Despite the fresh coat of lipstick, her lips felt dry as she smiled at him, before she turned to the counselor. Riva seemed to be in her early forties. Black hair streaked with silver, warm eyes like toasted pecans, and a wide smile. She was wearing a full-skirted cotton dress that swished around her legs as she walked. On her feet she had on Birkenstocks, her toenails unpainted.
"Come in, Claire. How was the drive? Would you like a coffee?"
"She takes cream," Kirk said.
Amused, Claire sat on the sofa, vaguely aware that Kirk had risen, then seated himself again. Two mugs already sat on ceramic coasters on the low table in front of them, next to a glass bowl of paper-wrapped candies. A moment later, a third mug was placed on a new coaster in front of her.
"There you go, Claire. I'm so glad you could make it."
How genial everyone was behaving, as if this were a simple social gathering. Claire set her purse in her lap and folded her arms over it. Riva took a chair on the other side of the sofa. If someone had drawn lines connecting the three of them, the result would have been an equilateral triangle. Perfectly balanced, Claire thought, with no biases. Another omen?
"So how are you doing, Claire?" Riva leaned forward over her thighs.
"I've been better." Now, there was an understatement.
"Yes. I'm sure you have. Kirk explained your situation to me over the phone. And we had a few minutes to talk before you arrived. Now it's your turn. Is there anything you'd like to ask me before we get started?"
"Does therapy really save marriages?" She hadn't meant to be so blunt, but wasn't that what she needed to know? She didn't want to go through weeks of meetings if there wasn't any hope.
"Therapy can help. It usually does." Riva sat back in her chair, her expression suddenly stern. "As for saving a marriage—well, that part's up to you. Up to both of you." She glanced at Kirk, then turned to Claire again.
"Do you want to save your marriage, Claire?"
The abrupt question caught her off guard. "I think Kirk should answer that first."
"Why?"
Wasn't it self-evident? Surely Kirk had told her the fundamentals of their situation. "He's the one who's fallen in love with someone else."
For the first time since she'd walked in the room, Claire angled her body so she faced her husband, and looked at him, really looked at him. He met her gaze with resignation. Or was it sorrow?
"Isn't that right?" she demanded, wanting him to say so out loud, in front of the therapist.
For a long moment he didn't answer. Then his chest rose with a deep, indrawn breath, and he nodded. "Janice and I had an emotional connection that Claire and I have been missing for a long time. That's true."
Jealousy, more potent than any venom, shot through Claire's bloodstream. Channeling the emotion into anger, she retaliated quickly. "Well, it's pretty hard to have an emotional connection with a man who's never home."
Kirk didn't defend himself, and in the ensuing silence, Riva spoke cautiously. "I understand your anger, Claire. But have you seen the positive aspect of this situation?"
"Positive aspect?" Up until this moment Claire had reserved judgment on the older woman. Now she had to wonder at Riva's sanity.
"What I'm getting at," the therapist continued, "is that Kirk told you about this woman before the relationship progressed to a fully intimate stage. That has to tell you something, Claire."
What the counselor wanted her to say was obvious. That Kirk's honesty was a sign he cared about the marriage. If they were talking about one incident only, Claire might be more prepared to agree. But Kirk had deceived her for months. He was an adult; he'd known what he was doing.
"It says he was feeling bloody guilty!"
She took a shallow breath, then continued. "As he should have. The fact that he didn't sleep with her doesn't make it any less wrong. He fell hi love with her!"
Riva's expression was noncommittal. Didn't she get it?
"For months he told me lies, neglected our kids, spent all his free time with her. So what if they didn't actually have sex? And so what if guilt finally made him admit the truth to me? He should never have let the relationship progress as far as it did."
She was raving. Claire knew it, and she tried to calm down, but damn it, she felt the counselor was making excuses for Kirk.
"You may not think my husband's had an affair, and maybe technically he hasn't. But in his heart—" she glanced at Kirk, meeting his gaze "—he's as guilty as sin and he knows it."
Kirk held her look; the only indications that he'd taken in her words were the paling of his complexion and the tightening of his lips.
After a few moments of silence, Riva finally spoke. "Do you have anything to say, Kirk?"
He cleared his throat and shifted his gaze from Claire to Riva. "She's right. I let my relationship with Janice stray out of bounds. And I knew what I was doing. I can't justify it, beyond saying that it made me happy to be with her."
No! Did he have any idea how that hurt?
"I can see that upsets you," Riva said quietly. "What's wrong, Claire?"
"I’m the one he's supposed to be happy with."
"But are you happy with me?" Kirk countered. "It doesn't feel that way. When I come home, all I sense from you is disappointment. I don't even have my foot in the door and I know you're already angry at me."
"There's a difference between my being angry when you come home late from work and your having an affair!"
Kirk's expression was cold as he replied, "I suppose there is."
He was unbelievable! Claire wanted to walk out of the room right then, but Riva leaned over and placed a hand on hers. "An affair doesn't have to mean the end of a marriage."
Claire thought about that for a minute. "You mean you get couples where one of the partners was actually sleeping with someone else and they end up staying together?"
"It happens all the time. More often than you might think. There are reasons, good reasons, for keeping a marriage together. At the same time, affairs do happen. Sometimes, the partners can get past it. Sometimes, they can't. Often, it depends on the basis for the marriage in the first place. Are the spouses well matched? Do they share values and interests?"
Once, Claire would have said yes to those questions. Now she thought about the hours Kirk put into work. He was consumed by his need for success. Had he consciously placed his work goals ahead of the needs of his wife and children?
''Kirk's job has come first for a long time now.''
"That's not fair," he retaliated. "Just because I don't work nine to five doesn't mean I don't love my family."
"Doesn't it? When was the last time you went to one of the kids' soccer games? You couldn't make Daisy's dance recital in June."
"I couldn't help it that I had a meeting—"
Had he? Or maybe he'd just been spending more time with Janice. Claire wondered why was she sitting here. Listening to him was just making her more angry. More resentful. "There's always some excuse, isn't there."
"You don't appreciate the pressures of my job."
"And you don't appreciate the pressures of mine." He thought staying home and taking care of three kids was a picnic. She knew he did. "It would be nice to have a little assistance at times. It would be nice to have a break, occasionally, at the end of a day."
"I've told you I'd have no problem with you hiring a cleaning lady."
A cleaning lady? The man just didn't get it. "God, Kirk, I'm three months pregnant and you haven't been around enough to notice!"
CHAPTER NINE
"Pregnant?" Kirk fell back in his chair, the world around him darkening so that there was only one focal point. His wife's face.
She'd gone quiet. The poison in their argument had found its antidote, and that had been her stunning announcement.
"Pregnant." He knew it was true. Subtle signs he'd been too troubled to detect lined up like arrows marking the route on a map.
His gaze slid down the front of her denim dress, which couldn't qui
te disguise the thickening of her waist, the fullness of her breasts. In some corner of his brain he'd registered that his wife was gaining weight. It hadn't occurred to him to wonder why.
"You could have told me."
Claire looked at him wearily. "Could I have?"
Emotion squeezed off his throat. Blinking, Kirk stood, then groped his way to the window.
Could I have? Claire's question was still alive in the room, bouncing off the walls, playing over and over in his head.
Of course she couldn't have told him. She was right. He spent almost all his time at work, and when he was home, he was hardly accessible. At least not emotionally.
Kirk pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the window. God, what was the matter with him? How could he be in this mess? These past six months…at each step he'd felt somehow justified in what he was doing. Now, looking back, he felt only disgust. Disgust for the choices he'd made and the pain he'd caused. For all of them.
Claire, Janice and himself. There were no winners in this game. No matter what the eventual outcome, no one would emerge unscathed.
"Obviously Claire's revelation came as a shock to you, Kirk," Riva stated.
He nodded, returning to his chair but unable to look at Claire. Time—he needed some time. Claire's pregnancy changed everything, although how he wasn't sure. Did one unborn child count for more than three existing ones?
He thought of his daughters, and cords of guilt wrapped around his neck. Oh, God, what had he done? And how to go about setting things right? To find the right words took effort, and when he did, his voice wasn't as steady as he would have liked.
"I think the basics are there for Claire and me. But we've never had the marriage we ought to have had. If we're going to get anywhere, I think we both have to admit that much."
Claire looked at him as if he'd betrayed her yet again.
But he couldn't back off. If he didn't finish now, it would never be said. "Something's always been missing."
"No."
There it was. That blank denial. How could he argue when she refused to see their past for what it was?
"Why are we here?" Claire's hands trembled. "If you were never happy, why bother trying to fix things at this late stage?"
Despite his own bitter guilt he felt anger. Claire was never going to forgive him, let alone work on the problems that had wedged between them right from the start. Maybe it was time to give up.
Then he thought of the unborn baby, and his anger deepened. So he hadn't been around as much as he should have. Still, he hadn't deserved to find out about her pregnancy this way. Claire throwing the news at him as though it was her secret trump card. Hah! Take that!
Well, if causing him pain had been her goal, she'd sure as hell succeeded. But in terms of preserving their marriage…
He wondered if he was the only one who felt they were hardly moving in the right direction.
somehow Riva managed to dissipate their hostility enough to convince Claire and Kirk to book a second appointment. Claire left Kirk at the reception desk to settle their account.
On the street, she fished anxiously in her purse for her keys. Kirk's bitter analysis of their life together was all she could think of. So their relationship had always been flawed. Kirk had never been happy. That was what she'd driven all this way to discover. She should have known he'd blame everything on her. Never mind that he'd lied and cheated and fallen in love with someone new…
The door to the van was warm as she lifted the handle. Inside, the heated air was suffocating, and she flinched when she touched the hot vinyl of the steering wheel. After turning on the engine, she put the air conditioner on High, and that was when she spotted the slip of paper trapped beneath her windshield wiper.
Damn! A parking ticket. She hadn't even noticed the meter earlier.
She climbed out of the van and was just lifting the wiper blade when Kirk came out of the office. She stuffed the ticket into the side pocket of her jumper, then got back into the van. But not fast enough.
"Where the hell do you think you're going?"
The anger in his voice, the actual words he used made her heart pound. Kirk didn't normally talk that way. She pressed a button on the panel by her elbow, and the passenger window opened smoothly.
"Don't swear at me!"
Ignoring the open window, he yanked at the passenger door, then hauled his body into the seat next to her. The van was roomy, but Claire still felt uncomfortable, aware that they hadn't sat this close in the therapist's office. She tried to ignore him as she adjusted the vent so it was blowing cool air directly at her face.
"Don't you think we ought to talk?"
He sounded calmer now, but she was still annoyed. "It didn't seem to do us much good in there."
Kirk twisted in his seat until he was facing her, his gaze steady. "Hell of a way to find out my wife is pregnant. Couldn't you have told me this weekend?"
She gripped the wheel and stared ahead of her. "Maybe I would have. If I'd felt more like a wife and less like unwanted baggage."
"Unwanted baggage," he repeated bitterly. "That pretty much sums it up, doesn't it?"
What did he mean? Was that really how he saw her? She didn't have the nerve to ask.
"Three months Claire? Are you really that far along?"
She glanced sideways and saw him eyeing her stomach, her breasts. With her seat belt fastened, the signs were all too obvious.
"Yes. I went to the doctor a few days before you told me about—about Janice. I'd just got off the phone with the results when you came into the kitchen."
He cursed. "Great timing."
Claire swallowed, thinking about the child she was carrying. The poor thing couldn't help that its parents were in such a muddle. Yet it would surely have to live with the consequences.
"But why did you go to the doctor so late? With the others we knew by six weeks."
"I don't know why I didn't notice the signs. I guess I lost track of my period…" Claire trailed off as she wondered if she was just kidding herself. Had she really been so oblivious to the messages her body was giving her? True, she didn't get the morning sickness that so many other women suffered from, but she'd been tired and her breasts had swollen. Then there'd been the missed periods.
Maybe she'd ignored the signals because subconsciously she'd known her marriage was in trouble.
"This shock, all the unhappiness…" Kirk shook his head. "I know you haven't been eating that well. Or sleeping, either. Have you talked to your doctor about possible impact on the baby?"
"My next appointment isn't for three weeks. I saw the doctor just before we left for the lake. At that point I'd lost some weight—but that's typical for the first trimester." She thought of the tests he'd suggested—she was over thirty-five now, and there were precautions that should be taken. But this wasn't the time for that discussion.
"You never lost any weight with the first three."
True. It wasn't the pregnancy; it was the emotional duress, and her resulting lack of appetite, that was to blame. "I'm trying to eat properly."
"Oh, Claire." Kirk touched the side of her cheek with his hand.
For a moment Claire closed her eyes, the caress of Kirk's hand all she cared to think about. Underneath the polished businessman veneer, Kirk had a tender side that she'd seen too little of lately. Except when he was with the girls. He had inordinate patience with them sometimes, she thought, even more than she did.
"How did this happen to us?" he asked.
Claire's eyes opened at the reminder of their situation. "How did this happen?" She pulled back from his touch and slipped her sunglasses from the visor. "I'm not the one who needs to answer that question."
So much for the tenderness in Kirk's expression.
He leaned back in his chair, his mouth thinned to a hard, tight line.
She stared at him pointedly. "I have to go, Kirk. Mallory's got the girls and I promised I'd be home before dinner." Actually, she hadn't sai
d when she'd be home. And hadn't Mallory told her not to rush back? But Kirk didn't know any of that.
"I want to come out this weekend. Friday night, if that's okay."
It wasn't okay. She didn't want to face up to what was happening between them. She didn't want to analyze what had gone wrong or figure out how to set things right. Now all she felt was anger, and concentrating on that seemed easier.
But then she thought of the girls' disappointment if their father didn't come for the weekend.
"Yes," she said, fixing her eyes on the road in front of her. "The girls would like that."
"The girls, Claire?"
She knew what he was asking, of course, and it was definitely too much.
"I have to go," she repeated.
He looked at her a full minute, but she refused to meet his gaze, focusing, instead, on the street, on the dotted white line, on the traffic lights where she had to turn to meet the highway. Finally, he let out a ragged sigh. "Okay, then."
He opened the passenger door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. "You will take care of yourself? Eat properly and get enough sleep?"
His concern for his unborn child was touching. When it had been just her, he hadn't worried so. She nodded curtly, still staring out the front window, and waited for him to close the door.
"It's not just the baby I'm worried about."
Oh, sure. As though she were fool enough to believe that. "I'll be careful, Kirk."
"Good. I'll see you Friday."
CHAPTER TEN
Holding herself together for the rest of that week wasn't easy, but somehow Claire managed. She had to, because of the children.
Thank goodness she had them. If not, she might have gone insane, or driven off in the van and never come back. All thoughts of Kirk, of their twelve-year marriage, brought with them lashes of pain. Yet she could think of little else.
She wondered where they had gone wrong, why Kirk hadn't talked to her, why he had turned to Janice.
And most painful of all, Claire wondered if he was missing Janice now. He'd said he wouldn't see her while he and Claire were going to their counseling sessions. But did he want to? Was he still thinking of the other woman? Dreaming of her?
When Grady invited Claire and the girls to go waterskiing late Thursday afternoon, Claire accepted eagerly. The distraction was badly needed. Not just by her, but by the girls. All day Wednesday, and this morning, too, they'd been at one another's throats. Especially Andie and Daisy.
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