“Kim, I had a great opportunity that was only offered to a few med students, and I was one of them. It was a mission trip to South Africa, a chance I couldn’t pass up. I called and left a message for you, but you didn’t call back. I called again and spoke to your mother! I tried to explain I wouldn’t be gone forever, but it was six months. I waited, and you never called, and I had to leave. It happened so quickly.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. He’d talked to her mother? She’d married Craig a year later after much heartache and tears and her parents urging her his way. “I don’t understand, Bruce. I never heard from you again until I saw you two years ago when you came home.”
It was a day she’d never forget, walking into church the same way she had every Sunday, taking a seat in the second row from the back, alone. Her parents sat up front, but Kim preferred the anonymity. She hadn’t paid much attention to anyone until the end of the service, and she saw him before he saw her. He had been shaking hands with a neighbor, and she’d felt as if a thousand jolts of electricity had just zapped her right through her feet, burning her to the spot, paralyzing her muscles so she couldn’t move, couldn’t think. She hadn’t known whether to hide, to run, or to wait. Then he had seen her.
“No, I didn’t come back. I learned you were seeing someone else. I was offered the chance to stay, and I did, for another six months. I heard you’d gotten married.” He didn’t say anything else, but he was watching her now as if she’d betrayed him. In a sense, she had.
Kim felt weak in the knees. “But you didn’t call,” she said again. It sounded so pathetic.
“I did call. You didn’t wait,” he said, quieter—and a little sad. “That’s really what it comes down to, Kim. Whatever you think happened, what it really comes down to is that you went into the arms of another man.”
He glanced around the kitchen, and she could feel the distance growing between them. This didn’t make any sense, but she realized he was getting ready to leave as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys. He clutched them in his hand for a moment before looking at her with such sadness. “For whatever it’s worth, Kim, I’m sorry,” he said, and instead of staying, he walked past her and out the door.
Chapter Five
“Mom, please, I need to talk about this!”
Kim’s mother had her shoulder-length gray hair pinned back, her face wrinkled from days in the sun. She had light blue eyes and was wearing one of her faded blue shirts, buttoned up, and flowing cotton pants. She had brewed a pot of tea and was filling two mugs. “What’s to talk about, Kim? It was years ago.” She didn’t look up at Kim as she walked around her. “Harold!” she called out to Kim’s father, who had disappeared down the hall after finishing breakfast when Kim arrived.
She heard her father shout back from wherever he was, and she had to roll her eyes. Nothing changed. Her mother shouted for her father, he shouted back, and neither one of them met in the middle. It was a wonder she hadn’t gone deaf growing up.
“I made tea! Would you like some?” her mother shouted to wherever he was in the house. Whatever her father shouted back had her mother mumbling under her breath as she wandered back into the kitchen. “I swear, that man is going to land in an early grave, the amount of coffee he downs. I try to get him to ease back, have some herbal tea, but he won’t even try it.”
“Mom, please, this is important. I need to know the truth,” Kim said. Seriously, her mother, sometimes she wanted to shake her. She would brush off Kim’s feelings, sometimes telling her how she should think or feel, as if she had the right to tell anyone. Clarice Howard could make her so angry, dismissing her feelings every time she turned to her. What her mother did instead was tell her what she should be doing. Kim hated that. That was why she never talked to her mother. Why couldn’t she understand that?
Clarice sighed and rested her hands on the counter, her expression letting Kim know she had a hundred other things to do. “Fine.” She swayed a bit and then shrugged helplessly, lifting her hands in the air. “I don’t know, Kim. It was so long ago. A lifetime, really. Did I talk to him? Maybe. I don’t remember. He called so often, Kim. When you weren’t here, I’d write it down and put it on the fridge.”
She slapped her hand down on the counter so hard her mom jumped and her eyes widened. “Stop it, Mom! I loved Bruce, and you were the one who told me it was time to move on. You kept inviting Craig over when I didn’t want him here. You knew what Bruce meant to me, how upset I was when he didn’t come home at Thanksgiving. Did you know I went over to his parents’, behaving like a fool, trying to find out where he was, why he didn’t come home? His parents both looked at me with sympathy. It was mortifying. Worse, they seemed embarrassed by my carrying on when I cried. Hearing from them that he’d gone away for six months, saying he was saving so many, doing a wonderful thing—all I could think about was that he’d left me, walking away as if I were nothing. I believed I meant nothing to him.”
Her mom pursed her lips and took a breath. “Kim, Bruce made his choice to leave, going off to another country for how long? And you were supposed to sit here and wait for him?” Clarice was shaking her head. She looked up when Kim’s dad walked in. He was taller than her mom, broad shouldered, with silver hair thinning on top. He had dressed the same as he did every day: a long-sleeved shirt, buttoned up even in this heat, the same plain brown work pants that had seen better days. He took in both of them.
“What’s going on?” he said, rubbing Kim’s shoulder. Her dad had always been the one she could talk to, but then, he’d often let her mom step in and do all the child rearing, as he called it. He had a farm to run while her mom ran the house and raised his daughter.
“Oh, Kim has a got a bee in her bonnet about Bruce Siegel. She’s harping on about something that happened when she was just a kid, twenty years ago.” Kim watched the expression on her mom’s face as she looked to her dad. “Some phone call.”
“Hmm” was all her dad said, as if this really wasn’t an issue.
“It wasn’t just a phone call, Mom, and you know that. Bruce called to tell me he wouldn’t be coming home and had been invited on a mission to South Africa for six months. If I’d known—”
“You’d what, Kim?” her mom snapped, interrupting her.
Her dad glanced over his shoulder to her and her mom while pouring himself a coffee.
“You’d be waiting here, still alone,” her mom continued, “pining away for a man who’s moved on to see the world.”
“You seem to forget I am alone,” Kim said, feeling so sad. Didn’t her mom have any idea what this had done to her, how it had shaped her life?
“Kim, that was your choice. Craig was a good husband,” her dad said, standing behind her mom and letting her know where his support was. Facing her parents, she realized they weren’t willing to even try to understand how she felt.
“You’re right, Dad. Craig is a good man, but not for me.”
She watched the disappointment on her father’s face. Her mother glanced up at him. The two of them could never figure out how to get Kim to understand what they felt was right for her, the way they felt it should be.
“You didn’t try, Kim,” Clarice said. “Marriage is work. We watched you pushing Craig away because of some fairytale you believed in. Life isn’t all sunshine and butterflies. It’s hard and cruel and unforgiving at times, but you make the best of it. Craig was a hard worker, responsible, a good husband for you until you broke his heart. You pushed him right out the door.”
“I didn’t love him,” Kim said. “I couldn’t love him, and no one deserves to be stuck in a marriage with someone they don’t love. He deserved someone who could love him. At least he knew that, which is why he left.” For a moment, she felt as if she was that seventeen-year-old girl on the verge of being a woman, standing before her mom, asking her to stop inviting Craig over. “And, Mom, you just kept encouraging him, sending him my way, inviting him for dinner, pushing me to go out with him
, sitting on the porch and bringing us lemonade. I was such a fool, listening when you urged me to stop pining for Bruce and just try. You urged me to go out with him to the dance, to spend time with him, to go for a drive… You’re right, he was nice and good and decent, and I liked him. I just didn’t love him.”
“Kim, you made the choice to marry Craig,” her mother snapped.
“Yes, I did, after you pushed me his way. You just kept putting him in my path. I only decided to marry him, Dad, after you took me aside and talked with me. Do you remember what you said?”
Her father watched her and slowly nodded. “I do, Kim, and I still believe it as I watch you now, living alone with a horse for a companion. You should have children, Kim. You’re our only daughter. We should have grandchildren.”
“I’m your only child, so sorry to disappoint you.”
“Hey, watch your mouth. You’re disappointing me because you’ve made yourself be alone for no reason. I told you before how important it was to let go of your infatuation, that a strong marriage can’t be built on a fantasy. All the chemistry you had with Bruce, we saw the direction that was headed, and we worried about you being brokenhearted when he finally left for medical school. He’d be introduced to a world you wouldn’t belong in, and his interest would stray. Craig was a great guy. He’s our kind. He’s a farmer. He would have been a wonderful father to your children, a good husband. He wouldn’t have strayed. He’d have been faithful.
“Love is something that comes in time after years of being together, working through so many of life’s ups and downs. You didn’t have a chance to work through anything. You wouldn’t give yourself the chance. You gave up, Kim.” Her father sounded so disappointed and was shaking his head. “And Craig gave you so much. You know that. That small farm you have, the property…if it wasn’t for Craig, where would you be? He left, but he left you everything. He left with nothing to start over again.”
Her father was right about that. She’d been so selfish and young, and when Craig finally walked out the door, bitter, with a look in his eyes that let her know he’d loved her so much that he now hated her, he’d signed the divorce papers and left her everything so he could walk away clean. Last she’d heard, he’d remarried, living two counties away—had five kids and a small ranch. She did wish him well, and there wasn’t a day that passed that she didn’t regret hurting him, wishing she could have loved him. But you can’t make your heart feel something it isn’t meant for.
“You’re right. I was horrible to Craig, and he didn’t deserve the way I treated him, but you also shouldn’t have pushed us together. If I’d only known the truth about where Bruce was, that he wanted me to know that he hadn’t just forgot about me…he was coming back for me!” she said, choking.
“He tells you that now?” her mother asked, but it sounded more like an accusation.
“Bruce isn’t a liar, Mom. He never heard from me before he had to leave because you didn’t give me his message. I didn’t know he was planning to go to some mission in South Africa. It was for his career, and it would do so much good. I would have waited for him.”
But her mom was shaking her head. “I don’t know, Kim. None of us can go back and rewrite the past. Maybe I should’ve told you.”
Her dad was resting a hand on her mother’s shoulder. “It’s not all on your mother, Kim. I’m your father, and you were a teenager, so young and impressionable. I watched an idealistic young man leading you down some fanciful path. I still believe we made the right decision, I just regret how you’re still hurting.”
“Dad, Bruce told me you asked him to stop calling. I was married, and he still called.”
Her father was shaking his head. “Yes, I did. After so many months of him not calling, he started again after you were married. I told him to stop, man to man, because he needed to understand that a man doesn’t call a married woman.”
What else could she say to her parents? She knew they loved her and had thought they were doing the best for her by keeping her in the dark. “But that was my decision, my chance with Bruce, and you took it away from me—from us. You should have told me, not kept it from me. It’s a wonder he doesn’t hate me, because if that were me in Bruce’s place, I’d hate him.”
Chapter Six
Driving into Columbia Falls twice in one week was something Kim didn’t do. She lived on a moderate income, and the extra gas she was using would tighten her budget for the month. She might need to consider picking up a part-time job. She could always go back to the feed store—it would do her good, she thought—but she also needed to find a way to make things up with Bruce, to somehow make it right with him, the thing she’d done because she believed he’d left her. What a mess.
The traffic was heavier in town this time of day, late afternoon, but she couldn’t wait until tomorrow. She considered going home and calling Bruce, but whatever it was she needed to do, it had to be in person. She had to see his face and be near him. In person was always better, and after all these years she wasn’t about to allow another forgotten message to be what ultimately kept them apart. She didn’t have a clue what she was going to say as she pulled into the parking lot of the grocery store across the street. Since the professional building where Bruce’s practice was had an underground lot with very little parking space, she wasn’t about to try there.
She locked her door and hesitated at the street corner, her legs feeling like lead weights as she crossed. Maybe he wasn’t even there. He could be at the hospital, or dealing with an emergency. She hesitated at the lobby door and almost chickened out when the door opened and two chatting women walked out. She grabbed the door and went inside, stopping at the elevator with another man who was waiting. When the elevator doors opened she stepped in, she jabbed her finger on the third-floor button. The man pressed four. The doors slid closed, and she stood beside him. He was close to her dad’s age, dressed in blue jeans and a dress shirt, she could feel his interest as he watched her.
“Nice day, isn’t it?” he said.
“It is,” she replied, praying the elevator would hurry up. She didn’t want to have a conversation with this man. “Oops, here’s my floor,” she said.
The elevator dinged, and she stepped forward, her nose to the steel door, counting the seconds until it opened. She didn’t look back as she stepped out, and she let out a heavy breath and searched the listings of offices and names on the wall. She found Bruce’s office number and turned to the right, going to the end of the hall to the office door with the sign saying, “Bruce Siegel, Pediatrician.”
She wanted to run her hands over the brass lettering and the last name she had practiced writing over and over as a teen, a name she had wanted to be hers. Mrs. Bruce Siegel, Kim Siegel—it was a fantasy that had ended in heartache and years of being alone, and what she had now was another man’s last name: Edwards. She was Kim Edwards. Somehow, it felt so wrong.
The door to the office opened, and a young woman pushing a stroller with a toddler inside stepped out. Kim jumped out of the way and smiled in her direction, glancing down at the little girl staring up at her. Another ache in her heart for the time that had passed. She and Bruce could have had a houseful of children, a boy with a round face, square jaw, and eyes as deep as his, and maybe a daughter she could spend time with, brushing her hair, sharing things that only girls did.
“Can I help you?” a voice called out to her as she was daydreaming, standing in the doorway amid the parents and children who filled the busy waiting area. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea. She was about to leave when the woman behind the desk glanced up again. “Ma’am?”
So she stepped inside and closed the door, pulling the strap of her purse over her shoulder, squeezing the leather and feeling completely out of place. Make an excuse was the first thing that popped into her head. She stepped to the counter so everyone couldn’t overhear the pathetic excuse she was about to give for being there. She prayed that something intelligent would come to mind.
“Kim?”
Her face warmed and her throat thickened as she stared back at Bruce, who looked absolutely amazing as he strode down the hall toward the desk. He was wearing a dark blue shirt and the same black jeans he’d worn to her place the night before. He had a stethoscope around his neck, and he flicked a pen and tucked it into his shirt pocket. He said something to the woman behind the desk—maybe a nurse. Then he stepped over to Kim, his hand out toward her shoulder, blocking her from view of the other patients. She was grateful for that gesture, but then, Bruce had been nothing but a kind, good friend to her since he came back.
“Come into my office,” he said, guiding her down the hall to a room at the end. She could see a desk with two chairs in front of it. He closed the door behind her. “What brings you here?”
She stopped in the middle of the room and turned to face him. She couldn’t get her tongue to move. He was so much taller than her. Kim wasn’t short, but she had to look up at him. There was something so special about this man, who gave her all of his attention when he was talking to her. There was no being lost in his head or busy doing ten other things as some people did. He was always very much in the present.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and he frowned, his expression letting her know he was confused. “I talked to my mom—to both my parents, actually. They never told me you called, Bruce. I don’t know why Mom chose to keep it from me. I thought you left me. I never got your message. I think my mom and dad both decided you were as good as gone when you left for medical school and you’d soon realize you could find someone better.”
Now he appeared angry. She’d never really seen him angry. Annoyed, yes, but he was a man who controlled his emotions well, a man who thought things through. Even as a teen, he’d had fire and passion, but he was always levelheaded, like now. He was a man everyone respected. She thought the world of Bruce, but she didn’t know what he was thinking.
