Jessie is solid to have around. She takes care of my basic needs and grooming with a no–nonsense approach that lets me spend a lot of time around her without wanting to kill her. She is surprisingly strong, too, in wheeling my injured ass around.
Sam takes me home with Jessie’s help, but there is no momentous change for us. He doesn’t move in and all is still not well between us. I lack the strength for several weeks to even contemplate our future together, or us, or the concept of forgiveness. It simply requires all my mental energy and physical compliance to get through the day and keep healing, while dealing with the stabbing, nagging pain.
There is no easy out for us. The first proclamation, the first decision, is perhaps the only easy part. Lying there after being shot, I felt really scared at having to face my own mortality. That made me realize I was more than willing to find a way to try and forgive Sam. But it was no magic elixir that could make me forget how we got here and what Sam did. Just because I chose to stick around and find a way to forgive him did not mean it could happen instantaneously.
He comes around often and sits with me. He helps me during the days, or evenings, when Jessie needs some relief. We never talk about shootings, or adultery, or broken hearts. We talk about the current TV shows, or places we’d like to go next summer, and sometimes, even the what ifs of future vacations. We avoid all the heavy, real discussions pertaining to our life at the time I was shot and shortly thereafter. We agree to a moratorium on all the anger, hurt, love and sadness we both feel. We are neutral for a while, which is what I need to heal more than anything. There are times when I catch Sam’s dark eyes studying me as if he is confused, or trying to work out a complicated scientific theorem. Perhaps he is seeking answers to the unanswerable. But for now, being together in small, quiet, ordinary ways feels better than anything else I can imagine. I don’t want to re–experience all those confusing feelings I felt leading up to the shooting. Nor am I ready to fully embrace us being together.
Sam keeps working at the youth center and improving his park. That spark I saw when he started his career after college is rekindled whenever he talks about the park.
I’m not sure when his job at BorderLine Solutions extinguished his old ambitions. I wonder, was it because of how it ended? Or because of me? Or the work? The politics? The pressure? The crazy long hours?
My heart sinks as I realize I honestly don’t know the answer. Not knowing hurts me, and I strangely blush as I think about it, even though I’m currently alone in my bed. It is embarrassing to realize how little I actually know about my husband. And how these last few years have turned us into no more than two strangers. Two roommates. Roommates who have sex, yes, but can’t discuss the very basics of our emotions, let alone all the deep ones.
I ask him one night, “When did we stop knowing each other?”
He clicks the remote on pause. We’re watching a new release. His gaze turns to me as the tears make my throat swell and my eyesight fuzzy. “I don’t know. I don’t have an exact date.”
“We have a lot of work to do. We’re together now mostly because of our history than for the people we are now.”
“Maybe. But I still feel the same love for you. What do you think we should do?”
“Start over. Maybe… maybe we should go to a counselor or something.”
“Couples counseling?” His eyebrows shoot up. I get his incredulity. Before I got shot, I would never have suggested such a thing for us. It’s not that I ridiculed it or thought it inappropriate for other people, I just didn’t believe I could ever benefit from seeing one. Even when I got depressed over mom’s death, I went to my regular doctor and he prescribed me antidepressant. I didn’t talk to anyone about it.
“Yeah… counseling,” I finally say without elaborating. I’m not sure what more to say, or where else we should start. I just don’t know how to do that. If there is any chance for us to move forward happily, we need help. I don’t want to spend the next year, or two, or ten trying to trust Sam, but failing. Or constantly throwing his one infidelity in his face if we fight, or disagree, or if he’s just ten minutes late. I know, I can already list the questions I want to ask him. That’s how rocky and precarious my trust of him is now. And I think he gets that.
He rubs my leg with his hand. It’s a reassuring rub. He hasn’t so much as looked at me with interest in his eyes. He’s worried about me. A lot. It’s an odd dynamic for us. “I think… yeah. That’s a good place to start. Better than anything else you or I can think of.”
So with that decided, two months later, I take a list from my insurance company for our area and pick three, whom I call and make appointments with. We agree on the third one we see, a woman in her late thirties. She is attractive, and has a calm, cool, easy–going personality. The first time I meet her, I am nervous. I don’t like discussing my feelings, let alone, voicing them out loud to a stranger. I don’t get how this can work. Sam’s more open to it than I am. I can tell by the way he sits there with his legs splayed, his arms at his sides, and his hands resting casually and at ease on his thighs.
But the woman doesn’t talk like a science book. She’s totally real and accessible. The first time she swears during a session while agreeing with something I say, I smile, and unfold my arms. I feel finally ready to give her a chance. Counseling is not how I thought it would be. It’s good. Mainly, it’s just talking. She just makes sure we don’t get off track. She gives us little assignments too. We start pretty small, since we have a lot of years to wade through. There is a lot of hurt, anger, betrayal and mistrust. The biggest surprise, however, is that those feelings are coming from both of us, not just from me over Sam’s cheating. I have some reconciliation to do, and now, at least, I know what I failed to do for him.
For the first time, we finally sit down and start to truly hear each other. For the first time, I allow him to talk to me, and make myself listen to him. For the first time, we begin to understand how we could love each other so much and hurt each other so deeply, without even realizing we were doing that, much less, intending to.
I sometimes wonder if I had not been shot, would I have ever taken such steps to try and learn how to forgive Sam? I can’t say for sure. In all honesty, it was the worst and the best thing that ever happened to me. Kind of like his cheating. If he never cheated, I wonder if I would have ever looked inside myself deeply enough to realize what I did to him. I highly doubt it. We might not have ever even realized how unhappy we were together and how little we communicated. We might never have decided to start over one day; or see what we could build together now that we know how terrible it is to nearly lose everything and each other… twice.
Epilogue
Natalie
We spend almost three years in weekly counseling. We don’t live together the first year. We date. And it’s for real. We go out to dinner on planned dates before eventually adding more casual nights where we might spend the evenings at my place or his. Sex, again, has never been a problem, but neither is it our escape this time. There isn’t as much sex as there is talking. Talking, connecting and getting to know one another is not an easy process. Not when there are such massive stones we have to roll uphill still awaiting us. The biggest issues for both of us? Children and infidelity.
During those years, I go back to Ellensburg a couple of times a year and the Hendrickses visit me numerous times. Sometimes it’s just one sister, and other times, more than one of them. Jessie too comes out. About a year after I was shot, she and Christina come to see me together. In that time, Christina and I slowly grow closer, until I want to tell her more about Sam and me. I finally tell her about Sam’s cheating and how we’re still trying to find a way to move past it. I also mention our concerns and different opinions about my infertility.
“Do you want to have kids? Someday, I mean? Do you want that to be a possibility?” Christina asks me one day.
“I don’t know,” I shrug. Then, in the new spirit of honesty and sharing, I add, “I think
I’d like the option to decide either way, without being told what to do. Sam would like to have children. I guess, I’d like to decide together what we should do. I wish it all didn’t have to be so hard.”
Christina stares at me closely. We’re eating lunch at a quaint, little café that overlooks the harbor. She replies in a quiet, mature, reasonable tone, “I could be a surrogate for you, if your eggs aren’t viable. If that’s something you’d ever consider. I’d be willing to help you if that was an option. I did some research into it…”
She goes on to explain herself as my mind kind of internally combusts. Is she for real? Jessie is with us, and her head whips around to study Christina too. She’s been casually perusing the moving crowds outside the restaurant. She watches and listens to us. Finally, she says softly, “You don’t know what you’re saying, Christina.”
Mother Bear Jessie is out, and doesn’t like Christina’s offer to me. Neither do I. It’s too odd to even consider seriously.
“I know what I’m proposing. I told you already, I looked into it.”
“You have no idea how hard it is to give away a baby,” Jessie interjects and her tone is hard as iron.
“I don’t claim to. But it wouldn’t be anything like it was for you. I would know from the start it’s not really mine to keep.”
“It still will feel like yours.”
I hold up my hand. “There’s no reason to even have this conversation. I highly doubt I’m going to ask my little sister to carry my child!”
Christina snaps her mouth shut. Jessie contemplates me and sighs heavily. “No, but maybe you should remember your long-lost mother who gave you away. Take the advice of someone who knows how to have a baby and not keep it.”
I stare at her. I can’t speak. She can’t be for real, but somehow, the solemnity in her voice tells me how serious she is. I tilt my head and shake it in refusal. “No.”
Jessie nods and continues talking, “It’s not an easy thing to do. But I can do it, Natalie. Like it or not, I’m capable of handling that. I’d be willing to do it. I’d consider it the first real thing I could give to you. It would actually kind of be an honor, and somehow, maybe it could seal our relationship more than anything else.”
I hold her gaze. “I haven’t even tried infertility treatments yet. There are a lot of things for us to try before I give up and have to take the surrogacy route.”
“I get that. But if you ever need it, I’ll do it. Gladly. Happily.”
“What would Will say to that?”
Jessie smiles that knowing little Mom smile of hers. “He’d say, what can I do to help you?”
I reach across the table and touch her hand. “Thank you.” It’s all I can manage to choke out, and it’s an inadequate response to the gift she’s so willing and eager to suggest… for me. I wouldn’t feel so emotional if I didn’t clearly understand she means it. I think this gesture, her volunteering to do that for me, already changes our relationship. It’s a unique gift that few women would offer another. And it only could happen between people who are deeply connected.
I don’t actually take her up on it, but the option, the possibility, the “Plan B,” and her willingness to help me fills me with the kind of comfort that only my own mother used to provide. I talk about it privately with my counselor, and eventually, discuss it with Sam. This is a subject we must tackle, for he is right. Previously, it was something I just decided without even consulting him. My theory that there is no compromise when it comes to having kids is no kind way to treat a spouse.
I can’t just shut down, or decide that issue for Sam. I have learned how to talk to him and with him. Even if I don’t change my mind, we still have to work it out together. I still have to hear him. I have to find ways to make sure our decision, whatever it is, isn’t all about me.
It is another year after we move back in together that I think we start to actually share a healthy, functioning, and most of all, trusting relationship. It is only then when I seriously contemplate the question: should we try to find a way to have a child?
And when we do start to investigate the subject, it is very different from the last time. It isn’t adversarial. It is about us, together, discussing all the options. It helps, of course, to only talk about it during counseling, with our buffer who keeps the subject on point and refuses to let us move outside of it. I keep the surrogate option to myself for a few conversations. When I finally express it, it’s because I realize how often I keep things inside me. Sam could not live with me before because I refused to let him inside my head, or my heart, in any real or lasting way. I kept out the good stuff along with the bad. Now? I need to let him in. I need to be honest even when it isn’t all that easy.
I never believed after Sam cheated on me, that I’d wind up discussing the possibility of having a child with him three years later. But I did.
And we do.
I guess, knowing me, it shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise. Once I decided to become a mother, there is no end to what I’ll do to make it happen. I become fierce in my quest to have a baby. We try fertility drugs for a while. And in vitro. All the while, we also start the adoption process. Two years later, we adopt a little boy who is half Latino and half African American. I guess it comes as more of a shock to me than anyone else, when I fall in love with the then seven–year–old little boy unconditionally. Having gone through foster care and several group homes by the time he finds us, he needs a lot of love and help.
All of which I am burning to provide for him.
I was so afraid to adopt at first. It was always an issue in my life. But when I fall in love with my son, only then do I truly understand that I do not care how my children enter my life, I love them wholeheartedly as mine. Just as my mother and father always loved me. We end up with two sons, both adopted.
Once we adopt the two boys, however, we need to make a better living and Sam decides to leave the youth center and go back into the corporate world. Sam gets hired at a large firm. Although it is much like BorderLine Solutions, of course, there is no Jayden Hall, or his father reigning supreme.
Sam keeps his park open, however, and we often spend our weekends there as a family, playing sports. Both of our boys soon become avid soccer and baseball players.
With some chagrin from both of us, we move away from the city, to be nearer to his parents. We buy a house with a large yard. I still work as a patrol officer, but after moving into a far less urban area, there are subsequently fewer occurrences of violent crimes.
We are so normal and average now, doing what most people do in their thirties, but we don’t forget the most important thing: each other.
There is not another time when we don’t take care of each other. Falling in love was the easy part. Sustaining it is a whole different proposition and requires an entirely different set of skills. Skills, it turns out, that neither of us had initially. We had to learn them together and with professional help. Where once I may have called it a failing, now, I think it’s the healthiest thing we ever did together.
I’ll never say I’m glad Sam cheated, even though strangely, that was what saved us. It also led me to a strange state and a small city where I met strangers who have since become my family. My sisters.
But not my mother.
Jessie remains an enigma in my life. We are friends. We care for each other. We know each other. And I dare say, we love each other. Jessie gave me the gift of life. She also gave me a mother–figure who worried and wondered about me, when my own was long dead and absent from my life. In the end, we never quite became mother and daughter. She, however, became the grandmother of my two boys. And that is so from the very start. Neither she nor Will discriminates in their unconditional love for them, even later when their three daughters give them more grandkids. But my boys are their first grandchildren and naturally become a part of their lives… as well as Sam’s and mine, from then on.
I finally know what to call Jessie: my boys’ grandmother, and foreve
r, one of my closest friends.
###
Dear Reader,
I would be so grateful if you took a few moments to leave a review of Natalie. It really helps expand an author’s audience, and we really do appreciate the effort.
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Leanne Davis
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I’m pretty sure I’m adopted, no matter how many times my parents claim otherwise. My sisters are smart, successful and athletic. Me? Not so much. I can’t concentrate; and I can’t perform well in school or on a job. I’m pretty sure I’m not even all that smart. I really don’t know exactly what is wrong with me, but something definitely is. Everything is unsettled inside my head while all my sisters seem to have everything all figured out.
Leanne Davis - Natalie (Daughters Series #2) Page 27