Embracing Ashberry

by Serenity Everton

  He'd never see her cry over him again.

  If she was wrong, he'd eventually notice.

  * * * *

  What was she to do, anyway?

  Shannon stayed on the sofa in the sunroom, staring blindly out into the backyard. She'd gotten up early and made her way there. He'd once again come to bed hours later than her. She'd woken to him in the shower — unusual for that time of night — and it had taken him an exceptionally long time.

  She suspected what he'd been doing, but instead of confronting him and creating a scene at midnight, she'd rolled over and pretended to be soundly asleep when he finally slid into the bed beside her.

  He couldn't have taken even a second to look at her, and he was sleeping as far from her as possible. The covers had dipped between them, as if sealing the separation.

  Shannon burned with resentment, but it was a state of affairs that seemed to define her nights now, so she had closed her eyes and tried to ignore it.

  Of course she hadn't slept well after that. She rarely did these days. After curling up on the sofa with the thick afghan they'd brought back from a magical cruise in Scandinavia, Shannon had slept an hour. It was a weekend morning, so the house remained quiet and still. The coffee pot didn't automatically click on, there was no alarm upstairs. He wasn't showering. Outside, dark clouds lowered, threatening, and soon the rain would beat down on glass around her.

  Shannon thought she might be happy for the noise. The silence screamed at her, encouraged her to cry again, reminded her of loss and emptiness. Had it always been this way — had they always been half-empty — and the presence of their two teenage boys just a mask?

  She swallowed and pondered, but couldn't believe it. He'd attended to her too solicitously, loved her too thoroughly, seen to her pleasure and her fulfillment regularly, even denying himself at times to bring her to a state of wanton desperation.

  Lately, though only in the last months and not in response to her new policy of not offering anything she didn't want rejected, it seemed as though he'd been more tired in the evenings. He'd brought work home three weeknights — not so unusual now that she'd thought about it — but lately he'd been shutting himself in the study with it instead of spreading it over the coffee table and taking his laptop to the recliner, where she could join him. The tears welled up and she pushed them back.

  A defeated sigh left her lips. It was Saturday, and she'd not asked him what he wanted, but she planned to explore the farmer's market by the wharf and then maybe dip her feet in the ocean if it was raining. She loved the beach in the rain and there was no reason to deny herself, just because he wasn't at her side.

  Shannon folded the afghan and left it on the end of the couch. No doubt she'd need it again. The sunroom wasn't heated, though it warmed over the course of the day, even in the winter. But it was her retreat — her place. He and the twins had always treated it as her space, and she'd grown used to the idea.

  She stepped into the kitchen, then, and her eyes flew open wide. He was there, leaning against the counter.

  Impossibly pale.

  "Harry?" she whispered, and watched his fingers grip the granite convulsively. "Harry!"

  His lips were dry, but he opened them and smacked them shut again. "D-doctor," he whispered. "L-l-love you."

  And then he closed his eyes and she screamed as he slid to the floor.

  ONE

  Harry blinked, then closed his eyes against the dim light. There was a strange man's voice — a younger man's voice — but Shannon's hand clutched his almost compulsively.

  He could hardly breathe, and tried to suck in air, struggled, only to suddenly realize his throat was open ––

  Harry lunged up, intending to pull the uncomfortable, choking thing from his mouth, but he did no more than fight against fabric straps.

  Panic welled, the man's soothing cadence broke off, and Harry heard — actually heard — Shannon speak to him, beg him, the words thick with tears. "Please," she said, "Please lie still, Harry. Please."

  It had been too long since he'd heard that warm, pleading voice. He acquiesced immediately, as much to comfort her overt anxiety as anything else, and then realized how disconnected he felt. He couldn't speak, he couldn't control his breathing.

  Harry focused on her low, intimate cadence, and felt the warmth of her breath against his ear. How he'd ached to hear that husky whisper again. Harry had gotten out of bed and gone in search of her, at a loss to explain her behavior in recent weeks. He'd been half-angry, frustrated and hurt over her sudden penchant to leave their bed at first light and the distant way she'd treated him and them, and he'd had enough.

  He had to know.

  Shannon hadn't been in the living room. He'd walked through it and into the kitchen, and rather than find her there, it had been dark and cold. Shannon always made coffee first. He'd leaned against the counter, ready to howl with defeat and call out loud to her when the odd exhaustion he'd felt for weeks now washed over him again and he stumbled backward, struggling to stay on his feet.

  She'd been there, then, the light glow of her skin shining through the dimness. Shannon said his name and he thought he'd said goodbye, or was that hello?

  Either way, she'd screamed but he was fading before the pain in his shoulder and couldn't respond.

  It was a damned hospital bed.

  He gripped her hand harder and concentrated on making his fingers squeeze hers.

  She gasped and clasped her second hand around their intertwined fingers. "Lie still, please," she repeated more clearly. "There are tubes and monitors everywhere and you're drugged. It's going to be hard for awhile, but you'll be fine, Harry."

  Harry tried to nod but it was more like a shrug.

  "Dad is driving in with the twins; they'll be here tonight. You know they'll be a ruckus if you're not walking around and able to put them in their place by then."

  Her voice was trembling, and his brain hurt from trying to follow her but she rushed on, seemingly determined to reach him.

  "Your parents have been in the waiting room all day, Harry. I think your mom's going to end up in the next bed if they have to wait much longer for good news."

  In desperation, he squeezed her fingers, hard this time, and then let go. Her fingers slid from his and she made to take his hand again but he was lifting it, ever so slowly, watching to make sure it acted as he thought his brain was telling it. Shaking, he laid it on her cheek and squeezed gently, then concentrated on setting his palm against her heart. She was still wearing the ridiculous old law school t-shirt of his that she slept in. Her face was pale, and the dark smudges under her eyes meant she hadn't slept.

  But she was silent, until one of her hands came back and covered his.

  "I love you too," she whispered and Harry's eyes closed in relief.

  * * * *

  She should be sleeping. He should be sleeping. Harry sat carefully back in the recliner and just stared at her instead, soaking in her feet crossed at the ankles, the long socks up her legs over a pair of old peach tights and the long, ivory sweater dress she'd sleep in tonight because it would still seem presentable in the clear light of the morning.

  Shannon was reading from one of those old books she was forever bringing home from used bookstores and flea markets. He knew it would be a love story — something Austen-esque. Her glasses were perched on her little turned-up nose and her hair fluffed about her ears.

  She’d cut her hair two weeks ago and he already missed the long curls that used to bounce on her shoulders and spill over her pillow as she slept. Harry had been shocked when he'd come home and seen those luxuriant locks missing. It wasn't that she'd needed to ask his opinion or seek his permission, but he wished he'd known. Harry would have liked one last night to rub his face in the fragrant long curls, to wrap his fingers in them and tug her head back so he could lean down to kiss her.

  He hadn't known what to say, of course, and she hadn't mentioned it, so there the haircut sat on her head, one more
example of what he still thought was a strange rift between them: a list of things they couldn't talk about for no other reason than they hadn't talked about them.

  She still smelled delicious. She'd said, repeatedly, that she loved him. She hadn't left him, except to shower and answer dozens of phone messages, and then only when their sons stayed with him. She'd held his hand, kissed his forehead, helped him wash and perform even more painfully personal functions. Her hands had traced the lines of his face with extreme gentleness as she'd helped him shave. She'd taken copious notes on his aftercare, read voraciously about the new diet and a myriad of medications. She'd taken care of his cell phone, both texts and calls, his e-mails, his parents, his mail and any other complication that arose without complaint.

  She'd slept very little, but then again, he knew she hadn't been sleeping before. It was yet another item on the list of things they hadn't discussed, that she hadn't brought to him. He ached with the desire to have her on his lap again, her head snugged against his neck as she poured forth all that she'd pent up that day into his ears. How many months had it been since she'd done that? How many more would it be before she could again?

  They had to start somewhere. The room was dim, the nurse not due back for another hour or two. They were both awake. But where did they start?

  She blew out a long breath and chewed her lower lip, twisting one of the short curls that framed her face now around her finger.

  It was as good of a place as any.

  "Why did you decide to cut your hair?" Harry asked.

  * * * *

  Shannon dreamed she was in a birdcage. Frantic, her wings fluttered anxiously and hopelessly, until she slammed into the metal wires again and again. She was alone, trapped, and frenzied, and there was no escape.

  In desperation, she flew harder and faster than she'd ever flown at the catch on the cage door. To her utter surprise, it flew open and she was ... free.

  Even more desperate, she flapped her wings in pure panic, screaming for help but there was no way for her to stay aloft outside of the cage. Shannon fell in a terrifying, dizzying rush to the floor and laid there, stunned.

  At his bare, beautifully formed feet.

  It wouldn't have taken a pop psychologist two seconds, she groused inwardly as she sat on the couch in the hospital room, to see the significance in that dream. She'd tried to escape from him, and had instead fallen blindly at his feet. Shannon was consumed with guilt, and she knew it.

  What had she missed in her selfish introspection that had made her not see what was happening? The strange new tiredness that seemed to afflict him in the evenings she had assumed to be a new disinterest in intimacy with her. The occasional, unexplained looks of pain on his face of which he had not complained? She had taken those to be unspoken irritation with her as he often had that look when he was annoyed, rather than actual, inexplicable discomfort in his shoulder and neck. She'd even dismissed the sudden increase in his consumption of Rolaids to be a simple effect of aging and had responded by limiting the garlic in their meals, rather than asking him about it, even when his apparent bouts with indigestion didn't improve.

  She flipped the page absently, less than half her attention on the book. Shannon had burst out of that cage two — no, three — weeks ago now. Harry had picked up her little lost soul as she'd laid on the floor at his feet and soothed it a bit, metaphorically kissed her forehead and sat her ... where?

  The only thing he'd felt he needed to say, in that horrible moment in the kitchen, was that he loved her. He'd said it since then, too, and watched her in a way he'd never had. He was brooding, even now, and a bit grumpily possessive and protective, even when those two aims are at odds. Shannon, you need a good night's rest, he'd said. But to be honest, I want you here. One of the boys can stay, but they're almost as much work as being alone. You make everything easier. Better.

  Shannon didn't mind. She'd rather be here, honestly, than tossing and turning in the empty bed at home. Of course, he was supposed to be sleeping and wasn't. He was staring at her again, brooding.

  "Why did you decide to cut your hair?" Harry asked her.

  Shannon blinked, and looked up at him, blindly marking the page and setting aside the book. She clasped her hands in her lap and considered. It had been one of her first acts of independence, she remembered, determinedly thinking of those heart-wrenching days after she'd decided he didn't want her. She'd needed to feel different, new. Shedding eight inches of ebony curls had been like cutting off her nose, or maybe something more erogenous. While the scissors had clipped, she'd had visions of Harry, his mouth buried in the hair at the back of her nape, raw words of passion in her ear, his hand alternately tracing the locks and winding his hand in them tightly to move her head where he wished it.

  Why was he asking now? She'd half-expected an eruption that first night, but he'd simply stared at her for a minute and turned away when she didn't offer an explanation. Now he wasn't turning away, he was insisting on an answer. She could practically feel the intimidation pouring off of him; in another setting, law clerks and lesser beings would be fleeing in terror before an impending stampede of commands.

  Shannon had always been somewhat immune to that broadcast of power. And to be truthful, she was infinitely relieved that his personality and presence were re-asserting themselves so dramatically, so soon. A small stirring of hope rose up, both that he was pushing open a door between them and that he might return to his relatively healthy self.

  "I'm waiting," he said, his eyes narrowing at her even as he infused the quiet words with determination.

  At least he hadn't arrogantly adopted impatience, as he might have done to a recalcitrant witness.

  "I-I was-was," Shannon began awkwardly, pausing to lick her lips before starting over, "I was testing my wings, I think." She blinked, then hesitantly explained as she looked down at her hands, "I thought I wanted to be ... different."

  "How did it feel?" Harry asked her. She looked at him puzzled, and he shrugged carefully and clarified, "How did it feel to declare your independence from me — from us — like that, without so much as a word to me?"

  Shannon's mouth fell open and she gaped at his suddenly stony countenance for just a second before she slammed it shut. It never had been wise to dismiss Harry's intellect; he was ruthless professionally and had just applied the same quicksilver logic to her behavior and arrived at the conclusion just as instantaneously. Tears welled up and she looked back at her hands. "It was awful," she whispered. "I felt as if I was cutting out my heart, or maybe my soul."

  "That's because you were carving out my soul, and my soul is your heart. And your heart is my soul," he said softly.

  "You didn't say a word," Shannon said after a moment.

  “I didn't know what to say," Harry agreed, "So I said nothing. Maybe I should have had a tantrum instead. Maybe I should have raved about it, spanked you to your senses like bloody caveman and forbidden you to even think of doing something so desperate to get my attention ever again. But honestly, I couldn't. I was too damn tired to do anything more than hurt."

  Shannon's throat swelled with guilt and regret. "I'm so sorry," she whispered in the dim room.

  Harry was quiet for a long minute and when he spoke, his voice was low. "I'm sorry too. I-I-I knew something wasn't quite right but I kept telling myself it would wait, that I needed to get past this case or that meeting or some holiday. I'm honestly shocked you haven't ripped up at me about it yet. You've said you loved me, but I was wondering if maybe you had succeeded in carving out that part of my soul."

  She bit her lip and choked back a sob. "No, I was waiting until you healed a bit more and we were home," she admitted. She bent forward and laid her head on her knees. "So what happens now?" she asked.

  "You let your hair grow back out, and talk to me before you cut it next time," he said, resting his head against the back of the recliner. "I never could refuse you anything, as you well know, and I would hardly upend our marriage over a
haircut. And while your hair is growing, why don't we see about growing my soul and your heart all back together in one piece?"

  He'd sat her back on her perch inside the birdcage and his hand was still with her, soothing her.

  "I'd like that," Shannon said shyly. "How do we do it?"

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