The Stepmother

by Carrie Adams

  My world collapsed. Of course it hadn’t been James staring out over the countryside. He would never stand apart from his daughters, no matter what the occasion. I realized only at that moment how much I had been holding out for him to come back to me, how my calm acceptance of the situation was not courage but denial.

  I looked down at the little hands in mine and felt my eyeballs burn. I mustn’t cry, I mustn’t cry, I must, must, must not—

  “You okay?” asked Ben, suddenly at my side.

  I couldn’t speak, but shook my head.

  “Come with me,” he said, then smiled reassuringly at the girls. “See you back at the house for cake.”

  I didn’t dare look down.

  “Perfect timing,” said Ben. He pointed out the vicar. He was walking toward us with a—I squinted. It wasn’t…it couldn’t be…There really was a fucking jam jar in his hand. If my heart hadn’t been breaking, I might have laughed.

  “We’ll take that,” said Ben. He grabbed Dad’s ashes and led me away from the spectators into the garden. He thrust the jar into my hand. It was warm. “You can cry now,” he said.

  And I did.

  It felt as though someone had wrenched open my jaw, stretched my gullet, thrust their fist down my throat, and pulled out my soul. I hugged my father and Ben hugged me. Occasionally, there would be a break in the tears and I would stare out over the shrubs and rosebushes and, beyond them, the road that brought in the dead.

  “Your dad was a lucky man, you know, Tess. Not many people get to leave life as painlessly as that, after such a full life as that, with the people who loved him most by his side.”

  “I’m not crying about him,” I confessed, feeling worse because it was true, even though his remains were placed neatly on my lap. “It’s James. He’s not coming back.”

  “You were pretty sure of that on Saturday.”

  “I was pretending,” I said. “I don’t know what real love is, if it even exists, but I felt…I felt in my core that this was something…oh, I don’t know…”

  “Go on, Tess.”

  “This is hard to say to you.”

  “Why?”

  It took a long time to answer. Ben waited patiently.

  “I suppose because I thought you were it, and it turned out I was wrong about that, so what the hell do I know? I’m a fantasist. I cling to whatever’s on offer around me and make it fit my ideals.”

  “I don’t think that’s true, Tess.”

  “You give me too much credit. I threw myself at you and nearly made you wreck your marriage, which, as marriages go, is a pretty good one.”

  Ben prized my fingers off the glass jar and held them in his. “I’m not sure it can ever be either/or. I don’t even know if it should. I think you can love more than one person, just not in the same way exactly. Everything I said to you I meant and still mean. In many respects we’re so right for one another but no one’s perfect, and I don’t want you getting up close and personal with my imperfections. Sasha and I can bash it out. Our relationship gets better for the beating, because we end up with a deeper understanding of one another. It’s a lifetime’s work and it’s not always fun, but it’s good, it’s rewarding, and I do love her. You and I, we already have a lifetime in the bag. I’d rather keep it safe and occasionally think about where I would take it if a parallel universe were ever to open up.”

  I sniffed loudly. “You always make me feel better,” I said.

  “Not if I was your husband.”

  He was right, of course.

  “So tell me about what you feel for James.”

  I sat back on the bench and felt a copper plaque, which commemorated a previously departed soul, cool my shoulder blade. “I wanted to be a better person for him. I wanted to make him proud. I wanted to love his children. I wanted to bring out the best in him. He made me want to raise my game. He made me want to grow up. I feel steady with him, even-keeled. I feel like it just fits, you know, everything. Got to be honest, the kissing wasn’t bad.”

  “That’s better,” said Ben.

  “What?”

  “You’re smiling.”

  “It wasn’t perfect—how can it be when there’s such a lot of baggage to deal with—but I was looking forward to rising to the challenge. For both of us.” I put my head on Ben’s shoulder. He kissed my forehead. “And now he’s back with Bea, which part of me knows is the right place for him, but there’s a larger part of me that’s just devastated we weren’t given a chance to find out how good we could be.” I rolled the jam jar in my hands. “Because I think we would have been pretty darn good and I feel absolutely fucking shit about it.”

  Ben squeezed my shoulders.

  “We had potential,” I said, in a mock U.S.-agent accent.

  “You still do.”

  “Not with James, though.”

  “But you still do, Tess. Bundles of it. Don’t forget that.”

  Didn’t feel like that right then. It felt like I was back on the slag heap with all the other discarded goods that had “faulty” stamped on them. No one wanted me. Or no one wanted me enough. Which amounted to the same thing. I had been beaten by an overweight alcoholic ex-wife, even taking into account how much I had come to like her. That said it all, really. I had come so far and yet I was back at the beginning. I was old enough to know that I could cope on my own, I wouldn’t fall to pieces, I’d be all right in the end, but there was no doubt about it: life was a fraction easier when you had someone else on-side. It brought complications of its own, of course, but, still, the pod felt better with two.

  “I’d like to take Dad to the pub for a final pint before we head home. Would you join me?”

  “It’ll be my pleasure.”

  We stood up. “You know what, Ben? You should adopt those children. You’d never ask them to be the perfect kids you might have had, because you never wanted them and therefore they can never let you down. You’d be a wonderful father.”

  “Well,” said Ben, taking Dad out of my hands, “I know who I’d model myself on.”

  MY MOTHER SEEMED COMPLETELY UNFAZED that I had absconded with Dad, simply hugged me on my return and then we were separated again. I never made it out of the kitchen. People came and went, some I knew, some I didn’t, to tell me in a variety of ways what a grand man my dad had been. Maddy and Lulu were playing Scrabble. New rules. When it was Maddy’s turn, Lulu got out her replacement letters; when it was Lulu’s turn, Maddy went back to reading her book. Amber was outside with Caspar. Every time I looked out of the window, they had their tongues thrust down each other’s throats. It made me smile. An old man might have died, but there was kissing to do. Fran was miraculous and took over, with Honor, as hostess, leaving Mum and me to concentrate on snippets of a life we still didn’t know everything about.

  Four cups of tea and a lot of chat later, I was exhausted. Our low-key, under-the-wire funeral service had not been as we’d imagined. People from the village kept dropping in with sandwiches, bottles of wine, flowers, and kind words, but now I just wanted to be alone. With my core family, which, weirdly, seemed to include Peter, Honor, Amber, Lulu, and Maddy.

  Ben and Sasha left shortly after the last well-wisher. Funny how they knew when to arrive and when to leave me be. Mum took herself upstairs to lie on her bed alone. Fran took Caspar and the girls back to London. She was used to carting children around and didn’t want Peter and Honor having to make the extra journey when she could easily drop the three of them off en route. There were no complaints from Amber and Caspar.

  The girls kissed me good-bye and Amber gave me an audio book that Bea had especially wanted Mum to have. There was a card with Mum’s name on it in her handwriting. It felt strange to hold it, and I wondered when I’d see her daughters again. I had got so close to them recently, but now had lost all rights to them. I found it nearly unbearable to wave good-bye. I was watching my future, with all its complications, drive away. I would have been a good stepmother. I’d never felt childless before, but
I did right then. Peter and Honor, who had said nothing about James and Bea to me, asked if they could go upstairs to Mum’s room and give her the audio book.

  I found myself alone in the sitting room. For the first time since waking, I glanced at my watch. It was only four in the afternoon but it felt like midnight. Exhausted, I slumped into Dad’s chair. I don’t know how long I’d been sitting there when I heard a tap on the windowpane. It filtered through my semi-meditative state. I wanted to ignore it. We had no more room for flowers and I was all talked out. The tap came again. I forced myself to stand up and turned.

  “James?”

  He smiled through the glass.

  I got up and went to open the front door. Another trick of my mind?

  “Hello, Tessa,” he said.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  I rested my head on the door frame. “Not now, James. It’s been quite a day.”

  “Please,” he held out his hand, “just for a moment.”

  I stepped outside. The afternoon sun was still warm. I breathed in the clean air and felt a little revived. “You just missed the girls,” I said.

  “I know. I wanted to talk to you alone.”

  “Your parents are still here. It was nice of them to come.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t.”

  So am I. More than you will ever know. “It would have been difficult.”

  We walked away from the house, down the lane, and left the village behind.

  “I need to tell you what’s happened.”

  Wild daffodils sprang up along the verge. I hoped they’d give me courage. “Couldn’t it have waited?”

  “No,” said James.

  We reached the stile that led to the bridle path. On automatic pilot, I climbed over it and jumped down into the field. The solid earth beneath my feet brought me back to my senses. I didn’t want to walk the bridle path, high or low. It was too painful. James climbed over after me and started to walk. Then, realizing I was still leaning against the post, he came back. “I’m sorry I didn’t make it to the funeral. I should have been there.”

  “Where were you?” I asked, against my better judgment.

  “With Bea.”

  I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to respond to that. It was too soon to be pleased for them. I wasn’t superhuman.

  “We had a lot to talk about.”

  “Pity you couldn’t have done that when you were married.” Then you wouldn’t have been free to break my heart.

  “You’re right.”

  Little joy in being right. Hadn’t I been good enough? I’d sent him back to Bea, now I just wanted to be left alone.

  “The drinking is only the latest manifestation of Bea’s problems,” James said.

  No shit, I thought. The extra sixty pounds didn’t alert you to that?

  “Booze replaced food, food replaced work…”

  I was getting angry and, more than anything, upset. Hadn’t I told him all this? Now was not the time to talk about Bea. I’d just cremated my father! I let you go. Don’t ask me to make you feel better about which choice you’ve made. Not today, of all days.

  “We shouldn’t have let all our friends slip away. You need your mates when things get tough.”

  Yes. And right now I needed mine. “I’m sorry, James, I need to go home.” I turned to climb back over the stile. James held my wrist.

  “Wait.”

  “No.”

  “Please, Tessa. I’m not finished.” He ran his hand down my arm. I shuddered. I didn’t want to hear what he had to say. I didn’t want to know that he and Bea had a lot of ground to make up, that they had a marriage to reclaim and a family to put back together. I wanted to throw him onto the ground and make him mine again. Damn my treacherous libido. Damn my heart. I was good, but not that good. He held on to my hand. I looked at his strong fingers around mine and felt pain shoot through me.

  “I love Bea—”

  I pulled my hand away. “Please—” I begged, clambering up the stile. “I’m not as brave as you think. I mean, I am. But I’m not, too. God, I’m not making sense. I need to go before I do something I won’t be proud of. I can’t just switch this off—”

  “I don’t want you to switch anything off,” he said. “Let me finish.”

  “But you love her.”

  “Yes I do, but I’m not in love with her anymore.”

  I stepped back onto the grass. “You’re not?”

  “No. I was. Deeply. And it took me a long time to get over her, but I managed it. I never ever want to go through that again.”

  He was staring very intently at me. For a second there, I thought he might suggest a weird three-way thing between us all, but it was worse than that.

  “Oh God, don’t tell me, you need to be alone. You bloody wanker, fucking men, I don’t know why I ever—”

  “Tessa, be quiet.” He put his hand over my mouth. “I don’t want to be alone and I don’t want to remarry Bea. I’m in love with you. I’m sure we’ll make a thousand of our own mistakes, but I promise you, if you’ll have me, I won’t make the same mistakes again. Whether we have children or not.”

  I pulled his hand away. “You want more children?”

  “Only with you. And this time I’d get my hands very dirty.”

  “Oh James—” I threw myself at him, but he held me away from him.

  “Hang on.” James crouched down and put his knee on a highly potent spring stinging nettle. “Ow,” he said.

  I laughed, very nervously. Actually, it was more like a choked croak. He reached inside his jacket pocket and brought out a red Cartier box. I swallowed a pocket of air. “You’ve been busy.”

  “Didn’t want to get this wrong again.” He held it up and looked into my face. “Tessa King, I absolutely, completely, with every inch of me, love you. Will you please, please, please, marry me? For life?”

  This time there was no pause. He didn’t even get to open the box.

  “Ow,” I said, as I landed on the same nettle. Luckily, James knew exactly how to kiss it better.

  “Is that a yes?”

  I kissed him back, then smiled. “Damn right it’s a yes.”

  I RAN UPSTAIRS TO TELL my mother the news and show off my beautiful, perfect eternity ring. Eternity, not engagement. I liked that. I wasn’t engaged. I was committed. For life. I burst through the door without knocking, but my mother wasn’t there.

  “Down here,” called James.

  I ran back down, threw myself around James, kissed him, and went into the kitchen. I had to steady myself for a second. Peter was sitting at the table, the paper open in front of him and a glass of red wine in his hand. Just like Dad. I blinked.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Couldn’t take any more tea. It was open.”

  “It wasn’t that. You just reminded me of Dad.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No,” I said. “It was nice.” I recovered quickly. “Sod the tea. Let’s open champagne.”

  “Champagne?” asked Peter.

  I thrust out my left hand at him. Peter knocked the chair backward in his rush to congratulate us. “Couldn’t be happier,” he said. “I mean it. Couldn’t be happier.” I watched father and son embrace, and was glad that Dad had known Peter. And vice versa. It would make it easier for Peter to understand me. There was no champagne in our Bea-proof house, so James and Peter offered to go to the liquor store. A celebration was due, today of all days.

  “Should we get the girls back?” I asked.

  “No. We’ll tell them tomorrow. Tonight it’s just you and me.”

  I nodded. “Where are Mum and Honor?”

  “Decided to take some air before we headed home,” said Peter. “Come on, son. Let’s go before the screeching starts.”

  “Oi, I don’t screech,” I said, longing to screech.

  James walked over and put his hand over my heart. “I think your dad would have been pleased,” he said.

 
“He is.”

  “I love you, Tessa King.”

  “And I love you, James Kent.”

  “Honestly,” said Peter. “We’re only going around the corner.”

  We laughed stupidly, then laughed more stupidly because of our stupid laughing. Eventually, I pushed him out.

  I expected to find Mum and Honor sitting on the terrace, catching the last afternoon sun. But they weren’t there.

  “Mum! Hello!” I wandered out into the garden where Dad had whiled away so many hours. I bowed to the daffodils. They bowed back. “Mum!” I shouted, a little louder. They couldn’t have got far.

  “Over here,” came a voice.

  “Where?”

  “The other side of the orchard.”

  Beyond the garden there was a patch of wild meadow. Well, it was called wild, but it had been carefully trained. My parents had sown wildflower seeds and worked hard at keeping weeds at bay. It was a beautiful boundary between their garden and the rest of the countryside. No privet hedge for Mum and Dad.

  “Where?”

  “Here.”

  “I can’t see you.”

  Suddenly, a hand appeared above the long grass and waved at me.

  “Mum! You okay?” I panicked. Had she fallen? Where was Honor? Was that sobbing? I ran, ducking through the trees, into the grass, and nearly put my foot through my future mother-in-law’s naked sternum. “Bloody hell!” I exclaimed.

  “Hello, darling,” said Mum, as if it were perfectly normal to strip off and lie in the grass with her arms and legs spread out. They were giggling.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Saying good-bye,” said Mum, “and it feels wonderful.”

  “Aren’t you cold?”

  “The adrenaline’s kicked in,” said Mum. “I feel invincible.”