• • •
TIME RAN ON A LONG LOOP CIRCUIT, BEING INSIDE WITH NO windows. I had no sense of day or night, except for when the meal carts came around. Cassidy was moved to a room but still hadn’t woken up past stirring, so we took turns sitting with her. Her doctor told us that it was normal that she didn’t wake up right away, due to the head trauma. While that made sense, it turned me inside out. She looked so young and fragile, all hooked up to tubes and wrapped up. Her head was bandaged on one side, and her face was swollen and cut up and purple from an apparent face-plant with the steering wheel and much broken glass.
Josh made his stand. Anyone could come and go as they wanted to, but he wasn’t leaving her side. I didn’t argue with him; I had to respect him for that. I sat on the other side of her, holding her hand, begging her silently to forgive me.
Holly came with fresh clothes for me, having finally heard the news when my mother physically went to her house. Mom and Aunt Bernie came and checked on Cass, checked on me, and watched Kevin and Ben for spontaneous combustion, but the two mostly avoided each other. Ben was the only one who never went in Cassidy’s room. He stayed in the waiting room, hour after hour, getting drinks or snacks when people needed them, leafing through every magazine there was, but not saying much. He never asked for a visit with her. And I was afraid to offer it, for fear that would be the moment she’d wake up. I didn’t think that would be the best thing to start her recovery with.
I found it interesting that Kevin finally broke to the hygiene gods and had to leave for a quick shower, whereas neither Ben nor I did. I didn’t care if I smelled. I only needed to see her wake up and talk to me. Ben was looking pretty rough, himself, his dark beard mixed with gray making him look ten years older.
Finally, in a prime moment right after Mom and Holly and Aunt Bernie had left, Kevin strolled back in, looking fresh and clean but just as tired, and Josh walked out.
“She’s awake,” he said.
“Oh my God,” I said, jumping to my feet. “I’m coming.”
Josh held out a hand. “They’re with her right now, checking her over.” He ran a hand through his spiky blond hair and then rubbed his eyes. He looked enormously relieved, and let a little smile through. “But she actually talked.” He closed his eyes and repeated it again, as if to himself. “She actually talked.”
My heart warmed all the way up for him right then. He loved my baby that much. Tears came to my eyes, and I walked up and hugged him. He didn’t hug me back right away, just kind of did it halfheartedly, but that was okay. I understood that. I was everyone’s Antichrist of the moment, and while it was beginning to wear on me, the only thing that mattered was Cassidy’s recovery.
“Thank you, Josh,” I said and then let him go. “How long will they be with her, did they say?”
He looked away, looking at everyone else but me. “Um, they said they’d come tell us,” he said. “But she actually just asked for her dad.”
My chest physically hurt. Like something sat on it. I concentrated on pulling in a slow, deep breath and letting it go. She didn’t want to see me yet, and that was okay. It wasn’t about my need, it was about hers. I repeated that in my head as I watched Kevin’s eyes water up, thinking that eventually I’d buy it.
“Which one,” he said bitterly, blinking back the tears.
“Jesus,” Ben said, making Kevin wheel around. “Who do you think? She’s not gonna ask for me, and she’s certainly not gonna call me Dad.”
“Quit being an ass, Kevin,” I said, finding my voice. “Go be what she needs.”
His cocky expression faltered, and there for a second was the Kevin I knew. I prayed that version would stay while he talked to her. She didn’t need a lecture or a guilt trip about him.
It was fifteen minutes later when Dr. Branson came out and told us that all looked good so far. “Mr. Lockwood, she’s asking for you,” she said. “And after that, just one at a time please. I don’t want to overwhelm her right away.”
Kevin swallowed hard and blew out a nervous breath before following her down the hall. I was left with Josh and Ben, and we stood eyeing each other until I turned away. It was my turn to go off alone. I—couldn’t stand being in that cramped room another second. I picked a hallway at random and let my feet carry me, refusing to let tears weigh me down again. I was tired of crying. I was tired of being everyone’s whipping post. Yes, I lied, I thought as I rounded a corner to God only knew where. I made a solo decision at the age of twenty-one, to not voice the possibility that it wasn’t Kevin I was pregnant by. I was young and pissed off for being what I thought was used and discarded. I was mad and scared—and heartbroken. And then when I knew it to be fact, I let it be. Because it was too scary not to. Days and weeks and months and years went by, and I buried it more and more. I made what I thought was the best decision at the time. Or maybe just the easiest. Yes. I lied.
“I’m sorry,” I said as I found myself staring at a door that said CHAPEL.
“I know,” said a familiar voice behind me.
I turned to look into Ben’s eyes.
• • •
MY SKIN DID ITS FAMILIAR TINGLE IT ALWAYS DID IN CLOSE proximity with Ben, but my brain just wanted to go the other way.
I licked my dry lips and wished Holly would have brought a toothbrush with the clothes that morning. I wasn’t up for more beatings. I was thinking I’d been led to this chapel for a reason, for some peace.
“Why’d you follow me?” I asked.
“Make sure you’re okay,” he said.
“I’m fine,” I said, hugging my arms to myself.
He glanced at the sign on the door behind me. “I found this myself, the other day.” He gestured with a nod of his head. “Mind if I join you?”
I really wanted to be alone, but it being God’s little nook and all, I didn’t feel I had a place or the right to say that. “Okay,” I said, turning to go in.
The room was dimmer than the hallway, and ten degrees cooler, washing over me with an instant diffuser. I felt calmer, just being there, and I took a seat in a pew to the left, halfway up the aisle. There were only sixteen pews total, eight on each side, split like a real church that had been shrunk.
Ben sat next to me, and I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t think about him. I wasn’t there for him. I was there to find—something.
It’s been a while, I said in my head. I’m sorry for that. I’ve been busy—no, I’ve been lazy—It wasn’t working.
“I need to talk out loud,” I said, pulling the kneeler down and getting on my knees, so I couldn’t see him or feel him. “So if you don’t want to hear this, you might—”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Don’t worry about me.” He said that with his head bowed, not looking up.
“Okay,” I said, unsure.
I faced the front and focused on the simple wooden cross that sat on a table. It had been a long time since I’d touched base with that side of me. I stared at it, knowing there was so much to say, and suddenly none of it seemed worthy. I felt foreign in there, and realized I’d probably felt more in touch with God sitting up on my mother’s roof than I did in a church.
I closed my eyes and tried to let it sink in, but I was fighting it. Then I felt pressure on the kneeler pad next to me, and Ben took my hand.
“Our Father, who art in heaven,” he began.
I opened my eyes and stared at his profile. His eyes were closed, and he continued with the prayer I knew from childhood. He spoke so calm. So sure. Even with everything he’d been through in his life, with his dad, his childhood. Me.
He finished and stayed where he was, not letting go of my hand. I looked at it, at the cross, and closed my eyes again, wanting what he felt.
“I love you, Em,” he said softly.
My eyes flew open.
“I have to start
with that,” he continued. I looked at the side of his head, because he still wasn’t looking at me. “I’m trying with the rest of it.”
“I don’t have the energy for a fight, Ben,” I whispered. “I’m—”
“I don’t, either,” he said, turning to meet my eyes. He looked as beat up as I felt. “I just wanted you to know—that’s all I can give you right now.”
He got up and walked slowly out, leaving me there. I knew in my heart he wouldn’t be in the waiting room when I got back.
• • •
CASSIDY DIDN’T ASK FOR ME, BUT I DIDN’T GIVE HER THE OPTION. I went in after Kevin left her with Josh. She met my eyes and then closed hers and went to sleep. As much as that ripped at my gut, I had to let it be okay. She had to come to me on her own terms. That was her way.
I held her hand as she slept, remembering her tiny little fingers when she was born, the impossibly small fingernails and little creases at the knuckles.
“Mr. Lockwood told her how it really happened,” Josh said from his chair on the other side of the room, his voice hushed. I’d thought he was sleeping, too, and his words startled me.
“What?” I asked, looking at her beat-up face, her mouth slightly open. “What do you mean?”
“He told her that you didn’t cheat on him, that you didn’t do what he did.”
My eyes filled with hot, burning tears, and I blinked them back. “He said that?”
Josh nodded. “He said that y’all weren’t married yet, and weren’t even together anymore when—you know—” He looked so creeped out at the thought of me having sex, it was almost comical.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to end his discomfort.
“So anyway, he told her she didn’t need to be mad at you, but she’s still—I don’t know.”
“It’s okay,” I said, looking at her. “She feels betrayed. I get that.” He got up and pulled her sheet up a little higher, and he touched her cheek as I watched him care for her. “How are the two of you?” I asked.
He shrugged. “We haven’t really had a chance to talk about it, but I’m not giving up.”
I smiled. “Good for you.”
He looked at me with a surprised expression. “Really?”
I gave a little head shrug. “You’re a good man, Josh. She’s lucky to have you.”
Ben wasn’t there when I went back to the waiting area. No one was. Kevin had evidently left for the night, and Josh gave me permission to go home as well. I’d actually laughed out loud when he said that, and the sound was so foreign to me that I had to stop and think the last time I’d heard it.
I decided to take him up on it, thinking Kevin’s idea of a shower was probably a good one now that Cassidy was among the conscious. I promised to be back the next morning to let him go do the same, and although he balked at first, he agreed once I pointed out that she was now awake and could smell him.
It was a mild night, chilly but not wet cold like Texas could be, when it goes to your bones, so I grabbed a thick blanket and headed out to the swing in my pajamas. In my red pajamas that Ben had peeled off me the day we made love all over the house. I hugged them to me at the memory, wondering what he was doing. It had taken every ounce of willpower I had not to stop at his house on the way home. And then again not to leave and go over there after my shower. And then again before I went outside. Every single cell in my body wanted to go talk to him, but I had to let it rest. Just like with Cassidy, I had to let him leave and figure things—and there was another thing she came by honestly I supposed. And with both of them, I felt the empty hole in my middle where my fear festered. The fear that they wouldn’t come back. I’d survived Ben’s departure before, and could probably do it again, but I didn’t want to. Not after rediscovering something so amazing. But Cass—my skin went icy just thinking about that. I didn’t think I could survive losing her.
I pulled my fuzzy-socked feet up in the swing with me just in case anything nocturnal decided to crawl on them, and wrapped myself in the blanket. The night sky was clear and full of stars. I remembered sitting out there on lawn chairs when Cassidy was little, trying to count them and laughing as we kept having to start over.
Ben had missed all that. But we’d beaten the what-ifs to death. Things happened as they were supposed to, I had to believe that. And even if that weren’t true, there was nothing we could do to change it now. All of us—myself, Cassidy, Kevin, Ben—all we could do was look forward. I covered my face in my hands.
“Shit, that’s such a load of crap,” I muttered into them.
I heard my gate open, and in the dark, that was a little unsettling even though I was hoping it was Ben. Per my luck on that, it wasn’t. It was Kevin.
I had a brief second of self-preservation, where I wondered if he’d brought a weapon or a vial of poison or something, but he just strolled slowly over to where I sat on the swing with his hands in his pockets and leaned his head back to look up at the stars.
“You didn’t answer the door; I figured you might be back here,” he said. “It’s clear, tonight.”
I stared up at him. “Are you here to kill me? Because about all I have the strength to do from here is throw this blanket at you.”
He shook his head while still gazing upward. “Nah, wouldn’t be worth the jail time.”
I moved my feet up a little closer to me. “Want to sit down?”
He looked down dubiously, as if maybe it was a trick, then landed heavily on the swing. He didn’t say anything for a few minutes, just swayed us gently with his feet. I felt so sorry for him suddenly, thinking of how I’d just gone sick over the possibility of losing Cassidy. To find out she wasn’t even mine—
“I’m so sorry, Kevin,” I said, and I could tell by his profile that he closed his eyes. “I don’t expect you to care that I’m sorry, I’m not saying it for me. I just truly regret—” I had to stop. “No, I don’t.”
He looked at me, and in the dark I couldn’t quite read his eyes.
“I can’t say anything that’s gonna be right, I’m screwed no matter what I say, so I’m just gonna talk. I’m sorry how things happened, but I don’t regret you raising Cassidy. You—you’re a fantastic father. She is who she is partly because of you. If I ever see Ben again, I’ll tell him I’m sorry that he didn’t get to raise her, and I do regret that for him, but I don’t for you. You did everything right.”
He looked away and wiped his eyes, then looked up at the sky again. “Except with you.”
“Oh, yeah, you sucked as a husband, but you were an A-plus father.”
A laugh broke through his tears, and I dared to laugh with him for the seconds it lasted. “And Josh told me what you said to Cass tonight, Kevin.” I nudged him with my foot. “You—were pretty A-plus there, too. You could’ve made me out to be a scheming troll.”
“I think I went in there with that, actually,” he said, scrubbing at his eyes again. “But the second I saw her, I broke. I just wanted her to feel like everything would be okay again. It wasn’t about me, anymore.”
I felt my own tears fall but I wiped them quietly away. It wasn’t about me, either.
“She told me I’d always be her dad, no matter what,” he said, his voice breaking. “That meant more to me than anything ever has—or ever will.”
My own flood started again. “Maybe in a backassward way, this can help y’all get close again.”
“Don’t push it.”
I chuckled. “Sorry.”
He looked my way. “What do you mean if you ever get to see him again?”
I gave a head shrug. “I don’t know if he can forgive me. And I can’t blame him for that any more than I can blame you.”
Kevin sighed heavily. “I probably didn’t help that.”
“I doubt it was anything he wasn’t already thinking.”
“But if you didn’t know,” he said, the tone in his voice testing me, “and he left town, how could you have done anything differently?”
“Well, for starters, I’m sure he’s probably thinking I should have said something since he’s been back,” I said. “Other than that—there are things I could have done.”
“Like leaving me?” he said, turning toward me.
I paused, thinking out my words. “I could have hurt you like that.” I shook my head. “I could have tried to track him down, and I know that’s what he’s thinking. But honestly, you and I were making a life by then.” I looked at him. “I made a choice. Was it wrong?”
His head moved slowly back and forth. “Did you ever love me, Emily? I mean, really? Or was I just convenient?”
My stomach contracted. “Of course I did. We were a family, Kevin. I didn’t marry you to get a father, I married you because I believed you were the father.” Sort of. It was enough of the truth to put his heart at ease, and I needed to do that for him.
“And if he would have never left?”
Oh, God, don’t ask me that.
“Never mind, don’t answer that,” he said, as if reading my mind. “I’m gonna go.” He stood up slowly so that the swing didn’t lurch.
I pushed the blanket behind me and stood as well, and before I could think better of it or give him a chance to back up, I wound my arms under his jacket and hugged him to me. It was foreign and familiar at the same time. I felt him catch a breath in surprise, then after a second or two his arms came up. One around my back, one hand cradled my head, and I felt him lay his cheek against my head as he held me. It had been years since I’d been in Kevin’s arms, and while it was comfortable, it wasn’t right. It wasn’t Ben.
He pulled back and looked down into my face. “I’m gonna marry Sherry,” he said.
I smiled. “Really?”
“And I’m gonna be faithful.”
I bit my lip. “Okay.”
“No, I’m serious,” he said. “When Cass told me she didn’t think people could be faithful, it hit something with me. I have to show her that I can.”
Before and Ever Since (9781101612286) Page 25
