Past Midnight

by Jasmine Haynes

  Rachel gave her a look that clearly said, Don’t you even know what your own husband’s doing?

  Well, no, she didn’t know what Dominic was doing. They didn’t talk much unless it was about business. Even in the dark, when she couldn’t sleep, weakened by the need to blot out everything for a little while, even then, they didn’t talk. What was there to say?

  With careful movements and a deep breath, Erin stood. “Don’t worry. I’ll talk to Dominic about it myself.” And she would be calm, swear it.

  Rachel nodded and scurried out as if afraid she’d get caught in the cross fire.

  God, had she looked that scary to Rachel? Erin followed her out of the office, the itinerary in hand.

  Like cogs in a wheel, the DKG offices ringed a large common area housing their office equipment, copier, fax, high-volume wireless printer, mail machine, and a conference table. Everything out in the open, shared by all. They called it the roundhouse, though Erin couldn’t remember who’d started that. On the far side, she’d had a break nook installed, with a sink, plumbed coffee machine, microwave, and refrigerator stocked with water, juice, and other goodies. Her motto: Happy employees didn’t waste time gossiping around the watercooler. On the left lay their manufacturing area with assembly, warehousing, shipping, and receiving. To the right was the engineering wing and the no-man’s-land of Dominic’s testing lab.

  She stomped down the engineering hallway. He wasn’t in his office. She found him in the lab with its walls the sterile white of a hospital room. Shoving a scrap of paper beneath the mouse pad next to his computer when she walked in, he was seated on one of the three metal stools amid parts, disassembled gauges, and test equipment that beeped too loudly. Another stool sat forlorn in a corner, its seat ratcheted higher than the others to accommodate a shorter, smaller body. It hadn’t moved from that spot in over a year. A cold cup of coffee sat on the speckled white Formica counter beside him, “World’s Best Dad” emblazoned on the mug in big red letters. She wondered how he could still use it. Her “World’s Best Mom” mug was gone; she didn’t know where and hadn’t looked.

  Mother’s Day had been the worst. Jay’s birthday, or the anniversary of the day she’d lost him, she’d thought those days would be the most unbearable. But if no one reminded you, you could lie to yourself about what day it was. Mother’s Day, though, it was everywhere you looked, on TV, store flyers, even shouting at you from spam e-mails the filters didn’t catch; everywhere, reminding her that she wasn’t a mother anymore.

  Erin swallowed past the lump in her throat. Aware of the sudden silence out in the roundhouse, she closed the lab door gently. That was the problem with working together; all your employees knew about your marital squabbles. Not that she and Dominic fought much anymore. They didn’t talk enough to do that.

  She slapped down the flight schedule on the counter next to Dominic. “What the hell is this?”

  A gauge in his hand, he glanced at it, then up to her. “It’s your itinerary for the PRI show,” he said mildly, his charcoal-colored eyes so dark they could appear black in certain lighting. Now they smoked, like coals on the edge of blazing.

  “I never go to that show,” she said, her teeth gritted.

  He wore his thick hair short. Despite being forty-three, he didn’t have even a hint of gray, and the overhead fluorescents gleamed in the black strands. He was more handsome than the day she’d first seen him in a university night class back in Michigan. Over the last year, she’d forgotten how good-looking he was. She’d looked at him, but she hadn’t really seen him. Just as she couldn’t really see him in the dark when it was long past midnight.

  “We need some time away from here,” Dominic said, flicking a button on the gauge. “Together.” He watched something on the piece of test equipment he was working, and she hated the way he didn’t even look at her as he added, “Don’t tell me you’ve got too much to do for year-end because I’m only talking about one work day.”

  Damn him for circumventing her argument. “You should have asked me.”

  “You would have told me no.”

  She could feel her heart’s vicious pounding against the wall of her chest. “I hate it when you make decisions for me.”

  He turned his head, smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Like when you decided we wouldn’t go to Michigan?”

  “All right, so I didn’t consult you about that. I didn’t want . . .”

  She hadn’t wanted to argue. Because he made her think when they argued. He made her feel. In a terrifying way, feeling something, anything, even anger, was dangerous. It opened her up to emotions she couldn’t deal with, things she couldn’t think about. It wasn’t like in the middle of the night when she reached for him. That was physical, akin to taking a sleeping pill, a matter of survival.

  He was making her feel now, and she didn’t like it.

  He flipped a switch on the meter, and it pinged at him. “It’s nonrefundable, and I’m not cancelling it,” he said, anticipating her objections again.

  That just pissed her off more. “Screw the money.” Why was he being such an asshole about this?

  All right, she was being more of an asshole than he was. First with Rachel, now with Dominic. But she couldn’t go to that goddamn show, couldn’t wear the game face, or pretend with all those strangers. It was bad enough pretending she was fine with people she knew.

  “WHOA, I DIDN’T MEAN TO START WORLD WAR THREE,” RACHEL whispered to Yvonne after Erin disappeared into Dominic’s lab.

  “It’s not your fault, honey.” Yvonne tried to assure her.

  In the break nook, they poured themselves fresh coffees. Rachel loaded hers with creamer. The coffee was made from expensive, freshly ground beans, and the creamer came in a variety of flavors. The DeKnights treated their employees well. Rachel didn’t have to make a copayment on the medical or dental insurance, and the benefits were so good that she and her ex had taken the boys off his plan and added them to hers. Then there was the profit sharing, which was based not on salary level, but divided equally among the thirteen employees. Everyone had equal incentive and was equally rewarded. Rachel had her own office, too. Where else did a receptionist get an office, even if it did open right into the front entrance? She needed this job, and she wished she hadn’t gotten testy with Erin even if she’d only been following Dominic’s instructions.

  Beside her, Yvonne eyed the hallway leading to Dominic’s lab. “They’re on edge with the holidays, and it being a year and all. You know how it is.”

  No, Rachel didn’t know. But she’d felt the tension around DKG growing over the last month. She was the newbie. Almost everyone else had worked for the DeKnights at least five years. Yvonne herself had been with them the full ten years DKG had been in business. She was inside sales, handling all the existing customers with repeat business. Yvonne Colbert was a big woman, not fat, but husky and tall, over six feet. In her midfifties, she was soft-spoken, with caramel skin and gentle brown eyes. If Rachel made a mistake, Yvonne was the first to say, “It’s okay, honey, don’t worry about it.”

  Rachel sipped her coffee. God, it was good. She couldn’t afford stuff like this. She was strictly freeze-dried. “Okay, here’s the thing. I feel like I need to walk on eggshells, but nobody tells me why.” She didn’t want to screw up this job by putting her foot in her mouth when she didn’t even know what she wasn’t supposed to say. Or do.

  “Aw, honey, I’m sorry. We just don’t talk about it, that’s all, and we all figure that someone else has told you.”

  “Like who? Bree?” Rachel glanced over her shoulder at Bree’s office, the fourth that circled the roundhouse along with Erin’s, Yvonne’s, and Rachel’s.

  Bree Mason was DKG’s bookkeeper. She sat at her desk, her long black hair pulled back in a severe ponytail that looked downright painful it was so tight. She was always at her desk working hard. While she was helpful, smiled, and talked like a normal person when you were face-to-face with her, alone in her office, when s
he didn’t think anyone was looking, she was almost a shadow of herself. So no, Bree wouldn’t have said a thing about Erin. Rachel had yet to figure out if Bree was always so quiet or if this was something new, like Erin’s increasing tension. All Rachel knew was that Bree didn’t gossip. In fact, no one gossiped about the DeKnights. They were a tight family, and Rachel felt like the interloper.

  Yvonne patted her hand. “I’ll say it once, then we don’t talk about it again, all right?”

  “I won’t say anything.” Rachel zipped her lips, but she had to admit, her curiosity was killing her.

  “Their little boy died last year, the end of October.”

  Rachel took the words like a body blow. “Oh my God. Was he in a car accident?” She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose one of her sons. Even if lately they’d been acting like they hated her guts, as if the divorce were her fault. Maybe that was the typical reaction of all teenage boys who adored their fathers.

  Yvonne sighed deeply. “He picked up some parasite while he was on a day trip with his school class. Little itty-bitty amoeba thingies the doctors couldn’t figure out were there. He died two weeks later.” Yvonne’s eyes misted. She blinked away a tear. “Wouldn’t have mattered if they had known, though. There wasn’t anything the doctors could do after the parasites got into his brain.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Rachel’s heart was racing, the horror of the loss washing over her, leaving her hands clammy. Yet she’d wondered about Dominic’s “World’s Best Dad” mug and assumed in the end he’d taken whatever was available in the cupboard.

  “It was awful,” Yvonne murmured. “I knew Jay all his life. And Erin had an awful time of it when she was pregnant with him, too. Fibroids in her uterus. She spent the last couple of months in bed so the baby wouldn’t come too soon, then she had him caesarean. They ended up giving her a hysterectomy afterward.” She shook her head sadly. “So no more babies.” Yvonne had three grown kids she doted on, two sons and a daughter, and Rachel knew she was thinking that Erin had lost more than her son; she’d lost the chance at more children.

  Though who would even think that having another child could replace the one you’d lost?

  Rachel’s stomach crimped. How could Erin DeKnight even get up in the morning? Every morning, knowing her little boy wouldn’t be in his bedroom. Never again. One day he was laughing and playing, then he was gone. Just like that. Rachel didn’t think she’d have survived. “How old was he?”

  “Eight. I tell you those two adored him.” Yvonne glanced at the closed door down the engineering hall. “Nothing’s been the same around here since. Nothing ever will be. It’s like we all lost Jay that day.”

  Rachel’s boys were thirteen and fifteen. Even now she sometimes got a sick feeling letting them out of her sight, though that was probably an aftereffect of the divorce.

  “Dominic was supposed to go on the school trip.” Yvonne wore a faraway look, her gaze fixed on the closed door. “But there was some problem with one of the new product releases, and he didn’t.” Quickly, she touched Rachel’s hand, her fingers cold. “Not that I blame him. It would have happened anyway.”

  Dominic must be racked with guilt.

  “Poor Erin, she was always taking care of everyone else, including all of us, and now, when she needs it, she doesn’t know how to ask.”

  From down the engineering hallway, despite the closed door, they could hear voices, not yelling, just tense. Rachel realized that for a woman who didn’t gossip, Yvonne was revealing things far beyond anything Rachel needed to know. It was like reading someone’s private diary.

  And yet, Rachel didn’t know how she was going to resist the urge to tell Erin how very, very sorry she felt for her.

  2

  DOMINIC SET DOWN THE GAUGE, BUT HE DIDN’T LET GO OF IT NOR did he look at her. He could feel the steady shoosh of his blood through his veins. “Don’t make me go alone, Erin,” he said softly.

  “You always go alone.”

  “Not this time.” He hadn’t gone last year. He didn’t believe she’d considered that this time of year held as many reminders for him as it did for her, that his guts ached with loss, with guilt for not being there that day, that at times he was as close to despair as she was. She wasn’t unfeeling, but she didn’t . . . notice him. Yet no matter how much you didn’t want it to, life kept right on going, rolling over you if you didn’t get out of its way. The trade show was important for them, a venue to show off their new products. He had to go.

  Around him, equipment hummed, beeped. Something scrabbled on the roof, maybe a bird, or a squirrel snatching up acorns that had fallen off the oaks surrounding the industrial park. He could smell Erin, the sweet shampoo he sometimes borrowed when his ran out. He liked having her scent on him.

  “I’m not sure I can.” Her voice lacked the tension she’d entered the lab with.

  “Do it for me,” Dominic said, his fingers tight on the gauge. “I need you.”

  It was dirty pool and he knew it, but he was tired of fighting fair with her. In past years, he’d spent the entire week in Orlando because a hell of a lot went on even before the actual trade show got underway. This year, though, he’d opted for the earliest flight out Wednesday morning to have time to set up the booth before the show started on Thursday. He’d had Rachel book a late Thursday afternoon flight for Erin. Last Christmas was a blur for both of them. They’d moved in a haze of grief. But this year, the holiday season was proving to be far more brutal on her, and he would not leave her alone for that many days, especially not over the weekend. But he’d already cancelled on several trade shows and conferences over the past year, places he should have been, networking he should have done. He couldn’t miss the PRI show. So instead, he’d decided to take her with him. No matter what kind of fight she put up.

  He held his breath, waiting, the animals scrabbling on the roof the only sound in the lab. Say yes, he willed her. Don’t fight me. He needed this. He needed her, but he was so damn terrified she was too far gone to ever find her way back to him. He should have forced her into counseling. He’d needed it, too. But she’d refused, and any pressure he’d put on her had only driven her further away.

  “All right,” she said.

  His heart started beating again, and he resisted the urge to punch his fist in the air. Unsportsmanlike conduct. He’d like to say it was all for her own good, but he was the one that had to have it. For the last eighteen years, even before they were married, every decision he’d made had been with her in mind. If she left him, he had no idea what would replace her. Without her, he could not bear Jay’s loss. He was willing to do anything to get her back. “Thank you.”

  “You owe me,” she said, trying to make light of it, but he recognized the huskiness of emotion in her voice.

  “I got us a room at the Crown Royal.”

  She raised a brow. “That’s a little swank, isn’t it?”

  “It’s nice enough.” On his own, he wouldn’t have spent the extra money, but he’d wanted to give her the best. At forty, she was still gorgeous to him, with a body women ten years younger would envy and long red hair that made him tremble when he buried his fingers in it. Yet her eyes, a pretty robin’s-egg blue, were blemished by dark circles, and her brow furrowed with a frown she probably didn’t even realize was there most of the time. It didn’t used to be that way. She used to laugh a lot. “Pack a bathing suit. The weather’s supposed to be nice.” Unseasonably warm, in fact.

  Her lips thinned. “It’s a working trip.”

  “I’ll be working. You can lay by the pool if you want.”

  “If I’m going, I won’t waste time at the pool. I’ll sit in the booth with you and talk to people.”

  She’d hate it, but he didn’t argue. He saw many of the same customers and suppliers year after year, and he liked the idea of introducing his wife around. “You’ll need a couple of cocktail dresses. There are evening parties we’ll have to attend.”

  She raised a brow.
“Oh yeah, I remember. All the business gets done at the parties.”

  Among other things. He grinned, feeling a little lighter now that she’d agreed. Of course, he’d told her about the parties. All the dirty details. And some of them did get pretty damn dirty. “I have to make a showing.”

  “Sure, right.” She smirked at him as she left. In that moment, there had been some remnant in her unguarded expression, the Erin of old, the girl he’d fallen head over heels for, the woman he missed as much as he missed Jay.

  They’d been together almost half their lives, meeting in night school at the local university in Kalamazoo. They’d both been working full time as well, and they had the same goals, the same dreams. Neither of them wanted to spend their lives worrying about where the next paycheck was coming from. They wanted control over their destiny, wanted a better life for their children. They’d married fifteen years ago, after he graduated with his mechanical engineering degree, but they put off having kids until Erin finished business school, until they owned their home out in sunny California, away from the Michigan winters. Building the life they wanted had been a struggle, but they’d done it together. He designed the products, courted the new customers. She did everything from purchasing to operations, handled the entire office. They were a team, DKG a second family to them. Everything had been perfect.

  Until last October. Now they lived in a darkness that seemed to have taken over their souls. They could never go back to that perfect life.

  He withdrew the photo from beneath the mouse pad, where he’d stashed it when Erin walked in. Jay had his dark hair and Erin’s pale skin, the wiry body of Dominic’s youth, but Erin’s smile. Jay had loved hanging out here in the lab after school, sometimes on weekends. He’d been smart as a whip, helped out with the testing, knew how to run the instruments.

  The photograph was all Dominic had left. She wouldn’t let him talk about Jay. There wasn’t a grave to visit. Erin wouldn’t have it. She’d wanted Jay cremated. That was the only real fight they’d had afterward. Dominic closed his eyes, his heart pumping hard, his chest tight, his temples suddenly throbbing. He could still hear her screaming at him.