by Robin Wells
The most shameful thing about my behavior is that I was furious he picked that particular time to turn over a new leaf. He stopped drinking, he was an attentive father, he read the Bible. He was good with the children, considerate toward me, and did chores around the house without me even asking. The nicer, the more godly, the kindlier, the more thoughtful he was, the angrier I got. I was so, so angry—white-hot, blue-flame angry.
Everyone thought I was cantankerous because I was grieving the baby. Mother insisted that Dr. Henry come see me. I was mortified. All the lies about why I hadn’t seen him—his questions about my problems with the baby—why, I didn’t know what to say. He thought I was having another nervous breakdown.
And maybe I was, because that’s when I wrote to Joe. I couldn’t keep all the secrets inside anymore. They were just eating me up, just gnawing at me day and night.
I wanted to telephone, but I couldn’t. Long-distance calls went through a local operator, and the whole town would know my business. Same thing with sending a telegram. So one day, while Charlie was at work and the kids were playing at my friend Marie’s house, I sat down and wrote a letter. I told him how I couldn’t bear for Charlie to touch me, how just looking at him made me sick. How I dreamed about just not waking up, but I didn’t want to leave my children motherless.
I begged him to please come and get me before I lost my mind.
Well, the phone rang before I finished. It was my neighbor Marie—Becky had fallen and cut her head, and it looked like she might need stitches. Well, I dashed out the door without another thought. I just dashed.
And it ended up that, yes, she needed stitches. And by the time I got her to the doctor’s office, and we’d been seen, and all the stitching and instructions and everything were taken care of, it was supper time. I panicked, because I remembered I’d left the letter out. I hurried home, but it was too late. Charlie had already seen it.
I knew, because the letter was gone. So was the bottle of scotch hidden in the back of the kitchen cabinet—and the cabinet was open. There was no sign of Charlie, which meant he must be out drinking.
I thought about what I had written—the cruel things I’d said, the vile way I’d portrayed him, the revulsion I’d expressed—and, well, I just felt heartsick. Ashamed. Horrified. Horrible. The truth is, Charlie’s biggest flaw was loving me, and I’d turned him into a monster. I was literally nauseous at the thought of how much that letter must have had hurt him.
But on another level, I felt something else: relieved.
He’d have to agree to a divorce now. He couldn’t want to live with a wife who felt the way I did. He just couldn’t. I sagged into my chair. I was tired, so tired of hiding my feelings. So tired of running away. It was time to confront this thing, head-on.
I put the children to bed—I had to cut Becky’s shirt off her little body, because it pulled on over her head, and there was another round of tears because it was her favorite shirt. This last crying spell left me completely exhausted, but I was too upset to go to bed. Charlie was out drinking, and there was no telling what he would do when he got home.
I heard a knock on the door. I saw police lights outside. My first thought was, They’re bringing Charlie home because he passed out drunk.
But it was John Carter, an officer who was a couple of years behind me in school, and he was alone. He pulled off his cap and twisted it in his hands in a way that made my stomach pull back against my spine. “Mrs. McCauley, I hate to tell you this, but Charlie’s been in an accident.”
The breath whooshed out of my lungs. Every scrap of air seemed to leave the cells of my body.
“He’s at the parish hospital.”
“Is he . . .”
My heart was in my throat, gagging me with terror.
“He’s alive, but it’s bad, ma’am. He ran into the bridge culvert.”
“Was anyone else . . .”
He misinterpreted what I was going to ask. Apparently he’d had other experiences with drinking men, men who’d been found in situations hard to explain to their wives. “Oh, he was all by himself, ma’am. Completely alone. But . . . he’d been drinking.”
“I—I see.” That certainly wasn’t news. I put my hand to my throat. “Was any other car involved?”
“Not that we know of. Someone might have run him off the road, or maybe he swerved to avoid an animal. Or maybe he just lost control of the car.” He looked down at it his boots. “He smelled awful strong of whiskey.”
Oh, dear Lord—did he do it on purpose? The thought made my legs turn to rubber. I clutched the doorframe.
“You okay, ma’am?”
“I think maybe I should sit down.”
He came into the room and helped me get settled in a chair. I ran my hand over my face. He brought me a damp towel from the kitchen, which I put over my eyes for a moment.
“Is there someone you want me to call?” he asked.
His mother. And my mother. They both needed to be called. I pulled off the towel and shook my head. “I’ll do it.”
I moved as if in a stupor. I’m not sure if I thanked him. I called—oh, thank God for family!—my mother first. She called Charlie’s parents, then came over to stay with the kids, and my father drove me to the hospital.
The whole time, I was making bargains with God. Please, God. Let him live. I’ll do anything. I’ll be good. I’ll be a faithful, loving wife till death do us part. I will. I swear I will.
Charlie was in surgery when I got there. The doctors told me he’d broken both legs and his back, and he had chest injuries and head injuries. If he made it through surgery and the long recovery period that was to follow, he might be paralyzed from the waist down. They warned that he might not remember the events of the accident or even a day or two before. I prayed he wouldn’t remember the letter.
But he did. They allowed me to be with him in the recovery room. As soon as he came to, he opened his eyes, looked at me, and closed them again. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.
“For what?”
“For not getting out of your way.”
Well, guilt just opened its enormous jaws and swallowed me whole. Let me tell you a thing or two about guilt. It’s a monstrous glutton with shark teeth, rows and rows of teeth that cut and cut and just keep on cutting. There’s no smooth esophagus you eventually slide down—just cuts and more cuts, and then you’re in the belly of the beast, all hacked up and bathed in acid. And just when you think it might be easing up, that ugly monster spits you out, then bites down and starts chewing on you all over again.
I vowed to turn over a new leaf. I would become a better person. An upright person. A person of total integrity. I would do what the boys in the war had done: I would put one foot in front of the other and keep on marching, keep on slogging. The only way out is through. I realized now, when it was maybe too late, that the key to life was just that simple. Wherever you are, whatever situation you’re in, the only way out is through.
I stayed at the hospital the next few days, while Charlie’s life hung in the balance. He didn’t speak again, and I began to hope I’d misunderstood him or misinterpreted his words. Maybe he wouldn’t remember the letter after all.
But when I finally went home to sleep at the insistence of Mother, I found the letter and a note from Charlie tucked under my pillow.
Can’t live without you.
Funny, I thought. Because I was finding it nigh near impossible to live with myself.
46
matt
I had to leave Friday just as Miss Addie was ending her story—the children came home, then I had to take them to a friend’s birthday party at a skating rink in Hammond. On Saturday morning I had to go to my office in Baton Rouge for a deposition, so I didn’t get a chance to see Hope again until the next afternoon.
I called her on the way back to Wedding Tree, and she met me at her grandmother’s back
yard swing while Miss Addie took a nap.
“Where are the girls?”she asked, handing me a glass of iced tea.
“Jillian took them to the Global Wildlife Preserve.” I put my arm around her shoulders and set the swing in motion. “So I’ve been dying to know—what happened with your grandfather after the accident?”
“He could never walk again. My mother and Uncle Eddie grew up with a father in a wheelchair.”
“Wow. That had to be pretty limiting back then.”
“It was, but Gran built a ramp on the back of the house and added the downstairs bedroom. The lumberyard built a ramp, too, and as soon as he was able, Granddad went to the store every day.”
“What about the store in Mississippi?”
“It was sold before it even opened.” Hope took a sip of tea. “When Mom and Uncle Eddie started school, Gran began taking photographs professionally. She started with a friend’s wedding, then her reputation spread. Without really trying, she had more business than she could handle.”
“What about their marriage?” I was wondering if they still had sex. After the accident, could Charlie even get it up? And even if he physically could, would he want to, after finding out she secretly despised him? But those were guy questions, too crass to ask—and none of them were my business anyway. Which didn’t keep me from being curious as hell.
“Mom said they had separate bedrooms.” Hope tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “She said a woman from the next town came in to give Granddad a massage once or twice a week. Mom once said she always suspected something more was going on between Charlie and the masseuse.”
“Oh, wow.”
“Yeah.” The swing creaked in silence for a moment. “Here’s the weird part: Gran hired her.”
“No kidding?”
“That’s what Mom told me. It was someone they’d known in high school.”
I rubbed her arm and pondered that. It was a little shocking, but at the same time, it was actually very kind and compassionate. Loving, even, under the circumstances.
A strand of Hope’s hair blew across my cheek, and the memory of her hair on my face when we were lying in the garden shed hit me straight in the groin.
“How ’bout I give you a massage?”
“Now?”
“Jillian texted five minutes ago and they’re still at Global Wildlife. No one will be at my house for at least an hour.”
“And Gran’s sound asleep.” Hope put her feet on the ground, stopping the swing, and gave me a sexy smile. “What are we waiting for?”
47
hope
I had an idea where we were going, but it wasn’t until we hit the top of the stairs and he turned left that I knew for sure. “Are you sure it’s okay for me to be in here?” I asked as he pulled me into his bedroom, where soft afternoon light filtered through the windows. “There’s that spare room down the hall, or . . .”
“This is fine,” he said, closing the door and locking it before drawing me into an embrace.
“You were pretty upset the first time I was in here.”
“I overreacted.”
“To what, exactly?” I’d been thinking and thinking about it, and I’d wondered if he’d been upset that I’d somehow defiled Christine’s memory. He headed to the bed and pulled down the comforter. Was this the bed that he’d shared with Christine? The thought creeped me out a little.
“To the fact I was attracted to you.”
My heart lifted like a butterfly. “You were?”
“From the moment I saw you.” He sat down on the white sheets. “But I have to say, I thought you were a little . . . odd.”
“Is that a polite term for cray-cray?”
“Well, you were wearing a fairy costume.”
“It was my grandmother’s nightgown.”
He lifted a teasing eyebrow. “Like that’s completely normal?”
I laughed and sat down beside him.
He lifted a strand of my hair. “I just thought you were, as Zoey would say, in’propriate. And when the girls came home, I had a mental image of them telling their preschool teacher that they’d seen the pretty neighbor lady in Daddy’s bedroom, and having it turn into this whole small-town gossip thing.” He pulled me down until we were lying side by side. “And the thing is, I wanted it to be true.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. But I didn’t want to want you.”
“But you couldn’t help yourself, because I’m so amazingly irresistible . . . even though you thought I was deranged.”
“That’s it, exactly.” His eyes were tender and amused.
“I have to ask . . . is this the bed where you and Christine . . . ?”
He closed his eyes. “Conceived Zoey and Sophie? No. I got a new bed after she died in that one.”
“Oh!” My heart lurched. “Oh, I’m so sorry! Oh, wow . . .” I put my hands over my face. What was wrong with me, asking a question like that? “Oh, Matt—I feel terrible. That was completely tactless and thoughtless. I don’t know what I was thinking! I wasn’t thinking, that’s the problem, and now I’ve gone and spoiled the moment, and you probably wish . . . I bet you want me to just leave.” I started to stand up.
He grabbed my hand and pulled me back on the bed. “What I want, Hope, is for you to shut up and kiss me.” He grinned at me. “Did I mention you’re a bit odd?”
The terrible tightness in my gut unfurled. I grinned back and let him pull me down, and suddenly his lips were covering mine, and my motormouth-itis came to an abrupt halt, because I was too busy getting thoroughly kissed.
The kiss moved to my neck, then Matt pulled off my shirt, and then my bra.
His finger traced a circle around one nipple, then his mouth followed. Heat shot right to my groin.
“I want to see you naked,” he whispered close to my ear.
“Me, too. I mean, I want to see you that way—not myself. I see myself naked all the time,” I babbled.
He smiled. “Lucky you.”
He stood up, stripped off his shirt, kicked off his shoes, then pulled off his pants and underwear in a single move. My breath hitched. I’d felt his six-pack the night in the shed, but seeing it was a whole other thing. It was hard to keep my eyes above his waist, though, because he was massively aroused.
The mattress dipped beneath me as he sank down on it, pulled off my skirt, then wrangled my panties down my legs.
“Oh, man—you’re so beautiful.”
I started to protest that no, my breasts were too small and I hadn’t gone to a gym in ages, but those thoughts were cut off by the smoky heat in his eyes. He obviously liked what he was seeing—and I was so turned on by everything about him that my lady parts felt like they were melting.
He stretched over me and kissed me. I was so aroused I nearly forgot to breathe, but breathing didn’t seem like a necessity. All that seemed absolutely essential was the continued touch of his hands on my body, the feel of his naked skin against mine, the heat of his erection pressing hard against my belly. He kissed a trail down my stomach, lower and lower until he reached the part of me that throbbed for his touch. His fingers and his tongue worked magic.
“Now,” I gasped at length. “I need you now.”
He raised up and pulled a foil packet out of the bedside drawer. A moment later, he hovered over me, taking his time, the thick tip of him easing in, then pulling out until I ached with wanting, with longing, with raw needy need.
And then he drove home, filling me completely. I came on that first thrust, I was so ready—and then it started to build all over again, that delicious pulsating desire, spiraling higher and higher. This time he came with me.
When I finally regained the ability to think, I realized I was crying.
He brushed my cheek with his thumb. “Hey—are you okay?”
“Yeah.
Just relieved. Or maybe I mean released. Or both.”
“Me, too.” He grinned down at me. “In fact, I probably should be bawling like a baby.”
I smiled up. “Please don’t.”
“Okay,” he said, and kissed me instead.
48
matt
The girls burst through the front door a little after five o’clock. “Daddy! Daddy! We had the bestest day ever!”
Hope had left just ten minutes earlier. The day rated pretty high on my great-day scale, too. I came out of the kitchen, where I had just grabbed a beer.
“I got to feed the animals!” Zoey said.
“Me, too,” said Sophie, not about to be outdone.
I knelt, scooped them both up in my arms, and carried them to the sofa. They were getting to be more than an armful, I thought wistfully.
The girls fought for space on my lap. Jillian stood in the doorway, smiling.
“So what did you do?” I asked.
“Well, first, we drove and drove and drove,” Zoey related. She had a habit of giving factual timeline narratives. “And then we got out, and there were all these ducks.”
“And geese,” Sophie added.
“And other birds. And we bought some food, and fed them.”
“And one of the geese tried to bite me!”
“And then we all got into a covered wagon with an engine with some other families, and we went on a ride.”
“A safari!”
“Yeah. There were all kinds of animals.”
“An’ some of them are dangerous.”
Zoey looked down her nose at her little sister. “You mean endangered. They weren’t dangerous.”
“’Cept for the zebras. They’re mean, so you can’t feed them or ride them,” Sophie announced.
“They had camels, and a baby giraffe who ate right out of my bucket!” Sophie said. “I got to pet his head! He has the softest lips.”
“Yeah.” Zoey nodded. “Like Mommy’s used to be.”
A dagger went right through my heart. Could she even remember her mother? I wondered.