All That Remains

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Still operating on autopilot, she climbed out as the front door opened.

  “Wren?”

  “Molly?” A burst of emotion hit her and she hurried to the porch. The two women all but collided, Molly’s huge belly between them. Wren was crying for the second time that day when they retreated to arm’s length to look at each other. “You’re really pregnant.”

  Molly giggled. “I told you. Didn’t you believe me?”

  “I did, but I guess I couldn’t picture it.”

  Sam arrived with Abby and Molly cooed and admired her while he brought everything into the house. Two hours passed in a blink while they talked and laughed and occasionally hugged again just because they could. Sam was the one to say at last, sternly, “You two both need to get some sleep.”

  They’d put Abby in the crib already set up for Molly’s unborn baby.

  “We took down the bed that was in here,” Molly said apologetically. “I wasn’t sure you were coming and I feel like such a whale, I keep expecting to go into labor any minute. But we have a pull-out couch.”

  “Tonight, that’ll feel like a luxury,” Wren said firmly.

  There were two bathrooms, thank goodness, and the house boasted a cozy dining room as well as the kitchen and living room. Wren knew she couldn’t stay forever, but maybe for a few weeks.

  She punched the pillow into a shape that suited her then lay looking at the darkness and listening to the muted sounds of an unfamiliar city. She wanted, quite fiercely, to be in Aunt Pearl’s bedroom in Saddler’s Mill, knowing that Alec was across the hall.

  She heard his voice, low and rough. Come back to me. And, You probably won’t even believe me, but I love you.

  She had come so, so close to flinging herself in his arms and saying, “Please take us home.” Pride had stopped her. Pride…and fear.

  Feeling as if she’d had open heart surgery without anesthesia, Wren asked herself if there was any chance at all that he really had meant it. That the pain she’d seen in his eyes was real, as was the tenderness in the way he touched Abby when he thought she couldn’t see.

  Had he been waiting for her email? She’d sent one from Sam’s Droid phone, saying simply:

  We made it. All is well. Thank you, Alec.

  Despite her tiredness, sleep eluded her. She could now make out the light from a street lamp seeping through the blinds. A distant siren grew in volume then faded. Somewhere a dog barked. A car with major muffler problems passed no more than a block away.

  Maybe in a few days she’d call him. She’d give him the phone number here and see whether he called her.

  After he enjoyed a few uninterrupted nights of sleep, he might decide to be grateful she hadn’t taken him up on his offer.

  But what if he did love her? What if tonight he was hurting, too? What if she’d hurt him?

  Oh, God, Wren thought. What if I made a horrible mistake?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  NO MATTER WHICH WAY Alec read Wren’s email, he couldn’t make it say I’m sorry or I miss you, or discern even a hint of a desire to stay in touch. That thank you, Alec sounded damn final to him. Would he ever hear from her again?

  Maybe it would be better if he didn’t. He drew on his anger, although it felt more like despair. He thought of how impossible it was trying to be any kind of father to Autumn and India via telephone and email. He couldn’t cut loose from them, however much it all hurt. If Wren wasn’t ever coming back, he couldn’t imagine how he’d make conversation with her should she phone only to chat. What was he supposed to do, say, “How great” when she told him Abby had crawled or said “Mama” for the first time?

  He went through the motions of his day. When he got home he finally decided he had to respond to Wren’s email. He sat down at his computer, opened his account and read what she’d written another five or ten times in hopes he’d missed something.

  Nope.

  Reply. Fingers unmoving on the keyboard, he stared at the monitor. He wanted to ask her if she really felt welcome there in Florida. Was the friendship as powerful as she’d believed it to be? Would she be able to find a job before her money ran out? He would have offered to help, but he knew how welcome that would be. She’d come right out and said that leaning on him wasn’t healthy for her. He understood why she felt that way. He did. But accepting a helping hand wasn’t the kind of dependence she feared. Accepting love wasn’t.

  She had to recognize that herself.

  He swore and started to type.

  Thanks for letting me know you made it. I called James’s mother today. She sounded so shocked I couldn’t tell how much she’ll grieve. She supposed he was in Arkansas on business and I could tell she was confused but she didn’t ask any questions except about how to bring his body home. Here’s her contact info, in case you decide to tell her about Abby.

  He included the name, phone number and address. He briefly told Wren that they’d given up on identifying the last body in the morgue and buried it. Gruesome, maybe, but Alec figured she’d want to know. She wouldn’t forget that face any more than she would James’s.

  He thought of a hundred ways to conclude the email, finally settling on:

  I’m here, Wren.

  Then he tapped Send.

  A week passed. He couldn’t seem to rise above his misery. Alec couldn’t decide if this was worse than the weeks and months after he’d said goodbye to his children knowing how long it would be before he would see them. Did it matter?

  He avoided his sister beyond informing her that if she knew someone who could use the bassinet, he’d be glad to drop it off wherever she told him. Unfortunately, it was impossible to avoid Randy, who was taking over Alec’s garage. Alec had taken to parking on the street so that his Tahoe wasn’t in the way when Randy needed to load sheets of plywood or unload a table saw. His brother-in-law wasn’t growing on Alec, exactly; it was more that he was becoming inured to him, like developing a callous on his heel where a boot rubbed. He did have to admit that Randy was taking his change of career seriously, which would have once surprised him but now didn’t. He went so far as to invite the guy in for coffee a couple of times, when they discussed Randy’s current job, the two buddies he thought he’d take on as soon as he was sure the workload would justify it and the priorities when it came time to tackle Alec’s house.

  It struck him that he did think of it as his house now, instead of Mom’s or Great-Aunt Pearl’s. The idea of selling felt wrong. Wren was right. There were ties here. As alone as he felt, hanging on to those ties with the past seemed important. And maybe it was a hope for the future, too, however thin it sometimes seemed. With Wren here, this house had been a home. It could be again.

  IN SOME DREAM WORLD, Wren had imagined going to the hospital with Molly and maybe taking turns with Sam being at her side, but of course she couldn’t. What would she have done with Abby? So when Molly, after a night and half a day of intermittent contractions, was sure she was really in labor, Wren could only give her a last hug and say to Sam, “Call me the minute the baby’s born.”

  During the long wait, all Wren could think was how much she wanted to talk to Alec. She missed him so much, it was an ever-present ache.

  I’m here, Wren.

  Not letting herself have second thoughts, she picked up the phone and dialed, then sat tensely listening to the rings. Maybe he wasn’t there. Maybe when he didn’t recognize the phone number he’d think it was some kind of solicitation. Maybe—

  “Hello?”

  “Alec?” she said, heart pounding. “Um, it’s Wren.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No! No.” She felt her face form a funny, crooked smile that expressed the bittersweet emotions that poured through her, hearing his voice. “I wanted to say hello. Molly and Sam are at the hospital. She’s having her baby. And I kept thinking about you.”

  “Because childbirth brings me to mind?” Was he smiling? “Aren’t you glad you didn’t have to be bothered with monitors and doctors a
nd, hey, a bed with metal stirrups?”

  How had he known what she needed from him? Only a little huskily, Wren said, “I wouldn’t have liked the metal stirrups, I know that.”

  “Actually, birthing rooms are homier than that.”

  “But not as homey as our attic.”

  They were both quiet for a minute.

  “No,” he said finally. “I think about it sometimes.”

  “Will the house get torn down?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know if there’s any family to see to it, though. It may have to fall down on its own.”

  Why did that feel so unbearably sad?

  Because we were happy there, that’s why.

  “Will anybody rescue the quilts?”

  “I can, if you want. I can let Josiah know I have them.”

  “Yes, please.” Once, those quilts had made a bed for the two of them. No, the three of them. She took a deep breath. “I didn’t really have anything to say. I guess all I wanted was to hear your voice.”

  “You wanted to hear my voice,” he echoed, so slowly she wondered what he was thinking.

  I miss you. Oh, I miss you. “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Okay,” he said after a minute. “Wren, I’m here if you need me.”

  Somehow she said thank you and goodbye. Tears were pouring down her cheeks when she ended the call. It was supposed to make her feel better, and instead she felt worse. So much worse.

  She’d forgotten to give him Molly’s phone number. That was going to be a test, and she’d forgotten.

  It occurred to her that she’d had Molly’s phone number in the first place only because he had given it to her. So, he’d had it all along, and he hadn’t called.

  But she was confused to realize she might not have liked it if he had, not after he’d asked her to stay and she’d said no. It was the kind of thing James would have done, putting pressure on her under the assumption he could change her mind. Alec hadn’t done that. He’d said, “Come back to me,” and “I’m here,” but he’d let her go because she’d said she had to. He had respected her decision.

  Was it him she hadn’t trusted, or herself?

  Wren was still sitting there in the quiet kitchen trying to decide when the phone rang again and she grabbed it eagerly.

  “We have a little boy,” Sam announced jubilantly.

  ALEC WASN’T SLEEPING MUCH anyway, so tonight he wouldn’t bother going to bed. Or, at least, not until he’d spoken to his daughters. That was one of the difficulties he’d faced: the awkward time difference. To catch them at six in the evening, he had to call at three in the morning. Early evening was about the only time he could successfully get them on the phone. In school full days, they seemed to be extraordinarily busy the rest of the time, too.

  It had been a month or more since he’d called. The intervals between talking to them had been growing. His fault, but guilt didn’t grab him by the throat the way it usually did. He was ready to do better, make sure he was a part of their lives.

  Alec had a cup of coffee while he watched the ten o’clock news. His upholstered rocker and the TV were now in the living room, all by their lonesome. One of these days Alec guessed he’d have to go furniture shopping, but so far he hadn’t felt inclined.

  He picked a sci-fi novel almost at random from his unread pile and opened it, but he couldn’t make himself focus.

  He found himself thinking instead about the Alec he’d been before his father died. About the days after. The grief, which time had muted. What hadn’t been muted was the sense he’d had that, in the blink of an eye, he’d assumed a terrible burden. It had been almost physical; he’d locked his knees to be sure they didn’t buckle beneath the weight he’d felt descend on his shoulders.

  Mom’s death was different, but no less painful. When he gently closed her eyes, he’d been dimly aware of Sally sobbing in the background. Inside, he’d felt anything but gentle. He’d been enraged. His mother shouldn’t have died of cancer that was now so treatable. Somebody had failed. He had failed.

  The night crawled on. He turned pages, but didn’t know what he’d read. Instead, he saw himself walking in the door from work to be met by Carlene saying, “We have to talk.”

  It wasn’t really a talk she wanted. She’d already packed, waiting only to tell him face-to-face that she wanted a divorce. He never even knew what had precipitated her to make the decision that day. Not ten minutes later, she’d called two subdued little girls from their bedrooms, let him hug them and then driven away with them to stay temporarily with her father. Alec had been left standing in front of their house, shocked in a way he wasn’t sure he’d been before or since. He’d felt…lost.

  Sitting here now, in the silent living room, he realized that somewhere along the way, love had come to be synonymous with a crushing sense of responsibility. He had to take care of the people he loved. If anything went wrong, it was his fault. Always his fault.

  No wonder he had been afraid to love again.

  Almost from the minute he had laid Wren down in that attic and talked her through a contraction, he’d quit feeling lost.

  I might fail her. Or Abby.

  The alternative was living without them. Pain swelled, and he knew he was ready to take any risk.

  If only he’d known sooner, not given Wren such mixed messages.

  Alec rocked and let himself remember the few times he’d held Wren. He thought about things she’d said and not said, and wondered if it would have mattered had he gone after her openly from the beginning. His conclusion was: no. His gentle Wren was filled with self-doubt. He would have sworn she had grown in confidence while she was here; maybe having a baby had done that for her, made her understand that she could be a lioness for Abby’s sake. He hoped he’d made a difference, too. But in the end, when she said she had to go, Alec understand that she’d meant it. After James, she couldn’t trust another man until she believed in herself and her own strength.

  Great. Good to know his massively inept interpersonal skills weren’t responsible for driving her away. But this new understanding might drive him crazy. Waiting for someone else to come to a decision and take action didn’t sit well with him. Feeling powerless reminded him too sharply of his father’s funeral, of sitting at his mother’s bedside and watching her suffer, of standing in front of his house as Carlene drove away with his girls. And now he’d admitted to himself that he had no control over Wren’s decisions. There was a strong possibility that she would indeed come to believe in herself—but wouldn’t come back to him. He’d said, “I love you.” She hadn’t.

  He never did get very far with the novel.

  At two-thirty in the morning, he placed the call.

  Carlene answered. When he identified himself, she said, “Oh, I’ll get the girls.”

  “Wait.” He was surprised to realize this was really why he’d called.

  “What is it, Alec?”

  She sounded far away. That was another thing that made these phone calls so difficult. There was a hint of a delay between speaking and hearing, a faint echo that blurred words. Sometimes he couldn’t understand what one of the girls was saying, and had to ask them to repeat it. He knew they didn’t catch everything he said.

  With sudden, explosive anger, he wondered why Carlene couldn’t have married a man who lived in Madison, Wisconsin, or Chicago or, hell, Providence, Rhode Island. Other divorced men he knew got to see their kids.

  “I want the girls for the summer,” he said bluntly.

  For the summer, his own voice whispered back to him.

  Carlene wasn’t in any hurry to say anything. When she did, it was, “They’re really young to make the trip.”

  “If necessary, I’ll fly over to get them.”

  “What would they do all summer, with you working your usual ridiculous hours?”

  “I don’t work ridiculous hours anymore.” For the first time ever, he didn’t feel guilty because now, too late, he’d changed his life enough to be able to say
that. His marriage had been doomed no matter what. He hadn’t loved Carlene the way he should, and Alec suspected she hadn’t loved him much toward the end, either. They’d jumped into marriage and Autumn had come along before they recognized they had made a mistake. Some of it was his fault, but not all of it. “You know Sally is here,” he said. “The girls will have a great time with their cousins.”

  She was quiet again. He braced himself for an argument. But to his surprise, what she finally said was, “I think maybe they do need to see you. Autumn cried the other day because she was afraid she was forgetting you.”

  Autumn, he thought, stunned.

  “A year is a long time in her life,” Carlene pointed out.

  “I want them every summer, Carlene. I can afford the airfare.”

  Again she surprised him. “We’ll pay half of it.”

  They had an unexpectedly civil discussion about the details, after which she went away for a minute and finally he heard a small, timid voice on the phone.

  “Daddy?”

  He was smiling, but, damn it, his eyes were wet, too, when he said, “India. Honey.”

  HE REALLY DID SUCK at waiting.

  At least every couple of days, Alec went online and priced airline tickets to Florida. He wanted to go in the worst way. To show up on her doorstep and say, “Damn it, I love you, and you’re coming home with me.” No matter how short their time together had been, no matter how arrogant it made him, he couldn’t believe she didn’t love him, too. He remembered the way she’d kissed him, the delight on her face when he came home every day, the things about herself she’d told him that he knew she never talked about. The way she’d wrapped her arms around him and held him so tightly. With such love. It had to be with love.

  Alec kept thinking of things he could have or should have or would have said, including “I love Abby, too.” In the end he knew none of them would have made any difference. Wren had a soft heart and he could have begged or played the you-owe-me card, but the truth was, he didn’t like the idea of her staying because she felt sorry for him, or obligated to him. He hated the idea of her staying because he’d manipulated her in any way.