Almost Always AMAZON

by Christie Ridgway

  “Thank you.” Her hand trembled a little as she reached for it.

  Seeing her like this made him want to kick his own ass all over again. In using distance to try to save himself, he’d allowed Tess to get overtired and sick. If Griffin hadn’t called him…

  His wife took a tentative sip from the mug, then seemed to think it was going to stay down and so took another. “Rebecca, are you kids okay?”

  “Yeah.” She didn’t take her gaze from the screen. “Daddy handled things.”

  Tess glanced over at him, her expression unreadable. “Will you be all right with Russ while I take a shower?”

  “Yes.” That she felt she had to ask twisted his gut. “Take your time.”

  When she next appeared in the living room, the four kids were in bed asleep. Tess’s hair was still slightly damp, and she was dressed in a pair of plaid flannel pants and a sweatshirt proclaiming Happy Mom from Eaglewood Elementary. There was a little more color in her cheeks, but her blue eyes still stood out too brightly against her pale features.

  He reached in the oven. “Hungry? I made mac and cheese.”

  Her gaze jumped to his. “You made your mom’s mac and cheese?”

  “My specialty.” He smiled a little. “That and hot dogs.”

  She sat gingerly in a chair at the kitchen table, as if maybe her bones hurt. As he placed a plate and glass of water in front of her, he wanted to lift her from its hard surface and cuddle her on his lap, whispering promises that he would always cushion her, that he would always be what she needed.

  But when he’d shown her the cushion of their financial situation, she’d thrown it back in his face. And as to always being what she needed…if he’d done that she wouldn’t be sitting in that chair, shivering.

  “I’ll light a fire,” he said, though the pressed-sawdust log wouldn’t give off much heat. On his way back toward the kitchen alcove, he grabbed a small blanket hanging over the arm of the sofa. He draped it over her shoulders while she sat staring at the steaming mound of pasta.

  “Would you rather I put it away?” he asked. “I can make you something else.”

  She shook her head and managed to eat a few bites. Then she downed the entire glass of water. It revived her a little, and when he thought she was through, he encouraged her to stretch out on the sofa.

  He tucked the blanket around her.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  So polite again. He sat on the coffee table in front of her, his elbows on his knees, his hands dangling between them. Now that they had privacy and time, he couldn’t seem to get his tongue to wrap around the words he’d been planning since walking into the house and finding his family looking like ghosts.

  Tess pushed at her hair, her wary gaze on him. “David—”

  “Come home.” The words burst from his mouth. “Please, come home. I’ll step up. Change more diapers. Make more mac and cheese. When Russ wakes up in the night, I’ll get up with him.”

  “He sleeps through the night, now. He’s slept through the night for months.”

  “I knew that.” Not exactly. “I just meant…if he has nightmares or…” David looked away, scrubbed a hand through his hair, faced his wife again. “I’ll do just about anything to have you all home again.”

  “‘Just about anything,’” his smart and beautiful wife echoed.

  “That’s right.” He tried blustering his way through the qualifier. “You name it.”

  “I won’t go home to the man you’ve been lately, David.” She dropped her gaze to pick at some lint on the blanket. “That man made me doubt myself. I thought maybe I wasn’t enough because I don’t have a degree or because I ‘only’ take care of our kids. But I loved that life we had before. I enjoyed being the woman who lived it, and I thought we were very happy. Maybe I can’t have it back. Maybe I’ll have to go to work or go to college because we’re not going to be together anymore.”

  Her words sent those dull knives digging into him again. What he’d done, the pulling away, it hadn’t been about any failing of hers. “Tess…”

  “But I know I deserve a man like the one you were before you turned forty, and I’m not going to settle for anything less.”

  David jumped to his feet and paced to the window, staring out over the sand to the ocean that looked like a black hole in the night. The same as what would be inside him if he lost what he and Tess had together. He didn’t know how to stop that from happening, and he felt as if he was drowning in all that darkness already. The cold seemed to be overtaking him, dragging him deep, deep, deep.

  He rested his forehead against the cool glass. “I love all of you so much, Tess. Too much.”

  Behind him, he sensed her sitting up on the sofa. “We love you too. Why is this a problem?”

  His hand flailed wildly. “Rebecca is a teenager, for God’s sake!”

  “Yes, well,” his wife said, her voice dry, “after the past couple of weeks I think I’m a little bit more aware of that than you.”

  “And Russ…” He couldn’t finish the thought because it had a stranglehold on his throat.

  “What is it about Russ?” Tess asked. “I’ve been racking and racking my brain trying to understand why you’ve treated him differently than the other babies.”

  She stood now and came closer to him. “Do you…do you have some doubts that you’re his father?”

  Startled, David turned. “What?”

  Her hands were in the kangaroo pocket of her sweatshirt. There was a paint stain on it, the pale sky color of their youngest child’s room. He remembered her up on a ladder with a roller, her pregnant belly round under the cotton fleece. He’d lifted it from her taut skin, his kiss for her and their growing baby boy.

  Tess smoothed her hair. “I just thought maybe that’s why you’re so cool to him.”

  “Of course I know he’s mine! And not just because I know it, but because—” David shoved his hands in his own pockets and transferred his gaze to his shoes “—he has my ear.”

  “What? You mumbled that last bit.”

  “He has my ear.”

  “Your ear?”

  David felt the back of his neck go hot and he lifted one shoulder. “The rim of my right ear is not the same as the rim of my left. It’s thicker. Larger.”

  Tess stomped right up to him then and took his jaw in her cool hands. She turned his head this way and that. “You’re right. I’ve known you for fourteen years and I never noticed that before.”

  “I didn’t want you to notice. I used to get teased about it when I was a kid. It was worse then, but it’s still a…a flaw.”

  “You have a lot worse flaws than that,” Tess informed him, then she hurried out of the room.

  He looked after her, unsure of her purpose until she came back, wearing a bemused expression. “You’re right. Russ does have your ear.”

  “I talked to the pediatrician about it,” David muttered. “I asked about plastic surgery.”

  Her arms slammed across her chest. “No one is changing a hair on my little baby’s body. You’re crazy.”

  “That’s pretty close to what Dr. Gomez said.”

  There were roses in her cheeks now, and she looked as if her health had returned with her indignation. Her blue eyes blazed at him, and he found her so beautiful that he felt that tightening in his chest again, that vise constricting his ribs. Or maybe the pressure was coming from the inside, because his heart felt as if it was swelling, its beat banging hard against his bones.

  Tess’s brows drew together. “Are you all right? Are you feeling sick now?” Her face showing clear concern, she came toward him and put her arm around his waist. “Come sit down.”

  Put yet another black mark on his side of the record books because he didn’t tell her it wasn’t the flu that was affecting him. Instead, he slid his arm around her shoulders and made sure she sat beside him on the sofa. But there was still worry in her eyes when she turned to him. “David, is there something wrong with your health? Is that
what you’ve been keeping from me?”

  “No, no.” He drew her hand to his mouth and kissed it. “It’s not about me.”

  Her fingers tightened on his as her eyes searched his face. “You’re lying to me. That’s why you’ve been exercising. That’s why—”

  “Tess, it’s not my health. It’s…everything. Rebecca growing up. All the kids moving out into the world where things…things can happen to them. I’ve tried to separate from all of you because of how much that could hurt me.”

  She shook her head. “What kind of things are you talking about?”

  “What if we lost Russ?” Again, the words just burst out of him. They tasted bitter on his tongue, and he hated that he’d said them, as if they could pollute the air with the ugliness of the idea.

  Tess’s hand trembled in his. She sat back in the cushions, her other hand rising to her throat. “Why would you say such a thing?”

  “The other Russ, my brother…”

  Her gasp was loud in the room. Then his wife drew closer, her arms circling him. His arms closed around her. It felt so good. So right.

  “My love,” she said against his pounding heart. “Oh, my love.”

  Then she pulled back, relief written all over her face. “This is what it’s about. Your little brother dying of leukemia. You’re afraid to be hurt that way again.”

  “I loved him so much, Tess,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I made promises and avoided cracks and took all my favorite toys and put them on his bed and he still didn’t come home from the hospital.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, pressing herself to him again.

  He squeezed his eyes against the burn behind them. His hand cupped her head, and he pressed his mouth against her hair. It smelled of baby shampoo. “He was a good little kid. He never did anything wrong.”

  “And neither did you,” his wife said.

  His body gave him away. He stiffened as the horror of that morning came to him again. Panic flushed through his blood at the memory, and he sharply inhaled as if it might be the last oxygen his lungs would ever take in.

  Tess moved back, wary once more.

  “I need to tell you…I did do something wrong,” he said, feeling as if each word was pulled from his throat. “On the morning of my fortieth birthday.”

  She swallowed. “I was out shopping for the party we were throwing that night. You took the kids to the park.”

  “The Gordon kids from next door wanted to come with us. All three of them and their bikes. No, the oldest had his skateboard.”

  “Rebecca was still at her friend Marcy’s…”

  “Right. And as we were getting ready to head out, the Gordons’ cousins showed up, so I said I’d take them too.”

  “So you had—what?—eight kids with you?”

  David, knowing he would never be the same in her eyes, shook his head. “Seven. I left one behind, sitting in his stroller on the sidewalk in front of our house. I left Russ.”

  She shot back on the cushions until she was pressed against the sofa’s arm. “But you turned back…you remembered….”

  He was still shaking his head. “We’d been gone fifteen or so minutes when Mac Kearney from across the street called my cell. Mary Hampton—from the PTA?—was at the park, and I asked her to watch my pack until I got back. I ran, Tess, God, I ran as fast as I could, and it was then that I realized what those stupid fifteen flabby pounds might cost me.”

  “Surely Mac…”

  He nodded now. “He stayed with Russ, but I wasn’t going to be able to breathe again until I could see our baby.”

  She sat silent now, one hand over her eyes. David didn’t believe he had organs or blood or bones anymore. He felt like a husk of himself and maybe it wasn’t so bad, because perhaps he’d finally reached that place he’d been striving for…where he felt nothing. Where he could be that distant and unfeeling man like his father.

  Then Tess’s hand dropped, and he saw that she was crying and the tears caused everything to come flooding back: his panic, his shame, his absolute terror and the certain knowledge that he didn’t deserve the beautiful creatures that had been entrusted to him. He saw his wife reach for the box of tissues on the side table, and she grabbed a fistful that she passed to him.

  Because he was crying too. He mopped up the wetness as best he could, while avoiding her eyes. He didn’t know what he wanted to see less: her condemnation or her abhorrence of his weakness.

  “You once told me,” Tess said, “that accountants never cried…”

  “…unless there’s an audit,” he finished with her, his voice a rough croak. But that’s what this was, wasn’t it? An examination of his accounts. His records were completely open now. The numbers laid bare.

  But it was all revealed for him as well. What a fool he’d been to try to separate his heart from her, from those who sprang from what they had together.

  You couldn’t duck love. It was the nature of being human to want the connections. And it was his own nature to hold close to his family with everything he had.

  He dried the final dampness on his cheek with the heel of his hand, then got down on his knees, shoving aside the coffee table to make room for himself. “I love you. Forgive me for what I did that morning and for how I’ve been since then. Stay married to me. I promise I’ll do better.”

  “You won’t go back to the way you’ve been?”

  He shook his head. “I won’t be that stupid.”

  Her hand came out to brush his face. More tears overflowed the most beautiful eyes in the world. His OM girl who hadn’t quieted his wild mind but who’d brought light and life to his tame world. “You can’t get rid of me so easily,” she said.

  No, you can’t duck love.

  Relief unbalanced his heart, and a supreme sense of rightness steadied it again. “Thank you,” he said, dropping his head so his cheek pressed against her knee. “Thank you for being my wife and their mother.”

  Tess tugged on his arms then, bringing him to the cushions beside her. They embraced, but she resisted his kiss. “Germs,” she said.

  “Are you kidding? Russ barfed all over me. If I’m going to get it, I’m going to get it.”

  The argument persuaded her, and they kissed until she claimed to be dizzy from it. And knowing what she’d just been through, he didn’t insist, instead drawing her against his chest and cuddling with her, their gazes on the fire.

  He idly ran his fingers through her hair, and her contented sigh released the last knot of his tension. “I’m sorry I had the vasectomy without telling you about the appointment.”

  She shook her head. “We had agreed. It was just another sign of your distance that I objected to.”

  He pressed a kiss to her head. “Did you really want more children?”

  “After the past two days? No. Or maybe it’s the whole Cheetos thing.” She tilted her head to send him a wry look. “I’m counting on you to train that out of the boys.”

  And that’s how he knew they were going to be good again, because she was smiling and because she’d said I’m counting on you. It was the single most important job they had, he realized now…to be the person the other could depend upon.

  And David Quincy, forty-plus years old, no longer feared the passage of time. Because age had wrought wisdom.

  * * *

  JANE HADN’T LIVED with anyone since graduating from college. Even during those years she’d rarely had time to socialize with her various roommates. She’d been a full-time student and a part-time nanny. The mother of the children she’d overseen had been head writer for a top-rated TV show. When the woman wrote a book on screenwriting, she’d asked English-major Jane to beta-read a draft…and a career had been born.

  So waking up with a roommate who was also a workmate in your—his—own bed should have been a shock.

  It was shockingly easy.

  She rolled her head on the pillow and gazed at Griffin. He was lying on his stomach, and his face was turned toward hers. He
didn’t look little-boy in his sleep. The stubble of his dark beard was too harsh for that. But he appeared rested, and she thought it good that his TV-all-night habit had been broken since she’d started sleeping in the room.

  One midnight she’d awoken to find him absent from the bed. Her bare feet hadn’t made a sound on the floor, but he wouldn’t have heard her, anyway. When she’d found him lying on the recliner in the living room, he’d been clad only in boxers and had had an iPod lying on his bare belly, its buds tucked into his ears. He must have felt her gaze, because he’d opened his eyes.

  There’d been weariness in them and a bleakness that she couldn’t address with words. So she’d thrown off the T-shirt of his that she’d been wearing, shifted the iPod to the arm of the chair and crawled into his lap. She’d figured he was listening to music that was hard rock or heavy metal and her touch was the antithesis to that. Every kiss gentle, every movement languid, the rhythm when she took him inside her mouth had been slow and measured. All meant to conquer the beast that wouldn’t let him sleep.

  He’d never left her in the middle of the night since.

  Jane was no idiot. She knew that there was danger in their compatibility and propinquity, though he continued to tease her and get annoyed with her and sometimes became mad enough to stomp out of the office. But underlying it all, she thought they had an understanding of each other that she’d never expected to find with a man. She told herself that she was lucky. With a set end point to the relationship, that understanding could never be ruined.

  When she left Beach House No. 9, she would leave the laughing, the arguing, the sex, behind. But she could retain it, she hoped, like a little snow globe in her mind. A tableau that she could shake up and revisit: the sand, the cottage, a palm tree and two little figures that were she and Griffin, forever caught in a together moment.

  “Jane,” Griffin murmured now, his eyes still closed. “Did you know that I can feel your mind at work from here? It’s irritating.”

  His growl chased away the little melancholy that was edging into her thoughts. “Some of us can rub two brain cells together before sixteen ounces of coffee.”