by Anna Adams
She touched her stomach, but quickly dragged her hand away. They both looked anywhere except at each other. Funny the things that reminded you.
“You need nourishment.” Man, he sounded like a granny. He glanced toward the door. “I can’t do something that’s bad for you.”
“If I have to fly through that window, I’m getting out of here today, but I’m too tired for the argument.” She nudged the tray again. “Is it because of your oatmeal thing?”
His “oatmeal thing” was a hatred for the stuff. “It’s my wanting-you-to-be-well thing.”
Her sharp glance suggested he didn’t have the right, but she glossed over the moment. “Eat this stuff for me, and I’ll devour anything else later.”
He dug into the congealed paste—oatmeal—and washed each bite down with cold eggs, stopping only to gag. When Lydia smiled, even oatmeal was worth it.
“What’s it like at home, Josh?”
Empty. Grim.
He looked for something to drink. How much damage could those flowers do to a cup of water? A coffee cup sat empty on the table just beyond her tray.
“What do you mean?” If he told her the truth, would she refuse to come home? A hug and the grief they’d shared the other day hadn’t put them on stable ground.
“Knowing it’s just you and me from now on.”
“I should have taken the nursery apart.” Neither of them needed reminders of how they’d painted and decorated and argued over the right way to assemble the changing table and bed.
“No,” she said. “I want to be the one who puts his things away.”
She blamed him so much she seemed to think he had no rights where his own child was concerned. “We’ll do it together.” He choked down another bite of oatmeal. She didn’t answer. In her eyes, he saw all the unanswered questions between them. “Unless you don’t want us to do anything together.”
She lowered her head.
“No?” he asked. The oatmeal almost came back up.
She shook her hair out of her eyes. “If not for the baby, we’d have split up months ago. I need to be sure you want to go on, too.”
He’d felt this kind of shock three times—when Clara had died, when the hospital had called him about Lydia and now. “You would have left me?”
Her mouth twisted with bitterness that seemed totally out of character for Lydia. “We’d have left each other,” she said. “Who cares who would have packed first?”
She must be out of her— “Are you crazy? I married you for better or worse. I’m not leaving you.”
“Why?” With no makeup and no pretense, she looked naked. “You don’t love me anymore.”
“Not love you? Have we been sharing the same bed?”
“I’m not talking about sex,” she said—loudly enough to make him glance toward the door.
“You’re the one who changed. You can’t—” How could he put his humiliation into words? “Can’t stand to let me hold you. Can’t let me touch you. Can’t let me kiss you.”
“I can’t stand the silence,” she said. “It was bad enough before, but all I want now is the baby.”
He didn’t pretend he’d been happy with their relationship, either. “It was getting better,” he said. “I thought we seemed closer again.”
“You mean we spoke once or twice at night if you got home before I went to bed, or if I called you from my office? We shared a chaste kiss before the lights went out and sex on the weekend if you found time away from the law library.”
How many times had she rolled away from him? “You didn’t want—”
“Yeah—right.” Her sarcasm left him cold. “And I just couldn’t tear myself away from work, either.”
“I thought you were excited about your projects.” Not always, he realized now. He’d wondered….
She stared at him, a hard, emotionless woman he’d never met and couldn’t hope to know. “Are you that insensitive?”
“I must be. Are you saying you want a divorce?”
She pulled her knees all the way to her chest, grimacing. Hunched over, she looked defeated. “I thought I could go on the other day, when I woke up, but now, I don’t know.”
He wanted to grab her so she couldn’t push him away. “I don’t even like going home now,” he said. She shot him another accusing glance, as if, like her, he missed only the baby. He shook his head. “I miss you, Lydia. I want you back.”
A frown lined her forehead.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were that unhappy?”
She linked her fingers at her ankles. “You stopped caring. I tried to tell you, but you never heard. Your job makes you happy, and I don’t.”
She’d left him room to fight. “I like my job, but you’re my wife. Just talk to me when you’re worried about something as crazy as my not caring.”
“Why should I have to tell you? A woman shouldn’t have to ask her husband—I shouldn’t have had to beg you to notice me.”
Defensive—and upset—he apparently didn’t know how to fight after all. “What do you need?”
She stretched out her legs and smoothed the sheet across her breasts. “I was serious about the third time being the charm. Three threats in five years shouldn’t seem so frightening, but that woman killed our family. I won’t ever forget.”
“You want me to quit?”
“Would you?”
“I don’t think I can.” He’d had one goal since college—to make people who’d grown up the way he had see that they could choose something cleaner, safer. He worked like hell to keep them out of jail and show them they didn’t have to repeat their parents’ mistakes. They didn’t have to give their children dangerous lives. They could keep their families out of the system that had let him down. He cared about those people who were as faceless and nameless as he’d been when his parents had gone to prison for neglecting his sister.
“Lydia, I can’t stop. What would I do?”
Tears filled her eyes. She fingered them away. “I’m afraid that if you can’t change, I will. I’ve thought about this all night. We’re about to go home, and I’m not sure there’s a reason to go together.”
“Nothing like this will happen again. It was an aberration.”
“It won’t ever happen to me again.”
CHAPTER TWO
“MR. QUINCY, if you’ll bring your car to the front entrance, we’ll take Lydia down.” Patty, Lydia’s nurse, took her bag of belongings and passed it, along with the cup of flowers, to Josh. “We’ll meet you at the doors.”
Josh looked at Lydia, longing in his eyes. They’d finished a wary morning. He’d gathered her things, talked about dinner tonight, assumed they were going home together.
“Are you all right?” he asked, but she knew he was asking if she’d rather call a cab.
She hesitated. She couldn’t turn back again. This time, it was give up or give in. “I’m fine.”
After he turned the corner, Patty put on her reading glasses and peered through several sheets of paper. “Let me see.” She ran her index finger down the print. “Watch for a rise in temperature and extra sensitivity in your abdominal region that might indicate internal bleeding. No sexual relations for six weeks.”
“No—” She’d almost said “no problem,” but stopped just in time to avoid flinging her dirty laundry at Patty’s feet.
“These are the numbers for the nurse’s desk and for Dr. Sprague. Call if you have any questions.” Patty took off her specs. “I’m working Monday, Wednesday and Friday from eight until eight.”
Unexpectedly warmed by an almost-stranger’s concern, Lydia smiled.
“I’d like to hear how you’re getting along.”
“I’ll call.”
“Okay.” Patty looked up as an orderly pushed a squeaking wheelchair into the room. “Shall we?”
Lydia sat and folded her hands to hide their shaking. The town house hadn’t felt like home since she’d first begun to think about leaving Josh, but if she was starting over s
he had to go home.
The trip in the small blue-gray elevator went too quickly. As the doors opened, a cool gust of air blew in. Lydia breathed deep. The orderly pushed her past a long row of wide windows and delivered her to the sidewalk as Josh pulled up in their car.
“Thanks,” Lydia said to the man behind her, though she avoided his helping hands as she stood.
“You’re welcome,” he said. “Best of luck.” He nodded to Josh and went back inside.
“Are you in pain?” Josh opened the passenger’s door.
She shook her head and let her hair blow across her face. She assumed his tenderness, as he eased her into the seat, was for the baby they weren’t taking home. He pulled her seat belt out, but she fastened it herself. “Thanks,” she said.
“I’ll take it easy.”
The bumps in the road didn’t matter. Neither did the stab of pain in her belly when Josh had to slam on the brakes for a VW bug whose driver sped through a red light.
“Damn it!” His ferocity had nothing to do with the bug’s driver.
“Can we stop?” She risked her first look at him since they’d left. “I don’t want to go home. I thought I could do it, but…”
He was clenching his jaw so hard she wouldn’t have been surprised to hear his teeth shatter. He glanced into the rearview mirror and then checked over his shoulder and pulled to the curb. “Where do you want me to take you?”
She glanced into the backseat. She didn’t even have a sweater. “Nowhere’s practical.”
“Then come home and think about what you’re doing.”
“I was trying to, but it doesn’t feel like home.”
He nodded, a brief jab of his chin in the air. She didn’t blame him.
“I’m not trying to hurt you on purpose. I just don’t know how to pretend anymore.”
“And you can’t make up your mind?”
She looked out at the passing traffic, at the sun that seemed too bright for a day like this, and at a couple strolling by with their young daughter holding their hands.
“I’m panicking.” She wiped sweat from beneath her bangs. “But I want to be with you. I mean that.”
“Trust me.”
“If it were that easy, we wouldn’t be talking about this at all.” She folded her hands in her lap and glanced over her shoulder. “Let’s go. I’m all right. I won’t do this again.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t promise that.”
She searched his face for sarcasm but found only compassion. It made a huge difference because fear was driving her, and he had a right to be angry. A chip fell out of her massive store of resentment.
Still, she clung to the sides of her seat when he parked in front of the town house. “I’m glad none of the neighbors are out.”
He nodded and pulled the keys from the ignition. “They mean well, but I don’t know what to say when they tell me they’re sorry.”
They both got out of the car. Lydia planted her fists in the small of her back and stared at the wreath on their door, the open drapes she hadn’t been home to close. The baby’s nursery was on the second floor. She walked up the sidewalk as fast as her aching body would let her to avoid looking at that window.
EVELYN STARED at the white phone that hung on her white kitchen wall.
“I should call him.”
“He won’t feel better if you do.”
She jumped. “Bart, I didn’t know you were home.” Turning, she crossed the kitchen to take her husband’s coat and hang it on one of the pegs in the mudroom.
He took off his boots and stared at them. “I forgot to change when I got off the boat.”
“Put them in the bench. If we can’t stand the smell of our own lobster and fish and ocean water by now…” She didn’t know how to end that sentence. “It doesn’t matter. You really think Josh wouldn’t want me to call? Isn’t this different?”
“To us. Not to him.”
“We were supposed to have a grandchild.” A grandchild that might have brought Josh back to them.
Bart pulled her close and kissed her forehead. Usually that made her feel better. “For all we know, it’s brought back memories of Clara and he hates us more than ever.”
“You can’t blame him.” She wiped her mouth. Eighteen years since she’d had her last drink, but the thirst could still bring her to her knees. She stepped away from Bart and went to the sink, grateful for dirty lunch dishes. She started running the water and slid her hands beneath its warmth.
“If you want to call him that badly, maybe you should.” Bart gripped her upper arms for a minute and then let go. “I just hate that you have to prepare yourself to be hurt.”
“He might understand. He’s lost a child, too.” She thought of Clara. Rather, a memory of Clara stole into her mind. Her baby, in pink shorts that bagged almost to her knees, brown hair blowing across her eyes and a spade almost as tall as she was for digging in the sand.
Evelyn clenched her eyes shut and willed that wisp of memory to leave. She didn’t deserve to remember the good times, and the worst day was just a nightmare feeling she could call to mind. She’d been so drunk she only knew what had happened after her daughter had died.
“Josh didn’t lose his child the way we did.” Bart started toward the hallway. “I’ll wash up. You do what you have to, Evelyn.”
“Bart—”
He stopped. She wrapped her wet arms around him, finding his sea scents comfortingly familiar. “Thanks,” she said. “I’m tired of him pushing us away. But how can we complain? He raised himself. He was more father and mother to Clara than we were.”
“Not just because of you.” He looked backward in time. “The catches were so sparse. I was afraid I couldn’t feed you all. I’ve asked myself the same question since the day Clara… Why didn’t I work harder, instead of drinking harder?”
“And why couldn’t I want to be a mom?” Evelyn made herself say the words, each one like hammering a nail in her own coffin. Josh had been a total surprise to her and Bart. She’d wanted to be a teacher, but pregnant at nineteen, she’d dropped out of college. As a mom, she was a total misfit, never feeling the instincts that came naturally to other women.
She’d thought something was wrong with her colicky son, but no matter how many times she’d dragged Josh to the doctor, they just kept telling her he was fine—healthy—and she’d get used to motherhood. She’d tried some of Bart’s vodka one night, just after she’d put her baby to bed. The vodka had eased her pain.
Finally, it had numbed her.
She pulled Bart even closer. “I might have been better with their baby.”
“It wouldn’t matter. You think Josh would have let us see him?”
“He’s not cruel. He’s sad. We have to stick it out—if only because Josh feels as guilty about Clara as we do.” It was only after the state had put her and Bart in jail for eighteen months for negligence that she’d learned not to give up trying to be a good mother.
“He has no reason to feel guilty.”
“If he could believe that, maybe he’d learn to forgive us and be our son again. And I wonder if something’s wrong between him and Lydia. Even when they’re together, they— I feel distance between them.”
“What are you talking about, Evelyn?” He let her go and turned off the water just before it reached the top of the sink.
“If you disagreed with me, you’d say so. You’ve been worried, too.” She dunked the dishes into the sink, taking comfort from the clash of glass and stoneware. “It’s time we stopped just waiting for things to get better,” she said. “I’m going to ask them to come up here.”
Bart took the first plate she handed him. Even filthy from working on the boat, he started drying. It was habit. She washed. He dried. People with addictive, alcoholic personalities found strength in habits.
“Lydia might come. Josh won’t.” He set the plate down and then stared at his dirty jeans. “I’m stinking up the place. Let me shower and I’ll help you.”
> “I’m fine. Go ahead.” She set a plate in the other half of the sink, her mind on her spiel to Josh. How could she convince him to come home and get over his sadness?
So aware of her thoughts after thirty-three years together, Bart stopped and said, “Listen to me, Evelyn.” His anxiety came through.
“He may turn me down, but how do you think Lydia feels in that house, with the nursery down the hall? Josh will come if he thinks it’ll help her.”
“Lydia loves us, but her loyalty belongs to him. She won’t come up here, knowing Josh can’t stand to be in this house.”
Evelyn turned. She put her hands on her hips, not caring when a marshmallow cloud of dishwashing suds dropped to the floor. “You forget—you can slide along, think you’re doing all right—but when you lose a child, nothing is ever the same. Lydia loves Josh, but she’ll be hating that room.”
They had a room of their own, hardly opened in the past eighteen years, still filled with Clara’s things. If she could have cut that room out of her house, she would have dropped it over the cliffs on the headland. And yet—it was all she had left of her daughter.
“You’d use Lydia?” Bart didn’t like that.
She struggled with a surge of guilt. “Use her, yes.” She couldn’t pretend to be better than she was. “But I love her as if she were ours. She needs a mother and father as much as Josh does, and I want my son back. This family has lost enough, and I’m through waiting for him to come home.”
“You worry me, Evelyn.”
“We’ve tried to give him time to make up his mind.” She went back to the sink. “We’ve done enough penance. He’ll either cut us off or we’ll convince him at last that he can depend on us.”
“I don’t want him to cut us off,” Bart said.
“This half life of having him come around once or twice a year is good enough for you?”
“It’s what we have.” Bart opened the fridge. He studied the bottles of water and juice and then slammed the door shut. “It’s what we made.”
