by Anna Adams
She started washing again. Bart, loving her, even after what they’d done, had saved her life. Was she about to risk losing him, too? “We can make something better.”
WRAPPED IN A pale yellow chenille blanket, Lydia stared at the evening paper, oblivious to the words. Josh came into the family room and set a cup of coffee beside her.
“Thanks.” She’d craved it. He’d brewed it.
He tucked the blanket around her feet. She tried not to move away from his hands.
Somehow, he knew. He looked at her with the knowledge of her instinctive rejection in his eyes. “Should you go to bed?” he asked.
“I don’t know. They just told me to call if I felt bad.” She hunched her shoulders and cupped her mug in both hands. The coffee should have been too hot, but it warmed her against a cold that came from deep inside.
“If you’re staying down here, I’ll start a fire.”
She glanced toward the fireplace. Gray ash and small black chunks crowded the hearth. The familiar scent of apple and wood smoke usually comforted her. “Okay, but then sit for a while. You don’t have to do anything else for me.”
Surprise made him look at her. “You want to talk?”
“I’d just like knowing you’re near.” She had to believe he wasn’t thinking up ways to get back to the office.
Nodding, he began to scoop the ashes into an old-fashioned coal scuttle they’d found in a shop in his hometown in Maine. No polished copper affair, this was a dusty, dented black metal working scuttle. Like their marriage, it had taken a beating. “Something’s on your mind,” he said.
She glanced at the phone, resting beside a stack of her library books on a table beneath the bay window. “I promised your mother I’d call when we got home.”
He opened his mouth, then shut it.
She’d seen his parents through his eyes at first. Alcoholics, who’d thrown his childhood down the neck of a vodka bottle. But he’d never given them credit for cleaning up after Clara’s death.
“They love us,” she said. “Both of us.” He didn’t seem to need his parents’ love.
“I don’t want to talk to them.”
“Okay. Josh?”
He stopped, midway across the room. A vein stood out on his forearm as his knuckles whitened around the bucket’s handle.
“Sometimes I wonder what I’d have to do to make you as angry with me.”
“As angry?”
“As you are with your parents.”
“Are you looking for an argument?”
“No.” But she was tired of trying to keep the peace. “I don’t know.”
“I get that you don’t want to be here.”
She couldn’t control a shiver as she thought of the nursery and their bedroom. She hadn’t forced herself to climb the stairs yet. Too many memories waited up there. “Listen.” She willed him to understand how the nothingness pressed in on her. “Don’t you hear the silence? I know you mean well, but all the fires and blankets and warm drinks in the world won’t help. I’m afraid to say anything because I’m hurt. And I’m afraid your mind is at the office.”
“What do you want?” Long and lean and unreachable, he went to the door. “I’m trying. I don’t want to lose you, but I can’t quit my job and sell this house today.” He glanced at the ceiling. “I feel that room, too, but this is our home. I want to learn to live with the empty nursery and your anger and my—” He paused, shaking his head. “My fear,” he said. “That you’re going to leave me because it’s my fault our baby died.”
“Let’s do something,” Lydia said. “Let’s get out of here, spend some time somewhere else, just the two of us.”
“And then come back to the problems you say we’ve ignored for years?”
The phone rang. A frown crossed his face. He picked up the receiver and scanned the caller ID. Then he crossed the room and handed it to her. “I don’t want to talk to them,” he said.
His parents. She clicked the talk button as Josh took the bucket out. “Evelyn?”
“How are you? Is Josh all right?”
“I’m fine. He’s quiet.”
“How quiet? You have to make him talk.”
Or he’d retreat from her as he had from Evelyn and Bart? “We’re settling back in.”
“Come up here instead.”
Lydia knew she should say no. Josh couldn’t talk to his mother and father. He’d refuse to see them. “I’m tired. Staying here might be—”
“Come tomorrow, then. You don’t want to be in that house right now. Let me pamper you and make sure you’re taking care of yourself. Let me have a daughter for a week or two.”
Her voice broke on the final plea. Lydia’s tears, never far away, thickened in her throat. “I want to, but you know how things are, Evelyn.”
“Josh will come if you do. Don’t give him a choice for once.”
Lydia laughed, as convincingly as she was able. “You wouldn’t take advantage of me to soften Josh?”
“I guess I would.” Evelyn was always truthful. “But I only left the hospital because I knew he didn’t want me there. I’ve worried about you. Come let me look after you.”
“Josh is taking great care of me.” Lydia jumped to his defense.
“I’m saying Josh may not tuck you in, or make sure you have nice clean sheets warm from the dryer.”
“I’m not taking to my bed.” But such loving concern tempted her.
“And Josh won’t bring you lobster fresh out of the trap. Bart will bring enough for both of you. Come, Lydia. And bring our son. Families should be together when they’re hurting.”
Lydia licked her lips. It was not a perfect answer, but she couldn’t stand this house. She dreaded sleeping in her own bed, seeing the baby clothes stacked on the end of her dresser, the copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting on her nightstand. “I can’t do that to Josh.”
“Ask him.”
“It’s not right.” And if she asked and he said no, she’d resent him for not seeing how much she needed to be away.
“I understand, but when do you think our family should try to love each other?”
Lydia splayed her fingers across her belly. All her hopes had died, and raising them was proving difficult. “I’m sorry, Evelyn. I can’t answer you.”
JOSH EMPTIED the ashes into the garbage can behind the door to their walkout basement. He gathered a couple logs from the pile beside the fence. But then he couldn’t make himself go inside. As long as he stayed out here, he had an excuse to avoid talking to his parents.
Ridiculous. Childish.
He didn’t care. His guilt over losing his unborn son hurt enough, but it had also opened the lid on his guilt about Clara. He should have found a way to keep her safe when he couldn’t be home. It hadn’t been normal for a high school freshman to take all responsibility for his five-year-old sister, but he hadn’t had a choice.
He turned his attention to the dead plants in the small yard. He put down the logs. Halloween was in two days, and the cool weather was upon them. Usually, he and Lydia had cleared out her summer garden by now, but purple and blue flowers had spread as far as the gray-brown plants the frost had already killed.
“Josh?”
He turned, a couple of withered begonias in his grasp. She stood in the doorway, her hands braced on the frame.
“You should stay away from those stairs. They’re too narrow and you’re not steady on your feet.”
“I’m all right.” She’d never accepted help or advice with enthusiasm. “What are you doing?”
“Yard work.” He yanked another brown, crumbling shrub out of the ground.
“You can come in now. Your mother hung up.”
“Did she ask you to go to Maine?”
Lydia widened her eyes. “How did you know?”
“Know my mother?”
Lydia let that question lie. “She asked us both, but I told her you wouldn’t want to.”
Another plant gave up its grip on the
ground. “You were right.”
“So we stay here.”
“Where you don’t want to be.”
She started to turn away, but hesitated, distraction on her face. She loved his parents. If not for him, she’d have jumped at the chance to visit Maine.
He reached blindly for a shrub, breathing in as he got a handful of sharp holly leaves.
Lydia went to him and opened his palm. “Are you all right?”
Not with her scent wafting off the top of her head as she peered at the drops of blood on his hand.
“What were you thinking?” She blotted his palm with the hem of her sweatshirt. Grateful for her tenderness, he didn’t have the strength to stop her.
“I’m realizing my parents will come between us some day.”
She froze. “Come inside and let’s clean that with something sterile.”
“They will, won’t they, Lydia? You’d rather be with my mother than with me right now. And my father’s always ready to ply you with lobster.”
“I was an only child. My parents are dead. Your mother and father have showered me with all the love you won’t let them give you.”
“Because of what they did to Clara.”
“And what you think you did?” The moment the words left her mouth, she stepped back.
He paused. “How long have you been thinking that?”
“Forever. I never had the courage to suggest you’re wasting your life and your parents’ love because you’re afraid you caused Clara’s death.” She wrapped her arms around her waist. Her sweatshirt billowed beneath them. Her unhappiness was easy to feel. “You did everything you could for Clara and your parents have paid their dues—in prison and in trying to win you back. Why throw away the kind of affection you wanted for yourself and your sister?”
“Because it’s too late.” He turned her, concentrating on keeping his hands light on her shoulders. “And I have no right if Clara can’t feel it, too.”
“That’s nuts, Josh.”
He urged her through the doorway, picked up the logs and shut the cold behind them. “I know. I can’t help it.”
TWO TRUCE-FILLED DAYS brought them to Halloween. Josh finished decorating the yard about noon and then found Lydia, dusting the little breakable things in her mother’s china cabinet. They’d hardly ever used the formal dining room. It must have felt safe to her, free of memories.
“What’s up?” He eased a plate out of her hands. “Did the doctor have cleaning in mind when they told you to take it easy?”
“I can’t sit still any more than you can.”
Understanding, he handed the plate back. “I’d better pick up some candy. You want anything from the grocery store?”
“I already bought some.” She shot an uneasy glance at the ceiling. “It’s in the nursery.”
Which neither of them had entered since she’d come home. “Okay.” If not for Lydia as a witness, he’d leave the candy in those bags and buy new. “I’ll get it.”
She braced herself, a heroine facing execution in one of those old movies she liked so much. “I’ll come with you.”
“I appreciate the offer, but I’ll do it. One of us has to tackle that room, and I can’t face another shrine.”
She nodded, empathy in her eyes. “I finally understand why no one goes in Clara’s room.”
Josh climbed the stairs. He was starting to hate his own home. He stood in front of the door he’d closed that first night when the town house had bounced emptiness from every wall.
Treat it like a Band-Aid. Yank it off. He grabbed the doorknob and walked inside. Like a man gasping his last breath, he went to the changing table. Two shopping bags, each filled with diapers and two huge sacks of candy, sat on the plastic surface that smelled new. Unused. They wouldn’t even have memories of their child.
Josh snatched at the candy and turned. Only to face the crib. Where his son would have slept in a few more months. Where his child would never sleep now.
He stumbled. The candy slipped from his fingers, a bag at a time. He reached the crib on his knees.
He could barely see through his tears. He clutched the rails and pressed his face between two of them, crying so loudly the neighbors could hear him.
Lydia could hear him. He had to shut up.
“Josh.” She was at his back, dropping to her knees with her arms around him.
He yanked her close, and for once, she didn’t pull away. Choking into her hair, he fought for control.
“We can’t do this,” she said. “I’ve been hiding from everything that mattered to me here, and I can’t stand seeing you like this. Let’s go.”
Telling himself to be a man, Josh climbed to his feet and helped Lydia up. Pressing his arm to his eyes, he leaned down for the bags he’d dropped and then followed Lydia.
“I won’t go to my parents’,” he said. “Forget it.”
Stopping in the hall, she nodded. She closed the door, and he swore the pressure on his chest eased.
“I’m going,” Lydia said, robbing him of the ability to breathe at all. “You can come. I want you to come, but I’m going.”
CHAPTER THREE
“WHAT MAKES my mother and father our answer?” Josh pulled Lydia to face him as she tried to walk away. From such a large man, his insistence should have been intimidating, but she shared his grief and understood his reluctance.
“They’re family. We need them, whether you know it or not. I don’t care about the past anymore. I want a future.”
“With me?”
His taunting barely touched her. “You don’t seem to believe me, but yes. Are you coming?”
“Clara’s all over that place.”
And maybe he was, too—a bereft teenage version of Josh that wouldn’t loosen his grip on the grown man. “It might be time to face her and yourself.”
“You’re a psychologist all of a sudden?”
She shrugged. “Is this house any easier to be in?”
His face turned ruddy, as if he were ashamed of the tears that had turned her back into a fighter. “I haven’t stayed in that house for longer than a weekend since I left for college.” And he’d left the second he was able to.
She stood, still and silent. He had to decide. She’d made her decision, but she couldn’t force Josh to try again.
He turned. She let him reach the stairs before she spoke, and she spoke over the feeling she was strangling.
“Wait.”
He stopped without looking back. “What?”
“Maybe I’m not being fair, but I do wish you’d come.”
With his back to her, he tensed his shoulders. More eloquent than words, resentment carried him downstairs.
Lydia grabbed at the wall. Suddenly exhausted, she limped to their bedroom. They’d already perfected the silent sharing of a bed, each clinging to one side. She kicked off her shoes, lay down and pulled the quilt Evelyn had given her on her last birthday up to her shoulders.
SITTING AT the family room desk, Josh tried to concentrate on paying the bills that had piled up while Lydia was in the hospital. He ruined four checks and five envelopes.
Memories, never far from his mind, rushed at him, claws outstretched. His parents had been unconscious when he’d come home from his first day of high school. Revolted at the sight of his mother and father sprawled on matching sofas, he’d expected the worst—with no idea how bad it would be. He’d searched the house for Clara.
He’d found her dollhouse, abandoned, her lunch, half eaten. He’d found her body, floating in the filthy swimming pool in their back yard. He couldn’t save her. He barely remembered the paramedics dragging him away from Clara after his mother had finally awakened to his screams and dialed 911.
Though he couldn’t stop loving his parents, he’d also hated them since that day. Nothing—not a visit, not brainwashing—could change the facts.
But his hard feelings couldn’t help Lydia. If she needed comfort—and for some ungodly reason, his parents were love enou
gh for her, how could he refuse to go?
Swearing inside his head, he climbed the stairs. He’d expected to find Lydia reading. Instead, she was burrowed inside a quilt his mom had made for her. The vulnerability of her slight body sealed his fate.
He eased the door shut and started packing the car. He turned their Halloween candy over to the neighbors, asking them to hand it out, and he packed his clothes. Then, he called his parents.
His father answered. “Josh, is something wrong?”
“Lydia’s fine. She mentioned that Mom asked us to come up for a few weeks?”
“Yeah.” His dad sounded stunned. Too stunned to make it easier on Josh.
“Well, do you mind if we take her up on that?”
“No, son. Come. Yes, Evelyn, he wants to come up.”
His mother’s voice came through the phone. “You’re coming? I’m so happy. When?”
“Lydia’s been napping. I’m going to wake her up so I can pack some of her things. We should be there by dinner.”
“Tonight?” He might have offered her the recipe for turning lead into gold. “We’ll be ready. I need to make the bed in your old room. We’ll have lobster. Bart, run down to the market and get some corn. Even if it’s not fresh, it’s Lydia’s favorite. I think I’ll make homemade peach ice cream.”
“Okay, Mom. Thanks. I’ll call when we’re almost there.”
“Don’t bother. Just come and we’ll see you when you get here. Josh, I’m so pleased.”
“Thanks for the invite.” His parents were already talking to each other when he hung up. He put his bag in the back of the car and spread a sheet on the backseat, hoping he could persuade Lydia to rest on the drive up, rather than sitting for four hours.
Finally, he eased to her side of the bed and rubbed her shoulder. She opened her eyes and focused on him. “Hi.”
“Want to go to my mom and dad’s?”
She sat up, a hint of light in her eyes at last. “Are you coming?”
As if she’d given him a choice, but he was doing this because she needed it, and he wasn’t about to let himself resent her. “Yes.”
