by Holly Jacobs
He had so much he wanted to say, but her deep silence was a wall he didn’t know how to breach. Once, they could understand each other with just a look. Now, what words they did manage were incomprehensible. They said very little and it meant even less.
The day after the funeral he’d thanked her for all she’d done for his mother.
She’d looked wounded, and without response walked away.
He’d tried to stop her, but she’d ignored him.
Here, they sat in the same room, next to each other, but not quite touching. That had been the way of things for them. Close, but not touching. And Brian wanted to touch her, to feel her … to have her feel him.
“Hayden.”
She looked up, but simply sighed and said, “Please, not now, Bri.” Her voice was heavy with exhaustion and sadness.
He wasn’t sure what she thought he was going to say, but he was pretty certain it would come out wrong, so he gave up. “Okay.”
He picked up his paper.
It was easier to hide behind it than confront the fact that he was losing his wife, and he didn’t know why.
Two weeks.
It had been two weeks since Kathleen had died.
Hayden stood in what once had been an office, then became Kathleen’s room. Now, it was just an empty space.
Hospice had come and taken their equipment away, and all that was left in the room were the personal items Kathleen had brought in to hopefully make it feel homey.
Hayden had never asked Kathleen if it had worked.
And now she never could.
All the things she should have said and didn’t clicked like a catalog of items in her mind. She worried that she hadn’t thanked Kathleen enough, that though she’d told her that she loved her, Kathleen hadn’t understood how much. Kathleen had been her mother, her friend, her teacher, her mentor, her biggest cheerleader …
How could you be sure someone understood that they impacted your life on so many levels?
“Hayden?” Brian was standing in the doorway.
It bothered her that her inclination was to say, not again.
Brian had spent the days since Kathleen’s passing hovering. Watching Hayden. She wasn’t sure what he was watching for, but the questioning looks, the furrowed brow … it was all making her decidedly uncomfortable.
“Yes?” She tried to force a smile, but didn’t think it was all that convincing.
He took a step into the room, barely over the threshold. “I got a call from the Realtor. They have an offer on our house.”
She’d forgotten all about their house being on the market. They’d only moved the bare essentials over from the house two doors down. They’d thought Kathleen’s illness would move more slowly, that they’d all have longer. It had moved too fast, and things Hayden had thought would be done by now weren’t. “That’s good, I guess.”
“We’ll have to go through both houses and decide what we’re keeping, how we’re going to combine both households into one.”
“Yes, I suppose we will.”
She leaned back against the window sill, almost sitting on the wide ledge, and looked at the former office, trying to imagine it as anything but Kathleen’s. They would probably use it for an office again.
Hayden tried to picture her desk in here, along with her computer and some books lining the walls, but she couldn’t quite manage it. All she could see was the hospital bed and Kathleen’s ill body.
“It’s a good offer,” Brian said.
Hayden nodded, not knowing what to say.
“We’ll have enough to pay off the mortgage we took on Mom’s.”
“Okay.” Forcing herself to be practical, she tried to feign some interest. “How long do we have to clean everything out?”
“A month easy by the time they get everything ready and set a closing date.”
“A month.” She nodded. “That’s doable.”
“We can decide what we’re keeping, then do a big house sale there, getting rid of whatever we’re not bringing here.”
“That makes sense.”
It did make sense, and it was good news, but Hayden couldn’t feel any sense of anticipation. Couldn’t imagine this house being anything but Kathleen’s.
Try as she might, she couldn’t imagine living here with Brian as husband and wife. She knew that was ridiculous, that they’d both lived here as children, that this had always been home. But without Kathleen, it didn’t feel like it anymore.
She realized Brian was still standing there in the doorway, looking at her. “Hayden, talk to me.”
“About what, Bri?” She got up and started pacing, feeling caged, though she didn’t know why. Truth is, she didn’t know much of anything right now. “Just what is it you want from me? I sure as hell don’t know. I’ve done everything I was supposed to. And now I’m lost.”
“Hayden, I’m just as lost as you.”
“I guess in the past, if one of us was sinking, the other was there to pull us up. But we’re both sinking this time. So, who’s going to rescue us?”
He didn’t have an answer, but then, neither did she.
“Let’s give each other more time.” She hoped that this would one day feel like home, despite the fact Kathleen was gone. And she hoped, given enough time, she’d figure out how to repair the relationship between her and Brian.
He said, “I feel as if every passing minute we drift further and further apart. Maybe we’ll be so far apart we won’t be able to get back to each other?”
“If that’s the case, maybe we shouldn’t be together.”
She heard herself say the words and wished she could suck them back in. Brian looked as if she’d struck him and she knew she’d hurt him. She hadn’t meant to.
“Is that how you really feel?” His voice was soft and almost vacant.
She wanted to close the distance that separated them, him in the doorway, her opposite, next to the window. But she didn’t, and he didn’t. All she could do was say, “I don’t know how I feel. I’m numb.” That at least was the truth.
“You wouldn’t have said it if you didn’t mean it on some level.”
“Maybe I do. Is that what you want to hear? Maybe we made a mistake when we married. Maybe I still think that you did it because it was convenient. Your marriage to Lisa had broken up. You’d moved home. It was easy to be with me, because we share a daughter, because we both loved Kathleen.”
She’d never put the feelings into words before, but as they tumbled out, she realized there was a truth to them all. It would be easy to blame the distance between herself and Brian on Kathleen’s death, but that was just an excuse. Maybe the distance had been there since the beginning? Despite the fact they’d had ten good years, maybe on some level she’d held a part of herself back from Brian, afraid to give him everything because she needed to protect some piece of herself for the inevitable day he left her.
“Maybe, Brian, I wonder if now that Kathleen’s gone and Livie’s a junior and graduating next year, then going to college, what we’ll have left? Maybe I’m wondering just what will hold us together?”
She waited, hoping Brian would say something about their love being enough to hold them together. Needing him to say that she’d never been just a convenience.
But he didn’t say anything. He merely walked out of the room.
Hayden, wanting to go after him, but unsure what to say if she did, sank to the floor and cried.
Livie was almost grown, almost ready to start a life on her own. She’d lost Kathleen, and now it looked as if Hayden might lose Brian.
What would she be without them?
2004
“What would I be without you? Lost, always searching …”
Livie continued, flawlessly going through her lines for the school play, Hayden reading the other parts.
As her daughter finished, sounds of applause startled them both. Kathleen and Brian were standing in the doorway, clapping.
“Oh, gee,” Livie moane
d, ducking her head into a couch pillow.
“Come on,” Hayden coaxed. “If you can’t do the lines in front of the three of us, how on earth are you going to manage in front of the whole school?”
“I don’t know. I’ll probably forget every word, trip and stumble and make a huge fool of myself,” Livie announced.
“Was I this dramatic at fourteen?” Hayden asked Kathleen.
“You were worse,” Brian assured her.
“How do you know? You were away at school.”
“I heard things.”
Hayden looked at Kathleen, who laughed. “Not from me, I swear.”
She looked questioningly at Brian. “Hey, I’m not going to give up informants. I just know that you were more dramatic than Liv has ever managed.”
“Lies, all lies,” Hayden told Livie. “I was the soul of easygoingness.”
As they bickered back and forth, Hayden laughed, and finally asked, “What would I do without all of you?”
“You’d fade away,” Livie said with effect.
Hayden had laughed. “Oh, no. I’d probably get daily massages and a new car every year. I’d only watch PBS and …” She continued to tease them with more and more outrageous plans, but deep inside she knew Livie was right—without them, she’d just fade away.
Brian was right, too—she was as dramatic as Livie, she laughed for no reason except it was silly to imagine her life without them. They were a family and nothing could ever take that away.
That night a few years ago had seemed like nothing overly important at the time. Hayden had just been studying lines with Livie. But now, looking back, she wished she’d paid more attention. She tried to remember what they’d done after Brian and Kathleen had come in on their rehearsal.
Had they gone out to dinner? Maybe gone into the kitchen and all worked together cooking?
Tacos? Maybe spaghetti?
She couldn’t remember and it bothered her. She should have stored away every detail. They’d all been there. They’d all been happy.
How on earth had she not seen what she had when she had it?
Now that she didn’t, she recognized her loss, but didn’t know how to get it back.
What would she be without them?
The question nagged at her, but no answer came.
She wanted to go after Brian and ask him if he remembered that night.
She might not remember what they’d eaten, but she did recall thinking that if she’d lost her family, she’d lose herself. But Brian and Livie were both still here. It was Hayden who felt lost.
Would she lose her family because of it?
Chapter Seventeen
Livie’s junior year ended as summer arrived, warm and beautiful. Hayden recognized the season, but couldn’t seem to find the joy in it she normally would have.
The house down the street had sold to a young couple and as she pulled into her own drive, she spotted Cathy crossing Miss Witman’s lawn. She waved, but scooted into the house, before the terminally chipper young mother-to-be could come over and spread her happiness all over Hayden.
Watching someone so in love only made her situation harder to bear. The harsh words she’d exchanged months ago with Brian had driven a wedge so deep that they’d simply learned to go through their days without talking. They might still be together, but they’d never been so isolated.
Two months after Kathleen died, Brian had come in late and spent the night in the guestroom, claiming he didn’t want to come in their room in the wee hours of the morning and wake Hayden.
Slowly, his sleeping there became more and more frequent. He would arrive late from work, then sleep in the guestroom. Oh, his clothes were still in the master bedroom, but Brian wasn’t, except on nights Hayden was on duty at the hospital. To be honest, he might have still used the guestroom then, as well. She had no way of knowing. He’d always taken care to make the bed when he got up.
Hayden came home from work and made her way sleepily to their room. As always, the bed was made and any evidence of where Brian had slept was erased.
Normally, after a long shift, going to bed was inviting, but today, she wasn’t sure she could face that king-sized bed on her own. She felt as if her troubles with Brian were coming to a head, and she was afraid of what she’d be left with when the smoke cleared.
Brian was in the master bathroom, so she showered down in Livie’s, then put on pajama pants and a T-shirt.
She went to see Livie before she tried to get some sleep. Liv was spending her summer working at a local bakery. “Hey, kiddo.”
Livie looked up from her breakfast, obviously surprised. “What are you doing up?”
Hayden took the stool next to her. “Hi, Mom. Nice to see you. What’s new in your world?”
Livie grinned. “Sorry. Hi, Mom. Nice to see you. What’s new in your world, and why aren’t you in bed?”
“Maybe I just wanted to see you before you left for work. You’ve been so busy lately.” Despite the fact she knew it would probably keep her awake, Hayden reached over to the coffeemaker, an easy reach from her stool, and poured a mug.
Livie swallowed a bite of her toast. “It’s a good busy, though. I like the job, and the money will be nice for college.”
Livie was so responsible, but occasionally she was too responsible. “Honey, you don’t need to work yourself to death. We want you to leave time for some fun. Your dad and I started an account for you when you were little, and Nana left you money for college. You don’t have to worry about college costs, or even living expenses.”
She shrugged. “Yeah, I know. But like I said, I like keeping busy.”
“You have to slow down and deal with things some time. I worry. How are you doing, really? I don’t think I ask you that question often enough.” She felt a stab of guilt. She’d been so preoccupied with her own pain and worrying about her faltering relationship with Brian, that she’d neglected Livie’s feelings, Livie’s needs.
“I’m okay, Mom. It still hurts, but Nana and I said everything that we needed to say. You don’t need to worry about me. You’ve taken good care of me. You took care of Nana, too.” Hayden knew, of course, that Livie was almost an adult, but hearing these very insightful comments from her daughter choked her up. Words deserted her.
“Mom?” Livie reached out and hugged her.
Hayden pulled herself together. “I was asking about you, hoping to comfort you, and here you are comforting me.”
She accepted the truth of it, Livie wasn’t just growing up, she had grown up. Looking back, it seemed fast. Too fast. One more year, then she’d be off to college. And that would leave Hayden and Brian here on their own. A house filled with silence and no Livie to break it up.
Hayden felt more morose than she had coming home, but she tried to cover it, not wanting Livie to worry. “You keep saying you’re okay, but how are you, really?”
“Really?” Livie paused, appearing to give the question some consideration before answering. “I miss Nana. We all do. And though it’s getting easier, I still think about her every day. Something happens, and I think, I can’t wait to tell her, then I realize I can’t … I won’t ever be able to tell her again and it hurts as bad as it did right after. But I am fine, and I know that these feelings are part of the grieving process. It’s normal to think about her and miss her.”
“When did you get so smart?”
Livie smiled, which had been Hayden’s intent. “Rumor has it that it’s genetic.”
“Oh, that’s swee—”
With a twinkle in her eye, Livie interrupted, “So I probably should thank Dad.”
Hayden laughed out loud. “Cold, that was so cold.”
Livie grinned. And took the last bite of her toast. “Mom, I’m coping and I know that day by day it will get better, but we do need to talk.”
There was a sudden seriousness in Livie’s expression. Hayden’s momentary relief gave way to a new surge of anxiety. “Honey, you can always talk to me about any of your p
roblems.”
“That’s just it, Mom, it’s not my problem. It’s yours. Yours and Dad’s. I’m worried about the two of you. I have been for a long time, since before Nana—” she hesitated, then managed to get the word out “—died. I thought maybe it was just stress and that you two would work things out after, but it’s been a while and things are worse.”
Hayden lied automatically. “We’re fine—”
Livie’s expression was one of exasperation.
“I know Dad is sleeping in the other room.”
“It’s not like that. We’re both on different schedules and there was so much to do, with selling the old house, clearing it out and settling everything here that … We didn’t just decide to sleep in separate rooms—it’s merely been convenient.”
“It was never convenient before.”
“Livie, I—” Hayden’s realization that her daughter had grown up came back to her. “You’re right. Things haven’t been right between your dad and I for a long time.”
“So, what are you going to do about it?”
“I’ve been thinking maybe we should take some time apart. We’ve talked about it.”
Well, talked about it may be putting too fine a spin on it. Hayden had asked if he wanted to be somewhere else, live somewhere else, and he’d just looked at her and told her it might be for the best. Those few sentences didn’t really qualify as a talk, but considering how little they’d said to each other the last few months, it was as close to talking as they came anymore.
“You two have spent months apart, even though you’re still living in the same house. So maybe you two should spend some time together, remember what it was like before?”
“Livie, it’s not that we don’t remember, it’s …” She stopped. Kathleen’s illness had put a strain on them, but Hayden feared it was her harsh words after Kathleen’s death that had driven their relationship beyond the point of repair.
“You two were planning a trip before we found out Nana’s cancer was back. To celebrate your anniversary. Maybe you should take it.”
“Livie …”
Looking desperate, her daughter kept going. “Maybe we all should take it. I mean, if you two will be splitting up, if I’m going to be from a broken home, then I think I deserve one last family vacation. And maybe some time together will remind you what you had, what you could have.”