For the Girls' Sake

by Janice Kay Johnson

He stepped silently behind her and brushed his lips along her nape. She started, then bowed her head. The skin was so soft here. With his fingertips Adam traced the column of her neck. She sighed softly.

  "Are you tired?" he asked. "You didn’t wait for me."

  "I am tired," Lynn admitted.

  "If you want to go right to sleep..." Hoping she’d say no, Adam nuzzled the curve between neck and shoulder.

  She sucked in a breath. "I thought I would." Her voice was throaty, not much above a whisper.

  Disappointment smacked him in the face, fear in the gut. She might just be tired. But what if it was more?

  He straightened away from her. With determined civility, Adam said, "Then you’d better get right to bed. Would you rather I read downstairs for a while?"

  "No." Lynn turned suddenly and wrapped her arms around his neck. "No, don’t go. I’m not that tired."

  "If you want to sleep, it might be best..." The translation, he thought grimly, was, I need to put some distance between us if I can’t be with you.

  Her eyes were huge and dark, and he felt tension quivering through her. "You’ve changed my mind."

  The disappointment evaporated like a cold sweat; the fear lingered. She tugged his head down to hers with a hint of desperation. Her mouth was needy.

  * * *

  THERE WAS NOTHING romantic about what had followed, but he’d been past caring. Now, when he tried to wrap Lynn in his arms, she stiffened.

  "I’m cold," she said in a small voice. "I think I’ll take a shower. If you don’t mind."

  That brought his eyes open. "Why would I mind?"

  "I’ll be back in a few minutes." She was definitely beating a retreat. A second later the bathroom door shut and he heard the shower start.

  Sighing, Adam got up. He hung up his slacks and tie, draped the shirt over a chair, and pulled on his pajama bottoms. He brushed his teeth and splashed water on his face at one of the two sinks outside the bathroom. Leaving on the lamp at Lynn’s side of the bed, he switched off the overhead light and climbed into bed.

  Her shower wasn’t a quickie. It ran and ran, as if she felt the need to scrub every inch of her body, or simply to let the hot water unknot the tension he’d felt. Guessing that she’d prefer it, Adam pretended to be asleep when she finally, quietly, came out. Water ran briefly in the sink as she too brushed her teeth. A moment later the mattress gave as she sat. The lamp went out, and she slipped in on her side of the bed, seemingly careful not to touch him.

  Wide-awake, Adam wondered how Lynn really felt about him. She had entered willingly into their bargain, but he knew that was for the sake of the girls. When they were together, did she pretend he was someone else? When she’d pulled his mouth down to hers, changing her mind with such odd abruptness, did she hunger for the physical connection without it mattering who held her?

  Did she think about him during the day, or in the night when they were separated? Had her feelings for him grown, or were they still two strangers who happened to share a bed?

  Adam hadn’t expected to feel so insecure. Not daring to move, he stared into the darkness and knew that something was missing for him in this marriage. He didn’t like discovering that he wanted her to love him. The words and everything that went with them counted, after all.

  What kind of jerk did that make him, considering he didn’t, couldn’t, return her love?

  Did she wonder if he closed his eyes and imagined he was with Jennifer? The idea unexpectedly jolted him. Was that what was wrong?

  The possibility was particularly ironic considering his own guilt because he so seldom did think about Jennifer anymore. She was slipping away from him, Lynn’s vivid presence routing the ghost. He had trouble seeing Jenny’s face anymore, hearing her laugh; she no longer visited his dreams. He sure didn’t imagine her when he was holding Lynn.

  That guilt crushed him suddenly in its grip. He’d lied to himself, he thought in despair. He’d never intended to hold Jennifer close to his heart once he had remarried. His promises on their wedding day, the vows he’d sworn beside her deathbed, all meant nothing. Out of sight, out of mind.

  Muscles rigid, Adam wasn’t sure he could keep lying here in this bed next to his too-still wife. He needed to be away from her. Able to pace. Bang his head against a wall. He needed to find Jennifer again, if she was here at all.

  Or maybe, just maybe, he needed to find a way to say goodbye. Lynn deserved better than their farce of a marriage. Could he give it to this shy, gentle woman with guts, brains and a heart?

  Before he lost her?

  Her breathing was regular, soft. His gaze sought the numbers on the clock. He’d been lying here for twenty minutes now. She must be asleep.

  Making slow movements only, he edged his legs over the side of the bed and sat up, then, careful not to tug at the covers, stood. He kept a bathrobe on a hook inside the bathroom door. He’d earlier turned down the thermostat, so he shrugged into the bathrobe. Lynn hadn’t moved. She had to be asleep. She wouldn’t even notice he was gone.

  He didn’t turn on a light until he reached his home office downstairs. There, Adam ignored the computer. It was the leather album he reached for, the one he kept on a low shelf so Rose could look at photos of her mother whenever she chose.

  He sat in the large leather armchair and opened the album in his lap. On the first page were pictures taken while they were engaged. She looked young, was his first thought. Not so different from Shelly. A girl. She sparkled, Jenny did, even in a photograph. He traced the lines of her pixie face, alight with laughter, and remembered the first time they met, when she’d chattered so fast he didn’t know half of what she said. She was beautiful, but in a different way with her eyes slanted like a cat’s, her high cheekbones and pointy chin. She’d worn her brown hair short, increasing the elfin effect. Next to her, he had always felt stolid, slow moving. Even his thoughts couldn’t jump from idea to idea with the lightning speed of hers. He had fallen in love with Jenny McCloskey immediately, and loved her until the day she died. Loved her even afterward, when he had been left to raise their daughter alone.

  Slowly he turned the pages and watched her mature from that laughing girl to a stylish, sophisticated woman who never quite lost the mischief in her eyes. In the last photos, Jenny was pregnant, her face slightly rounder, her stomach ripe with their child. Not Rose, but Shelly.

  Ah, Jenny, Adam thought, are you really gone? Is it time to say goodbye?

  "You still miss her."

  His head shot up so fast he bit his tongue. Lynn had sneaked up on him. She stood in the doorway, looking small and vulnerable in the thick chenille robe that had been a Christmas gift from her mother. Her eyes were fixed not on him, but on the open album.

  Adam resisted the temptation to close it. He swallowed. "No. Most of the time, I don’t think about her." Because of you. But he didn’t say that. It sounded too much like an accusation.

  "May I see?"

  Wordlessly he turned the photo album and held it out. Lynn took it from him and gazed down at his first wife, pregnant with the child she had raised as her own.

  With shock he saw her eyes brim with tears. She touched the photo, too. "She—your Jennifer—would have adored Shelly."

  Adam opened his mouth to say and Rose, but he couldn’t. Jenny had been so quick, so impatient, he thought Rose might have driven her crazy.

  Lynn swiped at her tears with the back of her hand. Her voice sounded just a little hoarse. "Why tonight?"

  "What?"

  Now she did look at him, her gaze bravely holding his. "Why did you come down to look at her pictures tonight?"

  He wanted to evade, but he could see that she wouldn’t let him.

  "I’m forgetting her. I swore I wouldn’t do that."

  "She’s dead."

  Anger flashed through him. "Do you think I don’t know that?"

  Her eyes were too clear, too all-seeing. "Sometimes, I’m not sure."

  "What does that mean?"


  “She’s been dead for almost four years. Shelly’s lifetime. And you’re still grieving as though it was only four months ago."

  "Would you want to be forgotten that quickly?"

  Lynn answered without hesitation. "I would not want to linger here, if some wisp of my presence crippled the people I’d loved."

  He got to his feet, dumping the photo album, not looking at where it lay sprawled on the hardwood floor. "Crippled? Rose didn’t know her to mourn. And look at me. I’ve remarried, I enjoy being close to my wife. How is that crippled?"

  Unblinking, she stared at him for the longest time. Anxiety clenched his stomach and knotted his hands at his side.

  Whatever he expected, it wasn’t what came.

  "I love you," she said quietly.

  He expelled all the air in his lungs as if a fist had driven it out.

  "You love me," he said stupidly.

  She loved him, Adam exulted. Her strange mood tonight meant nothing.

  "Do you love me?" she asked, equally quietly.

  He hadn’t caught his breath yet. Not a single word presented itself. She loves me, tangled in his mind with one last seeking cry, Jenny.

  Jenny was gone. Lynn was here, and his heart swelled with the startling awareness that he wouldn’t want it any other way.

  "See?" Lynn spoke gently. "You can’t say it, can you? Or anything close."

  His mouth worked.

  She laughed, but sadly. "I shouldn’t have even put you on the spot, should I? Love wasn’t part of our deal. You warned me. I thought that wouldn’t matter. I just didn’t know that I was already falling in love with you."

  "I...care." Even he knew that was inadequate.

  "I know you do," she said with that same terrifying gentleness. "You’re such a good, loving father, and you’ve been so kind to me. So...caring. Reading books I liked. And listening to me. I appreciate that. Really I do."

  He had never felt so lumpish, even with Jennifer. He knew he needed to find the right thing to say, but he kept shying away from the obvious—I love you. Did he love her? Was that what he’d been feeling? Was that why he needed the words from her, the reassurance? Why he thought about her constantly, missed her when she was on the coast? Why he’d begun imagining what a child who was his and hers together would be like?

  Panic made his heart pound so hard he could hear the beats. Think! he told himself, his customary caution coming to his rescue. Be sure. Don’t spout off at the mouth and then be sorry.

  Lynn squeezed her hands together in front of her, looking uncomfortably as if she were praying. "I thought I could live with you and be your wife, even if you were still mourning for Jennifer. But I can’t. No." She stopped him before he could speak. "It’s not her. It’s the fact that you don’t love me. Someday you’ll get over her, and you’ll be ready to love again. You won’t want to be married to me."

  “I will never not want to be married to you." This much he knew, with unshakable certainty.

  Her tiny, grateful smile ripped at his heart. "You say things like that, and it weakens my resolve. But the truth is, we’re married only because I wouldn’t move from Otter Beach. Well, I’ve decided. I’ll sell the store and get a job and an apartment in this area. We can do some kind of joint custody thing. Maybe they can spend a week with me and then a week with you. Or if I can get days off during the week, I can have them then and you can have them on weekends. Or something. We’ll make it work. But we will not be married just because it’s the most convenient way to each have both girls."

  "We are married."

  Tears sprang into her eyes again. "It’s not necessary anymore."

  Anguish made his voice raw. "I don’t want to lose you."

  Tears ran down her cheeks now. "I’m not going far. Maybe...maybe we can be friends."

  "Friends?" Adam repeated incredulously. "I don’t want to be friends!"

  Lynn’s face crumpled like a small child’s. She whispered, "I’m sorry," and fled.

  Adam’s mouth formed the words I love you.

  Too late.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  EYES BLINDED BY TEARS, Lynn stumbled up the stairs. At the top she waited, listening, for a moment that stretched until a sob tore its way from her chest.

  He wasn’t coming after her.

  She ached to crawl into bed with the girls and hold their small warm selves close, but waking them would be selfish. Instead she slipped as quietly as she could into the spare bedroom. She wanted to disappear; she wanted him not to find her, if he decided from guilt to offer awkward apologies and excuses. Closing the door behind her, she leaned back against it and let her legs collapse.

  In a small ball on the floor, she cried silently so that Adam wouldn’t hear her if he passed in the hall. His pity she couldn’t bear. Anything but that.

  I...care. She heard his stiff voice again, the faint hesitation, as if even such a tepid word required thought.

  When had she decided she couldn’t bear to go on living with a man who only "cared" for her, when she loved him desperately? The knowledge had crept up on her, though it terrified her. What would it mean to her daughters, who were so happy in a real family?

  But they would be unhappy if their parents were, she convinced herself. Mommy and Daddy didn’t have to be married for them to feel secure and loved.

  Tonight Lynn had looked around at Adam’s friends and their wives, heard mention of Jennifer, and thought, They all know he doesn’t love me. They know he married me for his daughter. They feel sorry for us. Perhaps for him, especially.

  She would have felt pity for someone in the same situation, once upon a time. Imagine, being married to a man you didn’t love! Putting up with his foibles, sharing housekeeping and memories, friends and family. Worse yet, accepting him into your bed.

  Lynn remembered the years of rooming with other women, the small irritations that added up to resentment despite an initial spirit of cooperation and friendship. How would she feel when she first saw Adam hide exasperation? When she first heard suppressed annoyance in his voice? When he didn’t reach for her at night? It was all inevitable. Even desire didn’t last when it wasn’t founded in true emotion.

  She had been determined to stay away from him tonight. Especially when during dinner she had realized she would have to suggest a separation, have to let him out of a bargain he couldn’t have wanted to make. But she hadn’t been able to help herself. Just once more didn’t seem like too much to ask, did it? She wouldn’t let herself think about later, about morning, about never feeling his mouth against hers again, his big warm hands circling her waist. Just once more, she could know they were a whole.

  A last memory. It would be her consolation. That, and the knowledge that at least she would never have to hide her tears when he didn’t want her anymore.

  Now, curled on the floor, Lynn wiped at her wet cheeks and longed for a tissue to blow her nose. Bed, she thought. She would crawl into bed, and maybe find the oblivion of sleep.

  She did creep between the crisp, cold sheets of the guest bed. As the night inched on, what fitful sleep she found came with dreams of grief and loss. The gray light of a rainy dawn awakened her to a pounding headache and a yawning chasm where her heart should be. Shivering, she wished for another blanket but made no move to get up and find one. Any other morning, she could have scooted closer to Adam, borrowed his warmth. But he was alone in their bed, and she was alone here, down the hall, all because she had followed him downstairs in the middle of the night and found him poring over photographs of his first wife.

  Her shivers spreading, Lynn gazed sightlessly at the rain droplets running down the window. Had she made a terrible mistake? He did care, she knew he did. They were friends, closer all the time.

  But not so close, she realized with a wrench of sadness, that he would talk about his Jenny with her. Oh, no. That part of his life stayed behind a barred door. She was not a real wife, who was entitled to admittance. They had a deal, and it didn’t include letting
her know the real woman he had loved.

  Lynn’s teeth chattered, but still she didn’t move. He had wanted her, she thought, but the comfort was too cold to help. He was a man, she was available. He found her "attractive," he had said once. "Attractive" was as chilling as the knowledge that he "cared."

  She should go home, she thought. Take both girls, if Adam would let her, and heal in a place where she belonged. There she could plan the future. Advertise for a buyer, put out feelers for a job, talk to Shelly and Rose and hope she could make them understand. She needed some time before she could face Adam again.

  Eventually she heard the shower down the hall. After the water stopped, she imagined him dressing. She had loved to watch the muscles in his back flex as he bent to put on socks and shoes, as he rifled the contents of his closet in search of a favorite shirt. Then he would look so serious as he bent over to use the mirror to adjust his tie and impatiently rake a comb through his hair.

  Had he slept easily? she wondered. Lynn tensed as the soft sound of his bedroom door closing came to her. Footsteps approached down the hall, paused outside her room, and finally continued downstairs. She lay shivering in the cold bed she’d made for herself until she heard the purr of his car pulling out of the driveway.

  At last she dragged herself out of bed and went to their—no, his bedroom—where she grabbed clothes and toiletries before returning to the guest bath. His presence wasn’t as strong here.

  Warmer on the outside after a shower, she began packing as she waited for Shelly and Rose to wake up.

  She was making breakfast for them an hour later when she found the note Adam had left propped against the counter backsplash.

  Lynn, I meant what I said last night. I don’t want to lose you. We need to talk, but maybe we both have some thinking to do first. I assume you’re planning to go home this morning. Take Shelly and Rose if you’d like, or drop them at preschool. Let me know. I’ll be in touch.

  Adam

  To the point, offering her room to hope, if she’d been so inclined, and gracious. Typical of the man she loved.