by Amy Andrews
SIX weeks later Tess was just about cried out—talk about the straw that broke the camel’s back!
She’d cried big, fat, silent tears for twenty-four hours solid on her plane trip home. The air hostesses had been so concerned about her that three of them had surrounded her outside the loos about four hours into the flight and asked her what was wrong.
‘My husband cheated on me,’ she’d told them, because it had been easier than the whole truth and it had hurt too much to keep it inside any longer.
Before she’d known it and in a startling display of female solidarity, she’d been whisked into business class for a little more privacy. Silent tears had rolled down her face as she’d thanked them.
She’d cried louder tears in her car, hurtling down the motorway towards Devon. She’d cried herself to sleep, she cried when she woke up and she cried at work. Hell, she’d even cried at the supermarket yesterday when a baby sitting in a trolley had smiled a dribbly smile at her.
She doubted she’d ever cried this much in her life. Not even in those first two months after Ryan had died.
Even sitting here right now snuggled in her pink polar fleece dressing gown in front of her fire on a chilly November night cradling a photo of Ryan in her lap, she could feel the tears pricking at her eyes again.
She shut them. ‘Please, no,’ she whispered. ‘No more.’
The phone rang and her eyes flew open. The muscles in her neck tensed as they’d formed the habit of doing every time it rang since she’d returned home. Her answering machine was full of messages from Fletch, who had taken to ringing several times a day for the first couple of weeks.
Wanting to talk. Wanting her to understand. Wanting her to come back.
The last time had been two weeks ago when he’d rung to tell her that Trish had given birth to a bouncing baby girl and he was an uncle again. Her heart had swelled with joy and happiness for Trish. She’d been standing right beside the phone, listening to the message as he’d left it, and she’d almost picked it up that time to share the occasion with him.
But she’d gone to bed and cried instead.
The answering machine clicked in and the tension oozed from her muscles as old Dulcie Frobisher, the secretary of the historical society, informed her she was sending Peter around with some jam she’d made because she knew how much Tess enjoyed it.
Tess rolled her eyes at the message, knowing that Dulcie also thought that her great-nephew, who after years of frustrating bachelorhood had finally come out of the closet three months ago, just needed the love of a good woman and that Tess, being practically the only single woman in town in his age bracket, filled that criterion.
Tess was used to well-intentioned villagers trying to fix her up with their sons, grandsons, nephews and widowed neighbours.
She looked down at her wedding ring, which seemed to mock her in the firelight. It may have been a force field to keep men at bay but she’d always believed in what it had represented.
Love, commitment, fidelity.
A knock interrupted her thoughts and she gave an inward groan. Dulcie must have nagged the poor man into action immediately because she just didn’t get visitors at eight o’clock at night. She grimaced as she stood, mentally preparing herself for the encounter. She flipped on the outside light as she pulled open the door.
‘Hi, Tess,’ Pete said apologetically, holding out three jars of jam.
‘Hi, Pete, thanks. Dulcie just called.’ She took the jars from him. ‘Do you want to come in?’ she asked, hoping sincerely that he didn’t.
He shook his head. ‘No, I’d better get back. I have some pots firing.’
But he seemed reluctant to leave so she asked, ‘How are things?’
‘About the same.’ He sighed.
‘You know, you really need to go and live in London for a while, Pete,’ she said gently. ‘Gay men are pretty thin on the ground in this neck of the woods.’
He nodded glumly. ‘I know. But I can’t leave Dulcie. Or the art gallery. And I’m sure I’m way too country bumpkin for the big smoke.’
Tess put her hand on his arm. ‘You’re a nice man, Pete, and very nice-looking to boot. You’re smart and articulate and arty. Any man would be lucky to have you.’
Pete gave a half-laugh. ‘You’re good for my ego, Tess,’ he said as he leaned in to kiss her on the cheek and sweep her into a hug.
It felt good to relax in a man’s arms with no expectations and she hung on for a little longer than she normally would until a sudden harsh cough behind them had them both leaping apart guiltily.
It was Fletch.
Standing on her garden path, his strong, beautiful jaw clenched tight, his hands jammed in the pockets of a warm, heavy coat.
He looked from Pete to Tess then back to Pete again.
‘Hello, Tess.’
Tess blinked. ‘Fletcher?’
Fletch threw a steely glare towards Peter. ‘Yes.’
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked dazedly.
‘We need to talk,’ he said tersely, his gaze not leaving the other man.
Peter took one look at the magnificent, tight-lipped guy staring him down and concluded that if this was a London man, then he truly did need to get there pronto. ‘Is everything okay?’ he asked Tess, dragging his eyes away from the stranger. ‘Do you want me to stay?’
Tess could see Fletch bristling and came out of her daze, stepping in before things got any more tense. She introduced the two men—Fletch as her ex-husband and Peter as a jam-bearing friend—and assured a rather disappointed Peter she’d be fine.
She saw Fletch through Peter’s eyes and sympathised. He cut a dashing figure in his heavy wool coat, which only seemed to emphasise the power of his chest, the breadth of his shoulders. The alcove light caught the streaks of grey at his temples that had been tousled to salon perfection by the brisk
November breeze. The three-day growth looked shaggy and touchable. He looked tired. But solid and warm and sexy.
Very, very sexy.
‘Tell Dulcie I’ll ring her tomorrow,’ Tess said as Peter turned to go.
Fletch watched the man retreat down the path and out the gate, giving Tess a wave as he turned left down the street. Even though he was obviously gay, Fletch felt a spike of jealousy. He didn’t want any man’s hands around her unless they were his!
He turned back and looked at her, capturing her gaze. She looked so good in her pink polar fleece he wanted to sweep her up in his arms and bury his face in it. But it was freezing out here and there were things to say.
‘Can I come in?’
This was not the way that Tess had expected her day would finish up. She didn’t usually hug gay men on her doorstep or have her ex-husband turn up out of the blue.
But, then, not a lot had been normal lately.
‘Sure,’ she said, standing aside.
He brushed past her, ducking his head to fit under her low cottage doorway, and every cell in her body went onto high alert. He shrugged out of his coat to reveal charcoal slacks and a round-necked, fine-knit sweater in navy blue, which clung to every muscle in his chest, and those same recalcitrant cells went into overdrive.
But the full lights inside accentuated rather than softened the lines around his eyes and mouth and he looked every day of his forty years.
‘You look awful,’ she said.
‘Thank you.’ He grimaced as the cosy atmosphere wrapped him in a big warm hug even if her observation hadn’t. ‘Don’t suppose you have proper coffee? I’ve just got off possibly the longest transpacific flight in living human memory with a grizzly baby behind me and a man who sounded like he had whooping cough in front of me.’
Tess smiled despite her state of confusion. ‘Sure,’ she said again, and headed for the kitchen. She made them both a cup while Fletch watched her with brooding silvery-green eyes.
She passed him a steaming mug and led him over to the lounge area where a three-seater couch and a coffee table stood a safe distance
away from the glowing fireplace.
She sat at one end and he at the other. ‘How’s Trish and the baby?’ she asked, because it was easier to start with the inane stuff.
Fletch took a reviving sip of coffee, shutting his eyes as the caffeine buzzed into his system. ‘Great. She went into labour at thirty-six weeks but the obstetrician was happy with that.’
He fished around in his trouser pocket and pulled out his phone. He touched the screen a few times and pulled up the pictures of baby Katrina and handed it to Tess.
Tess swiped her finger across the screen, smiling at the pics of Trish and Doug and their daughter. One of Christopher holding his sister very carefully scrolled up and Tess felt her heart contract.
‘You can tell they’re brother and sister,’ she murmured as Katrina’s two cowlicks became more evident next to her brother’s. ‘Christopher looks no worse for wear,’ she mused, examining his sweet little face for signs of long-term damage.
Tess had learned from one of Fletch’s many phone messages that Christopher had been discharged from hospital two days after his seizure and that nothing had turned up on any of the investigations the hospital had run.
‘Oh, yeah.’ Fletch smiled. ‘Back to normal.’
The next one that scrolled up was of Fletch holding his little niece. He was smiling but she knew him well enough to see that it didn’t reach his eyes.
He’d always wanted a daughter.
Then it was Jean’s turn. She looked fit and happy but Tess could tell from her eyes that she didn’t feel any kind of connection with the little bundle in her arms. Not like the hundreds of pictures they’d had of Jean holding Ryan as a newborn, where her love and pride and awe had shone from her eyes like a beacon.
‘How’s your mum?’ Tess asked, touching Jean’s cheek with her finger.
‘She’s okay, I guess. Not as settled as when you were there, although Tabby has helped enormously.’
Tess could tell that Fletch was trying to keep the accusation out of his voice. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, looking up at him, ‘for leaving you in the lurch.’
Fletch shrugged. He couldn’t really blame her. ‘I managed.’ It had been a huge juggling act but somehow he’d got through the last six weeks. ‘She went back with Trish yesterday. Or…’ he looked at his watch ‘…the day before…whatever the time is now.’
Tess gave a half-smile. Jet-lag and time zones always left her at sixes and sevens. She handed him back his phone and they sat and watched the fire without saying anything for a minute.
‘I’m sorry too,’ Fletch said. ‘For a lot of things, but especially for not coming sooner. I wanted to follow you… I would have followed you but…’
Tess nodded. She’d flown to the other side of the world because running away was what she did best but part of it was also about knowing he was stuck at home with Jean and couldn’t follow.
But he was here now.
He’d come after her this time.
Last time she’d asked him to leave her alone and he had. This time he’d come anyway.
Fletch put his mug down on the coffee table, feeling the boost of the caffeine bolster his nerve. He’d made a vow that he wouldn’t come back to Australia until Tess was with him, and the time to make his pitch was now.
He noticed a face-down photo frame near where he placed his mug and he picked it up and turned it over. A close-up of Ryan stared back at him, his green eyes sparkling. Not even a party hat at a jaunty angle was able to disguise how his blond hair stuck up on top from that impossible double cowlick.
He’d taken the picture at Ryan’s first birthday party.
He looked at Tess, surprised—she’d taken all the photos of Ryan down two months after he’d died, declaring she just couldn’t look at them any more.
It had been as if he’d never existed.
‘Reminiscing?’
She nodded. ‘I’ve been looking at that picture for six weeks. It doesn’t hurt to look at it any more.’
‘That’s good,’ he said tentatively, encouraged that Tess finally seemed to be facing things instead of locking them all away.
Had their argument the night she’d left been the catalyst?
Tess looked into the depths of her milky coffee. ‘You never blamed me,’ she murmured. Then she looked at him. ‘Not once.’
Fletch frowned then scooted to the middle cushion, folding one leg under him till he was turned side on in the lounge. He placed a hand on her arm. ‘It wasn’t your fault, Tess.’
She shook her head as tears welled in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. ‘I fell asleep, Fletch. I was supposed to be watching him and I fell asleep.’
Fletch had finished a run of five night duties and had been sleeping in the bedroom. Normally Tess would have had Ryan outside to keep him quiet for Fletch or even taken him out, but it had rained quite heavily overnight and had still been drizzling that morning. And she’d felt too ill herself to go anywhere. So she’d set him up with a DVD on low and his building blocks on the lounge-room floor. At some stage she’d drifted off sitting upright in the lounge chair as she’d watched over him.
‘Tess, you’d been up all night with him, teething. You’d had only marginally more sleep than me for the three previous nights and you had a really bad migraine that you’d taken something for. You were exhausted.’
Fletch had offered to stay up with Ryan for a few hours while Tess had got some sleep but she had assured him she’d be fine and he had been very grateful. He’d been so tired he hadn’t been able to see straight.
Normally in that kind of situation they would have had Jean come and look after Ryan but she’d been going off to the coast for the day so they’d decided they’d tag-team and manage between the two of them.
‘He was shut in the lounge room with you,’ Fletch continued. ‘You had no reason not to think he was safe. If I’d fixed the dicky latch on the door you’d been nagging me to do for a week, he wouldn’t have been able to get out.’
Tess shook her head, wiping at the tears. ‘I should have turned the bucket over the day before. Put it away like I always did.’
Tess had been playing with Ryan the afternoon before in the sand pit. She’d pulled the deep bucket out of the shed because Ryan had loved to fill it with sand. But because his clumsy toddling kept knocking it over and he was becoming frustrated, she’d dug it into the sand a bit and wedged it into the angle of wooden framework to stabilise it.
And then the phone had rung and they’d raced to answer it so it wouldn’t wake Fletch but it had and they’d all had some family time together before Fletch had gone off to work again and she’d forgotten all about the bucket in the sand pit.
‘Tess, you weren’t to know it was going to pour down with rain that night. It was an accident, Tess, a freak accident. A freak set of circumstances. Don’t you see we can go back and forth for ever like this? You shouldn’t have fallen asleep. I should have fixed the door. We should have put the bucket away. I should have done a better resus job.’
He cupped her cheek and swiped at a tear with his thumb. ‘At some stage we’ve got to forgive ourselves.’
Tess raised her hand to cover his. ‘He died, Fletcher. Our little boy died.’ She looked into his eyes. ‘I keep wishing I could go back to that day and change just one thing, you know?’ she implored him. ‘I’d stay awake. Because then none of that other stuff matters—if I had been watching him, everything else would be moot.’
Fletch couldn’t bear the pain in her amber eyes. He would have given anything to take it from her. But he knew that by finally talking about it she was taking the first steps towards expunging it herself. Steps towards living a full life again instead of the half-life she’d allowed herself tucked away in the middle of nowhere.
He pulled her towards him and wrapped her up tight. ‘The door,’ he said against her temple. ‘I should have fixed that door when you first complained about it.’
Tess heard her own anguish echoed in his words and when
the sob rose in her chest she didn’t try to stop it. She let it out. And the low wail that followed it. The gut-wrenching wail that cut like razors on its way out but instead of leaving her bloodied it left her feeling infinitely lighter.
Fletch held her while she sobbed. It was the first time apart from at the hospital and the funeral that she’d let him hold her while she’d cried. His own tears mingled with hers as they finally grieved for their son together.
Tess didn’t know how long she cried for or even where the tears had come from, considering how much she’d already cried these past six weeks. But she did know that she felt better for it and that it had felt right to share her tears with Fletch.
She eventually lifted her head from his shoulder. She was surprised to see his eyes also rimmed with red.
She smiled at him as she gently fluttered her fingers over his eyelids. ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured.
He shook his head, his eyes closed. ‘Don’t be.’
She traced the slopes of his cheekbones down to the corners of his mouth. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about…the other woman? Back then? Was I that fragile?’
Fletch opened his eyes. ‘Yes, you were. But mostly…’ he shrugged ‘…I was just ashamed and sick to my stomach over my actions. I could barely face you. I certainly didn’t feel like I deserved you after what I’d done. When you gave me the chance to end it I grabbed it with both hands. It seemed like a better alternative than having to confess.’
Tess traced his bottom lip with her thumb. ‘I guess that couldn’t have been an easy thing to tell.’
Fletch felt the stroke of her thumb right down to his groin. ‘You don’t seem so mad about it any more,’ he said tentatively.
Tess nodded realising he was right. ‘I’ve done a lot of soul-searching since coming home. I wasn’t easy to live with, Fletch. You tried so hard…every day…you were so patient with me. But I was so caught up in my denial stage, avoiding even the slightest mention of Ryan, that I forgot you were grieving too. That you needed someone to lean on as well. I don’t blame you for finding a little solace somewhere else for a few hours.’
She dropped her hand into her lap. ‘Don’t get me wrong, it hurts…but I need to own my part in that.’