by Julia Kent
“Trust me. There’s more than enough emotion,” Terry mutters. “It’s just muted by time.”
“And some forgiveness,” I add.
Terry snorts.
“I said some.”
A hint of a smile crosses his mouth.
“I have spent more time with all of you since Declan met Shannon than I have in the eleven years before that,” he notes.
I think about that for a minute. “Yeah. Sounds about right.”
“That’s so wrong! Emotionally, I mean. Family is family,” Amanda pleads.
“You can make your own family,” Terry says. “I couldn’t stay. Something in me snapped that moment as I watched Dad blaming Declan for making an impossible choice. For doing exactly what Mom asked him to do. He was blaming his own son for not being able to perform a miracle, and angry that his other son was the one who lived. Some part of me cracked in half in that split second. I was done. I wanted nothing to do with any part of Dad.”
“So you just knew.”
“I knew. I knew deep in my bones that I couldn’t continue to live my life the way I had been living.”
“Ever regret that decision?”
“No.”
“Once you know something deeply, that clarity is all that matters.” I cut my eyes to Amanda to find her staring back at me with a knowing look.
Nothing gets past her.
“Right. My only regret is that Dad shut me out of your lives. Then you guys did, just through inertia.”
“We thought you were the one who wanted the space.”
“We McCormicks suck at communicating,” he adds.
“Yes. You do,” Amanda declares, emphatic. “A few conversations and so many issues could have been solved years ago!”
We both shrug.
“Men,” she whispers. “And I thought having my dad abandon me at Fenway Park was bad,” Amanda says, stroking the hair off my forehead. “I’m so sorry, Andrew.” Her eyes jump to Terry. “And you, too.”
“I don’t need you to be sorry for me, Amanda,” he says.
“But I am. So much pain.”
Terry sets his full wineglass down on a sand dollar coaster. “I’m fine. Just rattled by being here. We grew up here. Mom’s imprint is here. I saw you changed the bedrooms, the kitchen, and you’re doing structural changes, but the living room is pretty much the same.”
“That’s me. My choice,” Amanda tells him. “I love everything she’s done.”
Tears fill Terry’s eyes, glistening as they grow, but never break. “Oh. Good to know.” He stands, offering her a hug, which she takes happily. Then it’s my turn.
And he’s off.
“You okay to drive?” Amanda calls out to him as he leaves.
“I already called Gerald. He’s in the caretaker apartment. Can drive you in five minutes,” I announce, watching as Terry’s face changes to a thankful acceptance. No way I’m letting him drive home like this.
And no way can I drive him, either.
He waves. “I’m going to go for a walk around the grounds. Thanks for the ride home. I’ll enjoy the luxury,” he adds in pensive voice. “I didn’t need as much liquid courage as I thought.”
I look at the bottle of wine. He’s right.
Maybe all it took was time.
And the offer to listen.
Chapter 10
Amanda
“ANDREW!” I call into the kitchen. “It’s starting!” It’s the final day of our honeymoon–such as it is–and I’m taking every last hour of time with my guy.
Which means torturing him.
“I told you I don’t want to watch it.” He walks out carrying a soda and glares at the screen as if it tried to change contract terms at the last minute in a merger at work.
“Someone’s doing a one-hour show on billionaire preppers and you don’t want to watch? Come on!”
“That’s exactly why I don’t want to watch it. Let me guess: the opening credits show a helicopter, diamonds, and a guy in a red Ferrari.”
I look at the screen.
Damn it.
“Close! No Ferrari. He’s getting a giant Hummer.”
“Are you sure this time it’s not you watching YouPorn?”
“ANDREW!”
He comes into the living room laughing and plops down on the sofa next to me. “You said he was getting a giant hummer. Where’s the blow job?”
I point to the screen. “They’re at a custom-outfitter auto shop. The billionaire is getting his Hummer re-designed for the apocalypse.”
He squints at the screen. “Who is the billionaire? Anyone I know?”
“Some twenty-four-year-old named Raji Mahara. Designed a social network for pets.”
“I’m doing this billionaire thing wrong,” he mutters as it becomes my turn to laugh.
It’s the very last day of our honeymoon, and so far we’ve been interrupted twice by the crew while trying to have sex in our bedroom, interrupted once while trying to have sex in Andrew’s study, and unsuccessfully tried to have sex in the treehouse but the poison ivy guy interrupted us there, too.
Frustrated and edgy, we’re trying to watch television now, waiting for the final hour of activity to cease in the house. Then we can get sweaty and naked and cap off these two weeks with a bang.
Or seventeen.
“I have no desire to live in a post-disaster world without being completely safe,” Raji says on the television, the scene cutting to what looks like his home. He’s surrounded by a tennis court, a pool, his new Hummer (with solar panels on top), and a pack of German shepherds that bark until the sound people somehow mute them. “I’ve worked hard and the world will need visioneers, especially after societal collapse.”
“What’s a visioneer?” I ask Andrew.
“A dudebro who cashed out his options and thinks he’s the smartest guy in the world,” he says through clenched teeth.
“Oh.”
“This guy is a total douchebag. His location is now public record. When the ‘societal collapse’ he’s preparing for happens, where do you think desperate people will go? He’ll be mobbed. All his preparations are for nothing.”
I turn back to the screen as the interviewer, a blonde, overdone woman I vaguely remember as a teen actress when I was a kid, asks Raji, “What about weapons? How will you prepare yourself?”
“Why would I need a weapon?” he says, looking at the screen, clearly loving the attention. “I have security staff.”
Andrew starts choking on his soda.
“Don’t worry, dear,” I say, patting his thigh. “You have me to protect you.”
Now he really gags.
Before I realize it, I’m on my back, half across the sofa, legs pinned by his body, his mouth an inch from mine. “We’ve been trying to have sex all day. I am the human equivalent of a vibrator right now, humming away in a drawer with nothing to slide into. You are insulting my ego and forcing me to watch a stereotype of a stereotype on the television in my own home where I can’t even have a quickie with my own damn wife.” His breath smells like cola, cool and refreshing.
I ache for his mouth and reach up.
He moves away.
“Not here.” The pneumatic whine of a drill in the next room splinters my arousal.
“Where?”
“Now?”
“Yes. Now.”
He blinks rapidly, thinking, still suspended over me. It feels illicit to have him so intimately attached to me when the electrician is re-wiring in the next room.
“Got it,” he says, suddenly off me, lifting me to my feet by taking my hands in his and pulling up. My breasts feel sensitive and light, aching for his touch, as he adds, “Get your shoes and purse.”
“We’re–we’re leaving?”
“Yes.”
“Where to?”
“A place I know is private.”
I sidle up to him, grab his ass, and whisper, “Are we finally going back to Walden Pond to have sex on the shore?”
“Darn. We’ll have to go for your idea.”
“Trust me.” He pulls me into his arms and gives me a toe-curling kiss. “My idea is fabulous.”
“As long as we’re not having sex with a chocolate dong in the room with us, I’m fine.”
He shudders. “Don’t bring up Vegas again.”
“I do miss the vagina steamers at the spa.”
“I am more than capable of warming that part of your body.”
And with that, he pulls me out to the Tesla. We’re on the road, headed toward the highway, when I realize where we’re going.
“The condo? We’re going to the condo?” When I met Andrew, he lived in a highrise on the water in the Seaport District. Since we bought the house in Weston, we don’t go there. He insisted on keeping it, which is fine–money isn’t an issue. And while he sometimes stays there when he has a series of late-night conference calls, I never do.
I love the big house.
Slapping his forehead, he mutters, “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.”
“I can. The whole point of these two weeks was to remodel. Why would we leave the house?”
“All those contractors have cockblocked us. Why wouldn’t we escape to the condo?” he points out.
“Because that would have been cheating.”
“Cheating on... who? What?”
“Cheating on the whole point of the honeymoon.”
“I thought the point of honeymoons was sex!” he shouts, merging onto the 95/128 belt like he’s driving a racecar, eyes on the road but attention on me.
“Don’t yell at me!”
“I’m not yelling at you!” he yells. “I’m yelling at two weeks of being interrupted half the time we tried to get freaky.”
“Our sex is not freaky.”
“It’s about to be,” he assures me, breaking the weird tension and sending us both into laughter.
The drive down to the Mass Pike is easy, a surprise to me. Then again, it’s late afternoon on a Sunday. No rush hour. We merge onto the Pike and he clears his throat.
“What did you think of Ellie last night?” he asks.
“Adorable. As always.” I reach for his right hand, holding it loosely in case he needs it to drive.
“She is. Shannon and Declan seem happy. Tired, but happy.”
He has an agenda here. It’s pretty obvious.
“Andrew, do you want a baby?”
“Of course.” His eyes cut over to mine. “Don’t you?”
“Sure. But not just because they have one, and you want one so you can be even with your brother.”
“That’s not why I want one.”
“Then why?”
“Because when I hold Ellie, I feel an emotion I’ve never experienced before. A groundedness. I’m enough, right there. Enough. Nothing more, nothing less. I’m not striving or competing. When I make her smile or calm her down, I feel more powerful than I do in any boardroom.” He gives a self-deprecating shrug. “Sounds silly.”
My eyes are full of tears, unbidden and unexpected, the wellspring of joy inside me unmeasurable. “It’s the opposite of silly,” I assure him, voice shaking.
“Not sure it’s a good enough reason to start having kids right now.”
“I think it’s better than most people’s reasons, Andrew. By far.” Squeezing his hand feels inadequate. I want to hug every inch of him, wrap myself against his body, entwine our limbs and get our hearts as close to each other as possible until they beat in sync.
Until we’re almost one person.
The only other way to make my body part of his is to perform conception alchemy and have a baby. DNA combines in mysterious ways, but the end result is mostly predictable. Having a child together holds ripe potential, the sense of unknown overwhelmed by the certainty of the direction we want to go.
“Can we talk about this seriously?” he asks.
“I thought we were.”
His eyes widen, throat moving with a swallow, left hand on the steering wheel, right hand in mine. I memorize the details, blinking only as needed, because this moment is a turning point.
We’re already us.
And we’re talking about adding more to us.
“Are you ready to start trying?” His question is soft. Inquisitive. There’s no right or wrong answer. I can feel his exploration in it. This isn’t a binary question with only two endpoints. So much fills the space between yes and no.
That ambiguity is normally horrible to navigate for someone like me, who lives and dies by project management tools, spreadsheets with clear results, the outlines and checklists that define my day. My progress. My achievements. My failures.
The boundaries of my life.
And yet ambiguity holds its own answers. The questions themselves are divining rods, leading the way to a better goal than any we could pick without faltering in uncharted lands.
“Am I ready? I’m ready to talk about it,” I finally tell him, reveling in his patience as I take time to think.
“What kind of a father do you think I’ll be?” The unexpected question turns my mind into a blank sheet of paper, smooth and full of promise but devoid of any starting point.
“Father?”
“Declan’s a father now. My dad is the only role model I have. Your father is... well...”
“In prison. Right. And I barely knew him.”
“You’ve said Jason was more of a father to you than any other man. My dad can be a bastard but he’s always been there. And Dec and Terry have a different relationship with him than I do.”
“Do you want to parent like James did?”
“Hell, no.” All of the uncertainty in his voice is gone like a fingersnap. “The only similarities will be handing down the last name, teaching my kids to manage the company, and being a presence. Otherwise, smack me upside the head if I ever start to act like my dad.”
“I’ll be a mother,” I say, breathless at the end of the word, as if it’s attached to an invisible fishing line and someone else is pulling it out of me.
“Your mom is great.”
“She is. I’m sure yours was, too.”
He just smiles, making the turn off the Pike, headed toward the condo. Traffic’s light tonight, so we’re making good time. Why do the heaviest conversations always seem to take place in cars?
“The remodeling has me thinking. Holding Ellie has me thinking. But no amount of thinking is as important as what I’m feeling. What you’re feeling,” he says, turning to me. The red light holds steady, so as we sit there in the car, idling, I breathe. Each breath takes me deeper, pulling him into me, making the yearning truer.
I want what he wants.
I do want more us.
A bigger us.
“I feel like I’m standing at the edge of a beautiful waterfall,” I tell him, staring at his profile, a dual consciousness taking over my mind. I’m speaking but also wondering what our baby will look like. Ellie resembles Declan so clearly. Would our child have my eyes? Andrew’s nose?
“And a hot breeze fills my face, gentle, caring people urging me to dive in, to cross over, to let the mother’s embrace of the water soothe and comfort me, infuse me with joy. Everyone’s laughing and their eyes are so loving. All I have to do is move my body, open up, say yes to the great risk of jumping without a net. Without a tether. Into the wide, open space where destiny isn’t a goal–it’s who I am.”
The light turns green. Someone behind us honks. Andrew startles and presses the accelerator, jaw tight, shoulders low as he breathes deeply.
“Go on.”
“Most people have to wait until life aligns with conception. Money, jobs, debt–all of that. And then other people just get pregnant and don’t plan it at all. Just happens. It’s weird to be in neither of those camps. We get to choose every single step we take, consciously. Nothing holds us back.”
“Damn it,” I add.
“What do you mean, ‘damn it’? That’s good!”
“Sometimes too many choices make life even harder.”
“Only if you don’t know who you are at the core, Amanda.”
And with that, he pulls into our parking garage, settling the Tesla in place right near the elevator. Someone who works here will plug it in, clean it up, and tend to it with the same loving care that horse owners exhibit for their beloved companions.
We walk around our respective sides of the car and meet at the elevator, hands linking without thought. The ride up is reflective, tentative, and filled with an untapped sense of urgency and eagerness.
Is tonight the night?
“Even if I stop taking my pills, it takes four to six weeks before my body could conceive. Or, at least, they say you should wait that long. You have to use condoms because we wouldn’t want to make a baby while the pill’s hormones are still in me and–”
He kisses me to shut me up.
Or maybe for a few other reasons.
Talking about babies has me revved up. I know we can’t, literally, conceive a baby with birth control hormones rushing through my bloodstream, but the potential is there. The needle just moved in that conversation, and as he kisses me, we’re closer than we’ve ever been before to having a baby.
Possibilities are potent. To people like me, who like to fix problems and understand systems, they represent the end point of a long journey that could be taken so many different ways. The paths are endless but they are significant: the best way is the goal. Achieving the goal itself isn’t enough.
You need to do it well. Every step matters.
Like making a baby. A family. A future.
“You’re a million miles away,” he whispers into my ear, his nose brushing against my hair, my back against the brushed stainless steel wall of the elevator car.
“I’m right here,” I assure him. “Just thinking.”
“My kiss isn’t enough to clear your thoughts?”
“It’ll take more than that,” I inform him, tapping my temple. “There’s a lot to clear up here.”
“Then I’d better get started,” he says, cupping my breast with fingers laden with intent, all good, all sensual, all for me.