“What does that have to do with anything?” I snap back.
“It’s like you’ve spent the last ten years trying to repent for keeping him out of the National Guard when he wanted to reenlist. Like you think if you’re super active in supporting the troops that will pay back some debt you think you owe. You don’t owe anyone anything, Natalie. In fact, you probably saved his fucking life.”
I’ve never given that a thought, that maybe I saved his life. Not likely. Guilt is stronger than reason, and I don’t buy what she’s saying.
“So what do I do?” I turn toward Tosha with tears in my eyes.
“You go figure out your marriage, or what’s left of it, and only think about Ryker Manning when you’re ready. You haven’t seen him in ten years. Maybe you’ll go another ten . . . if you want to.”
I leave her last words to bump around in my brain as I get out of her car and trudge up to my apartment . . . my real life. Pausing for a moment with my door on the handle, I listen for signs of what I’m about to walk into. Silence points to a successful nap time, allowing me to open the door with a tinge less dread than I’d walked up the stairs with.
“Hey,” Eric mumbles as he stares at the TV.
“Hey.” I take my bag to the kitchen and unpack the emotionally tainted produce.
“How’d everything go at the Clarke School today?” Eric asks purely as a matter of formality, since he hasn’t turned down the TV to hear a real answer.
“Everything’s fine. We’re pretty lucky Ollie already knows how to speak and has probably been reading lips for a while, anyway, they said. He’ll still see their speech and hearing therapist, and we’ll all learn sign language to give him the most options for communication.” Ryker’s half-smile blinds all other images from my mind as I try to discuss my child. “Still,” I continue with a sigh, “they suggest really focusing on being face-to-face with him when we speak so he can read lips. We’ve got to work on that with Max, too . . .”
Eric’s footsteps startle me from my speech. His hand feels foreign as it brushes the spot Ryker’s hands rested just half an hour ago. An awkward sense of betrayal swirls around me. I grip the counter and hang my head.
“Natalie . . .” Eric glides his hand up to my shoulder as my tears mockingly tickle my cheeks.
Despite me telling him I don’t love him, and having told him before that I hate him, Eric pulls me into a comforting embrace. My arms hang uselessly at my side. He knows everything, Eric does. He knows I missed school for a semester because I was a cutter with a borderline-abusive boyfriend, and that we’d made a spectacular mess of both of our lives. He knows I didn’t want to have his children, or get married just because it was the “proper” thing to do. Eric knows I resentfully put my aspirations on hold so he could fulfill his. And, still, he tries to hug my pain away.
“I’m sorry, Eric.” I apologize for things I can’t verbalize. Things from ten years ago and things from yesterday. I’m just sorry we’ve gotten in this far before I’ve had the clarity to leave. It’s like I never considered it an option.
“Me too, Hon,” he whispers as he softly rubs my back. “I know this is stressful, Nat, but we’ll get through it, okay?” He pulls away, holding me at arm’s length. “You’re an amazing mom to those boys. They’re lucky to have you.” His eyes say something else, something I can’t quite read, but I appreciate his sentiment. “Look,” he continues, “graduation is Friday, then the boys are going to your parents’, and we can have some alone time to figure things out.”
“I don’t really know what there is to figure out, Eric.” I’m not trying to be cruel, but I don’t want him to interpret my tears as surrender. He’ll want to talk about getting us back on track. There’s no track. Either way, I can’t have that conversation now.
My eyes must look as empty as they feel, because Eric takes one look at me and drops his hands.
“Whatever.” He walks back to the recliner and resumes his responsibilities to his Fantasy Baseball team.
“Yeah, whatever.”
I trudge to our bedroom and rifle through my closet until I find my old denim jacket, still proudly displaying its yellow ribbon. The silk under my fingers suggests a lightness and comfort that doesn’t exist between its fibers. I replay Ryker’s smile and honest hug today, letting myself wonder if he’s finally come home. Shaking my head, I shove the jacket back into my closet. Today was just some sort of sentimental wormhole through which Ryker and I slipped together for a short time. He’s alive and, honestly, that’s more than I expected.
Chapter 24
Finally. Eric’s graduation. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been equally anticipating the boys’ vacation when this day is over.
“I bet you’re looking forward to getting out of this tiny apartment and getting into a house.” My mom cuts right to the chase as she helps me dress the boys. They drove up last night and stayed at a hotel down the road.
“It’ll be nice,” I half-heartedly confirm, not wanting to give her any more. Like, how I don’t think Eric and I will ever live anywhere else . . . together.
“You look tired, Dear.” Bless her heart, she can dress up any insult into concern. The boys get their blonde hair from her. It sits in a glassy bob that falls just below her chin.
“I’m ready for a break. Thank you for taking these two monsters.” I laugh as I tickle the bellies of their freshly-pressed shirts. “Go find Grampa, then we’ll go.” We’re all meeting for a late lunch at Eric’s parents’ house before the evening ceremony. He had to leave early for a reception with his department and said he’d stop by his parents’ house before the ceremony. We’ll see.
I told my parents over the phone about Ollie’s hearing. Despite my trepidation regarding their potential reaction, they were quite understanding and even more excited to take the boys.
My mom fusses with the back of my knee-length “doctor’s wife” dress as I check my lipstick in the mirror. “I’m sure you and Eric could use some quiet time after the stress he’s had over the last several months.”
“Yeah,” I chuckle and mutter, “he’s had,” under my breath.
“What’s that?” She asks, catching my stare in the mirror.
I smack my lips together one final time and smile. “Nothing.”
“Navy looks lovely on you, though you look a little pale. Are you okay?”
She doesn’t care if I’m okay. We’ve never been close, my mother and I. I don’t know if it’s just that my dad and I always bonded over books and scotch—yeah, he let me try scotch at fifteen and I was in love—or if she just wasn’t cut out to be a mother. But, she’s much closer with my little brother, who’s graduating from Cornell this winter. He’ll be going to their medical school in NYC, so that should erase some of my marital shame.
“I’m fine, just tired. We’ve had a busy week of getting all of Oliver’s therapists lined up. Luckily they can start as soon as the boys get back from your house. They’re going to work with Max, too. Teaching him how to speak to his brother, helping him learn that he needs to assist him if something like the fire alarm goes off in the middle of the night . . .”
The ramifications of a hearing impairment get heavier with each passing day.
“What are your plans this week?” my father asks as we join him in the living room.
I shrug as I straighten the boys’ shirts again. “Monday I’ll probably go to the Memorial Day ceremony on the common—”
Locking eyes with my dad, I stop myself. He knows I go every year; I have since Ryker and I first started dating. My mom doesn’t know, though. Didn’t know. Until I just blurted it out. Maybe she forgot. I peek at her face from the corner of my eye and find her disapprovingly pursing her lips, but not saying a word.
Can’t a person go to a public event to honor service members without scrutiny? Maybe, according to my mother, if everything that happened hadn’t happened. I hurry the boys out the door and into the car before she can voice any opinion that she might
have.
Two hours later, Eric swoops into his parents’ house to give everyone hugs and kisses before he has to go back to campus. My mom smiles in the way she only does when Eric’s around. It’s like he makes everything all okay for her.
“I’m proud of you, you know,” I say as I walk him to his car. I really am, even though I can’t shake the nagging jealousy that I won’t be up there today with him, receiving my Ph.D.
“Thank you, Honey. I’m proud of you, too. You’ve put up with a lot of shit over the last few months.”
Years, Eric. Years.
The fact that he said “months” proves how out of touch he is.
“Well, see you later, Doctor Johnson.” I give him a well-meaning peck on the cheek and wander out back to find my dad.
Standing by a tree in the backyard, my dad puffs a cigar out of view of the kids and my mother. I shoulder up next to him, taking the cigar from his hand and handing it back after a puff of my own.
“How you doing, Kid?” My dad puts his arm around my shoulders.
I rest my head on his. “Just fine, Michael. Just fine.” I giggle when he smacks me for using his name.
“It’s been quite the few years, hasn’t it?” Sunshine highlights the fact that his hair—which is as black as mine—has very little grey peeking through.
“I saw Ryker last week, Dad.” Apparently I just blurt things out now.
I hear his breath catch for a second. “Oh yeah?”
The truth is, I’ve been dying to tell him. I haven’t talked with Tosha about it again because I’ve been running it over and over in my mind, trying to come up with some explanation for it all—cosmically speaking—but have arrived at the same shoulder-shrugging conclusion. It was a ten-car pileup on serendipity’s highway.
“Mmhmm. Tosha and I were at Atkins and he was unloading a truck. Apparently he has a farm . . .”
“Did you two talk?” We talk more like mother-daughter than father-daughter, and that’s okay with me.
“We said ‘hi’ and then he had to go . . . said I should stop by the farm sometime.”
I Googled it. I know exactly where it is and how long it would take me to drive there. It’s about ten minutes north of the center of Amherst, in Leverett. I haven’t pointed my car in that direction, though. I have enough sense to leave well enough alone.
Out of the bowels of are-you-kidding-me, my mom appears. “I hope you told him you weren’t interested.”
“Don’t start, Leslie.” My dad tries to cut her off at the pass.
I put my hand up, stopping my dad. “I didn’t tell him anything, Mother. It was just a run-in. I haven’t seen him in ten years.”
“And I wish you’d gone another ten. Don’t ruin things, Natalie. Eric’s a great man.”
“Are you kidding me?” I try to keep my voice at the appropriate WASP setting of low. “I run into someone and you immediately think I’ll somehow ruin things . . . for you?”
“Well,” my mother purses her lips, “it’s not as if you’ve spent the last decade trying to make something of yourself. You kind of need Eric if you’re ever going to get out of that tiny apartment.” She’s an absolute bitch; the kind of woman who expected me to slide into the role of wife and mother she assumes I created for myself, yet still resents that I don’t have my Ph.D. yet, like she and my father planned.
“Leslie, enough!” my father hollers. He hollers, good for him.
Despite the hole she just stabbed in my gut, I raise my eyebrows as I fire back. “There it is. You do know I didn’t get pregnant to spite you, right? I’m sorry if you think I run around ruining things for you. I’ll try not to let it happen any more. Besides, I didn’t need Eric when I got my master’s degree, and I don’t need him now.” I storm into the house and get the boys into the car to head to the ceremony, wondering cynically what will become of Leslie Collins when her daughter divorces her doctor husband.
We smile, though, like the perfect family all through Eric’s graduation ceremony.
The next morning, Eric and I kiss the boys goodbye as they’re buckled into my parents’ sedan. I’m just grateful I don’t have to sit in a car with my mother for three and a half hours.
“Thank you, Dad,” I whisper into his ear as we hug, “for everything.”
He kisses my forehead and holds my chin. “I love you, Kid.”
“I love you, too.”
I wave politely to my mother, who’s already settled in the car, and watch them pull away. When Eric and I re-enter our apartment, the silence is deafening. It’s not just from the boys’ absence.
“Things seemed a little tense between you and your mom.” Eric cracks open some eggs and whisks them in a bowl.
“They always are . . .” I grab some grapes from the fridge and curl up on the couch. “When did you get your haircut?”
Eric chuckles. “Yesterday morning, thanks for noticing.”
I roll my eyes and shrug. Glad he could clean up for graduation when I’ve only been asking him for months to cut his hair.
“My mom’s just uptight, you know that.”
“What about now?” Eric drops butter in a frying pan and stares at it while it melts.
Ryker.
“Who knows,” I lie with ease.
“Hey, some of us from the department are going to get together at the ABC for dinner and drinks tonight, do you want to come?”
I’ve met probably three of Eric’s co-workers. Only because babysitters are hard to come by, and that provided an easy excuse for my lack of interest in anything chemical engineering related. I have no excuse for tonight, and while I’m unsure about our future, I am sure I don’t want to spend our first night of child-freedom fighting about the details of our relationship.
“Sure, sounds fun,” I lie again—with a smile this time.
Eric speaks over his omelet, sizzling in the pan. “Great. Would you mind meeting me there at eight? I need to get the last of my things out of my old office this evening after all the lingering undergrads clear out, then I’ll head there.”
“Sure. See you at eight.” I get up to head to the shower.
“It’s a date.” He smiles and pulls me into a kiss as I pass by him in the kitchen.
He’s in an awfully good mood for someone whose marriage is falling apart. It occurs to me that he likely doesn’t think I’m serious about my view of the state of things between us, and that makes me nervous for our conversations to come.
Chapter 25
“Hi,” I smile through my whisper. I’m sure I’m blushing like a teenager.
Ryker holds the door open for me, the all-American smile I’ve longed to see has returned. “I didn’t think you’d come.”
I wasn’t sure I should, honestly. But after seeing him at the market, Ryker set up residence in my head. One visit couldn’t hurt. Maybe we both need closure . . . or something. Certainly getting a restraining order and not seeing each other for ten years doesn’t count as closure.
“Manning Farms? How could I not?” I wander through the first floor of the old farmhouse, running my hands along the knotty-pine leading to the kitchen. “You’ve really done good for yourself, Ry.” Turning around, I find him leaning on the door frame.
“Thanks.” He shrugs, keeping his eyes on mine.
Walking over to the basin sink, I elevate onto my tiptoes and scan the fields through the small kitchen window. “How long did all of this take? I mean . . . how long have you been farming?”
Something changes in the air. So does his voice. “Just a few years. You know, after I got over you totally fucking me over.”
My blood runs cold as I turn to find him standing in fatigues that he wasn’t wearing when I arrived. He’s pale and sweating, just like the last night I saw him. And he’s holding a gun. My heart hammers in uneven rhythm through my chest as I consider my options for escape.
“What?” I think I should keep him talking.
“You destroyed me, Natalie—ruined my life. That little stu
nt you pulled in your dorm cost me everything.” He watches me from underneath his eyebrows as he takes one, two, three steps toward me.
“Ryker . . .” Pulling from my old bag-of-tricks, I try to say his name to remind him that he’s in reality, while my palms lose traction against the counter.
“All I wanted was to be a soldier, Nat . . .” My breath trips as he lifts the handle of what I guess is a pistol.
“You are a soldier, Ryker. You served—”
“You know what I mean!” he screams as the barrel of the gun stares me straight in the face for a split second. It seems to surprise him, too, and he lowers his hand back down to his hip. “See? I can’t stop hurting you. Even now. Look at yourself.” He tilts his chin toward me.
Glancing down, I find every single cut I’ve ever given myself open and bleeding down my arms and legs.
What the fuck? I have to get out of here. This isn’t real. What’s happening?
Looking back up, I find Ryker holding the gun to his head.
“Ryker. Ryker . . . don’t.” I’m panicking, begging him to stop.
“I can’t do it, Nat. Not anymore. Lucas, you, my dad . . . I’ve hurt too many people. I need it to stop.” His brow furrows as he closes his eyes and whispers something I can’t hear.
“Don’t! Ryker! Ryker!”
He pulls the trigger and a sound tears through me I’ve never heard before. I fall to my knees, landing in blood—I can’t tell if it’s coming from him or me.
“God, Ryker, no! I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry! Please . . .”
“Natalie! Wake up!” I turn around to find Eric standing by the sink, holding out his hand.
I wave my hand dismissively. “Go away!”
“Wake up. Wake up!” he says again.
My shoulders start to shake, but not from my tears.
I have to wake up . . .
In one motion I’m seated on the edge of my bed, feet touching the floor. Audibly gasping for air, my skin is damp and I’m shaking.
Holy shit.
I jump when a hand lands on my shoulder, relaxing only when I realize it’s Eric. Momentarily disoriented by the daylight barging through my windows, I glance at the clock and see it’s only three in the afternoon. I’d come in the bedroom to read for a bit and must have fallen asleep.
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