"John, anything you want, we are all here for you. Just get her."
"Stephanie, she won't live with me.” Stephanie looks perplexed so he offers more. “Her first husband was abusive. She lost a baby, far along. She is terrified."
"But John, you’d never hurt her."
"I did last night." He sits on the bed with hands holding his hair back tight in frustration. “Fuck,” he say remembering more than he wants to about a time when hurting people was his best release. He realizes Stephanie has no idea about Buenos Aires. Brian must have kept that to himself. Just as well.
"John, just go and get her. We are going back to Chicago. The kids have to start school. Think about if you want to bring her back here to Austin, to Chicago, or even back to Osprey Island. You did so well there. Whatever you were doing, it worked."
"She won't live with me in that house Stephanie."
"I know, keep your own houses. Oh you don't know. Your parents own Anna's house too."
His eyes widen. "Since when?"
"They bought it shortly after you left. Lynn called them because the Thompson kids never used it and they were going to put it on the market. Lynn wanted to see if your parents knew anyone that might be interested so they could choose their neighbors. Maybe old friends or family. They decided to scoop it up. One property for each son. They figured the smaller house could be expanded. The lots are so big. Your parents don’t exactly need the rental income."
That explains a lot, John thinks. Lynn had a little help placing the perfect neighbor next door. "What about Clara?" John asks.
"We’ll work it out John. Anna needs you now. Go say goodbye and get out of here." He hugs her hard. "Will you fill them in for me?"
"They know about the baby. Your mom is a sharp gal. Actually it was your Dad who got it first. He said he could tell on the first day. It was the napping."
John kisses her cheek and he is gone. He decides to take a flight to Columbia to try to intercept Anna at the Marriott before she heads to New York. He tries her phone again. It is still off. He leaves no message. After a two-hour wait, he boards the flight for Columbia. He skips the cocktails on board and works on some breathing techniques he’s been reading about. The flight is long. He can't focus to read. He has no headphones. Music would have been good. He spends time remembering Anna. Sitting by the ocean the day they met. In Charleston, buying the orange vase. Painted in bronzer with a golden mask. Climbing Angel Oak. In a field on the road to Savannah. Saying her vows.
Finally they land and John takes a cab to the Marriott. He can't remember which name the reservation is under so offers both.
"John Halloway or Anna Hinton please. My wife should have checked in earlier."
"Sir, Ms. Hinton called about two hours ago and cancelled the room. I took the call myself. I am sorry for the confusion. Can I get you a room? We have availability."
John wonders if she thought he would come after her so she switched hotels. No, she wouldn't play games like that. More likely, she wanted to get a start on the drive and stop overnight after she made some miles. "No thanks, I’ll meet her in New York."
John picks up a cab and makes his way back to the airport. He gets lucky and buys a ticket for a direct flight to New York, boarding almost immediately. He has time to pick up headphones in the airport shop. He calls Pemberley's father to update him on the situation. Rodrigo arranges for a key to be left with the doorman so John can stay in Pemberley’s condo. On the plane, he tries to sleep and manages to doze, jolting awake, lost.
When he arrives at LaGuardia, he takes another cab to Pemberley's building. John picks up the key from the doorman and enters Pemberley’s apartment. He is immediately taken with how well it represents her. Strong red walls, a huge, plush black sofa, animal print chairs, abstract art and a few of Anna's photographs. John leaves his luggage in the hallway and spreads out on the couch, feet hanging off the edge. He finally sleeps a restless sleep. He opens his eyes hours later.
"Are you joking? I didn't peg you for a full blown stalker John, what the hell are you doing here?" With hands on her hips, rage pulsates from Anna standing in the half open doorway with a suitcase in each hand and a large bag over her shoulder.
John jumps off the couch. "No Anna. You don't understand."
But Anna storms off into a bedroom without another word. She locks the door and yells through the wood. "Please just go John. I have been traveling all night. I need some fucking sleep."
She sounds exhausted, crying. "Anna, sleep. We can talk later."
"I'm too exhausted to argue."
He sits outside the door just wanting the proximity for a while. Eventually he returns to the sofa and sleeps better, at least knowing, she is close.
When he wakes, John is grateful to find Pemberley's treadmill. He runs eight miles, showers, changes and risks a quick trip to the market for breakfast essentials. Pemberley's refrigerator has been cleaned out of anything besides condiments. He again calls Rodrigo for an update on Pemberley. She is expected to be in-patient for at least another week and then will go to Connecticut to his house to continue chemo from there. John brews a pot of decaf and cracks eggs for a frittata that can sit until Anna awakes. At noon, he fries bacon and she comes out of her room. Bacon works every time.
Anna looks exhausted, with dark circles under her eyes, tromping out in sweatpants and a crumpled tee shirt. She makes it halfway to the kitchen before running back to the bedroom. John can hear her vomiting. He debates going to her aid, but decides that wouldn't be well received right now.
When she comes back out he asks, "Is it the bacon?"
"The coffee."
He pours the pot down the drain, rinsing the sink with water, and pours two glasses of orange juice.
"Thank god it wasn't the bacon," she says crunching a piece.
They sit at the breakfast bar in high chairs across from each other eating silently. The bruise on her check has darkened. It makes him sick. He wants her to have some food and gives her time to clear her head, before they talk.
She starts quickly, "I am so angry at you John. Why are you here?"
"Anna something has happened." John stalls, not really knowing how to proceed.
Anna immediately panics. "Oh my god, is it Clara? Is it your parents?"
"No Anna they’re all fine," but John’s face lets her know someone is not fine.
"What John, you are scaring me!" She rises to her feet, terrified.
John traveled miles to tell her something. Very bad news is coming. Life is changing and it is impossible to soften the blow. "Anna, I am so sorry to tell you this..."
"Will you fucking out with it!"
So he does. "Pemberley is sick. She's in the hospital."
"Don't say it. It’s fucking breast cancer, isn't it? Oh my god. Her mother and her aunt too. They died John." Anna collapses to the ground covering her ears.
John reaches for her, but she pushes him off and runs for the bathroom, vomiting again. After a few moments, she quiets. He finds her lying on the tile floor. John lifts her and lays her on the bed. He sits with her and she eventually sleeps, after tears exhaust her.
John slips out and walks to the corner store. When he gets back to the condo, he sneaks into Anna’s room and leaves ginger ale, ginger snaps and Saltines on the bedside table.
A few hours later, Anna comes out of her room nibbling a Saltine. She is showered and dressed. John is reading an old paper in the kitchen. "Please take me to see her."
John folds the paper, grabs keys and goes down to hail a cab. The ride to the hospital is short, but Anna doesn't look ready for a walk.
At Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Anna finds Pemberley's room. John stays in a lounge by the elevator. Soon a slender, neatly dressed man in his early sixties enters the lounge and introduces himself as Rodrigo. John offers his hand, but Rodrigo pushes it away in favor of an embrace.
"The one benefit to times likes this is that you remember to show your love at every opportu
nity. I appreciate your coming. I know this has been a long and difficult journey. And Anna will struggle."
"Can you tell me how Pemberley is doing?"
"The prognosis is not good. She is not responding well to the chemotherapy. She acquired an infection after the surgery and has been unable to heal properly. She is in a lot of pain and heavily medicated." Rodrigo says with a sad shrug.
"What can I do for you?" John asks.
"I'm afraid there is not much to do. I sit with my daughter during the day and her cousins come at night. She is never alone."
"Anna will want to stay," John says.
"Pemberley has made her feelings known on this. She will not allow it and I will make sure her wishes are respected. I will go in and speak to Anna myself."
John says his goodbyes and offers to send dinner for the family.
Later, Anna comes from the room and walks past John. He follows her into the elevator giving her some distance. They walk back to Pemberley's building without stopping, without speaking. Inside, Anna returns to her room, locking the door. He hears her crying and leans his head against the door listening, feeling her pain. She knows he is there.
"I can't fucking believe this," she says to the door. "She is all I have. Before you I mean. She was all I had."
He knows that the subtle differentiation is progress. "Anna, I am so sorry." He wants to break down the door, but thinks that would probably end them.
"John. I'll sleep again."
"Okay Anna. I'll get some things for later." He returns to the corner store for the third time, buying pasta, butter, broccoli and fresh Parmesan. He walks a few blocks to get some air, picks up a Starbucks. Better to drink this out here, he thinks. He stops in at a florist and sends an enormous hibiscus to Pemberley's room. At an Italian restaurant near Sloan he makes arrangements for a dinner delivery that night, enough for family, staff and half the hospital. He walks for a long time, finding himself near Central Park.
He sits down on a bench to call his mother.
"Anything you both need to get you through John. If you want both houses on the island, if you want to be here, if you want to be in Chicago and we can care for Anna. Anything. John we will help you make any life you want. All we ask is that you don’t go again." She doesn’t beg, but the message is clear.
“You have my word. I won’t do that to you again,” John says.
Walking back, as he nears the building, sirens scream past. His heart lurches in his chest and he is sure the worst has happened. In his mind’s eye, he sees Anna jumping from a high balcony, arms spread wide like an angel floating too quickly to meet the earth below. He quickens his pace to a jog. After a minute, he forces himself to slow, works the breathing, and steadies his pace back to a walk.
Inside Anna is up, showered and sitting on the sofa with legs tucked under herself. Wet hair rests in a braid at her shoulder, leaving a dark mark on her tee shirt. He offers a quick hello, taking food to the kitchen and loading the refrigerator.
"Hungry?" he calls to her.
"In a while. Not yet, okay?"
"Of course." He walks back to the living room. "Do you want to talk?"
She shrugs, gesturing for him to sit beside her. When he does, she lays her head across his lap and cries in shuddering sobs. He lets her. He smooths her hair and hands her tissues. "She is going to die. I'm not sure what Rodrigo said, but it is bad. She doesn't want me here. She wants me to say goodbye when we leave and then she doesn't want to see me again. She wants to see you tomorrow but not me. Unless we are leaving." She tries to catch her breath.
"She is doing to me what I'm doing to you. She's taking my choices away. She decided it wouldn't be good for me to be with her. She won't let me decide. I am doing that to you. I don't think it will be good for you or Clara or me or the baby for us to be together, but I am doing all the deciding. Am I taking your choices away?"
He ignores the question. "I just want you, Anna." He is relieved to have a chance to say these words.
“Did I flip out in Austin? It brought back the worst of times with Dylan. I'm still so fucking fragile.” She smacks her hand on the sofa in frustration. “I am so fucked up. I go back and forth, thinking this was an accident.” She points to her bruise. “And then thinking I am making excuses for you. I’m not sure where we begin, and Dylan and I end. And I don’t trust myself to know, John.”
"Anna I would never describe you as fragile. The abuse, the pregnancy, my crap, it is all so fucking complicated. We need some help." This is the first time he suggests that she needs help too. But she does and she doesn’t deny it.
"John, I am the most peculiar combination of starving and nauseous."
"How about a little buttered pasta with broccoli and some Reggiano?"
"John, I want to be with you, but I need to be apart from you too. And I don't want to be with you just because I have no one else."
"Okay."
"How is that okay?"
“Because you love me,” John says, “but you still don’t really want to because you don’t trust us.” He smooths her hair away from the tears drying on her face. She is silent, but he knows he is right.
“I want to go back to Osprey Island. To 517.” She says holding up a key on a key chain. This one doesn’t have the familiar round tag with neat writing. This key hangs from a plain gold chain with a blue H for Halloway. “Your mom gave it to me.”
He pulls a key from his pocket, with the same H in green. “Me too.”
“516?” she asks and he nods. “They match our eyes. Weird.”
“Weird or meant to be?”
“You will go to Chicago to be with Clara though? You’ll visit me?”
“No. I’m not leaving you again. We’ll bring Clara to Osprey Island.” He is sure now.
“No John, it isn’t right to move her,” Anna protests.
“Anna, no more talk. We will work it all out. We’ll be okay. Let me feed you.”
“How will we work it all out John?”
"Let's eat first." John goes to the kitchen, a place where he feels competent and capable, to cook dinner for his wife.
"This is just right," Anna says forking her rigatoni.
"Do you have any idea why Pemberley wants to see me?"
Anna shakes her head.
"I'll go tomorrow morning." John considers his next words carefully. "Anna, Pem is in shock, terrified and feeling her absolute worst. She might feel differently as time passes."
"Maybe. The thought of saying goodbye to her...”
"I know."
"So... read any good books lately?" Anna laughs sarcastically at her attempt to change the subject.
"Actually I’ve been reading up on managing anxiety and overcoming symptoms of PTSD"
"Really?"
"Maybe I should read it too," she says without irony. "What are you learning?"
"I am, in fact, a fuck of a mess, but I don't have to be forever. I'm fixable."
"I never doubted that one of us was fixable." Anna’s eyes fill again.
"Anna, what is it?" He asks rubbing her shoulder.
She shakes her head.
"We’ll be okay. Have a little faith.”
"Now that I am all alone and needy and snotty and pukey. I'm not quite the catch I was a week ago," she cries.
"That is bullshit and you know it," he says. "Let me ask you this. Anna, what are you hoping for out of this next year? In addition to a baby?"
She dries her eyes on her sleeve. "This feels familiar. I want to be with you, but I want to be in my own space. These last weeks with you in my bed, well I need to stop that. That isn't because of what happened in Austin. That was an accident. As you would say, it is more about me than you."
"What else?"
"I want to be close to Clara. I don't want her to get to know me as I am having another baby. We need a foundation."
"And?"
"I desperately want to be with you. And I want you to cook for me every day of my life."
"Can we eat out occasionally? For inspiration?" he smiles.
"Yes. And what about you John?" she asks, laying her hand over his.
"I want to be with you. I want to be able to see you through this pregnancy and I want to figure things out between us. I want to be with Clara. I want to find a good therapist and I want to get a handle on my shit. I want to play music. I want to work. I want to reconnect with my family and I want to eat donuts from Donut Plant."
"Now?"
"Tomorrow."
"Anything else?"
"Everything you said over the summer too."
"So 516 and 517? We can be year-rounders. Don't they rent out?" she asks.
"Did I forget to mention that my parents are pretty well off? Old money on my Mom’s side and new money. Dad has published some bestsellers. There were films too." He sees her surprise. "Stories for another day. I have to confess, I already spoke to Lynn. We can move in anytime."
John likes taking care of things.
"And Clara?" she asks.
"Stephanie wants to bring her down in October to see how it goes. She'll stay for a few days and, if it feels right, she'll leave Clara and go. We'll figure it out."
"Are you sure this wouldn't be easier if you were in Chicago?" Anna asks.
"I'm not sure. We were so good together on the island before. I was good there. I want Clara there too."
"We were very happy there."
"You'll have your own space. Is that enough?"
"I think so. I have a lot to work out. I haven't been as open with you as I might have."
"I'm okay Anna. You take your time."
"John will you be offended if I take you to my room, have my way with you and then kick you out and lock the door?"
"Not in the slightest."
When she undresses, he can see her body is starting to change. She is smoother, softer, rounder. Her response to him is breathless. She has an urgency. He undresses quickly. He realizes this is the first time they have been together with an understanding of permanence. That surety ignites a greediness in him. He wants all of her, and she wants to give herself to him. Despite the sadness that has brought him to New York, he is grateful as he loses himself inside her.
After, he leaves her room before she asks him to go. She has set her boundary and he will respect it. He makes up the pull out sofa in Pemberley's office, finding sheets in a linen closet. He can't do another night on the couch and sleeping in Pemberley's bed feels like an invasion of her privacy. He lies down to text his parents that he and Anna are going back to Osprey Island.
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