Heart of Clay

by Shanna Hatfield

  Chapter Seven

  Clay pulled onto the road and drove with no direction in mind. He was so angry – with himself and with Callan. How could she keep something so heartwrenching, so intimately painful from him?

  He worked hard to swallow down the lump in his throat. When he and Callan first wed, neither one of them was ready to start a family. They had career ambitions to pursue. Truth be told, the two of them had been so wrapped up in the wonder of their love, they selfishly didn’t want to have to share it with anyone.

  The years started to tick by and Clay didn’t think a lot about it. He wasn’t in a hurry to be a father. He assumed that when the bug bit Callan to become a mother, she’d say something. Only she never did.

  Clay couldn’t imagine life without Callan in it, but he also couldn’t imagine life continuing like it had the past several months. Looking back, he realized the problem had been growing for years.

  He’d been such an idiot. How could he have been so clueless? Surely, there had been some signs he must have overlooked. How had he missed the fact his wife was pregnant and then lost the baby? How had he managed to ignore the fact that she blamed herself and shut everyone out? The loss of the baby must be why she dreaded January and grew so despondent during the winter months.

  “Oh, Lord, what am I going to do?” Clay prayed, hoping for divine direction.

  All the harsh, hurtful things he’d just said to Callan echoed in his ears. Some of them were true, but others were unfair. Like her hiding the bills. If they depended on him paying them on time, they’d end up living in a cardboard box under a bridge.

  When they first wed, it was a mutual agreement for Callan to handle all the monthly bills and paperwork. He also knew she wasn’t hiding her business information from him. He hadn’t wanted to know. If he’d been aware she did so well with the event planning, he wouldn’t have been able to lay the blame on her business for all that was wrong in their relationship.

  Clay couldn’t believe he’d raised his voice like that to Callan. He never yelled. Rarely lost his temper.

  Had he really just manhandled her?

  In all their years of marriage, he’d never once done that.

  Of all the times to choose to confront her, why had he picked today of all days? The sight of her stricken face as he pressed her to tell him what was wrong lingered in his mind.

  Killing our baby.

  Those three words and the raw desperation in Callan’s eyes were going to haunt him for the rest of his life.

  Surprised by where his wandering took him, he drove down the street toward Aunt Julie’s house. She knew Callan as well as anyone. Maybe she’d have some insight for him.

  As he pulled into the circular drive, he could see Julie at the kitchen table through the well-lit window. He walked to the kitchen door and knocked. Julie was quick to answer.

  “Clay, what a nice surprise,” she said pulling him inside and into a warm hug. She looked behind him expecting to see Callan, but soon surmised he was alone. “What brings you by this evening?”

  “Callan and I just had a really ugly fight. I was hoping you could maybe shed some light on a few things for me.” Clay was unable to look Julie in the eye as he took off his ball cap and toyed with the brim.

  “I thought I heard voices,” Uncle Ralph boomed as he sauntered in from the workshop attached to the back of the house. “Clay, come back here and see what I’m working on.”

  Julie gave his arm a pat and motioned toward Ralph. “Go see what this crazy old man is working on now,” Julie said with a wide smile. “We’ll talk when you get back.”

  Clay followed Ralph to his workshop where he had every kind of wood working tool anyone could want. Ralph spun a beautiful piece of birds-eye maple on a lathe, creating a large bowl.

  “Whew, Ralph, that is a beaut.” Clay ran his hand alongside the outside of the bowl and admired the simple but artistic lines.

  “The neighbor lost a tree last winter in that big windstorm and was going to burn this trunk, so I told him I’d take it off his hands,” Ralph said, starting up the lathe. “You wouldn’t believe the great pieces of wood that you can reclaim after a big storm. Most people are glad to have you haul it off, thinking it isn’t worth saving. I’m kind of glad they don’t realize what they are throwing away, otherwise I’d be paying a pretty penny at the lumberyard for wood like this.”

  Clay sat down on a stool and quietly watched Ralph turn the wood.

  "You look like you just lost your best friend," Ralph casually commented, looking over his shoulder at Clay.

  "I think I may have.” Clay watched Ralph work the wood. “Callan and I just had the worst fight of our entire marriage."

  “I’ve never known you two to fight. I bet you could count on one hand the times you two have gone at it.”

  “Possibly.”

  “You know working this wood is a lot like marriage.” Ralph gave Clay a sideward glance, pleased to see he had his full attention. “You start out with a whole lot of promises and dreams and ideas of what it could turn into. You start working with it, turning it, and smoothing it. But eventually you’re going to hit a knot or a flaw. If you’re careful in your craftsmanship, you can work through and around those problems and come out on the other side with something that is uniquely beautiful. If you let the knots draw a halt to the work, you’ll never know what would have emerged if you’d kept working at it. You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, Ralph, I get it. But what happens if no matter how you turn it, the knot seems to get bigger and bigger?”

  Ralph laughed and slapped Clay on the back. “That’s when you step away, take a breather, and come back ready to work at it again. I guarantee you’ll know just how to work out that knot when you get started again. You go on back to the kitchen. Julie will be waiting for you.”

  “Thanks.” Clay stood and shook his hand. “I appreciate it.”

  “No problem, son. Why don’t you come back someday when you don’t have heavy thoughts weighing you down and we’ll work some wood together?” Ralph invited.

  “That would be great.” Clay offered the older man an appreciative nod. “Thanks, Ralph.”

  He walked back to the kitchen where Julie sat working on a puzzle at the kitchen table. As long as he had known her, when she wasn’t busy working around the house or volunteering on a committee, she put together puzzles, read mystery novels, or did fancy stitching on pillows and the like.

  “Can I get you something, Clay?” Julie asked, already rising from the table. She didn’t wait for his nod, but filled a mug with hot chocolate, topping it off with a few marshmallows while he removed his coat and laid it along with his hat on a chair.

  After setting the mug down on the table along with a plate of sugar cookies, she patted the chair next to her. “Suppose you tell me what has you driving around our neighborhood on a cold night like tonight.”

  Clay sat down, took a sip of the chocolate, and started tracing a pattern on the edge of the table with his index finger. “I don’t know what to do, Julie. You know I love Callan and I’d do anything for her, but I can’t keep on like this. She’s so angry, so distant. I can’t do anything to make her happy. Tonight, I decided to have it out with her and in the process, I think I’ve gotten to the root of the problem. She kept a secret from me she had no right to keep and I don’t know how I’m going to get past it.”

  He sat back and sighed, staring up at the ceiling before looking at Julie. She did her best not to cry. Clay cleared his throat before he spoke again.

  “Callan had a miscarriage three years ago. I had no idea. I finally pushed her enough she told me tonight. How could she keep something like that from me? Didn’t I have a right to know?” Pain filled both Clay’s face and voice.

  “Oh, Clay.” Julie took his hand in both of hers. “She never told you? Oh, honey.” Julie started to cry. She dabbed at her tears and took a deep breath. “Do you remember when you had to put down Callan’s dog after she
got run over? Callan loved that dog so much. She had literally just found out she was expecting. The only reason I knew was that it was my day to volunteer at the clinic when Callan came in to see the doctor. She was so afraid because she was still taking birth control pills and worried about what affect that would have on the baby. The doctors told her years ago getting pregnant wasn’t a good idea. She was also frightened about what you would think. Neither one of you were planning on a baby right then. It wasn’t a week or so later that Margo was diagnosed with cancer. She went so fast.”

  Julie took a deep breath and wiped at more tears. “Shortly after the funeral, you had that out-of-town training. I know you told Callan you’d stay home with her but she kept insisting you go. In the end you went, thinking that everything was fine. No one could have known what would happen.”

  “I had no idea, until tonight. She never said a word about any of it.” Clay worked hard to keep from coming unglued in front of his wife’s favorite aunt. A mixture of anger, disappointment, regret, fear, and grief tore through his head and heart. “I was on my way home tonight when I saw Callan driving like the hounds of Hades chased her. She could have caused a wreck or killed herself. I was already irritated at her for leaving town this week. For months, she shut herself off from me. She went through all the motions of her life without any emotion. By some miracle, the Callan I first fell in love with seemed to come back for the holidays. I was hopeful that things were going to get better, but it didn’t last beyond New Year’s. The past few weeks, she’s been overly emotional, crying all the time, yelling at me for hours on end about things that normally wouldn’t bother her at all. Tonight, I saw red. I couldn’t believe she would endanger herself and others like that. When I got home, I gave her a piece of my mind and kept pressing her to tell me what’s been bothering her.”

  Emotion threatened to choke the air from Clay’s lungs, but he felt the need to share this with Julie. He swallowed the pain and continued. “I kept pushing her and finally asked what was making her so miserable. She said ‘Killing our baby.’ She thinks it was all her fault, Julie. Is that why she didn’t tell me?”

  “Yes,” Julie whispered, unable to stop her own tears. Callan had always been her little girl. With two boys nearing their college years when Callan was born, Julie poured all the love into Callan she would have given a daughter if she’d had one.

  Callan had needed it with a mother who resented her very existence. She and Callan were close. How could she have missed this? Missed the agony Callan had been in since she lost the baby.

  Julie sighed. “I was there, Clay. The doctors told her stress and fatigue may have accelerated the process, but with her preexisting health problems, the pregnancy most likely would have terminated before it reached full-term.”

  “What health problems?” Clay looked intently at Julie, wanting to know exactly what had happened. “What do you mean you were there?”

  “When she was seventeen, Callan experienced a lot of pain and bleeding. The doctor discovered tumors and ended up removing one of her fallopian tubes and an ovary. He told her she would have trouble conceiving and if she did, there could be complications. She never told you about this?” Julie was shocked Callan hadn’t shared the information with him.

  “How could she not tell me?” Clay asked brokenly. Callan had never once even hinted that she had any problems that would keep her from carrying a child. “Wasn’t that something she should have mentioned before we got married?”

  “She’s an incredibly private person. It doesn’t excuse her not telling you the truth, but you know she doesn’t talk about anything like that unless forced.”

  When he nodded his head in agreement, she forged ahead. “As for being there, it was the day you left for your trip and…” Julie stopped to think for a moment. “Oh, Clay, it was three years ago… today.”

  Clay groaned and put his head in his hands. Julie placed a comforting hand on his back and went on with the story.

  “Callan didn’t feel well that morning, as you probably remember. She told you she thought she was getting the flu. You called and asked if I’d check on her. She kept insisting she was fine, but you were right to be concerned. By the time I got there, there was no doubt something was wrong. I rushed her to the hospital. When she miscarried, she nearly bled to death. She had what they call a placental abruption and they couldn’t get the bleeding to stop. That’s why they performed an emergency hysterectomy. I’ve never been so scared in my life. Callan stayed several days at the hospital and called you every day so you wouldn’t know anything was wrong. She said she didn’t want to ruin your trip and swore me to secrecy. Even Ralph doesn’t know. You were gone for nearly three weeks. By the time you returned home, she was getting back on her feet.”

  Julie wiped her tears. “Imagine being Callan. How do you suppose she felt? She lost so much in such a short time. Knowing our girl, she was desperately afraid of losing you, too. Callan has had a lot of hurt in her life, Clay, and some of those hurts run so deep, she’ll have them with her always. It was a crying shame that a little girl with such deep feelings was saddled with that mother of hers. Margo was a perpetually unhappy, selfish person. She constantly beat Callan down, convincing her that she was worthless, that no one cared about her, that no one would ever love her. Callan has such a soft heart and tender spirit, but she learned to keep her emotions hidden to survive her childhood.”

  Julie took a deep breath and patted Clay’s arm. “You know she used to have such a passion and zest for life that even her mother couldn’t completely subdue. It’s still in there somewhere, Clay. You’ve got to help her find it again. I knew you were the one for her because she let you into her heart. She opened herself up to you. That’s why you’re the one who brings Callan the most joy and the one who can wound her heart the deepest.”

  Clay couldn’t breathe. If what Julie said was true, he’d carved chasms in Callan’s heart tonight. He needed to leave, needed to stay, needed to know that everything was going to work out.

  “What should I do, Julie?” Anguish filled his voice.

  “I think you and Callan would do well to give each other some space until you get your thoughts sorted out. Go spend the weekend at the ranch and I’ll visit Callan tomorrow.”

  Clay got up and put his mug in the sink. After giving Julie a hug, he put on his coat and hat. “Thanks, Julie. I don’t know what either one of us would do without you.”

  As Clay started out the door, Julie put her hand on his arm and he turned around. “You have every right to be angry, Clay, and every right to be hurt, and every right to grieve. Take care of your feelings then you can help Callan work through hers.”

  Clay drove home and sat in the driveway for a while before going inside the house. He quietly closed the front door then took off his coat, hung it in the closet, and tugged off his boots, leaving them by the door.

  Softly walking to the bedroom, he opened the door. The light was on, but Callan curled into a sad little ball in the middle of the bed, clutching his pillow to her chest, crying in her sleep.

  She must have been like this since he left. Her suitcase, and the contents she’d partially unpacked, still sat on one corner of the bed.

  Clay put her things back in the suitcase and set it off to the side on the floor. He pulled off Callan’s shoes, lifted a thick quilt from the closet shelf and covered her. He turned off the light and backed out of the room. For tonight, he’d sleep in the guest room.