“That was your own guilt talking, not me.”
“Then why did you begin to withdraw?”
Withdraw? Her? How could that have been, she wondered. “I never meant to do that,” she said with total honesty. “Kevin, I didn’t hate your job or that house because they represented some evil standard of living. I worried because it seemed to me that you took the job for all the wrong reasons, that you took it because you thought it was your obligation to your father and to Jason and me.”
“And the house? What about that?”
“I hated the house because it no longer seemed like our home, not the way our first house did. I couldn’t keep the new one up, so we hired a maid and a housekeeper and a gardener. All the things I loved to do, all the things that I needed to do to take care of my family, to feel I was making a contribution were in the hands of strangers. I felt as if I’d been cast adrift.”
Her claim hovered in the air until at last he said softly, wearily, “I never knew that.”
“Because we never talked about it. That was my fault, I suppose. I should have explained how I felt.”
Kevin caressed her cheek, the touch light and fleeting. “I just wanted you to have everything,” he explained. “It never occurred to me that in giving you all that, I was taking away something that you felt was more precious.”
“My identity,” she said quietly. “How could you not have known, Kevin, that all I ever wanted was you?”
Something in Kevin’s face shut down at her words. Lacey had meant them to be reassuring, but it was clear he hadn’t taken them that way.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, as an odd chill seemed to invade her.
For the longest time he didn’t answer, and during that time she was sure she could hear every tick of the clock on the bedstand, feel every anxious beat of her heart.
Finally, his eyes troubled, he met her gaze. There was so much raw anguish in his face that she was trembling even before he spoke.
“I can’t be your whole world, Lace. I just can’t.”
“But that’s not what I meant,” she protested.
He shook his head. “Isn’t it? The pressure of that, it’s more than I can handle.”
Stunned by the bleak finality of his tone, she could only watch as he left the bed, grabbed his clothes and went into the bathroom. She was still helplessly staring after him when he left the house just moments later.
Chapter Fourteen
No one was more stunned than Kevin at the words that had popped out of his mouth just before he’d left the house. Where had those thoughts come from? How had he gone for so many years without the vaguest sense that there was so much resentment buried deep inside him? A shrink would surely have a field day with that one.
As he walked on the beach, oblivious to the sun’s heat and the pounding of the waves, Kevin tried hard not to remember the quick flash of hurt and confusion in Lacey’s eyes. His implied accusation that her dependence on him had somehow weighed him down had been cruel, especially since he couldn’t even explain what was behind it.
Hell, he was the one who’d carved out his role as her protector early on. He’d liked feeling ten feet tall when she looked to him for answers to everything from math lessons to politics. If some of that uneven balance had carried over into their marriage, wasn’t that as much his fault as hers?
What worried him more than casting blame for that was the discovery that he had hidden such feelings from himself. Were they really buried in his subconscious or had they merely been a quick, defensive reaction to the guilt he’d accepted too readily for far too long?
Lacey was perfect. Their marriage was perfect. Wasn’t that why he’d wanted so desperately to win her back? Surely he wasn’t one of those men who clung to the past, simply because they couldn’t bear the thought of change.
But if that were so, if he were convinced that everything was so perfect, why did he have this nagging sense that he’d been fooling himself? Had he simply grown comfortable in the role of martyr, accepting the blame heaped on him and feeling noble for ignoring his own doubts?
No, dammit! He did love Lacey. He tried that claim out in his head. It rang just as true as it ever had. Okay, then, he wasn’t stark raving mad. He was just mixed up, confused, maybe a little exhausted from all the tension. He wasn’t thinking clearly.
Hard as he tried, though, he couldn’t easily dismiss what had happened. Those words had come from somewhere and he’d darned well better figure out where before he went back to face Lacey again. If their marriage hadn’t always been so perfect, after all, he’d better be able to explain what had been lacking from his point of view. She knew what she thought of as his failings as clearly as if she’d carried an itemized list of his sins around in her head.
But no matter how desperately Kevin tried to find a precise, clear-cut answer, he couldn’t. So, he thought with a sigh filled with regrets, it wasn’t going to be so easy for them, after all. They were going to have to struggle for answers.
He supposed they were among the lucky ones. They still had the will to fight for their marriage. They had their love. They had this new-found honesty, as painful as it was. He hadn’t a doubt in his head that they would make it, as long as they didn’t shy away from the truth.
He walked until the sky dimmed and the wind picked up. The biting chill cut through his jacket, but worse was the chill he felt deep inside.
For years now he had not taken the time to be terribly introspective, but suddenly he had the sense that something very precious was on the line. He had to figure out exactly why there had been that vague anger behind his words, that hint of something too long repressed. Theories weren’t the answer. He needed facts. He needed to pinpoint the cause, narrow it down to a specific moment or an evolution. He had to understand what was in his heart as clearly as what was in his head.
Kevin thought back to the early days of his marriage, days crammed with too much to do and so much tenderness and love. He and Lacey had both worked like demons at demanding, and often thankless, jobs. Then they had spent long hours side by side volunteering for causes they both believed in. Each night they had tumbled into bed, exhausted, but filled with exhilaration.
That period of their lives had been incredibly special. There was absolutely no doubt in his mind about that. Thinking about those days brought smiles, even laughter. Never pain.
But that time had been far too short, now that he thought about it. When Jason was born barely a year after the wedding, things began to change. Lacey took her maternity leave and seemed to blossom before his eyes as she took care of their son. She turned their cramped apartment into a real home, and there were tempting, creative dinners on the table.
Soon any thoughts of her returning to work, any time for volunteering vanished in a sea of household demands. They moved into the house Jason now owned. Nothing ever quite went back to the way it had been.
And he’d resented it, he realized with a sense of shock that actually brought him to a standstill. All these years he had resented the way things had changed, and yet he’d never said a word, hadn’t even identified the cause of his mild dissatisfaction.
If he had changed as she had accused him of so often, then so had she. They had never once dealt with that.
He thought he understood why. Unlike Lacey, he had kept the resentment so deeply buried that only now could he recognize the subtle way it had affected everything between them.
If Lacey was going to conform to a more traditional pattern, if she was going to content herself with a home and motherhood, then why shouldn’t he do the male equivalent of caving in? At least that must have been the subliminal message at work on him when he’d finally made the decision to go to work at Halloran Industries. How many decisions after that had been affected in the same way?
To top it off, he’d then had to deal with Lacey’s unspoken disapproval, along with his own burden of guilt about becoming more and more like his father with each day that passed. He’d
called it growing up, but obviously deep inside he’d never truly believed it.
Explaining all of this to her after all this time wasn’t going to be easy. He needed some time to sort through it all himself, time to be sure that the answers he’d come up with were valid. Time, in fact, to discover if his marriage was something he really wanted to succeed.
The last seemed like blasphemy. Of course he wanted it to succeed. That was the one given in all this, the one thing he’d never questioned.
Until now, he reminded himself. Lord knows, he had questions now. Unfortunately he didn’t have the luxury of time to find the answers, time to examine and come to terms with these raw new discoveries about himself. Lacey was waiting for him.
Kevin’s pace picked up, almost in spite of all the doubts tumbling through his poor, pitiful, aching head. That alone should have told him something. He needed to get back to her, to share his thoughts and hear her reaction to them. Lacey had always had a knack for cutting through his self-delusion.
Until now, he reminded himself ruefully. Now when it probably meant more than anything.
When he got back to the house, he found her sitting in the living room, almost lost in the shadowy darkness. He flipped on a light and felt his heart wrench at the tears tracking down her cheeks. He wanted to go to her. He wanted to hold her, comfort her.
Instinctively he started toward her, then stopped himself. They needed to air these raw emotions, not soothe them away with meaningless promises.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Sure. Terrific,” she said with a defiant lift of her chin. She couldn’t hide the way it trembled, though. It reminded him of their first meeting so long ago, and his heart ached for her.
And for himself.
“I think maybe this had been the most difficult couple of hours in my entire life,” he said finally, sinking into a chair across from her and dragging a hand through his hair.
Eyes shimmering with tears clashed with his. “It hasn’t been much of a picnic for me, either.”
“No, I’m sure it hasn’t been. I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “For what? For being honest? I asked for it, didn’t I?”
“But I think we both thought it was going to be a simple matter of airing a few gripes, vowing to try harder and then forgetting all about it.”
“Yeah,” she said, “silly us.”
“There is a bright side,” he told her, trying to earn a smile.
“Oh?”
“We haven’t had to pay a fortune for shrinks to get to this point.”
“Now that is something to stand up and cheer about,” she said, her voice steadier at last.
Tears still clung to the ends of her lashes, but she looked stronger somehow, as if she could withstand anything. Perhaps he’d underestimated her ability to stand on her own and overestimated the depth of her need for him.
Whichever it was, Kevin knew in that instant that he had never loved Lacey more. Whatever faint, lingering doubts he had had about that had fled. His heart still turned over at the sight of her. His head still demanded that he protect her from the sort of hurt he himself had inflicted on her. Old habits obviously died hard.
“Feel like talking?” he asked. “Or should we take some time out? Go to a movie or something?”
She met his gaze evenly. “Hey, it couldn’t get much worse than this. Let’s get it all out now. I don’t think I could concentrate on a movie, anyway.”
Her glib words were sheer bravado, but Kevin knew there would never be a better time, that what he had to say would hurt whenever he said it. It was better to get everything out in the open now, so they could begin to pick up the pieces.
If there were any left to pick up. Dear God, why did that thought creep in so often? It terrified him. Like an earthquake, it seemed to shake the very foundation of his life.
He stared at the fire before he spoke, gathering courage, censoring harsh accusations. “It’s funny,” he began slowly. “I never knew that I felt quite so angry until the words came out of my mouth earlier.”
Lacey regarded him intently, as if she were weighing his words. “I still don’t understand,” she said finally. “You talk about feeling pressured. Why? What did I ever do to make you feel that way? I built my life around making you happy.”
“Exactly. Instead of caring about the world as you always had, you limited your concerns to just me and our family. I guess I felt that you had betrayed me long before it was the other way around.”
“Betrayed you how?” she asked, looking wounded. “By loving you? By needing you?”
“By changing,” he said simply.
“But I’m not the one who changed,” she protested.
“Yes. Maybe you can’t see it, but I can. You were always strong and independent. You always had this clear vision of what you wanted out of life, what we should be doing to make the world a better place to live. There we were, these two intrepid souls going off to tilt at windmills. We were so self-righteous, I suppose, thinking that we knew more than our parents, that we could fix all their mistakes.”
“We did fix some things,” she reminded him, a little sadly it seemed.
“Maybe some,” he agreed. “Then we had Jason and everything changed. The entire focus of your world centered on our son and on me.”
“We had a new baby, Kevin. What did you expect?”
“I’m not talking about the first month or even the first year. I could have understood that. But that absorption with our own narrow world didn’t end. I began to feel pressured for the first time since I had known you. No man should ever have to carry the burden of being totally responsible for another person’s happiness.”
With a growing sense of shock and dismay, Lacey listened to Kevin’s version of what had happened to their marriage and tried to reconcile it with her own. It wasn’t that she could not accept part of the blame. It was simply that the way he described the changes in their relationship weren’t the way she remembered things at all.
There had been so much magic once. There had been so many times over the past couple of weeks that she had thought for sure they were recapturing it. Now she knew that had been only a naive dream.
This time, magic wasn’t quite enough. Lacey struggled with the fact that the life she’d chosen for herself—the role of homemaker in which she’d been so happy, could never be quite the same again. Jason was married now and her husband didn’t need her to see to his every need, in fact resented her devotion.
Could it possibly be true that the very things she accused him of were true of her, as well? Was she no longer the generous person who thought only of helping others? Had she lost the vision they’d once shared, just as she believed he had? It had been only recently that she’d rediscovered a sense of activism in the form of the housing project in which Paula had involved her.
“Maybe I should leave, go back to Boston,” she said finally, expressing a thought that had already come to her while Kevin had been gone. In fact, her mind was already made up despite the tentative way she’d phrased it.
Kevin regarded her angrily, as if the suggestion were yet another betrayal. “Leave? Now? Lacey, we’re just starting to get somewhere. You can’t run away now.”
“It’s not running. I just need to find some answers to questions I didn’t even realize existed. What you’ve said makes a lot of sense. I was so busy bemoaning the fact that you were no longer the man I married that I never saw that I was no longer the woman you’d married. I need to go find Lacey Grainger again.”
“Lacey Halloran,” he corrected sharply. “I never meant for you to leave.”
Lacey moved to his side, hunkered down and placed her hand over his. She caressed his knuckles, wishing she weren’t responsible for the fact that he’d clenched his hands into tight, angry fists.
“I know leaving wasn’t your idea. But I have a lot of thinking to do.”
“And you can’t do it here?”
“No,” she said s
adly. “When I’m with you, it’s all I want and that’s wrong. You’ve said so yourself.”
Kevin sighed deeply, then looked resigned. “When will you go?”
“If it’s okay with you, I’ll wait until morning.”
“Sure.”
“Will you go back into town with me or do you want to stay out here?”
“I think I’ll wait here. If I go back, I won’t do the thinking I need to do, either. I’ll end up going back to the office.”
She nodded and stood up. “I’ll go pack.”
She was almost out the door when he said, “Lacey?”
“Yes?” she said without turning around.
“The one thing I know without question is that I do love you. I’ll be here waiting for you when you’re ready to talk again.”
She felt the salty sting of tears. Her lower lip trembled. “I love you, too,” she said in a voice that quavered slightly.
She couldn’t quite bring herself to promise that she would be back. She had no idea where the coming days of self-discovery were likely to lead her.
Chapter Fifteen
Naturally the most depressing day of Kevin’s life had dawned sunny and mild. The beauty of the sunrise, the gentleness of the morning breeze seemed to mock him. A day like this should have been gray and gloomy, with the threat of a blizzard maybe. Barring that, a good, steady rain would have done.
Instead, he had to contend with clear skies and a temperature that beckoned. He’d tried his best to make it work to his advantage, but the time was fast approaching when Lacey would be pulling out of the driveway and heading back to Boston.
Saying goodbye to his wife—and quite possibly to his marriage—was one of the most difficult things Kevin ever had to do. It would be a thousand times harder this time than it had been months ago when Lacey had first made the decision to move to a place of her own. Or maybe he’d just forgotten the pain of that goodbye.
Already he had delayed her departure by several hours. He had talked her into one last walk on the beach in the glorious morning sunlight. Then he had convinced her that she had to eat before facing such a long drive. He’d insisted on a picnic on the beach. Then he’d asked her to pick up a few last-minute things in town so he wouldn’t have to call on the neighbors. She had seized each excuse far more readily than a woman who was anxious to go.
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