“I didn’t think so.”
“But I want to move on, Rowan. I do. I’m with you because I want to be.”
“I wish that was enough. God, I wish that was enough. You should see the way you look when you talk about him. You should see the way you smile when you talk about both of them.”
“No,” she said so quietly she wasn’t sure she even said it.
“Look how we’re hurting each other. Look at the things I’m doing and saying. This is turning us into people we don’t want to be. It’s turning me into someone I don’t recognize.”
“You told your friends without asking me.”
He held up his hand, stopping her. “No. These aren’t just my friends. Supposedly they’re our friends. They’ve tried for years to be your friends, but you don’t let anyone in, Kate. Don’t you even sort of see that? You keep your distance, always on the surface of things, always a little bit not-there. It’s killing me.”
“Don’t do this,” she said.
“Do what? Tell the truth? Well, here it is: We need to take a break. We need to breathe our own air for a while.”
Kate wanted to find a way to talk him out of this, to continue trying to be happy inside their life, but she couldn’t and didn’t.
twenty-seven
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA
2010
The baggage carousel turned endlessly, suitcases and golf bags a jumbled mass. People pushed forward as they grabbed their belongings. Kate spied her own luggage—a small black bag with a pink tag. The Birmingham airport was crowded on that Friday afternoon and yet when she walked outside, she didn’t need to wait for a cab, because no one else was in line. It seemed as if the whole world had someone to pick them up and she alone was alone.
She could have called Jack to get her, but she wanted to surprise him. Or maybe she didn’t want him to tell her not to come. She waved at the cab. This is real. She was in Birmingham and she was putting it all on the line: I want you and you alone, she would say. She hadn’t said that yet. She’d told him she wanted him in her life, that she missed him, but not yet that confession.
The cab driver took Kate’s bag, throwing it into the open trunk. “Where to?”
She recited Jack’s address and slid into the backseat. The short drive into Forest Park took her past downtown. She looked up to Vulcan and she wanted to whisper a prayer to the iron god, but he wouldn’t be any help at all. And she wasn’t sure what would help. Telling the truth seemed the only thing that mattered.
His house was dark in the afternoon shadows, and she stood on the flagstone front porch for longer than she wanted. Her bravado had fled. Finally she lifted her hand and pressed the buzzer, hearing the sound echo through the house, the empty house.
Again, she hadn’t thought through her plan. He wasn’t home. For all she knew, he could be on a two-month trip to Europe. Or out with a date he wanted to bring home. She turned around and faced the street, her back to the front door. She slid down, leaning against the doorframe and then sitting on her suitcase. Far off, a train called a mournful sound as it passed through the city without stopping.
The December air changed its mind every few minutes, calm and then lifting a cold-draft reminder of winter’s stay. Kate pulled her coat closer and waited. What was there left to do?
An hour later, but what seemed many hours later, Jack’s truck rounded the corner and turned into the driveway. He spoke to someone in the passenger seat, laughing, and he didn’t see her. She wanted the flagstone to crack open, create a crevice to hide inside. She dropped her head onto her knees and closed her eyes: maybe he’d go in the back door, never see her, and she’d call a cab.
“Katie?”
She looked up and tried to smile, feeling the shake at the outline of her mouth. “Yep. It’s me.” She stood to face him.
“What are you doing?”
She glanced around. He hadn’t been alone in the truck. “I came to tell you something,” she said.
“A phone won’t do?”
“Not for this,” she said, doubt turning to embarrassment and running along the cliff of humiliation.
“What is it?” he asked
“I love you, Jack.”
He closed his eyes. “Katie…”
“I’m not done,” she said, taking his hand. “Rowan and I—we’re over.”
He opened his eyes and shook his head. “I’m sorry. What happened?”
“He knows.”
“Knows?”
“He knows I love you, Jack. And he knows that nothing can change that.” She held her breath, waiting, again waiting.
“Let’s go inside,” he said.
A roller-coaster ride, a plummeting feeling inside, took Kate by surprise. “That’s all you have to say?”
“No.” He shook his head. “But let’s go inside.”
He unlocked the door. “Who was in the truck?” she asked.
“Caleb. He ran next door to play video games. Dad isn’t nice enough to buy the new Tiger Woods PlayStation game, so off he goes.” Jack smiled.
She stood at the windows, again looking at the downtown view, which was becoming familiar, a touchstone.
Jack took her hands and pulled her closer. “I just don’t know what to say or do.”
“Maybe you could say it back. That you love me. That we can try this…” She moved closer, kissing him, her hands sliding under his shirt.
He took her hands and pulled them from his waist. “Not here.”
Hot humiliation worked its way through her belly, rushing to her face. She carefully, like she forgot how to use her legs, backed away.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she answered, hesitating.
“Please stop,” he said, immediately at her side. “Let me make sure Caleb is staying at the neighbors. We’ll go somewhere.”
“Okay.”
* * *
The cabin had one bedroom. The walls were formed of logs stacked one on top of the other, nestled together. Kate could sit in the stone fireplace if she wanted, so large and empty. Jack walked through the room, turning on lights. They’d only driven twenty minutes, yet they seemed states away, Colorado maybe.
“What is this?” she asked, whispering.
“My Dad’s,” Jack said. “It’s his hunting cabin. And it’s not really even his. He leases it with a couple other guys.”
“For everything I know about you, there’s even more I don’t know.” She shivered. “It’s freezing in here.”
Jack walked toward her and took her face in his hands, his mouth finding hers, and he kissed her deeply. She was no longer freezing. She pulled away to look in his eyes, and his kiss became more insistent, a hungry need she met with her own. One hand fumbling and trying to unbutton her jeans, the other tangled in her hair sending shivers down her neck. When she was half-undressed, clothes hanging off limbs, he picked her up. She wound her legs around his waist as he walked forward. Maybe he’d changed his mind, a game where he was now carrying her back to his truck, sending her home. “Where are you taking me?” she whispered.
He didn’t answer, but carried her to the bedroom where two sets of bunk beds were shoved against the wall. He set her feet on the ground and then he sat on a bottom bunk, looking up at her. She bent forward to kiss him, her hair falling over his face. “God, you are so beautiful,” he said. “I’ve never stopped loving you.”
She answered with her body.
* * *
The night was a culmination of need. Years dissolved. With every touch, they drew closer to who they’d been—to who they’d been before the wilderness, before marriage, before Luna, before loss.
Between touch they talked of the past, they murmured about the years of missing each other and the things they’d each done to try and forget. Huddled beneath the quilts of a hunting cabin, he called her Katie and that’s who she was. They talked about seeing kids who were the same age as Emily at any time and having to stop, gain their b
earings. They admitted they’d been with others and imagined each other.
Desire would seem sated, and then rise again, a wave, a tsunami, and Jack’s hands again found their way to the places she’d imagined for years. Their lovemaking was the same and altogether different, wiser and slower, insistent and gentler. They used their bodies to erase the pain and the wondering, to say without words what they’d wanted to say all those years. They told each other the secrets of their need.
Kate didn’t believe she’d fall asleep, but then Jack was gently shaking her. “We need to go. Caleb will be home soon.”
Jack was quiet, efficient in his movements as they left the cabin, as he drove them back to his house before dawn. Efficient in the way he parked in front of his house and turned to her. “You have to leave before Caleb gets home.”
“What?” she asked, still sleepy. “I want to see him again, I want…” She wanted too much, too many things to list.
He shook his head.
Her heart woke completely, jolting her to reality, away from the bed and the warmth and the dream. “You don’t want me to be part of this, do you? You need me to be separate like Emily. A secret.”
“He doesn’t know who you are. He doesn’t know…”
Kate stared through the windshield. “I don’t understand. He doesn’t have to know everything.”
“This was a mistake. We should have seen where this was going. We should have known better. We can not do this. It will hurt too many people.”
Kate stared at his profile. She was still warm with his touch, with him, and there he was telling her it was a mistake. She wanted to hate him, but it wasn’t possible, even in that terrible moment, it wasn’t possible. “Known better?”
“How can I bring this knowledge into his life?” Jack pointed to the house, as if it was a living thing.
Kate was upside down, inside out, confused. “Then what was last night?”
His face was covered in the flashing hurt of truth, a cringing around his eyes and mouth. “I thought … I thought we could do this. I did. But there’s no way.” He motioned toward the house. “What am I supposed to do? Go in there and tell my son that you’re the mother of my other child, his half-sister? Am I supposed to tell my parents that they have another grandchild I never told them about? Am I supposed to tell my ex-wife that I kept this from her for our entire marriage?”
“Yes, Jack maybe that is what you’re supposed to do.”
He stared at her, the green of his eyes seeming to turn grey and distant, changing. “We have to find a way to end all this. To really end this, to stay away from it all. It’s too much for both of us. For everyone. We can’t destroy anyone else. I can’t.”
“Destroy?” Kate opened her passenger side door. “If you think our love and our daughter would destroy someone else, then you’re right, this was wrong.”
She didn’t allow him to carry her bag or even take her to the airport. She didn’t allow him to look at her or talk. She climbed into a cab and didn’t look back to see him standing on his front porch watching her leave.
twenty-eight
BLUFFTON, SOUTH CAROLINA
2010
The Sunday afternoon before Christmas, Kate stood at her loft window, staring out over the May River. She loved that river and every movement it made. Kate wanted to be that river—changing and stable simultaneously, but she felt as if she were coming undone, unable to keep opposites coexisting.
Jack had been right—wondering and not-knowing was better than revisiting the pain and separation. She was, once again, trying to heal. Every time she wanted to call Jack, or when she reached for the computer to e-mail, she reminded herself that she couldn’t talk him into giving her something he couldn’t give. Loving her had hurt him more than almost anything that had ever happened in his life. How could she expect him to do that again? He’d made it more than clear—having her near made his life worse, not better. This was an awful knowing, and she reminded herself of it whenever she went to pick up the phone or type an e-mail.
Beautiful days needed to be lived, and Kate tried to plunge into them, determined to move toward gratefulness and joy. She turned her gaze from the river and grabbed her coat. It was Christmas tree–buying day with her parents and then a party with Norah and Lida that night.
Kate drove her parents through the Christmas tree parking lot for the third time, passing full and double-parked spots. Her dad, still angry Kate hadn’t shown up for Thanksgiving, said, “Forget it. We’ll just skip it this year. Just like Kate skipped Thanksgiving dinner.”
“Skip a tree? What are you talking about?” Kate’s mother asked. “Stop it, Stuart, you’re being ridiculous.”
A pickup truck backed out of a parking spot and Kate slammed on her brakes, flicking on the turn signal. “Look, we got one,” she said, using her lightest voice, hoping to dissipate her dad’s anger with kindness. She’d already tried the apologies and a bottle of thirty-year-old whiskey.
“Lookie there,” Kate’s mom said in a voice better used on four-year-olds. “It’s a sign that we should stay.” She pointed at the open parking spot.
“A sign?” he asked.
“Dad, seriously. Can you just stop being mad at me long enough to make this fun for Mom? It’s her favorite thing every year, and you’re ruining it.”
“I’m ruining it?” He turned in the passenger seat as Kate put the car in park. “Because I’m the one who made her cry on Thanksgiving because her oldest child didn’t show up? Because I’m the one who ruined the day?”
“Ruined the day?” Kate asked. “Listen, I’m more than sorry. Sorrier than sorry for not coming. I was in a messy place. I honestly believe you would have been more miserable if I’d been there.”
“Well, you could have let us decide for ourselves,” he said.
Kate opened the driver’s side door. “Let’s pick a tree. Come on.”
The air was permeated with the sappy-sweet smell of pine. The ground was soft with the spongy feel of evergreen needles piled in layers. Lines and crooked rows of bent trees waiting to be chosen, to be taken home and dressed with bright lights, tinsel, and family ornaments.
Her dad climbed out of the car and slammed shut the passenger door with more force than was needed.
Kate rolled her eyes. “So, Dad, if you could just pretend to want me around for fifteen minutes, that would be good for me. Seems lately everyone needs me to stay away.…”
He stared at his daughter. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice softening as they wound through the rows.
“Here, here,” Nicole called from a few yards away. “I found the perfect one.”
Stuart and Kate walked toward her, and he circled the tree. “It’s missing branches in the back,” he said.
“We can put it in the corner,” Nicole ran her fingers down a branch, allowing needles to fall into her palm. “I love this one.”
“Why do you always pick out the one with the bald spot?” he asked.
“Guess I love bald spots,” she said, reaching up and touching the back of her husband’s head.
Kate laughed out loud and Stuart made a noise that was meant to sound angry, but carried humor inside. He walked away. “I swear the two of you will be the end of me.”
Kate’s mother looked at her and smiled. “He can’t stay mad forever.”
“I know.” Kate walked toward the back of the lot where the smaller trees leaned against a makeshift wall, and her mom followed. “Now I want to get a small one for my loft.”
“This year let’s put more on your tree than just tiny white lights.”
“Why? I like all the white lights and nothing else. It’s nice. Clean and nice.”
“Well, I think you need messy and bright.”
Katie smiled. “Maybe you’re right. Okay, this year, let’s get loud and obnoxious: green, red, blue, everything.”
“Yes.” Her mother smiled. “I know just where to find such things.”
“I am sure you do.”
When Stuart had written the check and the trees were tied to the top of the car, the annual dance of the Vaughn Christmas tree buying ended on a good step. Michael Bublé sang “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” on the car radio and Kate sang along with her mother’s voice as background and her dad’s “humph” as an endnote.
Kate parked her car in front of Mimsy Clothing to allow her dad to undo the trees, taking one to tie to his own car and propping the smaller one against the brick wall. “I’ll take it up,” Kate said.
“Wait,” Nicole said, opening the hatchback. “These are for you. Have fun at your party tonight.” She handed Kate four boxes of bright, large, multicolored light strands.
Kate laughed. “Thanks, Mom.” She hugged her parents good-bye.
The tree dropped needles in the elevator and across the apartment floor as Kate dragged it to the corner and set it up in her small tree stand. Her iPod was plugged into speakers and she clicked the playlist titled “Holiday Music,” filling the room with the sounds of Diana Krall singing “Let It Snow,” her voice convincing enough to coax white flakes from the Low Country clouds. Lida and Norah were coming over that night for their annual Mimsy Celebration, and Kate wanted the tree to at least have lights on it when they arrived.
She filled the tree stand bowl with water as her cell phone buzzed across the room. She reached for it without thought, fumbling at the side table and answering.
“Hey, it’s Jack.” His voice broke across her complacency.
“Hi, what’s up?” she asked in a voice that wouldn’t betray her mood. It had only been days since she’d left him. She’d told him she loved him and he’d said their relationship needed to end. It seemed impossible that he was on the phone talking as if the hurt hadn’t happened, as if she hadn’t made a fool of herself.
“I want to talk to you.” he said.
“Oh?”
“I know you left mad. I am so sorry if I hurt you. This is all such a mess.”
Kate didn’t answer, her breath held, her eyes closed.
And Then I Found You Page 20