“So this was your room?” Oliver said from beneath the covers of her childhood bed.
She nodded. “Well, when I was home from boarding school, that is. I spent more time at school than I did here.”
“It doesn’t really seem like you.”
“No. It’s probably not how I would have done the room.”
The walls were covered in a pale, textured wallpaper. A large Persian rug was centered on the dark hardwood floor. An upholstered loveseat sat in front of the heavy chintz drapes that shielded the windows. There really wasn’t anything in the room that had been chosen by Serena herself.
Which was fine.
This wasn’t her home anymore. She tried to give Mason and Cam more autonomy in their lives than she’d had in hers as a child. But her childhood was water under the bridge now. She was trying to accept her parents as the people they were right now. Today.
She turned off the bedside lamp and crawled into bed. Oliver opened his arms and she snuggled into them. The fact that he had gotten on a train and come to New York made her cautiously optimistic.
But not completely optimistic.
“Now where were we?” he asked.
“You were going to demonstrate your new talking skills, I believe.”
“Oh. Right. I guess I was thinking about what almost happened after that.”
She pressed her lips lightly to his. “There. If you want more, you’re going to have to dish.” There was just enough light in the room to see Oliver’s mock pout.
“I dented the garage door.”
“Okay. That’s technically not a feeling, but … how on earth did you do that?” She imagined him kicking it out of frustration.
“I ran into it with the car.”
“You didn’t open the door first?”
The mattress vibrated with his shrug. “I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t paying attention, I guess.”
“Well, now there are two unexplained accidents in the family.”
“I think I can hammer out the dent.”
“Or we can have it replaced. My parents are definitely releasing my trust fund. And we will pay back your dad for my medical expenses.”
“Oh. Can I ask how much that is?”
She hesitated. They had never discussed this in great detail. It hadn’t mattered since she didn’t have the money anyway. But now Ollie had a right to know.
“It’s a little over two.” She flattened her palms against his chest, feeling his heartbeat beneath the skin. “Million.” She glanced up at the stunned expression on his face.
It took Ollie a few more moments before he could speak. “You gave up two million dollars to marry me?”
“Mmm. I must have really loved you.”
“Either that, or you’re a complete idiot. If I had known how much it was, I wouldn’t have let you marry me.”
“Good thing I didn’t tell you, then.”
“Seriously, Serena, what were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that I loved you, Ollie. And I loved your family, how close you all are.” She lifted a hand from his chest and waved it at the room surrounding them. “That’s what upset me in the museum today. I was remembering my grandmother and how close I was to her. And it hit me that Mason and Cam won’t have that kind of relationship with a grandmother. My mother is trying, but … it won’t be the way it was with your mom.”
She felt tears stinging at her eyes again. Ollie pulled her closer until there wasn’t even a centimeter of space between them.
“No, they won’t have that,” he said. “But they’ll have aunts and uncles, their cousin Jackie, really cool trips to New York. They’ll have other things.”
“Those things can’t replace—” A hiccup escaped her chest. “—your mom.”
“There’s nothing to be done about that.” He pressed a kiss into her hair. “But their children can have those grandparents. We can be those grandparents someday.”
She tilted her head back so she could look him in the eye. If he was talking about them as grandparents, then maybe he hadn’t completely given up on their marriage.
“I don’t remember being anything more than just friends with Ben. But if there was, I am sorry, Ollie. Sorrier than words can express. I want you. Only you. I can’t picture the rest of my life without Oliver Wolfe in it.”
“Would you ever tell me if you remembered?”
“Would you want me to?”
He was silent for a good long while.
“Probably not,” he said at last.
“I’m not the sort of person to sleep with my best friend’s husband. I know I’m not.” She traced her finger along his jaw. “All I can offer as evidence is my character, Ollie. What you know of me as a person.” She grazed his lower lip with the pad of her thumb. “And you know me better than anyone else ever has. You know that’s true.”
“And you know me better than anyone. Hell, better than I know myself. And you’re right. I haven’t let myself grieve for my mom.”
“You bottle things up.”
“I have to or I’d be useless on a call. I can’t afford to feel everything I see.”
He paused and Serena allowed him the time to think.
“I lost it that day, the day of the accident. Dad and Mattie had to physically restrain me to keep me from tearing you out of that car with my bare hands.”
She felt his arms twitch and she knew he wanted to cross them in front of his chest, assume that protective, closed off posture he did so frequently. She took his hands in hers and kissed his knuckles, one by one.
He spoke again, his voice low. “You’ve always made me feel out of control, Serena. Ever since I met you. I find myself doing things I wouldn’t normally do. Like hopping on a train to New York and asking some rich man who’s never particularly liked me to come visit so I can take him sailing.”
“You invited my dad to go sailing?” She touched his forehead, like she was checking one of the boys for a fever. “Why? I mean, that’s nice of you but if you’d rather not …”
“I was trying to be the better man.”
She let her hand slip from his forehead to his cheek, holding it there, lightly. “Oh Ollie. You were always the better man. I knew that the night we met.” She giggled softly. “We went skinny-dipping and you didn’t even try to sleep with me.”
“See?” He smiled in the dark. “You make me do ridiculous things.” Then his face grew serious again. “You also make me feel things I don’t always want to feel.”
“Like what?”
“Like sheer, unmitigated terror. That I’m going to lose you. Lose the boys. That one day you’ll wake up and realize that you could have a bigger life than I can give you.”
“So you know how I feel every time you go to work. That today will be the day you don’t come home from a call.”
“How do you do that?” He rose suddenly, pushing himself into a seated position against the silk-covered headboard of her bed.
He was putting distance between them, the way he always did when a conversation got into uncomfortable territory. Normally, she’d allow him to do it, let him stay in his comfort zone. But not tonight. If they didn’t finish this conversation, he might not be willing to go this far again.
“I pretend I’m not afraid,” she answered. “I hope that you’ll be like your dad and not your Uncle Jack.” She pulled herself up off the mattress and crawled toward Ollie. She straddled his outstretched thighs, staying on her knees so they could be face to face. “I trust in your training to protect you.”
“I don’t worry about my safety that much. I have some measure of control over what happens when I’m working. Or my response to it, at any rate.”
“But I don’t have any control over it. I just have to trust that the universe will deliver you home to me and the boys, day after day.” She leaned in and flattened her palms on his chest. “If you love something, it’s going to hurt if you lose it. You can’t have love without that fear.”
&nbs
p; “Sometimes you sound just like mom.”
“I loved your mom. And to wake up and discover that she was gone … and to see that you and your dad and your brothers are all just flailing around …”
Suddenly Oliver’s arms were open and reaching around her, pulling her into his chest. “I know you loved her. That the two of you were so close always made me …”
His words hung there, unfinished, but she didn’t push him on this. He was being more open than she’d ever seen him—it was progress and she’d take it. She kissed the warm skin of his chest.
“We never told her about your accident,” he added. “She passed a few days later. We didn’t want to upset her any further. Dad, especially, was worried that she’d try to hang on if she knew you were in the hospital and she was in so much pain by that point …”
She watched Oliver’s face crumple and tears begin to stream down his cheeks. She’d seen him cry a few times before—at Mason’s birth, after a particularly difficult call with the fire department—but not often. But now the bottle that his emotions were normally stuffed into had popped its cap.
She held his shaking body as he cried into her chest, soaking the front of her pajama top with his tears. As she held him, something nudged at her brain. She closed her eyes to focus on it, try to pull it closer before it could slip away. For every memory she managed to lasso, two others disappeared as quickly as they came.
But she had this. A husband whose faithfulness she’d never had reason to doubt. Two sons. Enough time to try and have more children. A truce, finally, with her parents. So what if she couldn’t remember everything that came before—maybe this was enough. It had to be enough.
Live in the present.
Right. The here and now. That’s what was most important. It was a cliché, but no one was guaranteed a tomorrow. She was given a second chance when she woke from her coma. They had been given a second chance, when so many other people weren’t. What more could they ask?
It would have to be enough for Ollie, too. She couldn’t give him back the past. He would have to be content with what they had right now.
She held him until every last emotion had been cried out.
Chapter 39
Serena took a deep breath and pushed open the door to the education and health sciences building at Talbot College. It was the evening of the education program Open House. Oliver was at work, but Becca was watching the boys for a few hours. They had barely noticed her leaving, so excited they were at the prospect of Facetiming with their cousin, Jackie.
She stepped into the air-conditioned lobby, where tables were lined up around the perimeter. Check-in, Admissions, Curriculum, Financial Aid, Career Services. The soft light of a summer evening washed everything in the soaring windowed atrium with a shimmery gold.
She headed for the Check-in table, where two women sat behind laptop computers and tent cards that read “A—M” and “N—Z.” She walked up to the “N—Z” woman.
“Last name?” the woman asked.
“Wolfe. Serena Wolfe.”
She waited as the woman clicked and scrolled, then paused. Nodded. Looked up at Serena.
“This is your second Open House?” the woman said.
Serena shook her head. “No. My name’s Serena Wolfe. I registered back in March.”
The woman leaned in and squinted at the computer screen. “Right. Serena Wolfe. It says here that you attended an Open House last August, as well. No, wait.” The woman squinted harder. “You were registered for the August session but it looks like you didn’t check in. So I guess you didn’t come.” She looked up from the screen and smiled. “It happens. Life gets in the way, right? But you’re here now.”
She tapped a key, then slid a sheet of blank labels toward Serena. “Make a name tag and you’re all set.”
Serena printed her name on a label, peeled it off, and stuck it to her twill summer blazer. She walked to the Admissions table and got in line. With a degree from Princeton, she wasn’t worried about her academic credentials but her work experience was a little thin. She was stretching the concept of switching careers, since she’d barely had a career before marrying Oliver.
And what was all that about her registering for an earlier Open House? They must have her mixed up with someone else in their records. As she gazed up at the atrium’s ceiling, a dizzying sense of déjà vu slammed into her. She took a deep breath to clear her mind, then returned to the Check-in table.
“Excuse me,” she said to the woman she’d left just a moment earlier. “What day was the August Open House?”
The woman smiled brightly at her. “August 12th. But you never checked in.”
“Right. But I was registered?”
The woman nodded.
“Thank you.” Serena turned away from the table, thunderstruck. August 12th. The day of the accident. She was driving here that day. Only I never made it.
She hadn’t been driving to see Ben. Or to see Angie in the hospital—even her own theory was wrong. And I didn’t tell Ollie about it because I didn’t want to upset him if I changed my mind. It was all coming back to her now.
She dug in her purse for her phone, and tapped Oliver’s name in her contact list. Predictably, he didn’t pick up. He was at work. She didn’t leave a message.
The line at the Admissions table had cleared, so she approached the older gentleman standing behind it. She introduced herself, explained her academic background and volunteer experience. They discussed application deadlines for a moment, then Serena moved on to the Curriculum table. She was juggling an armful of brochures and course planning worksheets, when she heard her phone ring deep in her purse. She hurried to a bench by the back wall to answer it.
“Babe? I saw you called. What’s up? Are you at the Open House?”
“I am. And guess what? I was registered to come to an Open House here last year. On August 12th.”
She waited for that information to sink in, then heard a sharp intake of breath on the other end.
“On the day of the accident? You were at the college?”
“No. I never made it here. I must have had the accident on the way. They have me in their system as being registered, but not checked in for that date.”
“But I don’t remember that—”
“I didn’t tell you, Ollie, because I wasn’t sure I really wanted to do this.”
“And that’s why you left the kids with Charlotte that day.”
“Yes.”
“Wow.”
“I know, right?”
She leaned into the hard back of the bench. For the first time in months, she felt relaxed. There was no looming secret hovering just out of view, ready to drop and crush her entire life.
“I’m glad I remembered that,” she added.
“Me too. When will you be home?”
She glanced at the other tables she still needed to visit, and the lines moving slowly by each one. “I think I’ll be here another half hour. Then half an hour to drive home.”
“I’ll try to be home before the boys go to bed.”
“Love you, Ollie.”
“Love you, too.”
An hour later, she was pulling the minivan out of the parking lot, a folder stuffed with class descriptions and schedules on the passenger seat beside her. She opened the window on her side to enjoy the warm evening air and cranked up the radio a bit. It felt so damn good to have that mystery behind her. She was looking forward to going back to school. It would be difficult, with the boys still so young and Oliver’s crazy schedule at the station. But she was up for the challenge. Speaking to the professors at the Open House had only reinforced that. For the first time, she could imagine her own classroom with her own students.
But there was still one mystery left.
On her way to the college, she had driven past the accident site but not stopped. On the way home, she braked the minivan onto the shoulder of the road and cut the ignition. The big white oak tree stood on the other side. She check
ed for traffic, then got out of the car. She ran across the road to stand in front of the tree.
What had happened here?
“I was on my way to the college,” she thought out loud. “Why didn’t I make it?”
She trailed her fingers down the bark of the tree. She knew the answers didn’t lie behind it. They were stuck deep inside her brain—too deep for her to reach. After a few more minutes, she gave the tree a friendly pat.
“Not your fault.”
She darted back across the road to the minivan. She was about to put the car into drive when her phone rang. The bluetooth screen displayed her mother’s number. She stared at the numerals and listened to the distorted ringing coming through the car’s speakers … and couldn’t move.
This is what happened.
Her mother’s call rolled over to voice mail.
My phone rang.
But it hadn’t been her mother calling on August 12th as she drove to the college. It was Angie Wolfe, calling from the hospital. And Serena had answered, hands-free. Earlier, she had thought about stopping by the hospital to see her mother-in-law, if there was enough time after the Open House. Charlotte wasn’t available to babysit the entire afternoon.
But she had ended up in a different hospital instead, airlifted to Baltimore, because Angie had called to say “goodbye.” Just in case.
Angie’s condition had been recently downgraded but, like the rest of the family, Serena was in denial about it. They were all going to wake up one day and discover that Angie’s illness was just a bad dream. Angie was healthy. She was going to be around for years to come, for all the future weddings and grandkids, retirement and old age. All of that would still happen.
Angie wasn’t in denial, though. She was the sort of person to try and put every last affair in order before shuffling off the mortal coil. Of course, she would make her goodbyes.
“Take care of those boys of yours,” were her final words, “and that boy of mine, too.”
Tears were streaming down Serena’s face—then and now. She had stretched her arm to reach her purse, digging around for that small package of tissues. The car drifted into the other lane, just for a moment. She dropped the tissues and grabbed the steering wheel with both hands. She swerved back into the right lane.
This Reminds Me of Us Page 26
