by Hill, Teresa
"It just..." It sounded so ridiculous, even to Rebecca, but it was true. "It just isn't enough."
Brian untangled himself from her arms and laughed. The sound made Rebecca flinch.
What could she say to him? That she was lonely? It sounded so simple, and it did feel so bad to be so lonely. But as dear to her as Brian was, there was a part of her soul that he had never touched, a part of her soul that yearned to be touched.
And now she didn't know if anyone ever would.
She looked up to find him facing her again, the pain evident in his face, and she couldn't continue to look at him.
She was staring at the ceiling, so she felt rather than saw his fingertips brush across her cheek to find the tears she hadn't known were falling. And his touch set her tears to falling faster.
"Rebecca, if this is the end for us, it's the end. We can't go back to being friends."
She nodded her head to tell him that she understood, then wrapped her arms around her middle, trying to hold herself together.
"Is that what you want?" he asked.
She nodded again, because she was sure she couldn't get the words out.
Brian went to the coffee table to retrieve his keys, walked toward the door, then paused.
"Rebecca?"
"Yes," she whispered.
"Stay away from him. He's poison to you."
"It's not about him," she protested. "This doesn't have anything to do with him."
"Sure it doesn't."
His parting shot, she thought, and she was going to let it go by. But he wasn't done. He was standing right in front of her again, and she braced herself for the bitterness and anger she was sure she'd aroused in him.
She should have known him better. His touch was so gentle as he tilted her chin up so her eyes met his, sorrow melding into sorrow.
"I'll go, Rebecca. I'll stay away, if that's what you want."
She held her breath, trying not to let herself beg him to stay.
He looked right down into her eyes. "But I'll always, always love you."
And then he left.
Rebecca eased herself down onto the nearest chair. She sat there, hurting so badly that she didn't know what to do about it, frozen into inaction.
She'd feared for a long time that her relationship with Brian was coming to an end, that she must bring it to an end because it wasn't fair to him. She'd known what she had to do, but when she'd thought it all out, she hadn't thought far enough. She hadn't considered how she'd feel when he was gone.
She was devastated. She felt more alone than she'd ever been in her life. Brian had been a constant in her life, an anchor, a rock.
She felt so vulnerable without him. She had Sammy, and for a while he had been everything to her. But she was a woman as well as a mother. She'd managed to deny it for a long time, but she had needs and hopes and yearnings that only a man could fulfill.
Except, she didn't know if she'd ever find the right man. She wondered sometimes if he even existed.
At times her life seemed like a puzzle that hadn't quite come together. There was always a missing piece, a gaping hole.
She had to find that elusive piece that would complete her life, that would bring the whole picture into focus, because if she didn't, she'd always feel this sad, this lost. And she couldn't stand to feel this bad forever.
It hurt too much. It was too scary.
* * *
Rebecca sat in the chair, wondering and worrying until she burned the bread. Then she decided the safest thing was to simply sit there.
So, she did, accomplishing nothing but upsetting herself even more. She sat there until Tucker and Sammy walked in the door.
Digging deep down inside herself to find the strength and composure she needed, she hastily wiped her face of tears. Once she made it to her feet and turned around, she found herself face-to-face with a happy little boy and one stern-looking man.
Rebecca backed away from the sight of Tucker, so tense and so angry. But she didn't get far enough away from him. He still reached her. He found a tear caught on her right cheek near her hairline.
"You missed one," he said, wiping it away with a gentleness that she found unsettling.
Rebecca's breath caught in her throat, and she sank back down into the chair. Her own hand went to her cheek, covering the spot where he'd touched her and knocked her off balance, yet again.
She felt the color and the warmth flood her cheeks, felt her control slipping away, wondered if she'd ever actually been in control, ever, around this man.
She heard Sammy chattering excitedly without really listening to what he was saying. She was waiting, silently, while she watched Tucker, watched him become stern again, watched his hands, clenching and flexing time after time.
What could have happened between him and Sammy?
"Mom?"
Rebecca finally turned her attention to her son. Whatever the problem was, Sammy seemed unaware of it. He was beaming. He threw his arms around her and squeezed for all he was worth. Then he started babbling a mile a minute about race cars and winding roads. He talked without pausing for breath, his thoughts barely staying ahead of his words, which tumbled over one another in a jumble that even a mother had trouble following.
"Wait a minute." She broke in, and finally he stopped talking. "I thought you two were going to the petting zoo."
"Well, Mom," Sammy said, considering, "We just decided to go drive the race cars 'nstead."
"Oh?" Rebecca looked from the son to the father. "Race cars?"
"Go-carts." Tucker mouthed the word.
"Oh." That didn't sound so bad, not at first. "He's too little to drive those."
"I was driving. Sammy was in the race car with me."
"No-o-o," Sammy jumped in. "I was driving, and he was helping me."
"Okay. Got it," Rebecca said. "Did you have a good time?"
"Yeahhh! We went real fast, and the car made this big noise, kinda like, waaaaahhhhm, waaaaaaahhhhm... "
"Okay," Rebecca said.
"And I gotta go tell Jimmy Horton. His dad never took him to ride a race car."
Sammy ran for the phone, and Rebecca reluctantly turned back to Tucker, who looked as stern as ever.
She wasn't sure she wanted to know why Tucker seemed so angry, but was afraid she wouldn't have a choice in the matter.
* * *
Sammy invited Tucker to dinner, and Rebecca didn't want her son to think Tucker wasn't welcome in their home, so she agreed.
Tucker and Sammy went out to the backyard to play while she cooked and brooded, ignoring the soufflé she'd made that afternoon in favor of something else. Shrimp Creole, she decided, over rice. But the cooking didn't help. She feared nothing would tonight.
She survived dinner, hardly ate a bite, put Sammy to bed and left him with his father to read the bedtime story.
Then Rebecca decided to have a drink, a mistake she recognized the minute the first sip of her gin and tonic hit her stomach. Alcohol and old ulcers didn't mix well.
The heavy crystal glass banged against the table as she set it down, quickly and unsteadily, so she could press a hand against her burning midsection. She wondered if her ulcer really was returning or if it was simply nerves eating at her stomach.
What a mess, she thought as she leaned over the table. She waited for the pain to go away as she wondered what had brought her ex-husband back into their lives, and what kind of damage he would do this time.
"Rebecca? Are you all right?"
She braced herself against the table and took a long, steadying breath, then straightened and turned to face him.
He was standing in the hallway, looking uneasy, or maybe worried, with anger simmering there, too, just beneath the surface.
Her perfectly rotten day was going to get worse.
"Is Sammy asleep?" she said, choosing not to answer his first question.
"Yes."
Rebecca watched him for a minute, wondering if she could get rid of him wi
thout the confrontation she felt coming.
Probably not, she feared.
Rudely, she turned her back on him and headed for the kitchen without saying a word. She just had to move. She could finish loading the dishwasher and wipe down the stove and the countertops. It would give her something to do besides watch him and wait.
She loaded the last dish and turned to get the dishwasher detergent and nearly bumped into Tucker.
He had his wallet out, and he was peeling off twenty-dollar bills into a neat stack on the countertop.
"Sammy's ready for a new bike," he said as he added another bill to the stack. "The one he has now is for babies. Jimmy Horton said so."
"Well, Jimmy Horton should know."
"I couldn't say, but in this case Jimmy Horton happens to be right. Sammy's ready for a bigger bike. He wants a red one with big tires, a mountain bike, I think from his description. What do you figure one costs?" Tucker counted the bills again and added two more twenties. "Will you get it for him?"
She didn't know what to say, didn't understand why it was so important to him. "Why don't you take him yourself tomorrow after soccer?"
He pushed the money toward her and finally raised his eyes to hers. "Because you can't buy love, Rebecca."
Her cheeks burned. She had wondered whether he'd ever understood that she hadn't cared how much money he made or how many expensive things he bought her. She'd wanted him, wanted his love and his attention.
"It's just a bike," she said, trying to stay in the present.
"You get it for him. You can tell him it's a late birthday present."
"All right." She took the money.
"Tell me about the birthday, Rebecca."
Something about his voice tipped her off, and she stared at him. He wasn't as good at hiding his feelings as he used to be, or maybe, right now, he wasn't even trying.
The man she'd married had been a happy-go-lucky type—smiling, joking, laughing his way through life, adept at avoiding a fight and at giving the impression that nothing touched him deeply.
For the longest time, she'd believed that nothing ever affected him, that he didn't care that much about anything or anyone except himself.
She wondered now if she could have been wrong about that—or if it was possible for someone to change that much.
"Why are you here, Tucker?"
She was afraid to ask, afraid to know, but didn't see how she could avoid it any longer.
"The birthday," he said quietly, dangerously quietly. "Your mother sends me a picture every year from his birthday and another one from Christmas."
Rebecca stiffened in surprise. She hadn't known that, couldn't imagine Tucker looking in on their lives that way, couldn't imagine that he'd even want to do as much as look at a picture every six months.
"Why?" she asked finally, because she couldn't manage more than that.
"Why does Margaret send them? I don't know. I didn't ask her to, but it seemed important to her and... I didn't see how I could stop her."
Rebecca had a million questions. What had he seen? What had he felt? How had he stayed away while catching only glimpses of Sammy all these years? Hadn't he even been curious enough to want to meet his son?
Or was that what had brought him today—mere curiosity? She had to know.
"Tucker, why are you here?" she repeated.
"I think you know."
She shook her head and said, "No." She'd never even begun to understand him.
"Where are your pictures from his birthday?" he asked, his tone frightening her.
"In the album on the bookshelf in the living room."
He was heading that way even as she finished telling him where to find them. She walked briskly behind him. With a sinking feeling, she decided she knew what he had seen.
"This one?" he said with his hand on a thick three-ring binder of photographs.
"No. We filled up that one when he was a baby. This one." She went to grab a thinner binder from the shelf and got too close to him, found herself brushing up against him. The brief contact unsettled her as much as the look in his eyes.
They both backed away from each other and stared. It had been just a touch, her right side against the hard wall of his chest, nothing that should set her pulse to racing, even if she was as nervous as a cat.
What was this man doing to her? What was he after? And how was she going to protect herself this time?
She moved quickly to the sofa and put the picture album down, unopened, on the coffee table. Then she stared at the floor and prayed she was wrong about what he was looking for inside.
The sofa cushion to her right sagged as Tucker sat down beside her. He flipped to the back of the album, guessing correctly that the birthday photos were the most recent ones.
"There," he said bluntly as he punched the picture with his index finger. "What do you see?"
A terribly sad little boy.
She didn't even have to look down at the picture he'd pointed out. She knew the one. Sammy, miserable, facing seven glowing birthday candles and looking as if he were about to cry.
She had hated seeing that look on his face. She'd known the instant he'd closed his eyes and blown out the candles what Sammy had wished—for his father to come for his birthday.
It had been a terrible day, the first time that Sammy had wanted something, wanted it desperately, and Rebecca hadn't been able to give it to him.
That was one of the worst feelings a mother ever knew—wanting to give her child something important that she couldn't provide.
"Look at that." Tucker punched the picture again with his finger. "What's the matter with him, Rebecca? Can you tell me?"
She shook her head sadly, hating what had happened, hating having to tell him about it. "He got this idea in his head that you were coming to his birthday party."
"And?"
"And he was pretty upset when you didn't come."
Tucker laughed bitterly and got to his feet. He paced, hampered by the small space.
"So you just let him wait for me all day when you knew I wasn't coming?"
"No." She jumped at his harsh tone. "I didn't know, Tucker. He wouldn't tell me what he wanted for his birthday until that night, right before he went to sleep, when you weren't there."
Tucker scowled and paced some more.
"It was that damned Jimmy Horton," she said. "His parents separated, and then they got back together. And it gave Sammy the idea that you might come back, too."
When he looked as dangerous as ever, Rebecca kept talking.
"He didn't... It's not like he begged me to find you and ask you to come see him, Tucker. He didn't even tell me what he wanted until that night after the party."
"So why didn't you call me?"
His words hung in the air, and she paused, knowing they'd reached the heart of the matter.
And she wanted to hurt him then. She knew it was wrong, knew it wouldn't solve anything, but she wanted him to have a taste of the pain he'd caused her and Sammy.
"Why, Rebecca? Why couldn't you just call me and tell me?"
"Would it have mattered to you?"
He halted, almost in mid-step, and she heard the breath whiz out of his lungs.
She'd wounded him, and now she found no pleasure in it. "Tucker——"
"It would have mattered."
She heard the anguish in his voice and hardened her heart against it.
"You're telling me that if I had called, you would have come running?" She couldn't believe that. "It's been years, Tucker. Years without so much as a word from you. He's your son, for God's sake, and you haven't seen him in years."
Tucker sat down on the edge of the coffee table, right in front of her, and took both her hands in his. She would have resisted, should have, but something in his eyes stopped her, something urgent, something unfathomable that touched her in the core of her being.
"Tucker—"
She tried to draw away, but he held fast to her hands and ran the p
ads of his thumbs back and forth to calm her, and she let him. She sat there with her hands in his, closer to him than she needed to be, feeling that old familiar power.
She'd been drawn to him once, inevitably, inexplicably, undeniably, and for the life of her she couldn't understand why it had all happened.
Except, of course, for Sammy.
At one time, Rebecca had wished vehemently that she'd never met Tucker. But that hadn't lasted. Tucker had given her Sammy, and Sammy meant the world to her. As Rebecca saw it, she was meant to have Sammy. He was her world, her absolute joy. So she had been fated to fall in love with Tucker, too, and to have her heart broken by him.
Asking why didn't do any good. It never did. Fate was fate. It didn't take kindly to questions, and it always won out in the end.
Still, with him here now, she couldn't help but think... Why? Why did it have to be Tucker? Why did he have to come back? Why did her whole body go warm all over in remembrance of him when he was doing nothing but holding her hands and making her miserable, all at the same time?
"Rebecca?"
She met his eyes, when she shouldn't have. She let her hands stay there in the warmth of his hold, when she should have known better.
"I just..." Tucker faltered, and she thought it was so unlike him to be the least bit unsure of himself. "I honestly thought he'd be better off without me."
She bit her lip, bit down hard and found herself trembling, her hands still in his and tears running down her face.
She should hate him. She had for years, and one heartfelt confession couldn't change that but—oh, a part of her hurt so badly for him then. Hurt for him, and at the same time, blamed him. She tried to concentrate on the anger and to hang on to the need to blame him. She had to do that.
"It's just not enough, Tucker. It's a cop-out."
"I know," he admitted. "But it's true."
Well, maybe it was. It probably was true. Rebecca couldn't deny that. She believed Tucker did think Sammy would be better off without him, because she knew how he felt about having children.
And it just wasn't fair. It was so absolutely unfair that it had happened this way, with so much hurt and so much pain.
Grudgingly, she admitted part of the hurt came from knowing it wasn't just him to blame. She'd blamed Tucker for years for the mess they'd made of their family, but when she was being really honest, she blamed herself, too.
