Between the Sheets

by Molly O'Keefe

  That’s my fault, too, she thought, gathering up his indifference, his disdain, and adding it to the pile of all that was her due.

  “I’d like to talk to him.”

  Ty stepped closer, dropped his voice.

  “Not if you’re going to make him feel bad.”

  She swallowed back the razor wire of emotion scraping her throat. “I won’t. I promise.”

  Ty watched her for a second and then shook his head. “I swear to God, I don’t know what to do with you, Shelby.”

  “I know. But please, let me put his mind to rest that this isn’t his fault.”

  Ty waited a second and she really believed he was going to say no. That was what other parents would have done after the things she’d said. But Ty wasn’t like other parents. Wasn’t like other people, and he seemed to have this tremendous capacity to understand that second chances were a divine right, so he stepped aside, letting her in.

  Casey looked tiny on the bed. A little boat in a sea of white. His red hair a sharp contrast to the white sheets and the paleness of his face.

  “Hey,” she said, trying to sound as if she weren’t simply a bag of broken pieces. “How are you feeling?”

  His big blue eyes filled with tears, his chin creased and wobbled.

  “Oh Casey,” she breathed, and she reached for his arm but it was bandaged and in pain, so she clutched the metal bed railing instead. Its cold reality a terrible substitute for human touch.

  “Your mom?”

  “She’s going to be fine, Casey. Just fine. Don’t worry.”

  “She saved me. Scuzz was going to bite me but she pulled me out of the way.”

  “Did she?” she breathed, trying to smile. “That’s good.”

  “I’m so sorry. I’m so—”

  “Listen to me,” she said, leaning forward and using her best firm teacher voice. “It’s okay. Everything is going to be okay. You didn’t understand what was happening. And there were adults around who should have been taking better care. This is not your fault.”

  “It feels like it is.”

  “That’s because you are a great kid.” Finally, unable to resist the compulsion, she allowed herself to touch him. Funny how after the few weeks with Ty she’d gotten so used to touching. To the quiet stroke of fingers through hair. The press of a palm against another person’s palm. She’d thought after that she’d understood incremental relief—but she hadn’t.

  Now she did, when it was too late. The soft touch of a loved one letting you know you are not alone, no matter how bad it is—that was relief.

  So she stroked back Casey’s hair, touched his sweet face, and watched some of the strain vanish from around his eyes, the load unburden his thin shoulders.

  “Shhh,” she whispered, and on impulse she leaned over to kiss his forehead.

  His eyelids fluttered shut and she realized that in all the ways she knew children, all the hundreds of hours she’d spent with them, she’d never seen one fall asleep. It was beautiful. That kind of trust was really quite a special thing, and she felt better for having seen it.

  Her choice to be a teacher was rooted entirely in the fact that the children passed through her life. They did not stop for long. She could love them and help them, but the relationship was not forever. It was safe.

  She realized now what nonsense that was. Another tool to keep herself alone.

  She stood up and found Ty standing by the doorway in the shadows left by the bedside lamp. He wore flannel pajama pants and the black Henley he’d worn at their dinner. They’d made out on the couch, deep, long, wet kisses until it had been time for her to go home, and she’d slid her hands under that Henley in an effort to touch as much of him as she could.

  I am a hoarder at heart, she thought, and I should have taken more of you when I had the chance.

  Tears sparkled in his eyes.

  That box where she hid all the things she wanted disintegrated at the sight of those tears, and she ran at that open door inside of him that he’d shown her a few days ago, the door she’d been unable to get to with all of her baggage. “I’m so sorry. Please give me … give me another chance.”

  “Another chance at what?”

  “Us. You, me, and Casey—” She was dizzy. It felt like she was floating outside of her body and she reached out to touch him, to ground herself, but he pushed her hand away.

  “You’re desperate,” he whispered. “Scared—”

  “Yes. I am. I always have been. Except when I’m with you. When I’m with you it’s like I’m the person I’m supposed to be and I want that. I want you, Ty. I want to try. Please let me try.”

  “Try?” He laughed, but then it turned into a groan as he rubbed his hands over his face. “Try what?”

  Try what? She felt panicked, hysterical laughter build in her throat. Try loving you. Try being loved. Try an honest, healthy family.

  “Try to let you in,” she whispered.

  Never in her life had she been so naked and aching, covered in the raw honesty of her failures and desires.

  “What happens if it doesn’t work out?” he asked. “What do I tell my son?”

  I don’t know, she wanted to scream. I don’t have answers to any of this. You were the one with the answers.

  “Where’s your faith?” she whispered.

  You destroyed it. He didn’t even have to say it—it rolled off his body in choking waves.

  Ty looked over her shoulder at his sleeping son. “We’ve already tried, haven’t we? Again and again. I’ve got to take care of Casey.”

  Her breath was a moan and he flinched at the sound; the two of them already so broken and battered were only hurting each other more.

  Leave, she told herself. Leave before you make it worse.

  She pressed shaking fingers to her lips and then, because she was stupidly wearing a robe in the hospital, tightened the belt. Tightened the belt until it bit into her flesh through the tee shirt she wore, tightened her belt until the pain brought her back into her body.

  “I’m going to go see if there’s any word on my mother,” she whispered.

  “Good idea,” he said, and stepped past her to be with his son.

  Chapter 24

  It was about nine a.m. when people started showing up. At first it was Cora and Sean with fritters and a thermos of coffee. And then it was Casey’s friend Scott, from school, and his parents. They left some Percy Jackson books and a few games. Brody came in, his arm around Ashley, who looked green at the gills.

  “You didn’t have to come,” Ty told his boss while Ashley and Casey played a game of war with the deck of cards she’d had in her purse.

  “Of course we did,” Brody said, squeezing Ty’s hand as they shook.

  “Have you seen Shelby?” he asked.

  “Her mom is out of surgery but the door to her hospital room is closed,” Ashley said, sweeping a pile of cards into her stack. “We didn’t want to intrude.”

  Right, Ty thought. He tried not to be bothered by the thought of Shelby locking herself up tight in a room with all of her demons, but he couldn’t stop himself.

  Mr. Root came with flowers. Mrs. Jordal brought brownies and a book about how to draw superheroes. By two in the afternoon the nurse let them know they could leave after the doctor came by to give Casey one more checkup.

  The room was stuffed with flowers and balloons and food. And despite the lingering effects of the painkillers, Casey was buzzing with a sugar rush.

  Perhaps it was knowing that Casey was going to be fine and they’d be going home soon while Shelby and her mother were just beginning their stay, but Ty couldn’t leave without seeing her. He had watched her with Casey, brushing the hair off his forehead, putting his fear to rest, and he’d realized once again what having a son meant.

  I have to protect him. Protect him from all the things that would hurt him.

  But that wasn’t Shelby.

  That was a smokescreen he’d thrown up to protect himself.

&nb
sp; Ty gathered up some of the gifts and left Casey watching that actually pretty funny Annoying Orange show.

  “Can you tell me what room Evie Monroe is in?” he asked.

  The reception nurse, the happy recipient of some of Cora’s fritters, obliged. “Second floor. Room 210.”

  His arms full of flowers and magazines and food, balloons trailing behind him, he walked up the flight of stairs to room 210. But when he turned down the hallway, he realized he shouldn’t have bothered. Outside the shut door there were piles of food. Flowers. Books. Two thermoses of coffee. A few balloons that said “Get Well Soon” drifted on a draft.

  He wondered if Shelby knew they were there. Or if she was just denying herself the gifts because that was what she was good at.

  I want to try.

  The memory of her face as she’d whispered that, the tears in her eyes, the total nudity with which she’d stood in front of him and begged for another chance—it shook him.

  Because his odds weren’t good with Shelby. The chances were high she’d crush him in some way and he didn’t know how much tolerance he had left for that kind of pain.

  But the chances were also high that she would love him. Save him, even. Drag him and Casey out of their strange orbit of each other and into something closer. Happier.

  A family.

  “Oh, Christ,” he muttered. It seemed his faith was not gone. It popped up like a ball held underwater and then let go.

  Maybe, in the end, she wouldn’t be able to give him what he needed. Maybe her try wasn’t going to be enough, but right now, he was going to be the guy that gave her what she needed.

  He sat down in the empty chair beside the rest of the offerings. He’d wait as long as he could, and all he could do was hope it was enough.

  Mom had come out of the surgery. The surgeon, far too young to actually have finished med school if you asked Shelby, said she had come through it just fine. The lung had been reinflated, the small wound there repaired.

  “The real trouble was her arm. We have two screws in there now, but she’s going to need another surgery to put in plates.”

  “Plates?” she breathed, because none of this was sinking in. Her head was cloudy and slow. Everything seeped into the haze and then disappeared.

  “It was a compound fracture,” he told her slowly. “The ulna was shattered in two different places. But she is going to come out of it.”

  Shelby nodded, Doogie Howser left, and she went back to stroking the thin, see-through edge of the medical tape that was keeping her mother’s IV in.

  I’m sorry, she thought with every sweep of her thumb, over tape and skin and the small hump of a blue-black vein. I’m so sorry. The world faded away past the edge of that tape and the litany in her head. Hours could have passed.

  “Ms. Monroe?” Shelby turned to find a woman poking her head through the door. She wore glasses and her long brown hair was in curls. She had the kind of face that instilled a certain relief. A kind of calm. And Shelby was not impervious to it.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Laurie, the social worker assigned to your mother’s file.”

  Go away, she thought, out of a terrible lifelong habit. We don’t want you here.

  “I have some questions,” Laurie said, sitting in a chair across from Mom’s bed. It was a gray morning outside and the weak sunlight barely survived its fight through the glass. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “I wasn’t there. She’d …” Shelby cleared her throat and attempted to sit up straight, having realized she was bent over the edge of the bed. “She’d wandered out into the fields behind the house across the street.”

  “Has she done that before?”

  “Apparently that was at least the third time.”

  “How were you unaware? Most Alzheimer’s patients don’t return when they wander.”

  “The boy across the street brought her back home.”

  “But didn’t tell you about it?”

  She nodded her head, her thumb busy on the edge of the tape.

  “Are you the primary caregiver?”

  Shelby just opened her mouth and let it all out. Hiring the nurse. The house full of junk. The aggression and the sundowning. The cobbled-together schedule of care. A housekeeper instead of a nurse because she’d been too stubborn to admit they needed one.

  “When was the last time you had a full night’s sleep?”

  Shelby shook her head. It had been a year. At least.

  “You know, an injury like this, it generally speeds up the decline. If she leaves the hospital, it is likely she won’t be able to go to your home.”

  Shelby nodded, panic clawing at her throat.

  “This is my fault, isn’t it?” She looked up at Laurie, the social worker, with her clipboards and her sensible hair and her answers.

  “Why do you think it is?”

  She explained the nightgowns she’d found.

  “I didn’t even question them. I was just so happy to be emptying out the house, to have Mom on a walk somewhere else and a few minutes to put things back in order and I didn’t—”

  “That’s quite a leap, Shelby. Not many people would be able to look at two nightgowns and surmise that Evie had been wandering outside of the house. Especially when the neighbor boy kept returning her.”

  “I should have had a night nurse, shouldn’t I?” she asked. “I kept telling people I was fine. That we were fine. But we weren’t. We haven’t been fine in years and I just kept pretending—”

  She stopped. Swallowed back the rest of her panic.

  “Your mom already lives in the past,” Laurie said. “She needs you to be in the present. It’s not easy making these decisions, but you have a chance to be the daughter she needs now.”

  “You’re recommending a nursing home—”

  “No. I’m not recommending anything. I’m saying you need to see things clearly and be open.”

  “Open to what?”

  “All the possibilities.”

  How? she wondered. How does one do that?

  She thought of the nurse with her smile that said so much, of Ty with his capacity for risk and forgiveness. She thought of the kids she taught and their open, willing, loving hearts.

  How did one live like that? How did someone get from where she was to where they were?

  Laurie patted her shoulder and vanished.

  Shelby’s stomach growled and she checked her watch, astonished to find that it was afternoon. The daylight outside had only grown more and more gray.

  Her knees creaked as she stood and her back protested as she tried to straighten herself up from her hunched position.

  She wondered, as she walked over to the door, if a nurse might loan her some scrubs to wear and if the cafeteria would take an IOU, because after Ty called her with the news about her mother, she hadn’t stopped to grab her purse, so she didn’t have any money and she wasn’t ready to head home to get those things just yet.

  In the hallway she wasn’t sure which way to go and she turned left, only to stumble to a halt at the sight of Ty in a chair outside her door.

  Ty surrounded by balloons and flowers. Food. A coffee thermos. A stack of clothes from her house. Her purse.

  It wasn’t as if something burst inside of her. There wasn’t a giant explosion of everything she’d ever wanted and denied herself. She didn’t suddenly understand what it meant to be open.

  But inside, that tiny voice she’d silenced far too many times whispered, This. This is how you learn. This is where it begins.

  “Hey,” Ty said, looking exhausted and beautiful and silly with a yellow Mylar balloon hitting him in the head, pushed by some unseen, barely felt current of air.

  “You’re here.” That was stupid. A stupid thing to say, but she didn’t care. He was here when she’d pushed him away. He was here when he knew all the ways that she might hurt him.

  “I am.”

  “How is Casey?”

  “We’re leaving in a little
bit. I just wanted—” He looked down at all the stuff around him. “Oh, hell, Shelby, I just wanted to be here.”

  She took a deep breath. Another. Deeper. More. Carefully, she took all those things from his lap and pushed them onto the chair beside him. Taking note of the fritters for later. And then when his lap was empty, his arms open, she set herself right down inside of them. It felt awkward, because she was still awkward—she had a lot of years to unlearn all the terrible lessons of her childhood—but it was right.

  His body against hers. The hard thump of his heart against hers. The scrape of his morning beard against her cheek.

  It was all right. Very right.

  She curled her arms around his shoulders, pressed her face against his neck, and just let herself breathe. Breathe in the calm support of him. The beautiful, willing strength of him.

  And she let herself feel better. Selfish, horribly painfully selfish, but true.

  What was coming was bad; she knew that. This situation with her mother was only going to get worse, but she didn’t want to lock Ty out anymore.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  “It’s okay.” His wide hands rubbed over her back, in long sweeps from her neck to the top of her hips. He was petting her and she loved it.

  “It’s not,” she told him. She leaned back and looked him in the eyes, something she so rarely had the courage to do, and told him what was in her rapidly expanding heart. “People would say you deserve better. They’d be right.”

  “I don’t give a shit what people say.” He ran his hands over her hair, gathering it in his fists at the back of her neck. It hurt a little, like he needed all of her attention. “I want you. I want to try.”

  His beautiful face had grown so familiar to her over the past month, and when he smiled, creating wrinkles and lines around his mouth and eyes, she had to press her fingers against them. Confirming by touch what was too beautiful for her eyes to believe.

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  He didn’t say he loved her back and that was okay; she’d hurt him, and he was being careful and he had every right not to trust her yet. Not with his heart. Not with Casey.