by Anna Adams
“They won’t mind if you sleep.” He tucked the comforter around her. No task was too small.
“They’re doing enough, getting us out of that house. I don’t want to put them to extra trouble.” She sighed, so weary her skin and lips looked almost bloodless. “Is this worse for you?” she asked.
“No.” Seeing the baby’s things had made him hurt for Lydia and himself and for the child they’d never have a chance to know. He’d never feel comfortable in Kline, but time had applied a sturdy bandage to the wounds he’d suffered there. “Being here is better than being in the town house.”
CHAPTER FOUR
EVELYN WAS CHOPPING tomatoes for a salad when a scream rode up her spine. She dropped the knife. Her hand, jerking, shoved the tomatoes across the counter. She flew down the hall and up the narrow stairs.
At the door to Josh’s room, she paused. Lydia might want privacy. Hell, no. She’d screamed. No one would ever find Evelyn negligent again.
“Lydia?” Tapping twice, she opened the door at the same time. “Are you awake, honey?”
“Come in.”
Already in, Evelyn stopped dead. Covered in sweat that curled her blond hair, Lydia turned from the closet beside Josh’s desk, her hand sliding off the doorknob to tremble at her thigh. Her pale face and shadowed eyes made Evelyn desperate to do something. Anything.
“How bad do I look?” Lydia asked.
“Well.” Evelyn didn’t want to frighten her. “I hope you’re feeling some better. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I thought I’d lost my clothes.” She opened the closet and pulled out a clean T-shirt, her face flushing as if she’d made up an excuse. “Josh must have put them away.”
“You didn’t scream over a shirt.”
Lydia froze. “I screamed? You heard me?”
“Yes.” Trying to laugh, Evelyn pushed Lydia’s moist hair away from her face. “That’s the way screaming works. Do you have a fever?”
“Don’t suggest that in front of Josh.” Lydia’s quick smile apologized for her terseness. “He’ll worry.”
Evelyn sank against the bed, pushing her hands down her own faded jeans. “What a relief. Bart and I wondered if something was wrong between you.”
Lydia stared too hard at her shirt. “We’re both sad.”
“I mean I’ve been worried before. Josh has a compulsion to save the world. It’s my fault, of course, and his father’s, so I shouldn’t say anything, but where does that leave you?”
Lydia shook out her shirt, her expression an order to butt out. “I need to change.”
The old Evelyn would have backed down. The new Evelyn wasn’t so different after all. “Go in the bathroom and wash your face, too. I’ll make the bed. You’re sure about the fever?”
Lydia started toward the door, but stopped. “Look,” she said. “Josh hasn’t done anything. I fell asleep, and every time I fall asleep, I dream I haven’t lost the baby. Then comes a moment when I know I have.”
The lump in Evelyn’s throat refused to go down. “None of this is your fault, and Josh won’t hate you for it.” She grabbed the comforter and fluffed it hard enough to almost remove the batting.
Lydia tossed her shirt on the bed and pulled Evelyn close. “Josh doesn’t know what to do with his feelings and neither do I. I’m starting to think it’s an everyday, take-stock-of-where-you-stand process.” Her hand was tender on the top of Evelyn’s head.
“Josh loves you. Don’t forget that.”
“He loves you, too, but he lets his relationships slide, and I kept waiting around for our marriage to get better. I’m not content to coast anymore.”
“You and I are in the same place, and Josh is about to find himself at a disadvantage.” Evelyn piled the comforter on the desk chair. “I wanted you here because I love you and I needed to take care of you, but I have an ulterior motive. I’ve missed my son. I’m going to find a way to make him believe in us again.”
Lydia looked askance, which gave Evelyn her first doubt. “What?”
“I’m not sure Josh is easy to force.”
“He’s here.”
“Because we were both desperate to get away.”
“Then you’ll remain desperate. I’m not above scheming to get my son back in my life.”
“What does Bart think?” Lydia asked it with pity in her voice, as if she were hoping Bart could make Evelyn come to her senses. Dread tried to rush in, but Evelyn turned it back.
“Don’t worry. We’ll be fine. Now, I’ll make this bed. You freshen up and come sit with me if you feel able while I start supper.”
They sidestepped each other. Evelyn raced around the bed plumping and straightening. Fear of losing a son would light a fire under any woman.
Lydia shut the bathroom door, and a moment later, the water began to run. Evelyn finished the bed and then turned to Josh’s open bag. Jeans and sweaters, neatly stacked, just begged to be put away.
Except that her son would consider her intrusive if she took care of his personal things. She set the bag on a shelf halfway down the closet wall and closed the door. Then she tidied the room, ending by picking up a copy of Tom Sawyer from the desk. Bart’s father had given him that book. She pressed it to her face, taking solace in the musty smell of the rough, old-fashioned cloth binding.
“Where’s Josh?”
Evelyn jumped, but then quickly stashed the book on the shelf above the desk. “He had phone calls. Last I saw him, he was strolling the headland with his cell phone glued to his ear.”
“Working. What a bolt from the blue.” Lydia grasped the door to hold herself up.
“Are you all right?” As concerned about Lydia’s indignation as her lack of balance, Evelyn took her arm. “Let me help you down the stairs.”
“I’m fine. Really—and I shouldn’t have said anything.”
They headed downstairs. Over the front door, a small fanlight let in sunshine, mottled by hundred-year-old glass. How many times had she felt as if she was searching for her own future when she’d tried to see through that glass?
Evelyn couldn’t bear to look at Lydia. “He’s not out there making appointments in the city.” She finally realized her son had always taken another tack to solve his problems. Business had come before family but not anymore. “I’d bet he’s canceling everything that would take him back to that office. He’ll be here until you’re ready to go back.”
“That could be forever, Evelyn.”
“CANCEL THAT CONFERENCE, Brenda, and make sure we get continuances on the rest of my cases.” Josh cupped his hand over his free ear as late autumn wind kicked through the sea grass, rustling it in loud whispers. A storm was coming in on clouds that seemed to have blown up in the blue-gray sky.
“Cancel everything? For the next three weeks?”
His assistant’s shock hardly flattered him under the circumstances. Where else did she think he’d be than with his wife? “I’ll let you know if anything changes, but don’t expect to hear from me.”
“You have no idea when you’ll be back?” she said again.
“Right. Talk to Dean.” The chief public defender “I told him I’d be here until Lydia is well. He knows you’re going to bring him my caseload. He may want to reassign my cases.”
“You’re not quitting, Josh?”
“No.” Below the cliff, high tide slammed into the dirt and rock walls. He couldn’t give up, not even for Lydia.
Brenda tapped at her keyboard. “I’ll follow your instructions, but you’ll let me know if you decide you’re not coming back?”
“Yeah.”
“Because I want to choose my own boss.”
So he’d be missed? He shook his head. She was good enough that the other attorneys would line up to interview her. “Thanks, Brenda.” He hung up and turned toward the house.
He was standing on his own land. Side by side with his parents’ lot, it was too close to them, but—he turned out to sea, where the sky had grown even darker and the clouds di
pped into the water—his headland was beautiful.
He stopped for his fill of the view he’d never see through his own windows. In the sweep of the wind, he searched for a sense of family ties that should bind him here. His grandfather had left a parcel for him and a parcel for Clara. After his sister’s death, her land had been merged with his father’s property.
Lydia used to ask him if he’d ever be able to live here one day. He knew she’d move tomorrow. She’d probably already planned their house in her head. She’d never throw those ideas away now.
She’d told him once that she looked at the headland as their escape from Hartford. She wanted to be close to the reformed Evelyn and Bart Quincy.
He’d been two years from adulthood when the state had returned him to their newly sober care. They’d sat him down and blah-blah-blahed about starting over.
But he’d known that song by heart. He’d spent eighteen months mourning for his sister and for his pathetic boyhood dream of finding a happy, safe home for them both.
He’d been Clara’s only semblance of a parent. The first time he’d tried to make her dinner, he’d found a vodka bottle in the potato bin. Why did they make the labels so pretty to a boy? He’d unscrewed the lid, sniffed and nearly thrown up. He’d found another in the storage bench in the mudroom when he was hunting for Clara’s boots so he could walk her to preschool. His first day working the lobster boat, he’d discovered another bottle in his father’s toolbox.
He wiped his face. Images so frightening to a child enraged him as a man. And Lydia liked being with those monsters.
He put on some speed, knowing logically that they wouldn’t—couldn’t—hurt Lydia, but every time he saw how much she loved them, his past pain came up and slapped him in the face.
The mudroom door slammed against the side of the house. Lydia came out. At first she looked as if she was running away. Then he realized the high wind had snatched the door out of her hand. She leaned back in to turn on the porch light and then pushed the door shut with both hands.
He jogged to her. “Are you all right?”
“Fine.” She searched him—for the phone he’d slipped into his pocket, probably. “Your mother said you had to call the office?”
“I gave Brenda the lowdown on my cases.” Relief smoothed Lydia’s frown. “You and I have a long way to go.”
“Before we trust each other?” The wind swooped at her hair.
He climbed the stairs toward her and stopped when she was only inches away. “I trust you.” He was trying, anyway. “I put my cases in Brice Dean’s hands.”
“Thanks,” she said, and he was grateful for her simple reply. “What if he fires you?”
“He might,” Josh said. Without conceit, he added, “but I’m good.”
“I don’t want Brice Dean to make that decision for us.”
“Now that I’ve left Hartford for a couple of weeks, you want me to quit my job?” Let it go, let it go. He knew Lydia better than that. She’d never try to manipulate him.
“I won’t pretend I can imagine wanting to go back.” She’d borrowed one of his dad’s jackets from the mudroom. He bunched the lapels.
“I know.” They were both too upset to make long-term demands or decisions. “Let’s go in, out of the cold and dark.”
“Your mom’s about to murder the lobster.”
His now toughened wife couldn’t take the “senseless slaughter.” Trying not to grin, he brushed the back of his hand over her cheekbone. So soft, her skin. “You’ll eat?” The urge to kiss her was strong. She could still want him. He knew it, but his capacity for rejection was wearing thin. “You need to gain back the weight you’ve lost.”
She squeezed his fingers briefly, but Josh and Lydia had lost their ability to offer mutual comfort. “I’m a hypocrite. I feel bad for those poor lobsters, but I plan to eat my share and clean up everyone else’s plates.”
“My father’s always admired your appetite.” Josh was relieved she felt up to eating.
“He’s in for an impressive show.”
LYDIA HAD OVERESTIMATED her abilities. To celebrate their homecoming, his mother had set the table in the dining room. Bathed in candlelight that lent her healthy color, Lydia took the chair across from Josh’s and dug in. She made a respectable job of the tail and the smaller claw, but lost interest in the pincer.
“Something wrong?” His dad disapproved of her surrender. “You haven’t touched your corn.”
“After you shucked it yourself, Lydia,” Evelyn said.
“I wondered why we were eating strings tonight.” Josh made a show of removing a corn silk from his teeth.
“Save it and you can use it for floss later,” his mother said. “Waste not, want not.”
Josh laughed, surprising himself as much as his parents. Lydia seemed to fade as she laughed, too. “You’re tired,” he said.
She glanced from him to his mother and then to his father. “I’m fine.” In other words, don’t turn me into an invalid.
“I know you don’t like to give in.” He set down his own fork. “But until you’re well, you lie down whenever you’re tired.” He slid his napkin onto the table as his mother stood. “Mother, leave the dishes. I’ll do them later.”
“Huh?” They all three said it together.
He’d hardly suggested carrying his grandmother’s best china down to the cliff and tossing it over. “You’ve worked all afternoon to make us comfortable. Let me clean the kitchen.”
He helped Lydia scoot out her chair. She glanced up at him and then smiled at her mother-in-law. “Do what he says, Evelyn.”
“If you say so….”
Josh helped Lydia back to their room, puzzled by her silent submission. “How bad do you feel?”
“I’m sore,” she said with a heavy sigh, “and exhausted. It’ll pass.”
Was it normal? He waited, feeling both foolish and uneasy beside the bathroom door while she brushed her teeth. After her third self-conscious glance, he turned away. Maybe women didn’t like their husbands to stare at them while they foamed with toothpaste. She stepped out when she was finished.
“Need some help?” he asked.
“No.” She was drying her hands on a soft yellow towel. “When you go back downstairs, you’ll be nice?”
“Nice?” She’d never understand. “When am I not nice?”
“I mean really—not that fake stuff you all do.” She glanced down the stairs. “All of you.”
“What’s on your mind now?”
“I talked with your mother this afternoon.” She tried to smooth out his frown with her fingertips.
He dragged her palm to his mouth. God, she smelled good. Her touch eased his pain. As if the tide of his need pushed her away, she eased her hand out of his and climbed into bed—clearly not welcoming company.
“What’s my mother up to?”
Lydia shook her head, her posture a flawless picture of guilt. “She has to be up to something?”
“I’m glad lying isn’t your talent.”
“I felt guilty not telling you—”
“We’re here because you—and I—couldn’t stay at home. Whatever my mom’s plotting won’t work. ’Night, Lydia.”
“You’re sure?”
“I don’t care about games. It’s always the same thing, trying to drag me back here.” He took advantage of her relief, leaning across the bed to kiss her forehead. Every time she let him this close, he remembered he’d almost lost her, too. For those first few hours in the hospital, no one could or would tell him she was going to live. Fighting a compulsion to wrap her in his arms, he backed off the bed and headed toward the hall.
“Josh, I’ve sometimes thought of you as a hard man—but maybe you’re not.”
She was half asleep so he didn’t answer, but her words would stay with him. He eased the door shut and went downstairs. His mother had already cleaned the kitchen.
“Would you like some coffee?” she asked, gesturing to the cup in front of his
father at the kitchen table.
“No, thanks.” He glanced at the real estate ads in the newspaper his father was reading. “What are you doing, Dad?”
“I never get to read the paper in the morning before I go out on the boat. Want a section?”
Surely his mother wasn’t looking for a home for him and Lydia. She’d lost more than her lack of subtlety. How could she even think he’d move back here?
“I’m going for a walk,” he said. As he took his coat off the hook in the mudroom, he remembered it was Halloween. “Don’t you get any children out this way?” There’d been few when he was a child.
“I have some candy.” His mother nodded toward a bowl on the counter. “But we’ll probably be eating it for the next year.”
“Too few neighbors.” Josh’s dad peered over his reading glasses. “The kids go for quantity since those new subdivisions went in on the other side of town.”
“A lot of young families live out there. They even voted in a bond to build a new elementary school.”
Josh was smiling as he put on his coat. Outside, he walked around the house, glad Lydia had wanted to tell him about his mother’s plans, even if there’d been no need.
He hunched into his collar. His coat was no match for an unseasonably cold night. Storms had flirted with the coast all day long, and the clouds still spiraled in front of the moon. He went down the cliff, all the way to his parents’ closest neighbor, a retired politician from some Midwestern state, who’d fallen in love with Maine during his eastern tenure in congress. Josh knew the name, but he’d never met the man.
They’d torn down a Cape Cod that had looked like his own family’s. In its place, they’d built a house in layers of limestone and windows. Lydia, who’d spent her career restoring historical buildings and homes would disparage the modern lines, but Josh was drawn to the orange-colored lamp light within, a seductive sense of welcoming heat built into the cliff.
A man walked past one of four wide-paned windows, and Josh turned away, feeling a bit as he had as a boy, like a peeping Tom who couldn’t resist looking inside other people’s houses to find out what a real family did together.
