These Three Words

by Holly Jacobs

  Peggy shook her head. “He was so confused when I said no. I mean, genuinely befuddled by the idea I might not want him to take care of me. I was almost insulted when he took all that money he’d saved and put it in that account for me. But when I was trying to get home, it was a godsend.”

  “I’m glad it helped get you home,” I said.

  “I’ll never be rich, but I love what I do, and I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished,” Peggy said.

  “I don’t think he meant to minimize that,” I said, defending Gray.

  “No,” she said. “I’m sure he didn’t.”

  “Being strong and taking care of us. I think that’s one way Gray tells us he loves us without words.” As I said the words, I realized that maybe that’s what he was trying to do for me after we lost our son.

  Maybe he didn’t see himself as being distant. Maybe he thought he was being strong for me. Supporting me.

  I remembered him waiting on me the first few days I was home, then afterward, he was always nagging me to get out of the house, go for a walk, go see a sunset, all the things I used to love that had lost their appeal.

  “I didn’t need a cheerleader,” I said softly. “I didn’t even need a shoulder. I needed someone who understood what I was going through because he was going through the same thing.”

  “Maybe Gray didn’t know that. My son is sometimes a bit obtuse about things like that.”

  I snorted. “More than a bit.”

  “He always had you to remind him. Like not buying me a house as a surprise. I don’t think he knew what to do when you stopped reminding him of things. You two have been joined at the hip since you started school. He can’t function properly without you.”

  Peggy and I stood next to each other, her hand still positioned over his fingers.

  I looked down at Gray, and the now-familiar noise of the machines was the only sound. I realized that I had stopped trying.

  When I’d tried to force that trip to St. Lucia, it was very much the same thing as when he’d wanted to buy his mom a house. I was trying to back him into the corner and force him to do what I wanted. To be what I wanted him to be.

  I thought that maybe getting away after we lost the baby would somehow help us reconnect. Maybe even find our way back to where we were before the tragedy.

  But I’d never said those words to Gray. I’d never explained why I’d planned a trip for us. I’d simply handed him the itinerary, and when he’d said he wasn’t sure he could make it work, I’d walked away.

  Smita came in and checked the machines, noting the figures on Gray’s chart.

  “Peggy, this is Gray’s nurse today. Smita, this is Gray’s mom, Peggy.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Grayson.” She paused a moment and eyed both of us. “Technically, he should only have one visitor at a time. I don’t mind if you both are here, but he’ll be in the hospital for a while. It might be better to take turns.”

  She paused again then added, “And I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but you both look like hell. Neither of you will do Mr. Grayson any good if you don’t take care of yourselves.”

  She turned and left the room.

  I looked at Peggy and knew that Smita’s observation was right . . . her trip home had cost her. I could try to send her for some rest, but I knew how much she needed to be with him.

  “Why don’t you take some time with him?” I offered. “I’ll go home, catch a nap, and then come back, and you can head home and get some sleep, too.”

  “Are you sure?” Peggy asked.

  “He needs us. Both of us. Smita’s right, we won’t do him any good if we make ourselves sick.” I hugged Peggy and took one last look at Gray. “If there’s any change, or if the doctor comes down, call me?”

  “I will,” she promised. “Thank you, Addie.”

  “If you get tired and want to head home before I get here, just call.” I kissed Gray on the forehead. “I’ll be back soon.”

  I remember thinking that the hospital’s corridors were like a maze when I first came here, but I navigated to the elevators with no problem. I’d come to think of them as the hub. I just had to remember how to get back to them in order to get around.

  Maybe if I could figure out my hub with Gray, I could get back to us.

  I thought about heading to Ferncliff, but I hated that the reception there was so inconsistent.

  I found myself driving home instead.

  Maybe that word explained why.

  The house on Ferncliff was where I lived. The house on Willow Lane was home.

  Chapter Twelve

  I pulled up in front of our Willow Lane home. I could almost see the two of us on that first visit so long ago.

  I stood at the gate.

  The metal was cold in my hand.

  The squeak that had once been a soft sound had deepened and turned gravelly in the months since I’d last been here.

  I stood for a moment, ghost images of that first visit playing through my mind. Gray and I had been so happy.

  We’d had so many plans.

  I walked through the gate.

  The plants in the front of the house were all dying off in the cool fall nights. Normally, I’d have planted mums, simply to keep color in the garden just a little longer.

  Gray hadn’t done that.

  The ivy that framed the door was in the process of dying back as well. There were still spots of dull green, but most of the leaves were turning brown.

  I walked up to the arched door and held my keychain in my hand. I fumbled through the keys, looking for the one for the house.

  I’d never taken it off my key ring. I’d simply added a key to the Ferncliff house. I didn’t need labels to know what each key was for. Harbor House, Ferncliff, my car. Gray’s car. Willow Lane.

  The key felt foreign as I plucked it from the rest and slipped it into the lock.

  I opened the door for the first time in months and stepped inside the house, shutting the door behind me.

  I dropped the keys into the bowl on the small hall table. I hung my purse from the hook I’d always used. I took my phone out and put it in my back pocket, in case the hospital or Peggy called.

  I started to set the envelope down as well, but in the end, I carried it with me.

  I stepped into the living room. It looked the same as it always had. Even the throw pillows on the couch were propped the way I’d have done them.

  I stopped in front of the fireplace. The Helen Allingham print I’d bought for the house hung where it always had. Pastoral. Homey. That’s what I’d tried to achieve here in the house . . . a home.

  There were logs in the fireplace so that it would only take a match to get a fire going. For a moment, I was tempted. I remembered our first night here, on an air mattress in front of the fire. I remembered thinking I could have been content to always stay like that.

  But we couldn’t.

  And here we were.

  I picked up a match, ready to light the fire, but I set it back down. I wouldn’t want to leave a fire burning if I had to run back to the hospital.

  The large buffet in the dining room shone, as if it had been recently polished.

  The kitchen was the same as the other rooms, cleaned and in the same sort of order I’d have kept it.

  I opened the refrigerator. Other than the water pitcher and a quart of milk, it was barren. The pantry was pretty sparsely filled as well.

  What had Gray been eating in the months since I left?

  I knew that his condition wasn’t brought about by a bad diet, but I had to think that being run-down wouldn’t help his recovery.

  I thought about opening the freezer. Gray had said he’d bought ice cream for when I was home. Well, I was here. I could open it up and eat some. But I found I couldn’t face it.

  Part of me wanted
to go curl up and nap on the couch, but instead, I turned to the stairs. I walked up them slowly and hesitated on the landing. All the doors were shut.

  Rather than go to our bedroom, I turned to the door to the left of the stairs. My hand hesitated on the doorknob. Part of me didn’t want to open it, but I knew I had to.

  Everything was exactly the same here as well. The box with the crib was in the corner. A plastic package of soft flannel sheets with monkeys on them on top. I’d opened the box for the mobile with black-and-white circles when I brought all the items up.

  I wound the music box part of it now and the tinkling rendition of “Brahms’ Lullaby” filled the room.

  Bags of baby clothes. I remembered how fascinated I’d been by how small they were.

  There was a bookshelf under the window next to the recliner. When I’d found out I was pregnant, I’d gone on a book-buying splurge on Amazon. All my childhood favorites were stacked on the shelves, waiting to read to the baby.

  I ran my fingers along the shelf, surprised that there didn’t seem to be any dust on it. It had been months since I left. Months since the day Gray had shut the door to this room.

  And yet the room had obviously been cleaned, the same as the rest of the house.

  I sat in the recliner, pushed the footrest up, and covered up with the soft, cream-colored throw that I’d placed on the back of it.

  The throw smelled of Gray.

  I curled up around it, drinking in the scent of him.

  In my mind’s eye, I could suddenly picture Gray coming home to the empty house and making his way to this half-formed room. He’d kick off his shoes, cover up with this blanket in this chair, and . . .

  Did he cry for our son?

  Did he mourn for the child who never stood a chance?

  From under the blanket, I stared at the room. I remembered the day he’d painted it. He’d used low-VOC paint, but still insisted I couldn’t spend the weekend in the house.

  It was the week before that last trip to the doctor’s.

  Ten months ago.

  That weekend was the last time I remembered being truly happy . . .

  “. . . it’s so hard to spend much time down here because Wills is so small,” JoAnn said after she’d tucked Wills into the portable crib in the master bedroom and come back into the second room where I was staying. “I keep imagining that he is eying the balcony, thinking he could rappel from it. Harmon’s been talking about renting it out for a few years, until the kids are older. I asked if he wanted to sell it, but he said he might want a boat someday.”

  “Harmon in a boat?” Harmon was a wonderful man, but he felt like someone who would be more at home in an ivy-encased library than on a boat. JoAnn laughed as she nodded. “Not just any boat, a sailboat. He wants to teach Wills and the new baby to sail.”

  “I didn’t know he sailed.”

  “He doesn’t.”

  She laughed and I joined in. Her husband was a sweetheart, but Harmon was not what I pictured when I thought sailor. He was more of a man who after a day in a library would head to an Irish pub. I could picture him with a Guinness in hand, singing along with some folk tune.

  I realized it was easy to picture because we’d all gone out and he’d done just that more than once.

  “Well, if Harmon says he wants to learn to sail so he can teach the kids, he will. That husband of yours is the most determined man I’ve ever met. He saw you, fell for you, and decided to win your heart, and he did. And you weren’t easy, my friend.”

  JoAnn laughed. “Harmon was not the type of man I normally dated.”

  I snorted. “You can say that again. The men you normally dated were losers. Harmon is not that.”

  “No, he’s not,” she agreed. “I think we both got lucky with our husbands.”

  “I do, too,” I admitted. “But then again, they were even luckier.”

  JoAnn laughed. “They were. Are.”

  I nodded.

  She glanced at her watch. “We should probably call it a night. I need to get some sleep or I’ll never be able to function tomorrow.”

  “Me, too.” I got up. “Night.”

  JoAnn started toward the door then stopped, her hand on her stomach, which was definitely rounded. I put mine on my still-flat stomach and realized I couldn’t wait to see the evidence of my baby. I could imagine my stomach swelling as our baby grew.

  My baby and JoAnn’s would grow up together. Hopefully, they’d be friends.

  We were thrilled that we’d have children who would be so close in age.

  “You remember when we were younger and would have spent a girls’ weekend partying all night?” she asked. “When did we get so old?”

  I rested my hand on my stomach. “When we started having kids. Peggy assures me if this baby’s anything like Gray I may not sleep for a couple of years after he’s born. And if your new one is anything like Wills . . .”

  “We both better get some sleep now, then,” JoAnn said with a laugh.

  She went next door to the master bedroom. I heard the door shut.

  I went out to the second-story deck. It could be accessed from either of the bedrooms. I was careful to stay at my end and not disturb JoAnn and Wills.

  I sat out on one of the lounge chairs. This was a view I didn’t think I’d ever get tired of. Ferncliff sat on the city side of the bay and looked out to Presque Isle, the peninsula that made up the other side of the bay.

  The beaches were closed at sundown, but there were a few lights visible. Maybe they were rangers? Maybe they were lights on buildings? Whatever they were, they were enough to make the peninsula have some sense of form even in the dark of a moonlit night.

  But what I loved the most out here was the night sky.

  The stars seemed so much brighter, so much closer.

  I wished my phone had some bars down here. I would have liked to call Gray and say good night. I’d love to sit here on the deck, watching the stars and knowing he was just a phone call away.

  “Addie,” someone called in a stage whisper. “Look down.”

  I got up and looked down beneath the deck to the bit of walkway between the house and the bay. “I feel like I should quote Romeo and Juliet,” he called.

  I laughed. “‘O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?’ But I guess those would be my lines. Hold on. I’ll be right down.” I hurried down the stairs and opened the front door. “There you are,” I said happily as I walked into his arms, which automatically pulled me close. “I was just wishing I had cell phone reception so I could call you, and there you were. Almost as if I’d wished you here.”

  “I always try to make your wishes come true,” he murmured against my hair.

  I realized that was true. When we were little, he always ran out to the playground and held my favorite swing until I could get there.

  It was rare that there wasn’t a bit of my favorite ice cream tucked up in the freezer. Pralines and cream.

  “I thought I had to spend the night here because of the paint fumes at home?”

  “You do, but I thought maybe I could spend the night with you?” He released his hug enough to kiss me. “I missed you.”

  “I missed you, too. And the lines for you would be ‘But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.’”

  “I always saw you as the sun—bright and shining. People are drawn to you because of it, Addie. You bring out the best in them. You bring out the best in me.”

  I snuggled close. “That’s not hard to do. You are so good that your best just shows through.”

  He shook his head. “I’m only at my best when you’re around. I think there’s a part of me that’s missing. A part that you . . . I don’t know. Fill in, if that makes sense.”

  “This is a very heavy conversation for a man who’s snea
king into my room.”

  “Is that what I’m doing?” he asked.

  “JoAnn’s asleep and it’s late at night, so yes, that’s exactly what you’re doing.”

  “I kind of like the idea of a clandestine rendezvous,” he said.

  I woke up with a start, remembering Gray’s words as I curled around the blanket that smelled of him.

  He’d been eloquent that night as he held me.

  I realized my phone was buzzing in my pocket.

  With fingers thick from sleep, I fumbled and finally got it out of my pocket. It was Peggy. “Honey, the nurse said the doctor will be making rounds soon. She thought you might want to be here.”

  “I do,” I said groggily. “Thank you. I’ll be there in just a few minutes.”

  I got up, refolded the blanket, and looked at this room. We’d had so many hopes and dreams for this baby.

  Hearing that Gray had mourned him, too made me feel less alone.

  I wished he’d mourned with me.

  I thought about what Peggy had said, and I understood, but . . .

  I wasn’t sure it was enough.

  I left the room as I’d found it and went back downstairs. I gathered my things from the hall and spotted Gray’s Mercyhurst sweatshirt. He’d bought it back when Mercyhurst was still a college, not a university. The sweatshirt had a softness that only comes from years of wear and washing.

  Without thinking, I pulled it on over my shirt. If I closed my eyes, I could almost believe that Gray was here, holding me.

  I headed back to the hospital.

  Before I went to the elevators, I stopped at the chapel. I didn’t say anything; I simply stood for a moment, trusting that my intentions were heard. Here I am, I said in my head.

  I turned to leave and saw Mark standing silently in the doorway.

  “How is your husband?” he asked. “I was going to come up later and see you.”

  “He’s holding his own. How’s your father?”

  He simply sighed. “He’s the same as ever.”