Joss felt her jaw tightening and the acid in her stomach fire up like rocket boosters. I’m not big enough to be okay with this, she thought with quiet alarm. She knew then that seeing Sarah with someone else would always bother her, even, she supposed, years down the road.
“Your father,” Joss said, too cowardly to confront Sarah about her new girlfriend. “Have the two of you reconciled yet?”
Sarah’s eyes widened perceptibly, but her voice remained flat. “Is he going to die from this? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
Heat shot up Joss’s neck. What the hell was she doing bringing up Sarah’s relationship with her father in the context of his health crisis? She’d simply wanted to get Sarah alone, that was the problem, and because of it she wasn’t thinking straight. She was grasping at any subject to talk about, and her father’s health was common ground. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to alarm you. I expect him to recover fully from surgery. What I meant by my question was that it might be more helpful to his recovery if there wasn’t the stress of, well, your estrangement.”
Sarah’s face seemed to clamp shut before her eyes. “You were the one who encouraged me to be honest with him, to stop accepting the way he was treating me. And you were right. It was something I should have done a long time ago.”
“I know, I…We couldn’t have known that he was going to get sick, that’s all. Look, I’m sorry. It’s your business and your father’s. And I’m not sorry I gave you that advice, Sarah. You were right to do it.”
Sarah looked away, and there was the glint of tears in her eyes. She spoke in a whisper of frustration. “Maybe so, but I seem to be fighting with everyone right now.”
“You’re fighting with your new girlfriend already?” The small opening was too much for Joss to resist. It might be her only chance to get back at Sarah for the pain she had caused her.
“What are you talking about?”
Joss winced. It was too late to back out. “At your New Year’s Eve party. At your apartment. I saw you with someone.”
“Lauren told me you showed up, but I missed you somehow.”
“I came later, hoping to talk to you. But you were…indisposed. With someone else.”
“Indisposed? Come on, Joss, I’m having trouble deciphering whatever it is you’re trying to get at.” Sarah’s voice had an edge to it. “What is it that you think you saw? And why didn’t you answer the next day when I texted that I heard you came to the party?”
Joss swallowed against her dry throat, remembering the image of Sarah lying in someone else’s arms. Remembered too how she’d felt like she’d been kicked in the stomach by a steel-toed boot. She’d been too raw with hurt to try to discuss it in a text. “I couldn’t talk about it in a text,” she said, even now finding it tough to draw breath. She’d never be able to chase that image from her mind. “I saw you. You were in bed with another woman.”
“What?” Astonishment played across Sarah’s face, then anger, then something that resembled recognition. “Oh no. You saw me with A.J., didn’t you?” She pursed her lips, shook her head lightly, but there was no apology in her actions. “So that’s what this is all about.”
“You’re not denying it?”
“I’m not denying what you saw, but it wasn’t what you think. If it’s any of your business.” Sarah stood abruptly, nearly knocking over her chair. “Look, you had your chance, Joss. And you made your choice. There really isn’t anything else to say that wouldn’t be going around in circles.”
Joss stood too, still smarting, still wanting to hurt Sarah the way Sarah had hurt her. And still wanting to kiss her madly. “Apparently you made your choice too.”
As Sarah stalked out the door, anger accentuating her strides, Joss knew this thing between them was a long way from being over. She’d never be able to leave Sarah behind, to banish the sweet pain from her heart. No matter how many women she slept with or spent time with, laughed or argued with, nothing and no one would ever come this close again.
She slumped into her chair, inadvertently knocking her stethoscope onto the floor. She wondered, as she stared at the snake-like object near her feet, if it had the power to detect a broken heart. Her broken heart.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Sarah waited with her stepmother while her father underwent surgery. The hours dragged and the buckets of coffee did little to keep her energy up. It was exhausting, the way Joss and her father tugged at different parts of her, separate and yet intertwined like a ball of string. It was also ironic that Joss was the one performing life-saving surgery on the man Sarah had not been able to forgive for not loving her enough. For it was Joss who had given her the strength and determination to accept nothing less than full acceptance from her father. And it was Joss who, like the flipside of the same coin, couldn’t seem to love her quite enough. Who couldn’t quite get out of her own head enough to give herself to Sarah. They made quite a pair, Joss and her father, Sarah thought. Both stubborn, both afraid to love and be loved, both seemingly paralyzed in the face of letting Sarah go.
Sarah and her father had hardly spoken since his arrival in the hospital. The air was so frosty between them that she could have scratched her initials in it. Her father had given no sign that he was ready to apologize, that he was ready to begin treating her differently. And Sarah had chosen not to take the first step toward reconciliation either. It was up to him to make this right, she’d decided, even though he was lying in the operating room now and faced weeks of recovery. She’d always been the one to give in, to go to him, to compromise her feelings, her values, to do whatever was needed to make his life easier. It was always she who wanted to keep the peace, who was afraid to ruffle too many feathers, mostly because she’d felt sorry for him having to raise her alone. It was up to him now to show her that he loved her and maybe even needed her.
The day Sarah’s mother left was the first and only time Sarah had ever seen her father cry. She was just a kid, but she’d put her arms around him, tried to comfort him in his anguish. He’d pushed her away, preferring to be alone, and they’d never bridged that distance, had never been close, even when they were all the other had. For all intents and purposes, it was as though both parents had abandoned Sarah that day nearly two decades ago. But her father’s emotional abandonment had cut the deepest.
Linda knew better than to interfere between Sarah and her father. But she felt no such compunction when Joss was the subject. She asked Sarah during the long wait what had happened between her and Joss, and Sarah told her, using broad strokes to describe the honeymoon atmosphere on Sanibel Island and then the quick disintegration upon their return to Nashville. It had been her decision to end things, she explained, because she was no longer willing to stand for people in her life who weren’t prepared to give her what she needed.
“Maybe it’s selfish,” Sarah admitted, self-doubt shadowing her. She hoped that her father’s health crisis and Joss’s role as his doctor wasn’t some kind of sign for her. A sign that they were both meant to be in her life and that pushing them away had been a mistake. Maybe they, in spite of their faults, deserved to be loved too. “I don’t know, Linda. Maybe I’m too demanding. I mean, why should I make her change for me?” And for that matter, should she bother trying to make her father change too?
“That woman’s in love with you.”
No way, Sarah thought. Joss cannot possibly be in love with me. Then she remembered the way she’d looked at her while she sketched her. And more recently, the hurt in her eyes when she’d described seeing Sarah in bed with A.J. It was the haunted, injured look of someone betrayed, even though nothing had happened between Sarah and A.J. And even if it had, it wasn’t Joss’s concern. But deep down, it felt as though Joss did in fact have every right to feel betrayed. “I think she’s more into keeping score than anything else. And she has absolutely no intention of falling in love with me.”
“Too late.”
It must be the stress of her father’s surgery that was maki
ng Linda so smug and sure, Sarah thought. And maybe, just maybe, she had a small fraction of a point. But it was a moot point because Joss had no intention of giving into her feelings. “I know you mean well, Linda, but look. Joss has made it very plain to me that she does not want to be in a relationship with me. And as I know all too well, it takes more than one to make a relationship work.”
“She probably doesn’t know how. You two are so good together, Sarah. Don’t tell me you’re giving up on her. Can’t you work with her on this?”
“You know what? I’m so tired of being the one doing all the work when it comes to relationships. I can’t do it alone anymore.” I won’t do it alone anymore.
Linda patted her hand knowingly. “I know, sweetie, I know. Some people need more time than others, that’s all.”
Yeah, like about a century and a half, she thought morosely.
Joss entered the waiting room and motioned for them to join her in the hall. She looked satisfied, on top of her game, and the reassurance it gave Sarah was immeasurable.
“How is he?” Linda asked in a voice pitched high with worry.
“He’s doing fine. The surgery went well. I was able to repair the valve, and I think it will actually be stronger than it’s been in years. It should hold, but we’ll need to guard against infection for the next few days.”
Linda expelled a long-held breath. “Can I see him?”
“Soon. He’s in recovery right now. We’ll keep him in CICU for a good twenty-four hours, then move him to his own room for a few days so we can monitor him.”
Nearly collapsing with relief, Linda hugged Joss and thanked her repeatedly.
Sarah exchanged a subtle look with Joss, a silent thank-you, and it confirmed they were no longer furious with one another, no longer accusatory and raw with hurt the way they’d been yesterday. Maybe, she thought with fresh hope, they could be friends after all. But not yet. Right now the bruise on her heart was too fresh.
Sarah turned to go. She had work to do in her studio.
“Sarah…”
She kept walking because there was nothing else to say. If she never set foot again in this hospital, it would be too soon.
* * *
Joss poured herself a rare glass of wine—it was technically her day off, discounting the fact that she’d gone to the hospital briefly to check on Peter Young. She was satisfied with yesterday’s surgery but needed to sign off before he was allowed to transfer out of CICU to the medical floor. She’d just set her glass on the coffee table and was about to pick up the novel that she’d begun weeks ago on Sanibel when the buzzer announced company.
“Mother?” Joss said into the intercom, staring in surprise at the security camera’s grainy black-and-white image of Madeline McNab, awkwardly shifting from foot to foot. Joss could count on one hand the number of times her mother had visited the condo in the last four years. Reasons were scarce, excuses plentiful. “I’ll buzz you in. Come on up.”
Joss hoped her mother’s surprise visit meant she was extending some kind of olive branch. The coolness between them was worrisome. And unusual. Madeline had her faults, to be sure, but she’d never before kept Joss at arm’s length like this.
“Wine? Coffee?” Joss offered, but her mother shook her head and sat down, clutching her purse to her like a shield.
“We need to talk,” she said in an uncharacteristically meek voice. She looked small, fragile, and not at all like the fierce woman Joss had known all her life.
“We do.” Joss sat down next to her mother on the long, comfortable sofa. One or two hairs were actually out of place on her mother’s head. “It’s all right, Mama. We’ll get through this.”
“Not necessarily, dear. Not after what I’m about to tell you.”
Oh shit, Joss thought, mentally steeling herself for her mother to trash her father, to tell her he was a horrible husband and that she should have left him years ago or perhaps that she shouldn’t have married him at all. None of it would be surprising, but it wouldn’t make it any less difficult to hear.
“It’s true,” her mother finally said, “that your father wasn’t around much. That he didn’t have a lot of emotional energy for you and me at the end of the day. It wasn’t his fault, it was the job. And he was good at his job. People needed him.”
“We needed him too,” Joss said quietly.
“Yes, we did. But you see, it was I who ultimately failed your father and not the other way around.”
“How could you say that? You stood by him. You supported him in every way possible. You raised me practically single-handed. You did your part and then some.” The anger she now directed at her father was all the more acute because she’d so seldom verbalized it. And never this intensely. He’d always been her hero, in spite of his shortcomings on the home front. She didn’t want to hate him.
Madeline nodded slowly, even as her eyes scanned the room as if searching for an escape hatch or for something to swallow her up. After a moment, she squared her shoulders and was instantly the brave and stoic woman Joss knew.
“I stayed with your father for many reasons, but the biggest was guilt.”
“Guilt? Guilt for what?”
Madeline’s eyes shone with unshed tears. Her chin quivered ever so slightly, but she kept her gaze locked on Joss. “For eight years, I had an affair behind your father’s back.”
Joss’s lungs sucked for air that was no longer there. She could not move or even speak. Her mother? An affair? For eight years? She shook her head, wanting to expunge what she’d just heard, wanting, if only she could, to stuff the words back into her mother’s mouth. But everything in Madeline’s voice, in her words, in her eyes, said that it was the truth, and the truth was what she’d been begging of her mother. If her mother was brave enough to speak it, then Joss would have to be brave enough to hear it.
“It was with one of his colleagues, doesn’t matter to you which one. The man—and his wife—don’t live around here anymore. It was a long time ago, you were still a kid. But for eight years we—” Madeline closed her eyes briefly. “We snuck around. For a while we even thought we were in love, but it would have been a scandal then to leave our marriages.”
“Did…did Daddy ever find out?”
“Yes.” Tears began to trickle down Madeline’s cheeks. “He walked in on us once, right here in this…this…Your condo.”
Oh, God, Joss thought, her head spinning. No wonder she never visits me here.
“And that was the end of it. We—your father and I—agreed to stay together. We both felt guilty. Me for what I’d done and him for making the conditions ripe for a neglected, lonely wife to wander into another man’s arms.”
Joss closed her eyes. Her parents’ marriage had been a train wreck and not at all what she’d thought it was. Not even close. The ground that had once been so firm beneath her feet, so reliable, no longer was. Much of her own history, at least as far as she knew it, was a sham. “Jesus, Mama, I don’t even know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything. Just don’t hate me, Joss.”
“I don’t hate you.” It was hard not to judge, though. Why had her mother put herself in the position of straying in the first place? Why had she let her father neglect her the way he had? Why had they both been so weak as to let guilt propel them through more years of a lousy marriage? They were questions for another day.
“Good. Then do something for me.”
Joss looked into her mother’s eyes, which had grown fierce with resolve.
“Don’t end up like your father and me. When I say I want you to be happy, I mean it. I want you to have it all. And I don’t want you to let your career blind you to the rest of what’s important in life. Your job is not a substitute for love, Joss. It cannot take the place of a happy home, of a happy relationship. Trust me, I know that lesson all too well. And your father did too, even though it came too late.”
Joss let her mother’s words sink in one at a time in a gradual reckoning un
til something began to shift and give way inside her. Her parents had been human after all, had been something far less than perfect. Perfect, she realized, was a fallacy. She’d been striving all this time for something that didn’t exist and had been so damned afraid of falling short of perfection. She didn’t need to be perfect, because they certainly hadn’t been. They’d never taught her, never allowed her, to be less than perfect. Well. Maybe it was time for her to be her own woman now.
Her voice came out in a strangled whisper. “I don’t know how to do it, Mama.”
Madeline squeezed her hand. “That’s the thing, my dear. Nobody knows how. You just put one foot in front of the other and move forward, all while hoping for the best. The key is in taking a chance. And in realizing what you have.”
Joss thought about that. She knew what she had with Sarah, but was she brave enough to risk the heartbreak that might come with pursuing it? Was she brave enough to risk needing Sarah so much? And would Sarah even allow it?
Chapter Thirty-Three
Sarah clutched Roxi’s small, brown hand in hers and led her into the Frist Center for Visual Arts, Nashville’s hippest and most happening art gallery. The girl was growing stronger every day and had promised Sarah that she was up to spending a couple of hours at the gallery. They were here to see an exhibit on nineteenth-century American art, but Sarah had a funny feeling that Roxi would be drawn like a magnet to the Martin ArtQuest Gallery upstairs, where people of all ages could make use of interactive stations that allowed the participant to produce instant art. She’d ask Roxi and her mother later about signing the girl up for the gallery’s upcoming summer art camp for kids. If money was an issue, Sarah was happy to pay for it.
By Mutual Consent Page 24