She knew that he only really relaxed when he was home, and so he never slept well anywhere else. And she knew he’d been working for several days and nights straight.
Of course, he needed to sleep.
She didn’t sleep though. Not at all, not all night.
She lay awake in the dark, trying to sort out what had changed and how they could possibly change it back.
***
Erin knew that Seth’s reunion with his daughters wasn’t exactly what he’d been expecting either.
He was showered and dressed before they got up the following morning—he needed to go into the office to catch up on everything that had piled up in his absence—and Erin went into the girls’ bedroom to make sure they woke up before he’d left for the morning.
So they were groggy and a little confused when Seth came into the room, looking coolly professional in his dark suit and blue tie. Mackenzie went over to give him a hug as requested, but she was quiet and wary, instead of brimming with the intense joy with which she usually greeted him.
Anna wouldn’t go over to him at first. She had always been a little shy, her vibrant emotions only emerging once she was comfortable. She actually hid behind Erin’s legs for a minute, peeking out at Seth until his smile and low voice convinced her that everything was okay.
She ran over to hug him, and she even giggled a little and pronounced herself glad that Daddy was home.
Erin was relieved that the first greeting was over. Her heart ached in her chest—for her girls, who had to deal with their father’s long absence. And for Seth, whose face hadn’t changed at all from its mild composure, but whom Erin knew was sharply hurt by his daughters’ hesitance.
They were going to have a family night this evening, and Erin hoped that spending time with their father would do much to mend over the rifts that had emerged. Children were resilient, and Seth had always been a loving father. The tension, she was sure, would be temporary.
After the girls went to bed tonight, she and Seth were going to have a long talk about things. Erin wasn’t going to continue this way, and it was long past time she’d hashed it out with him.
The day wasn’t as bad as she'd feared. Both girls were a little testy and so they bickered more than usual, but Erin had the evening to look forward to, during which they could start to work everything out.
Seth came home a little later than they’d planned, but still in plenty of time for their scheduled time together. They had pizza in the family room and then set up to play the girls’ favorite board game.
Things were going quite well, and Erin was starting to relax for the first time when Seth’s phone rang.
Something clenched in her chest as he answered it, and Mackenzie stiffened visibly as she watched Seth walk out of the room, talking in low, urgent murmurs on his phone.
Erin and the girls sat in tense silence until he returned.
His face was torn, exhausted, and reluctant. “I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely. “I have to go in. It’s an emergency.”
Erin couldn’t seem to feel anything. She was frozen. Numb. Felt…nothing.
Anna blinked up at Seth. “Daddy’s going away again?”
“I’m sorry, honey. I’ll just be gone an hour. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“But tonight was supposed to be with us,” Mackenzie said accusingly, something so tight on her face it was almost unspeakable. Something far too sharp and knowing for a girl of only six.
“I know,” he said, kneeling down and stroking Anna’s soft blond hair. “It’s not fair. But I don’t have a choice.”
Erin was holding her breath as she watched Mackenzie’s face. The delicate features had started working and twitching, as the girl tried to control her emotions.
She couldn’t. She choked on tears of hurt and disappointment. Then stumbled to her feet and ran out of the room, evading Seth’s arm as he reached out to comfort her.
“Mac?” Anna mumbled, wobbling to her feet as well, her huge eyes wide and swimming with tears. “Mac’s crying?”
Then Anna started crying too and ran after her older sister.
The frozen numbness in Erin’s chest was beginning to crack. She jerked to her feet and stared at Seth with something too intense to articulate.
“I have to leave,” he said, his eyes almost desperate and his voice breaking slightly. “Erin, it’s not just work. It’s a serious criminal case. Someone’s whole future is on the line.” He rubbed an urgent hand over his face. “I’ll go and try to explain it to them.”
He was turning to follow his daughters when Erin cut him off.
“Don’t bother. If you’re going to go, then jus
t leave.”
She hurried after her daughters, both of whom were crying in Mackenzie’s bedroom.
Even as she followed them, Erin kept hoping that Seth would change his mind. That he wouldn’t be able to bear having caused his daughters to cry like this and would decide to stay here with them instead.
After a minute, however, Erin heard the door of the apartment open and close.
Seth had gone back to work after all.
***
When Seth returned two hours later, Erin was packing a suitcase.
She’d put the girls to bed shortly after Seth left, and they’d eventually fallen asleep in exhaustion. By then, Erin had known what she needed to do, so she didn’t waste any time, didn’t give herself a chance to talk herself out of it.
She was neatly folding shirts and stacking them in the suitcase when Seth came into the room—his eyes utterly drained and haunted, as if the evening had been too much for him.
He immediately snapped into urgency when he saw what Erin was doing. “What’s going on?” he demanded, striding over to stare down at her half-packed bag.
“I’m packing,” she said simply, turning away from him to go back into the closet and get some more clothes.
“Erin?” He followed her, grabbing her arm and swinging her around to face him. “Why are you packing?”
“I’m leaving,” she explained, the words sticking in her throat. When she saw the brief flash of shattering anguish on his face, she qualified quickly, “For a couple of weeks. I need to get away and think things through.”
His face was composed again, but there was a barely suppressed panic visible beneath his composure. “What do you mean by get away?”
“I mean,” she replied, taking a deep breath and trying to keep her voice calm, “things aren’t working. I need to figure everything out. I can’t do that here.”
“What?” Seth’s fingers were clenching spasmodically around her upper arm, so tightly that it actually hurt. “What?”
The broken look on his face was about to undo her resolve, so Erin shook off his hand and kept moving to the closet.
Seth had gotten himself under control by the time she returned to the bedroom. His face was cold now and hard—with what she knew was an automatic defense against anything that threatened to hurt him.
Before they’d gotten together, he’d looked that way most of the time.
“Are you actually telling me that you’re thinking about leaving because I had to unexpectedly go into work this evening?” His voice was cool and cutting.
She swallowed. Stared down at the suitcase. Couldn’t believe she was doing this. “You aren’t really stupid enough to think it’s just because of what happened tonight.”
Seth was directly beside her, his tense presence very distracting. “I know I was gone on the trip for too long, but that’s only happened once. And I’m not sure it deserves this severe a response.”
Erin took a shuddering breath and folded up a pair of pants to place in the suitcase. “This isn’t just about your being gone for a month. It’s about all of it. Your work has become more important than your family.”
Seth grabbed her shoulder again and turned her to face him. “Work is not more important than my family. How can you say that? I’ve been dealing with a lot of very unusual pressures at work lately, and they’ve ended up taking too much of my time. But it has nothing to do with what is important to me.”
Erin shrugged slightly. Pulled away from him again. “I’m sure that’s how you feel. But all I know is how you act. When you have a choice between your family and work, you always choose work.”
Seth released a frustrated groan and lowered himself to sit on the bed next to her suitcase. “I don’t always have a choice. I know it seems to you like I do. But—at the risk of sounding patronizing—I’m not sure you understand the stakes of what I do. There are some things I simply can’t not do. The result would affect people’s futures, even their lives. I have certain responsibilities that I can’t just put aside.” He was speaking earnestly now, having moved past his protective coldness in a real attempt to make her understand. “Often, when you think I have a choice, I really don’t. At least not one I can responsibly make.”
Erin shook her head. His words made sense, but Seth was the one who didn’t understand. She’d known all of this already. “Why do you think I complain about your work as infrequently as I do? It always seemed petty for me to whine about not having you home for dinner when someone else's future was at stake.” She met his eyes. “But, no matter how much a person understands and tries to tolerate, there will always come a point when you can’t take it anymore.” She paused for a moment. “This is that point for me.”
Seth must have recognized she was serious because his brief attempt to explain his perspective suddenly flared up into a new rush of stifled panic. “Erin,” he said roughly. “This isn’t fair. I’ve been home one day, then I leave to go into work at a bad time, and now you suddenly declare you can’t take anymore. I’ve had no preparation for this. How the hell could I have tried to make it better?”
Erin’s throat was aching so much she could barely breathe, and she couldn’t stand to look at his expression anymore. She stared back down at the clothes in her suitcase. Pretended she was straightening them. “I’m not sure it would have made any difference.”
“Damn it.” He jerked back to his feet with the momentum of his indignation. “That’s ludicrous. You’re saying that I’m not home enough, but then you say it wouldn’t make any difference if I was.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Seth stood in frozen silence for a moment, staring fixedly at a spot on the far wall. Erin knew he was thinking, his mind working with rapid precision as he sorted through reasons and possibilities.
Finally, he rubbed a frustrated hand through his hair and began, “I can see I’ve made a lot of mistakes.” His tone was low and hoarse, and he seemed to be thinking quickly as he spoke. “I knew it wasn’t good that I was gone for so long on this trip, although I couldn’t see any way around it. And obviously I know how upsetting it was that I left you and the girls this evening, just when they were starting to relax with me again. I shouldn’t have left tonight. I see that now. I should have…figured out something else to take care of the crisis. And I should have worked harder to get home from the trip sooner than I did. But I just thought…” His voice broke off, as if he’d hit a block in his throat.
Erin was listening carefully, although part of her knew that nothing he said tonight would really make a difference in what she knew she needed to do. “You thought what?” she whispered.
Seth’s face twisted strangely, which was a sure sign he was about to admit something that was too deep and private for him to get spoken easily. “I thought the point of family was that you could make mistakes. The last few weeks have been really difficult, but I just kept thinking about you and the girls, waiting for me. You know what things used to be like for me. And it took me a long time to finally trust that there were people in the world who loved me, regardless. Because of that, I just thought that I could count on you…to understand.”
Erin knew how hard the words had been for Seth to say. His voice had grown more and more gravelly, and he could no longer look her in the eyes.
He wasn’t a man who opened up easily. Six years ago, it had taken him months to open up enough to tell her that he loved her at all. So the fact that he had come this far—that he was willing to say something so raw and naked—meant something to Erin, despite everything.
Her chest was flooded with love, with tenderness, with grief. And with a kind of bitterness, that even his blunt sincerity couldn’t fix things.
“You were right,” she responded at last, putting her hand on her breastbone because her chest was hurting so much. “In a lot of ways, you were right. You can trust us and count on us.” She made herself continue. “But the problem is that you’re thinking only about yourself.”
&n
bsp; Seth glanced up, as if he were surprised.
It told her something.
“You haven’t even thought about how difficult these last weeks have been on us. I know how hard you were working and how stressed and overwhelmed you were. But you weren’t the only one who had a hard time. Your daughters had to spend a month without you, at an age where that kind of thing really has consequences. A couple of nights ago Anna was afraid that she didn’t even remember what you looked like.”
Seth’s mouth dropped open slightly. “She what?”
“And Mackenzie…” Erin had to swallow before she finished her sentence. “Mackenzie—who adores you more than anything in the world—actually told me that she hated you.”
She couldn’t look at Seth after she said that. Knew what she’d see in his face, and couldn’t stand to witness it.
There was a long unbearable silence before he rasped, “Why?”
“Because you kept promising you’d come back but never did.” Erin pushed her hair back impatiently from her face. “Did you even think about what that would do to them? To have their father keep breaking his promises to them?”
“But—”
“I know you didn’t do it on purpose. I explained it as much as I could. But I also had to comfort them when they kept crying about it.”
Seth turned on his heel and started striding out of the room.
“Seth,” Erin demanded loudly. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to apologize. To make sure they know—”
This time, Erin hurried over and grabbed him by the arm. “No. They’re asleep. If you wake them up now, you’ll just confuse them.” He seemed to resist, to still try to pull away, but Erin hung on resiliently. “You can talk to them in the morning. Mackenzie doesn’t really hate you. You know that as well as I do. But do you realize how much she had to be hurting for her to say that…about you?”
Of course, Seth realized it. The knowledge had almost leveled him. His face and posture were still composed, but the coiled tension was so tight in his body that she was afraid he might shatter.
“I see your point,” he said at last, roughly and still not fully meeting her eyes. “I wasn’t looking at the whole picture. I figured they’d miss me some, but I didn’t think it would…” He shook his head jerkily. “I was just expecting you all to be waiting for me, without thinking about what the waiting might do to the girls. I was foolish. I made a mistake. I won't do it again. But that doesn’t explain why you’re still packing.”
