Scattered Ashes

by Maria Rachel Hooley

  Taking a deep breath, she brushed through her hair and tried to put herself into some kind of order before she went and dressed Nick to head to her mom’s. While Margaret O’Roarke hadn’t felt much like talking lately, Nicole needing some advice about Michael, and she really didn’t want to talk to Sarah about this one. She knew Sarah would feel that the real reason she was having doubts had to do with Jordan which just wasn’t true. Whatever there might be between her and Jordan, she wasn’t allowing herself to dwell on it because it couldn’t go anywhere. He might be divorced, but she was in the middle of a marriage she refused to throw away by cheating. She just wished she could say the same of Michael.

  “Do you want some tea?” Margaret asked, pouring a cup for herself. Her hand wavered slightly, probably due to all the emotions that had been running high since Ed had died, and of course Margaret believed enough tea could fix anything no matter how difficult it was.

  “No, Mom. I’m fine.” She pulled a chair out and sat at the dining room table, waiting for her mom to join her. Nick peacefully slept in the basinet by her feet. She figured he’d wake in a couple of hours and demand to be fed.

  “So what’s all this urgency about?” Margaret carried her cup and saucer to the table and sat down. Then she snapped her fingers. “Oh, I should get the shortbread cookies I bought. Would you like some of those?”

  Nicole caught her mom’s arm. “No, Mom. I just need to talk to you. No cookies required.”

  “Well, maybe I’d like some cookies.” Margaret said and got up. “Sure you don’t want any tea?”

  Sensing that her mother wasn’t going to let go of the idea behind the tea, she finally relented. “Sure, why not? I’d love a cup of tea.” In reality, she hated tea. She’d just never had the heart to tell her mom that, not considering what a panacea Margaret seemed to think it was.

  “Now that’s a good girl.” Margaret set the cookies on a small plate and carried it to the table, putting it closer to Nicole than her own chair. It didn’t take much for Nicole to realize the cookies had been for her all along.

  “Can you sit, Mom?” Nicole asked, feeling like the pressure building inside of her was going to spew loose at any moment.

  “Just let me get your tea.” She pulled down a cup and quickly filled it. “Would you like anything with it?”

  “Just you.” Nicole patted the seat next to her.

  “Very well.” Margaret carried the cup and saucer to her daughter and set it front of her. “Now be careful. The tea is really hot.” Then she eased down in the chair, her trembling fingers gently curling around her own cup so she could take a sip. Then she asked, “So what seems to be the trouble, Nicole?”

  Where do I start? Nicole thought. “It’s Michael.”

  Margaret took a cookie. “What about him? He’s got a great job, and the two of you have a beautiful baby. What more could you ask for?”

  Someone who is actually here when I need him to be, Nicole thought. Still, she forced herself to take a deep breath. Although she knew her mom liked Michael, she kind of figured that Margaret would understand. Now she wasn’t so sure.

  “He’s never around, Mom. He’s always on the road with his job, and here lately I’ve begun to wonder if it’s more that.”

  Margaret took another sip and frowned while staring ahead, lost in her own thoughts. “What are you saying, Nicole?”

  Up until now Nicole hadn’t actually said anything. Saying it meant that it could be real, and that was the last thing she really wanted to think about. Yet she wasn’t stupid enough to believe the whole out-of-sight, out-of-mind thing. Averting her eyes, Nicole finally just plunged into the conversation. “I think he might be having an affair and that’s why he’s gone so much.”

  Although Margaret was taking another cookie, the moment she heard her daughter’s words, her fingers fumbled and she dropped it. “An affair? You really believe Michael could do that?”

  Studying her mom’s face, Nicole quickly realized that while she could believe it about Michael, Margaret was a bit more skeptical. Then again, her mom had a track record for always giving people the benefit of the doubt. It was like a compulsion with her. This only made Nicole second-guess her own thoughts more. Like she really needed that.

  “He’s gone a lot, Mom, especially during important times, times when he should be here.” She looked down at her hair, checking the ends to see if she needed to get a trim.

  “He has a job. That does limit how much he can be around, Nicole. You knew that when you married him.” Margaret picked up her tea cup and took a sip, carefully avoiding eye contact with her daughter.

  “Maybe I did know that he worked a lot,” she admitted. “But everybody has days they can take off when a wife is expecting a baby or someone in the family has died. Yet Michael never takes off. Our relationship is somewhere at the bottom of his list, and I hate it.”

  Unable to take just sitting anymore, she got up and paced the room. Her mother watched her walk around the room. “Wearing the carpet down isn’t going to make anything any better, and you know it.” She took another bite of cookie. “Have to talked to Michael about any of this?”

  Nicole whirled. “You mean have I accused him of cheating?”

  “Well, yes.”

  Nicole strode back to the table. “Mom, I might be nuts, but I’m not going to say anything unless I have proof. If I do find proof then I will definitely confront him.”

  Although Nicole was really angry about her husband’s less than attentive behavior, the thought of actually confronting him made her head spin. If she did catch him, it was going to mean starting divorce proceeding, and the last thing she wanted to be was a single mom with a son.

  Margaret stood and walked to her daughter so she could wrap her arm around her. “Baby, maybe you are just overreacting. Maybe Michael really is just working so hard and that’s why you never see him.”

  Although Nicole wanted to argue with her mom because her gut told her that Michael was cheating, she felt her resolve caving in as her mother wrapped her arms around her in a gesture of comfort. It would be so much easier for everyone if she were wrong. Maybe she was just really angry at him for missing both the birth of their son and her father’s funeral. Perhaps that was clouding everything.

  “It just feels like everything is off.”

  Her mother gave her one last reassuring squeeze and released her. “Your daddy just died, Nicole. Did you expect that everything would feel normal after that?” She nodded to the table where their cups sat. “Maybe we should get back to our tea. It’s getting cold after all.”

  Without waiting for Nicole to say anything, Margaret walked back to the table and sat to enjoy her tea. Nicole glanced at her mother, struck by how Margaret seemed to be so happy with the smallest things. That was one thing Nicole’s daddy had really loved about her mother. It made it so easy to get a smile out of her. Of course that just made Nicole wonder if she were just being too hard on her husband, that maybe considering his work schedule that she was expecting far too much from him. She just didn’t know.

  For the rest of the day Nicole drove around. She went the park, to the mall, to the arts and crafts store. Anywhere but home. Her last words to Michael had been cast out in anger, and she really didn’t feel any less angry at him. She had thought perhaps talking to her mom might ease the fury, but it hadn’t.

  As she carried the a small sack from the drug store, Nicole tried to think of another time they’d fought like this, but she couldn’t. Of course perhaps that might have been because Michael was gone so much. It took both people being present or at least corresponding over the phone to argue so it only stood to reason that perhaps the reason their marriage had been so peaceful was because of absence and distance not love and devotion.

  Nick cooed at her, another sign that even he was tired and had had a long day.

  She shook her head, glancing at the blackness around her. Even though she’d been gone for hours without ever telling Michael where sh
e headed, he hadn’t called to check on her. Was he having an affair? Or was he just so sure that he was right about everything that he never doubted their marriage could start to fall apart when both of them failed to nurture the life they’d forged together.

  Glancing upstairs, she saw that the light was off. Michael, a creature of habit, had probably gone to bed already, completely convinced that wherever Nicole and Nick were, they were both fine and would return home soon. How did anyone have that kind of faith. She worried non-stop whenever Michael traveled and yet he slept so soundly when she hadn’t come home by eleven.

  Nick started to fuss a little, a sure sign that he was probably hungry so once she slipped into the foyer, she headed into the kitchen to fix him a bottle to help him drift to sleep as she sat in the rocker, gently moving back and forth. It didn’t take long for him to drift away.

  A sudden yawn confirmed just how exhausted Nicole truly felt and how grateful she was to carry her son to the crib and gently lay him down. Standing there, she stared at his peaceful face, liking the way the moonlight poured down around him. He was so beautiful and amazing. Still, she thought, looking at the paper sack from the drug store, she still had one important thing to get done before she turned in.

  In the bathroom, she pulled out the lone content of the sack—a pregnancy test. Even looking at it made her grit her teeth. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to have another baby. She did. Nick was the brightest spot in her whole world. But right now things were so upended with Michael, and she felt adrift, especially at the thought of him having an affair.

  Granted, maybe her mother was right. Maybe it was just a lot of long hours that he worked keeping him away from home all the time, but Nicole didn’t feel that was right. When they had dated, Michael hadn’t had nearly the trouble with traveling as he did now.

  Still, she mused, one thing at a time. And the first thing was peeing on a stick. Once that was accomplished, she sat on the toilet and waited for her future to develop into one or two lines. At first she thought the results were negative, but in the last couple of seconds, a faint second line appeared. Nicole slumped against the back of the toilet and kept staring, as if that would make the second line disappear. She didn’t need a baby right now, not with all the stress between her and Michael.

  A soft knock at the door made Nicole jump.

  “Nicole? You in here?”

  Who else would it be? She thought savagely. “Just a minute. I’ll be right out.” She crammed the test, the box, and the directions back into the sack from which they’d come. Trust Michael to find her while she was doing a pregnancy test.

  A moment later she emerged, expecting to find Michael standing in the hallway. Instead, he had probably gone back to bed. Shaking her head, she tossed the bag into the trash and headed to her bedroom.

  “Hey, you,” Michael said in a sleepy voice as he held his arms wide. “C’mere.”

  Stress tensed her back and shoulders. Still, she forced herself to walk over to the bed and lie next to him, not nearly so comfortable with the dark and his proximity as she had once been. Not five minutes after he wrapped his body around hers, Michael drifted back to sleep. She could tell by his easy exchange of breath. She envied him that. Then again, who’s to say what Michael dreamed of.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Seven months later.

  Jordan had been lying in his apartment for the last hour. More than once, he’d started to drift off, only to jerk awake again. He could blame it on any number of things—trying to get settled, dreams about Alyssa and the divorce. Just plain stress, but somehow it seemed simpler than that, as though an answer was right in front of him. He just didn't know what it was.

  The air conditioner had kicked on and off, but the room was incredibly hot. Maybe that was why he just couldn’t get settled, no matter how he tried. Shaking his head in disgust, he threw the covers back and strode to the window. Peering out, he spotted a full moon low in the sky with clouds to either side.

  It was a beautiful night. Of course, Jordan definitely would have preferred to be sleeping right now because getting to work at eight tomorrow was going to suck. Then again, he hadn’t slept well for some time, probably not since he and Alyssa had finally split. Part of the world felt out of kilter. Maybe it was sleeping in a bed big enough for two people. Invariably, he kept waiting for someone to fill the other side, but it wasn’t going to happen--or maybe it was just losing both his wife and his best friend at the same time.

  It really didn’t matter what the reason had been.

  As he propped both hands on the sill and looked out into the moonlight, he heard his cell begin to play a Bon Jovi song—“Never Say Goodbye.” He glanced at the display: Nicole.

  He glanced at the clock. Two-thirty. Could it be things were off in her world as well? There was only one way to find out. He flipped the phone open. “Hello?”

  “Jordan?”

  He frowned at the sound of Nicole’s voice. It had been months since they’d spoken. “Hey, how are you?” he asked, stepping slowly back to the bed so he could ease himself down on the mattress.

  “I’m…okay.” Her voice wavered slightly, and he sensed that, whatever she might be, okay wasn’t it.

  “So what made you call at 2:30 in the morning?” He raked his fingers through his hair, unsure what to ask or how to ask it but sensing she wanted to talk just the same. The air conditioner kicked on again, and he glanced toward it.

  He heard her inhale sharply. “Oh, my God. I didn’t even realize it was that late. I am so sorry.”

  Without thought, he raised his hand to reassure her, even though he knew she couldn’t see it. “It’s all right. I was having trouble sleeping, anyway, so you didn’t wake me.” He took a deep breath. “So I guess I’d like to know what’s keeping you up this late.” Perhaps he could have said it better, but she had this way of always keeping him on the edge of everything, so he wasn’t sure what to say.

  “It’s just been kind of a rough day.” More wavering. Was she crying? He flopped back on the bed as his stomach tightened nervously.

  He swallowed hard, not sure how to proceed. “In what way?”

  “I should go.” She was definitely crying. He could hear it now. “I shouldn’t have even called.”

  “It’s okay,” he insisted. “Just breathe and talk to me. I don’t want you to hang up when you sound this upset.”

  A pause. He wondered if she would hang up, and if she didn’t, he hoped like hell he could figure out what he was doing.

  “It’s Michael. I think he’s…having an affair.”

  Jordan cringed. Trying to get his reply together, he rubbed his forehead. “What makes you think that, Nicole?”

  “He’s always gone--always, even when he should be here because it matters.” Her voice almost died away at the end, and Jordan could hear her sobbing openly.

  “Take a deep breath. Let’s think this through, okay?” He rose slowly and started to pace. “How much is he home?”

  “Not much--and he’s definitely not interested in me when he gets here.”

  Crap, Jordan thought. One was a coincidence. Both of them were kind of pointing to the same thing: an affair. Reluctantly he said, “Well, that does sound kind of suspicious. Is it possible he’s just tired?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.” Her tone shifted slightly, as though she were trying to regain control of her emotions.

  “Look, Nicole, I’m not trying to downplay what you’re feeling. There’s a chance you could be right. I just want you to approach this rationally, and considering how much emotion is invested in your marriage, that isn’t so easy to do.” He took a deep breath, hoping he’d said at least something right because he sure didn’t feel it.

  “Yeah, you’re definitely right. Maybe I’m the one who's too tired. Jordan?”

  “Yeah?” he asked, closing his eyes and trying to imaging her sitting there, her long, dark hair flowing around her face and wide eyes, luminous with pain and tears.
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br />   “Sarah and I were going to take a road trip this weekend. I wanted to know if you might be able to meet up with us.”

  Jordan’s shoulders sank, and he tried to tell himself not to even think about this because the last thing he needed to do was insert himself into the middle of a troubled marriage, and it was more than a little obvious by Nicole’s tears that her marriage was in trouble. He just didn’t know how much, and probably neither would she until it was all said and done.

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Nicole. It sounds like you’ve got some things going on, and the last thing I want to do is cause problems.”

  “We’re going to Sunset Beach, North Carolina. I’ve never been to the ocean.”

  Jordan smiled. “You’re going to love it. I’ve often thought of moving to one coast or another.”

  “Will you come?” she asked, her voice painfully soft, subdued by fresh tears. “We’re going to be staying at the Causeway Inn. I could book you a room.” Her tone was pleading, and he knew he shouldn’t accept, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.

  “Okay. I’ve got some time off coming. I’ll be there around five on Friday. Will that work?”

  “Yeah, it’ll be great.” For the first time since he’d picked up the phone, he thought he heard her smile which made him smile.

  A couple of moments later, he finally hung up, but only after he'd felt confident Nicole was in better spirits. He knew he should've said no, but he figured, what the hell? It wasn’t like they were going to be alone. They weren’t even going to be staying in the same room, and Sarah, her best friend, would be with them. What could go wrong like that?

  “You what?” Sarah asked as she pulled into the Causeway Inn’s parking lot. Her foot stuttered on the gas as though even it couldn’t believe what Nicole had just said. Sarah glared at her best friend, not feeling a bit sorry for her, even in this ninety-degree heat. Yeah, she was eight months pregnant. She had also done something unthinkably stupid.