Heart Stealers

by Patricia McLinn

  She’d expected him to say something a bit more personal—like, “Let’s go home,” or “I’m glad that’s over with,” or “Time for this little guy to have a cookie.” But he still appeared shaken and grim. Perhaps viewing the accident had been more traumatic than she’d realized. Perhaps spending all that time at the hospital, not knowing whether Max would be all right, had wrung him out.

  “Yes,” she remembered to answer. “I’d like his seat in my car.” She wouldn’t have been able to bear being separated from her son for the fifteen minutes it would take to drive home.

  The automatic door slid open and Brett preceded her and Max out of the building. Max rested his head against her shoulder—he must be drained, she realized. Once they got home, she would probably feel drained, too. But right now, she was still running on adrenaline, her senses too acute, her heart in its proper location but thumping much more fiercely than normal.

  She spotted Brett at his car, leaning into the back seat. When he straightened up, he was holding Max’s car seat. Sharon crossed the lot to her car, which she hadn’t even bothered to lock, and continued to hold Max while Brett strapped the car seat into place. She wished she could have Max in the front seat next to her, so she could see him at a glance. But he would be safer in back.

  “I’ll meet you back at my house,” she told Brett once Max was buckled into his seat.

  Brett hesitated for a moment. “Sure,” he finally said, then pivoted and strode back to his own car.

  She had never seen him so tense before, so unreachable. Even at his touchiest—that first day, when she’d taken pictures of him for his company’s annual report—she’d broken through to him. She’d made him smile, made him laugh—and she’d gotten quite a few good photos of him. And one stunning photo, the one she’d kept, when he’d dropped his guard and she’d seen him as he could be, at home in his skin. But now, it was as if he’d donned an armor of frost.

  Once they were back at her place, she’d pull out her belly-dancer doll and see if she could tweak a smile out of him. She had let go of all her stress with her tears. It was time for Brett to let go, too.

  She monitored his car in her rearview mirror as she drove home. The sun glared against his windshield, so she couldn’t see his face. She could see Max’s in her mirror, though. The bandage on his chin was a darker tan than his complexion. If he’d fallen harder, he could have broken his jaw. Or his nose. He could have bitten through his lip. He could have injured himself badly enough to require plastic surgery. He could have—

  No. She wasn’t going to fret over what could have been. Her baby was fine.

  At her house, she carried Max to the door. He was probably able to walk, but she wanted to hold him. She was vaguely aware of the tote bag she’d packed for Max lying on the lawn. Brett must have dropped it when the accident occurred. It had lain there, spilling clean diapers and a juice box out onto the grass. No one had bothered to pick it up.

  “Can I have a cookie?” Max asked as she unlocked the front door.

  “Of course you can. What kind would you like?”

  “Chocolate chip.”

  “Okay.” She stepped inside and headed straight to the kitchen. Behind her, she heard Brett enter and close the door. “Does your back hurt?” she asked Max as she lowered him onto his booster seat at the table. “Would you like Mommy to give you some of that red medicine that makes the pain go away?”

  “I want a cookie.”

  Sharon smiled. A cookie might ease his pain just as effectively as an analgesic could. She pulled a couple from a package of chocolate-chip cookies and put them on a plate, then filled a sippy cup with milk for Max. She couldn’t resist the urge to kiss him as she set the plate and cup before him on the table.

  Once Max was happily munching on a cookie, she glanced toward the door, expecting to see Brett. She had assumed he would join her and Max in the kitchen. But he hadn’t. She didn’t know why, or why he’d seemed so remote at the hospital, so tightly strung. If she was able to recover from her shock and fear, why wasn’t he?

  She told Max she’d be right back—not that he cared; he was greedily devouring his treat—and left the kitchen. Brett was in the living room, his back to her as he stared at the photos she’d hung on the far wall.

  “Brett?”

  He turned, and she saw in his face that he was a long way from recovering. His brow was creased, his eyes pained, his lips pressed together in an austere line.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “I’ve got to go.”

  Go? Why? They were home. Max was safe. Everything was all right.

  Everything but Brett. He remained at the far end of the room—a small room, but she felt as if he were miles away. She took a few steps toward him, yet she couldn’t seem to close the emotional distance between them.

  “Go where?” she asked.

  “I shouldn’t be here now.”

  “Of course you should be here. You saved my baby’s life! You got him the care he needed, and—”

  He laughed, a brief, bitter sound. “I didn’t save your baby’s life, Sharon. It was my fault.”

  “What?”

  “The accident. It was my fault.”

  She shook her head, refusing to believe him.

  “I wasn’t paying attention. He wanted to play, and I didn’t. He was running, and I didn’t chase him. That’s how he wound up in the path of that skateboarder.”

  “Oh, Brett...” She wanted to hug him the way she’d hugged Max, to reassure him. He mustn’t blame himself for what had obviously been an accident. Max could be wild—if anyone knew that, she did. He could tease, he could scamper, and sometimes she couldn’t keep up.

  But Brett’s forbidding expression warned her off. “I didn’t want to chase him,” he explained. “I was tired of him. I’d dealt with him all morning, and all through lunch, and I just... I didn’t want to deal with him anymore.”

  She took a slow, deep breath. All right, then. That was a little different from just being too fatigued to chase Max when he was on a tear.

  “Taking care of a toddler is hard,” she conceded. “Sometimes I burn out, too.”

  “You don’t let him run away, though. It wouldn’t matter how burned out you were. You wouldn’t have let him escape. I did. I’m sorry, Sharon. I didn’t want Max to get hurt. But at that moment—at the moment he got away from me, I...” He closed his eyes, as if he couldn’t bear to look at her. “I let him go. Because I wanted to.” He opened his eyes again, and the remorse, the self-condemnation in them sent her reeling as much as his words had. “I can’t do this, Sharon. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

  He broke his gaze from her, walked to the front door, stepped outside and closed the door behind him.

  “Mommy!” Max hollered. “I want another cookie!”

  But she couldn’t move. She could only stare at the door, at the emptiness of her living room.

  She refused to believe the accident had been Brett’s fault. He might believe it, but she couldn’t. She loved him.

  And maybe her love was blinding her to the man he really was: one who had let her child place himself in harm’s way. One who perhaps could have prevented this calamity, but hadn’t—because he hadn’t wanted to.

  Maybe she could believe it. But believing it would mean believing she’d been wrong about Brett, he’d been wrong about himself... It would mean acknowledging that he was not the man she needed him to be.

  Max was all right. But Brett wasn’t. And she wasn’t. What had just occurred in her cozy living room could not be treated with ointment and painkillers and ice. She wasn’t sure it would ever heal.

  * * *

  By dinner time, he was on his third beer but still had no appetite. He sat in his den, watching the shadows grow as the sun slid down to the horizon. Just last night, he’d had Sharon here with him. They’d eaten lasagna and garlic bread, sipped wine, talked about his cranky assistant, Janet, and Sharon’s timid assistant, Angie. They’d
debated the governor’s most recent highway initiative and argued over whether Avatar had really deserved an Oscar. Then they’d cleaned up and returned to this room, to the plush area rug in front of the fireplace—which lacked a fire, because it was August—and made love. “This feels so wicked,” she’d murmured, lying naked in his arms. “So—public.”

  “There’s nobody here but us,” he’d pointed out.

  “I know. If we were at my house...”

  She hadn’t had to finish the sentence. He knew what she was thinking: her den belonged to Max. Her whole house did, with the exception of her bedroom. She didn’t have the freedom to make love wherever she wanted in her own home, because she had a son.

  A son who could have died, thanks to Brett’s incompetence, his selfishness.

  The voices had echoed inside his head all evening: the ghost voices of his siblings demanding that he help them, that he play with them, that he pick them up or put them down or get them a snack or walk them across the street. And his mother’s voice, chiding him for having not done enough: “While you were sitting here reading, the children were tearing pages from the encyclopedia! Why weren’t you keeping a closer watch? What’s wrong with you?”

  He’d wanted to answer, “I’m one of the children, too.” But in spite of his age, he hadn’t been a child. He’d been the one in charge, and he’d resented it. So he’d buried his nose in a book.

  That was what had happened today. He’d tried to keep a close watch on Max. He’d done his best all morning and through lunch. But then... he just hadn’t been able to do it any longer. What was wrong with him was that he lacked what it took to be a daddy, even a substitute daddy for a few hours on a Saturday.

  He had thought that if he loved Sharon enough, he could handle anything: Daddy School classes, full-time care-taking, Max. He’d thought loving her would make him more patient, more imperturbable. He’d thought it would help him break free of his past. He’d thought: I can do this for her.

  But he couldn’t. He had failed her and her son—and himself.

  He contemplated phoning her, just to see how Max was feeling. The welt on his back where the skateboard had struck him wasn’t as bad as it looked, the emergency-room pediatrician had assured him, but it had looked pretty damned bad. And his barked knees. How many knees had Brett cleaned and bandaged as a kid? It seemed as if one or another of his siblings was always falling down and scraping a layer of skin off a knee. And then they’d come running to him, screaming, and he’d have to drop whatever he was doing so he could scrub the knee and cover the wound with an adhesive strip. His sister had always insisted on the bandages with pictures on them, stars or cars or Mickey Mouse.

  And Max’s chin. Christ, he could have really hurt his face. Nobody cared about a scar on the knee, but what if he’d knocked out teeth? What if he’d needed stitches? What if he’d injured an eye?

  All because Brett had shut down. All because he couldn’t be a daddy.

  He wouldn’t phone Sharon. If he heard her voice, he would want to be with her. And if he went back to her house, he’d have to stand by while she took care of her son, gave him compresses and cookies and whatever else he required. Max’s needs did take precedence; Brett couldn’t dispute that. The kid came first for her. He had to.

  Brett didn’t mind that Max was Sharon’s top priority. But he couldn’t bring himself to accept Max as his own top priority. He was a selfish bastard, but he couldn’t sacrifice himself to the needs of a child again.

  * * *

  “Oh, My God!” Deborah exclaimed when she saw Max. “Oh, look at his chin!”

  Sharon actually thought his chin looked better today than it had last night, when she’d eased off the bandage before his bath. She’d kept the wound covered overnight, but it was scabbed over today, clean and dry, and since he said the bandage itched, she decided to leave it off for a while. The rain was going to keep him and Olivia indoors, so the likelihood of dirt getting into the sore was slim.

  “He’s all right,” Sharon assured Deborah.

  “And he’s not even achy?”

  “Not that I’ve noticed.” She watched Max traipse down the stairs after Olivia, the two of them yammering about building a choo-choo train. “He was a little fragile last night,” she admitted, turning toward the kitchen, where Deborah was fixing a pitcher of lemonade. “I think the whole thing—the accident, the hospital—I think it shook him up. He got weepy. I let him sleep with me.”

  “Of course.” Deborah filled two tumblers with lemonade and handed one to Sharon, who carried it to the table and slumped into a chair. “Did Brett mind that arrangement? Or is it none of my business?”

  “It’s none of your business,” Sharon said with a sad smile. “Not that that matters. You and I have no secrets, Deb.”

  Deborah smiled as well, sat across the table from her and gave her hand a squeeze. “So where did Brett sleep while you shared your bed with Max?”

  “In his own house. He left.”

  “He left?” Deborah reared up indignantly. “With all you were going through, he didn’t stay?”

  “He stayed until he was sure Max was all right. Seriously, Deborah, he was wonderful through the worst of it. He got Max to the hospital, got him treated, called me, saw us home, hung around long enough to be sure Max was okay—and I was okay, too—and then he left.”

  Deborah clicked her tongue. “Some men are like that. They’re so tough and macho, but show ’em one drop of blood and they’re ready to swoon.”

  “That wasn’t why he left.” Sharon took a sip of the tart, cool drink and sighed. “He thought it was his fault.”

  “The accident?” Deborah shook her head. “I’ve seen those teenagers fly through the neighborhood on their skateboards. It’s amazing more people don’t get knocked over. They’re crazy on those things.”

  “I know. But Brett... It wasn’t the accident he felt responsible for. It was that he’d let his attention falter. He was—” the words stuck in her throat, and she had to swallow to loosen them “—tired of Max.”

  “Max can tire anyone out. Even Livie.”

  “Not that way. He was tired of dealing with Max, I think. Tired of having to be responsible for him.”

  Deborah mulled that over. “Well, what’s so strange about that? I bet you feel that way sometimes.”

  Sharon nodded.

  “Of course, you’ve got more justification. I mean, he’d had Max only, what, three or four hours?”

  “It’s not a responsibility he’s used to. But none of that should matter. I think...” She traced a line in the condensation on the surface of her glass, then swallowed again. “I think he feels guilty because—well, you know how kids can get. Sometimes, you just look at them and think, oh, go away! And Brett had reached that point. So then, when something terrible happened—it was as if he’d wished it.”

  “But he didn’t really wish it,” Deborah argued.

  “I know that. He’d know it, too, if he was thinking logically. But when something like that happens, a scary accident... You don’t think logically.”

  “So he feels as if he somehow brought this down upon Max.”

  “I’m only guessing, but yeah, I think that’s what’s going on.”

  “Mr. Wrong.” Deborah shook her head. “He was good looking.”

  “Better than good looking. He was smart, and thoughtful, and stable.” And loving. Tender. Sexy. Caring. “He was trying so hard, trying to get it right with Max.”

  “Men,” Deborah muttered.

  “How are things with you and Raymond?” It hurt Sharon too much to think about Brett. She’d rather dump on Deborah’s husband than dwell on her own pain over Brett’s abrupt departure from her home, from her life.

  “Raymond,” Deborah said, then sighed. “Well, they’re better.”

  “Meaning—?”

  “We’re talking.”

  “Anything besides talking?”

  “Well...” Deborah blushed. “That, too. He
dropped by Friday night, took me and Livie out to dinner, and wound up spending the night. He had tickets to a Red Sox game yesterday, so we all drove up to Boston for the day. Olivia ate cotton candy for the first time. She freaked out.” Deborah grinned, obviously remembering her daughter’s reaction. “She just couldn’t figure the stuff out. It was so soft and airy and sweet. Anyway, I sent Raymond home last night. I thought, I’m not about to get into a habit with him. Not until we’ve hammered out some understandings.”

  “Do you think that’s possible?”

  Deborah reached for Sharon’s hand again, this time seeking approval rather than offering comfort. “I’m afraid to hope, Sharon, but I think it’s possible. You wouldn’t believe what the man said to me.”

  Sharon leaned forward, delighted to share her friend’s excitement. At least something was going right, someone’s love life showing promise. “What did he say?”

  “Are you ready for this? He said, ‘I’m sorry.’”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I swear.”

  “I didn’t know men knew how to say that.” They both laughed.

  “Well, he said it,” Deborah insisted. “He said he was sorry about focusing on his job at the expense of our marriage, sorry he was missing milestones with Olivia—he said he didn’t realize how much he was missing until we were really gone and he was missing us all the time. He said he’s been working with his supervisor, trying to figure out a better way to schedule his trips so they don’t keep him out of town so often, and on weekends.” She smiled sheepishly. “He just apologized and apologized. I don’t know if men realize what an aphrodisiac those two words can be.”

  “So, are you going to get back together with him?”

  “Not so fast,” Deborah said, holding up a hand like a traffic cop slowing down a speeding car. “But we’re talking. He’s been coming to the sessions with the marriage counselor, and calling me every evening after work—and he’s getting home from work by six instead of seven-thirty or eight, like he used to when we were together.” Her smile grew poignant. “I still love him, Sharon. I never stopped loving him. I’m afraid to be too optimistic, but I think we might work things out.”