by Eden Butler
“Good.” That glare lowered when I sat next to her, facing the lake. I could sit there all day. Sundays were for rest and Ethan…well. Things had been a little frigid between us mostly because he had been so busy with cases and I hadn’t given him a decision about our might-be/might-not-be engagement. He still wasn’t pressuring me, but I could tell that the passing days with no resolution was weighing on him. I’d also made zero excuses for helping Keira out with Koa and Mack. Ethan had given me a side look when I mentioned bringing Mack back to Mandeville after practice or staying with she and Koa so Keira could work. He didn’t ask why Ransom couldn’t look after his siblings and I didn’t offer any information about my ex’s PT and half-hearted attempts to get back into playing form.
Ethan didn’t seem to care about why I came to the lake house, only that I did. So he’d spent most of his night working on cases and not anywhere near my condo. Last night he’d left for Biloxi promising, via text, that he had to defend his honor against Steph’s claim she could out play him at the Craps table. So, he left and I got busy. My condo was clean, laundry folded and put away and meal prep for the week was done. Busy work. It’s not just for undergrads and first graders.
Keira barely moved when I scooted the chair close enough to rest my boots on the pit. She didn’t often pout. That wasn’t her style, but being away from Kona—and ignoring his constant calls or so Ransom told me—had put her in a funk. Everyone was allowed one off day.
“No studio work today?” I asked, nudging her with the tip of my boot when she kept silent.
“My muse left me too.”
“Keira…”
“What?” She sat up, turning around to face me, tucking her slippered feet under the arm rest. “That’s what it feels like. He left.”
“You asked him to, didn’t you?”
“That’s not the point.” The hem of the quilt got dangerously close to the flame and Keira threw it back. “He was supposed to fight…”
“Do you know how ridiculous you sound, cheri?”
“What?” She opened her mouth, looking like an out of her bowl fish and I understood. She wanted solidarity. She wanted me telling her she wasn’t wrong at all keeping Kona from his home. But I wasn’t going to lie to her.
“Keira, do you know how long I waited for Ransom to chase after me?” She closed her mouth, leaning back against the chair like I was revealing state secrets. “Do you know how many nights I prayed that he’d just turn up at my condo and tell me he wanted me and nothing else? No team, no Miami, no chance of hurting himself again and again, no anything but me and him in the city we loved.”
“Sweetie, it’s different. Kona and Ransom…”
“Of course it’s different. I left. I walked away and you practically pushed Kona out of the door.” When she moved to the edge of her chair, looking jumpy and eager to argue, I shook my head, mimicking her by moving forward in my seat. “I know why you did it. I know that all of this secrecy, him keeping everything to himself, is completely different from the man you love. The ex, the supposed other kids he fathered, the way your lives have gotten…”
“Busy.”
Shoulders falling, I tilted my head watching Keira close, realizing to her, her struggles were real. But they weren’t hers alone. “Souple, that’s life. You know. Hell, you taught me that. Work and kids and trying to juggle all the hats you wear, me zanmi, Keira, you’ve been preaching that to me for thirteen years. It was bound to get monotonous and complicated because that’s what life does. But you still need each other.”
“He didn’t tell me. He didn’t trust me enough to…” A small whip of wind moved against her, moving the hair from her forehead and Keira stopped her complaint in favor of blinking, trying it seemed, to keep herself in check.
“He wanted to protect you. I know that.” I held out my hand and she took it, rubbing her thumb over the obnoxious ring Ethan had given me. “I think you know that too and I understand, shoushou, that it still hurts. You feel like he didn’t think you could handle it.”
“That’s it exactly,” she said, giving my fingers a squeeze.
“But you haven’t exactly given him a chance to ask for forgiveness, have you?” She didn’t answer, kept her eyes on that diamond, finally closing her eyes like she couldn’t stand to look at it anymore. I could relate. “Something else I’ve learned from you over the years, from Kona too: you want to live a happy life, you fight for it.”
Blinking again, Keira looked at me as though she wasn’t sure what she should say to me. There was less loss in her expression, less insult at being fed a meal of truth she clearly wasn’t interested in. But beyond that was confusion—that came in the soft lines denting across her forehead and how she pressed her lips together. “But you didn’t fight. You left.”
It wasn’t an accusation and I didn’t take it as one. For four years Keira had not asked what had really happened between us. She’d never asked more than how I liked my condo or if I minded Ransom being with her when she visited. They hadn’t known, none of them, that Ransom came to me after the break up. I didn’t want him mentioning it. I didn’t think giving his family some small hope that things had changed was fair. Keira had kept her friendship with me despite the distance between her son and I. Despite the fact that she knew my leaving had hurt him.
“I fought, cheri, for as long as I could. He just wouldn't listen, had too many other things pulling at him, and I was rarely at the top of the list—unless he had a night off. I yelled, he apologized, then went back and did the same thing again. He made promises, then broke them. I finally put down an ultimatum and he stepped over it like it wasn't even there. I loved him, I really did, still do, but, well...” I looked out across the lake. “Despite what the poets say, love can only go so far.”
The wind and the chill and the choppy water, the sight of Keira wrapped up in that old blanket, the feel of her heartache, the idea of words not spoken, of secrets withheld, all these churned in the pit of my stomach. This woman had shared with me her worst fears. Wasn’t it time I shared mine with her? “But it wasn't just that. Honestly, I can’t lay this all at Ransom’s feet. Something happened.... there’s something that.... I....” I didn’t know how to go on. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
“Aly…” Keira’s voice was soft, cautious, but she didn’t keep quiet. “What really happened? Why did you really leave?”
Looking at her—that sweet, open expression, the concern I knew she felt despite her own worry, despite how desperately scared she was that her marriage was unraveling, Keira still wanted me to talk to her. She’d seen me struggle. She’d seen me trying to fight against my instinct to cling closer to the past. She’d claimed to understand when Ethan first asked me on a date. I’d kept all of this to myself for so long that the ache of it was familiar—like a knot in the center of your chest, something that pains you but you’re sure will eventually disappear. The truth, the reality of feeling like a failure, the disappointment that I couldn’t give Ransom what I knew he wanted, it had all taken root inside me. It had sat there, a burning ache that I’d learned to disregard. Now Keira was giving me the chance to chip away at that ache.
My gaze hadn’t moved. I looked over her face like it was an anchor, like she was, keeping my head above water from the weight of this burden. When her grip on my hand tightened, I knew she’d keep me from drowning.
“It…you remember the cramps, all that summer before I left when we went to Maui? I was miserable.”
“Ransom took you to the ER, I remember that.”
I nodded, looking down at the flames, the licks of blue and red swaying against the wind. “The doctor didn’t know what my problem was, guessed that I’d eaten something bad since nothing showed up on my blood tests and he couldn’t make out anything with the dinky ER ultrasound machine.” I shook my head, smiling at the memory of Ransom glaring at that doctor, who couldn’t have been any older than twenty-four, a Doogie Howser-looking kid with big green eyes and a sunburnt nose lookin
g up at Ransom with no real answers. “He gave me pain meds and told me to see my regular doctor when we came back to the mainland.” I shrugged, sitting back again. “Ransom had two away games in a row that month and I was stuck in Miami getting ready for a dance camp, but the pain, it just wouldn’t go away. So I go to my doctor, explain my symptoms—the excruciating cramps and back pain, how abnormal my cycles were, things that so many of my friends had. So many women I knew or heard of had the same thing so I didn’t even think about it. When he mentioned the endometriosis and more tests, more concerns, even then, I didn’t worry.”
The doctor hadn’t seemed concerned. I was young, he’d said. I had plenty of time to worry about fertility and children and there were lots of women that had the same condition and went on the have children. I took a breath, drifting a little away from myself, not really thinking of how closely Keira watched me or how still she’d gone as I spoke. “A week later I was in his office and he had this expression on his face…” a glance at Keira and I’d sworn she stopped breathing altogether. “One look at him and I knew it was bad. The scar tissue was just too much. Medicine, laser surgery, nothing would get it all. I’d…he wanted me to have a hysterectomy as soon as possible.”
“Aly…” but Keira kept still, dropping her hand as she reached for me when I looked away, feeling ridiculous for how badly my eyes burned.
“The Dolphins had played so poorly that month. Ransom was exhausted, irritated. He kept talking about the bye week and us coming back here for your birthday party. He went on and on about how being home was all he could think about for weeks so…I didn’t say anything.” I looked back at Keira pushing a grin on my lips, hoping she’d forgive me. The point was close and it had an edge. “We…we got here and it so nice. We’d needed that time away from Miami, just to be with you guys and reconnect and relax and I kept thinking, that whole night of the party, how it didn’t matter. Ransom loved me. He loved me so much and you did and Kona…”
Telling her everything would hurt. Maybe it would sharpen Keira’s anger at Kona, something I didn’t want to see, but the truth was already out. The bandage was loosened. I had to rip it off completely. “Kona…he was drunk. He probably doesn’t even remember talking to me.” Keira’s face went pale and I could see that quickening pulse as it beat against her neck. I squeezed my eyes closed, too much of a coward to watch her reaction. “He told me how happy he was. He told me…he told me the only thing that would make him happier was to see me and Ransom married and for us to give him grandchildren. He wanted lots of grandchildren.”
“Oh, Aly...”
The tears had loosened from my eyes without me realizing it. One minute I was talking, unaware that the familiar ache nesting in my chest had broken free. But there I was, face fevered, hot and my eyes leaking, mourning something that was never meant to be.
Keira knelt in front of me, tilting my face up so I’d look at her. I did long enough to catch the tears making her eyes shine before she pulled me against her chest like I was her child—like I hadn’t broken her son’s heart more than once. She held me because she was a mother. Because, in many ways, she was the only mother I’d ever know.
That was the point.
“You see?” I lifted my face, watching the shudder working across her features, shaking her lips and moving her chin. “Keira, you and Ransom and even Kona, you’ve all given me so much. You made me part of your family. I didn’t ask for it, but God how I wanted to pay you back for it. I wanted to make Ransom happy.” That hurt, remembering how desperate I’d been to see him smile. To keep him smiling and as I said it, a fresh wave of tears collected and moved down my face. “I wanted you and Kona to call me your daughter. I wanted…God…I wanted those babies, Keira. Ransom’s sons and daughters. I wanted to give back to you all the wonderful things you gave me. But I couldn’t. I can’t.” I waved my hand across my stomach, balling my hands into fists to keep from slapping myself. “I’m defective. Too broken then and now…now it’s impossible. Now there’s…nothing…nothing there.”
Keira’s gasp was faint, came before her hurried tug against my arms as she held me. “When?”
I wiped my face, willing away the tears. “A week after I moved back. I…I waited until you and Kona took the kids to New York for New Year’s. I told Ransom I was going to Portland to meet some of my friends from Ballet camp when he asked if I wanted to meet him in Miami. He didn’t question it. Remember when I had the flu? Nikki and Sabrina taught my classes?” Keira nodded. It had been a month and a half of me refusing company when Keira or Mack called. I’d promised them I was too contagious to see a soul. Keira’s paranoid mommy senses kept her and her kids away, but it hadn’t been easy convincing her I didn’t need her help. “No one…no one but Lettie, knew.” Keira knew my neighbor. Over the past year especially she’d become a good friend. “You know she’s a nurse at Tulane. Lettie stayed with me the first week then came in every day for almost two months after the surgery to check on me until I was able to get around on my own.”
I sniffled a bit, and rubbed another errant tear from my cheek, tried to give her a smile as I looked up, but it was a poor attempt. “You know, that’s kind of why Ethan and I got serious.” My eyes welled up again. “We had gone out to dinner with his sister, and she was complaining about something bratty that her kids had done, and Ethan made the comment that he wasn’t all that eager to have kids. When Steph pressed him, he said that he had plenty of things he wanted to experience first, and he didn’t think it was right to have kids if he was bound and determined to be so selfish.” I smiled at the memory, despite myself. “Later, he asked me if what he had said disappointed me, afraid that he had offended my feminine sensibilities. When I assured him that kids weren’t on my radar, either, well... I think that’s when he might have started thinking about us as a couple...Still, he has no idea that it’s not a question of ‘won’t’, it’s a question of ‘can’t’.... I can’t.... I....” Another tear slipped down my cheek and I looked down, afraid to look in Keira’s face. I felt empty inside, but lighter. And terrified.
Keira’s grip tightened on my arm, then she lifted my chin and brushed back the hair from my face. I chanced a glance up; her smile was shaky, her tears drying, but I saw the frustration there, the sadness. “You should have told us.”
“I couldn’t,” I said, dipping my head to let her kiss me. “I’d rather Ransom hate me for leaving, than to give him some false hope that one day I could give him a family.”
“Aly…he would have…” Keira stopped suddenly with a sharp intake of breath. She didn’t release my hand when she stood, hurrying to dry her own tears.
What Keira thought Ransom would have done, didn’t matter. Nothing did at that moment. Nothing but the shadow that grew larger as he stepped toward us. Nothing but how Ransom looked broken. How he looked betrayed. It was an expression I never wanted to see on his face. One that told me he’d heard everything I’d just revealed to his mother.
Keira left me out there with Ransom, the chilly air blowing between us. We sat out near that fire pit in the cold, the wind kicking up as the afternoon fell. It was colder for October than it should have been and the lake felt like something out of a horror film—the trees around us swaying, the approaching storm giving the horizon an ashy hue.
Ransom slumped into the chair across the flames watching me like he had no idea who I was or why I was there. But he knew me. Ransom knew me better than anyone ever would. And I had hidden myself from him. I’d run away to avoid the disappointment that lay ahead for us.
“You were never going to tell me?” It was the first thing he’d said since walking up on us twenty minutes before. The question felt like an accusation I could not defend.
“I didn’t want there to be a need for it.” His throat worked and Ransom gripped the arm rest like he needed something to keep him tethered to the earth. It went against everything inside me to keep in that chair, to stiffen my back, sit on my fingers. I wanted to comfort him. I
wanted him to tell me he understood. Moving my gaze down, back at that ring, I closed my eyes, willing my heart to slow. “I thought you hating me for leaving would be easier. That way I could keep my secret. But you never did. Hate me. Not once.” When I opened my eyes it was to find Ransom leaning forward, watching me, mouth tense, fingers trembling. “Why didn’t you just hate me?”
He was kneeling in front of me inside of three seconds—standing, slipping around the pit and on his knees faster than a snap. “How could I?” There was no point in telling him to back away, to keep his hands to himself. I’d depleted my energy, exhausted my caution. “You were mine. Every inch of your body. Every single bit of your soul. I owned it completely.” Ransom kept me from flinching with his hands on my shoulders, his thumb against my cheek. “Those eyes, that mouth,” he moved close, shifting his touch to my bottom lip, “this body, all of it—the parts that don’t work just right, the ones that do—all mine. I loved every inch. And everything I had, every bit of me, it was yours. You knew that. It isn’t in me to hate you, Aly. Not then, Christ, not now either.”
He released me, breath fanning across my neck as he rested on his haunches. The wind had slowed and in the distance one of the neighbors played some awful twangy country song too loud. Ransom kept one hand resting on my thigh, like he needed to touch me, but he didn’t try to kiss me or get too close. “You should have told me.”
“It would have hurt you knowing I couldn’t…”
“This hurts worse. God, Aly…” My leg felt cold when Ransom lifted his hand to scrub his fingers over his face. “You left me because you thought I wouldn’t want you? You thought having kids, giving my father grandkids was more important to me than the single most important person in my life?” He swallowed, head shaking and I hated the look he gave me—anger, worry, upset, I didn’t know which he felt. “You took the decision from me. You decided our future without even telling me why you were doing it.”
