Who Loves You Best

by Tess Stimson

  I reach across Clare, and open the passenger door. “Get out. Double back and find Josef. I’ll deal with Marc.”

  “I can’t just leave you—”

  “Come on, Clare!” Jenna yells, tumbling out of the backseat and grabbing Clare’s hand.

  “Go on!” I urge. “Josef will get you to Damascus. I’ll meet you there. Please, Clare!”

  She struggles out of the front seat. Rowan is screaming now, his face red and shiny with tears. Marc is just two cars away. Jenna reaches for Rowan, but Clare simply cradles him tighter against her chest.

  I slam open my door, but a rust-bucket has crept up on my inside, and blocked me in. With a snarl of frustration, I jam the door against the side of the ancient Mercedes and force myself through the gap. My jacket snags, and I simply shrug it off.

  Horns blare all around us. Marc puts his hand on the hood of a BMW and vaults across it, landing just feet from Jenna. She yanks Clare’s hand and pulls her between two buses. I lose sight of them as I cut behind the painted van, flinging myself recklessly over cars and around motorcycles.

  We’ve started to attract attention of our own. Volleys of Arabic fly from all directions. A Lebanese cop breaks off arguing with the two scooter riders to stare at us. His hand moves reflexively to the gun at his waist. My pulse quickens. The last thing we want is to involve the police.

  Marc is the bigger and younger of the two of us, but he’s clumsy and out of shape. I reach him just as the cop hitches up his belt and starts to head towards us.

  With a loud laugh, I clap my arm around Marc’s shoulder. “Habibi! My friend, I’ve missed you! It’s good to see you! How are you? How’s the wife?”

  He tries to pull away, but my grip is steel.

  “Who the hell are you?” Marc splutters.

  “Your worst nightmare,” I hiss in his ear. I raise my voice, smiling broadly. “It’s been too long! I was starting to think you’ve been avoiding me!”

  The cop hesitates, then turns back to the two riders. I shove Marc in the direction of the sidewalk, forcing him into the shadow of a bakery shop doorway. Behind me, the traffic starts to move slowly around the scooters. Our vehicle, stationary in the middle of the street, is an island in the tide.

  “I don’t know who the fuck you are, you bastard,” Marc pants, freeing himself, “but I’m going to break your fucking legs if you touch me again!”

  “I don’t think you’re in any position to—”

  “Wait.”

  We both swing around. Clare is pale, but composed. In her arms, Rowan hiccoughs, and she drops a brief reassuring kiss on his forehead.

  “I’m so sorry, Cooper,” she says, moving over to her husband, “but I’ve changed my mind.”

  MS. SABRINA CHAGNON

  MD, MRCP, MRCOG

  CONSULTANT OBSTETRICIAN

  AND GYNECOLOGIST

  The Portland Hospital The Homerton Hospital

  205 Great Portland Street Homerton Row

  London W1N 6AH London E9 6SR

  Telephone: 020 7390 8000 020 8510 7300

  Facsimile: 020 7390 8888 020 8510 7333

  Mrs. C. Elias

  97 Cheyne Walk

  London

  SW3 5TS

  Monday, December 14, 2009

  Dear Clare,

  Your booking investigations are all satisfactory. Your hemoglobin was 12.8, your blood sugar is normal. You are syphilis negative, HIV negative, hepatitis B negative, and immune to both German measles and chicken pox. Your blood group is B positive with no abnormal antibodies.

  Your Down syndrome screening test gave a risk of 1 in 390. This in fact is better than the risk due to your age alone (1 in 330).

  I look forward to seeing you at your twenty-week scan on January 25, 2010.

  With best wishes

  Yours sincerely,

  Ms. Sabrina Chagnon MD, MRCP, MRCOG

  Consultant Obstetrician & Gynecologist

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Clare

  “I’m so sorry, Cooper,” I say, moving over to Marc, “but I’ve changed my mind.”

  Jenna grabs my hand. “Clare, come on! We don’t have time for this!”

  I don’t move. We stare at one another, frozen in place like exhibits in a museum. Rowan presses his wet face into my neck, his tiny body heaving with silent sobs. Over his head, I meet Cooper’s eyes, willing him to understand: I’ll do anything for my children. Whatever it takes.

  Before I had the twins, I’d heard people talk about maternal love, of women who’d fight like a tigress for their child. I’d heard of it, but I didn’t quite believe it. Now, I cannot imagine a world without Rowan and Poppy. To love a man is one thing, but to love a child is something else, something so consuming and all-encompassing, so visceral, it leaves room for nothing else.

  Cooper was right. Being a good mother doesn’t mean sewing in name tags and making potato-print paintings at the kitchen table. It has nothing to do with how many bedtime stories you read, the lavishness of the birthday parties, whether you work in an office or stay home to change nappies yourself. Nor is it even in your willingness to throw yourself under a car for them, to take that speeding bullet. Being a good mother is a thousand, a hundred thousand, tiny sacrifices, a lifetime of putting someone else first. It’s going without a new pair of shoes. It’s never sleeping in on a Saturday morning.

  It’s putting up with a rotten marriage for twenty-five years because you have two children who need a family, a mother and a father, at home, together.

  You are a good mother. But good doesn’t mean perfect. Good doesn’t mean you won’t get tired and angry and make mistakes. You aren’t perfect, and neither are your kids. But you’re their mother, and you love them. In the end, that’s all that counts.

  “I need to talk to Marc,” I say. “Alone.”

  “You can’t be serious!” Jenna cries. “Cooper, you can’t let her do this! She’s just scared, that’s all. She doesn’t mean it!”

  For the first time, Marc seems to register what’s going on. He steps forward, pushing his face into Cooper’s. “You heard my wife,” he snarls. “Back off.”

  Cooper doesn’t flinch. “Is that what you want?” he asks me curtly.

  His expression is as cold and hard as granite. He could be a stranger. No trace, now, of the man who wiped my tears away with a touch so gentle and erotic that my body liquefied beneath it. I can still feel the electrifying brush of his skin against mine, and smell the clean, citrus smoke scent of his hair. I know exactly what I am giving up.

  Whatever it takes.

  “Yes,” I tell Cooper.

  He turns away.

  My heart thudding, I hand Rowan to Jenna. He clings to me in silent protest, fisting his small hands in my hair, too bewildered even to cry. Gently, I prize his fingers open. “I won’t be long, Jenna. You can wait in the car.”

  Marc starts. “Wait a minute—”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere without my son.”

  Two doors down, a small shop sells fizzy drinks and coffee. On the pavement in front of it are three iron tables emblazoned with faded brewery logos, and a couple of plastic chairs. I sit down at one of them, while Marc buys two cans of cola. He puts one down in front of me with a grimy glass and a plastic straw in a paper wrap. I push the glass away, and open the straw.

  Despite his belligerent expression, Marc seems diminished somehow, less sure of himself. There are new lines around his eyes, and he’s gained weight. For the first time, I wonder at the toll this has taken on him. He’s lost his job, his home, his family. He’s effectively on the run, living out of a suitcase with a diminishing pile of cash. I realize he may want to find a way out of this as much as I do.

  I wait for him to speak, letting him take control of the conversation. We may have found Rowan, but he still holds all the cards.

  “So,” he says, with an unpleasant overconfidence that tells me he’s just as nervous as I am. “Who’s the American heavy?”

>   “A friend. How long are you planning to stay here?” I ask pleasantly.

  “We were doing fine, if that’s what you mean. We don’t need you.”

  I smile nicely. “I can see that. Rowan looks wonderful. He’s really grown. Poppy’s been missing him terribly, of course. She’s just cut another tooth, by the way. She kept us up for three nights while it came through.”

  “You should have rubbed whisky on her gum. That always helps.”

  I nod. “Yes, of course. I should have thought of that.”

  “Rowan’s missed her, too,” he adds, grudgingly. “Especially at night.”

  “Well. They’re used to sleeping next to each other.”

  Marc picks up his sweating can of cola and studies the Arabic writing on its side like a Biblical scholar presented with the Dead Sea Scrolls. I wait him out. I know my husband. He’s a defiant child, bewildered at the way his small rebellion suddenly got out of hand. He wants nothing more than to come in from the cold, if only his pride will let him.

  “You wouldn’t listen,” he accuses suddenly. “I tried to talk to you, but you wouldn’t listen.”

  “Is that why you took Rowan?” I ask mildly. No rebukes. A simple question.

  “I didn’t think you wanted him. Either of them. You were always busy working, or else there was Jenna. I didn’t think you’d even miss them. You said you wished you’d never had children. I thought I’d be doing you a favor.”

  “I didn’t mean it, Marc. I was just tired and overwhelmed. You knew that.”

  He spreads his hands on the metal table and stares down at them.

  “Clare, I’ve been thinking,” he says awkwardly. “Things got a bit … heated … before I left. Maybe I said things I shouldn’t have. These lawyers: They should know when you’re just letting off steam. They twist things and make them sound so much worse than you mean.”

  “Do you really think I poisoned Poppy, Marc?”

  Startled at my bluntness, he looks up.

  “No,” he says, after a long moment. “No, I don’t think that. Not anymore.”

  “I’m their mother,” I say quietly. “I know I’m not perfect, but they need me. We can’t snatch them back and forth like trophies. We have to put them first. They need me,” I repeat.

  Marc stares in surprise. I realize I’ve never actually stepped forward and claimed my role as mother before.

  “You never seemed interested in them. It was always the bloody shops—”

  “And that made it OK to just take him?”

  He scowls. “I never meant things to go this far. Even when I borrowed the cash from Hamish, I didn’t really mean to go through with it.” He glances at the chaotic street, the vendors selling soft pretzels, the women in black chadors, the unfamiliar shop signs in Arabic, as if seeing it all for the first time. “It just … it got out of hand. I’ve wanted to call you. Rowan was so much more upset than I thought he’d be. I tried to find him a baby-sitter, but—”

  “Marc. Please. Let me take him home.”

  For a long moment, he hesitates. And then he nods, once.

  I close my eyes, sick with relief. Cooper has been wonderful, finding Rowan; but I couldn’t have lived with the fear and uncertainty of never knowing when Marc would try to kidnap my children again. Stealing my son back from him would have meant depriving the twins of their father forever. I couldn’t do that to them. And, despite everything he’s done, I couldn’t do it to Marc either.

  “They need you, too,” I add.

  His eyes blaze with sudden hope. My heart unexpectedly twists with pity.

  “Do you—do you think we—not now, but maybe—”

  I should despise him, for what he’s done to me. The past four weeks have been unimaginable. I’ve missed Rowan so much, some days I haven’t wanted to get out of bed. The only thing that made it even slightly bearable was the knowledge that at least my child was with his father; at least he was cared for and loved. I cannot begin to comprehend how the mothers of children who are abducted by strangers cope. Their lives must simply stop.

  But I can’t find it in me to hate him. He’s the father of my children. He’s been my husband for seven years, and I can’t just switch off my feelings. It may not have been a passionate marriage, or a meeting of minds, but until recently, it worked. I just dropped the ball, that’s all. If I really try, maybe it’s not too late to put things right.

  Pity isn’t love.

  “I don’t know,” I say honestly.

  Marc nods again, satisfied.

  A horn blares near us, making us both jump. Jenna beckons to me from the car. In the driver’s seat, Cooper is staring straight ahead, his eyes on the road.

  “You should go,” Marc says.

  “Yes.”

  He puts his hand on my sleeve. “Kiss Poppy for me.”

  I climb into the car. Rowan is asleep in Jenna’s arms, worn out with crying. I twist around in the backseat, watching Marc diminish through the rear window. His head is bowed as if in prayer, and I know without being able to see his face that he’s crying.

  Cooper doesn’t fly back to London with us. Josef drops us at Beirut Airport, since we no longer need to flee to Damascus, and without a word, Cooper books himself on a flight back to the U.S. via Paris. I buy tickets to Heathrow for Rowan, Jenna, and me, my heart aching. I can’t blame Cooper. I know how he feels about me, and I know exactly what I’ve just done.

  He doesn’t even glance at me as we check in separately, much less say goodbye. I watch him pass through security, his back rigid, his long coat swirling angrily around his ankles. I can’t bear to leave things like this. I never made any promises, but I have to explain. Somehow, I have to make him understand.

  “I’m going to take Rowan to the bathroom,” Jenna says, watching Cooper. “I’ll see you at the gate.”

  I find him hunched over a small cup of thick, black Arabic coffee at a bar to one end of the long marble concourse. The chrome stools on either side of him are free, but I hesitate to sit down. I can tell from the way his shoulders stiffen that he knows I’m there, but he doesn’t look around.

  “Cooper, I’m sorry,” I say nervously. The words sound hopelessly inadequate, even to me. “You’ve been wonderful, and I couldn’t bear—”

  “We got Rowan back. He’s safe with you. That’s what we came for.”

  “I know, but I wanted to explain what—”

  “No need.”

  “Cooper, could you at least turn around?” I say desperately.

  He pushes himself away from the bar, and turns, folding his arms. His navy eyes are hard and opaque.

  “Can’t we discuss this?”

  “Why?”

  I know this man can talk. I’ve read his prose, eloquent and moving. Yesterday, he spoke to me as no one ever has before, making me feel normal and human and capable of this impossible feat, motherhood, for the first time since the twins were born. When he cares about something, he is passionate and fluent. And yet most of the time, he communicates in terse Neanderthal monosyllables.

  “Why are you making this so difficult?” I demand. “What exactly have I done wrong? I persuaded Marc to let me take Rowan home. Isn’t that what we wanted? Why are you treating me like I’ve just done a deal with Stalin?”

  “Point made.”

  He turns back to his coffee. I experience a blinding rush of anger. Does he think this is easy for me either? Does he think I don’t care?

  “If you want to wall yourself off from the rest of the human race, fine. I can’t stop you,” I say furiously. “You’ve been doing it for forty-nine years, so I guess you’re used to it. But I can’t. After everything that’s happened, I’m not letting you pretend it meant nothing! You know how I feel about you! If it wasn’t for the twins—”

  “Do you think that helps?” Cooper snaps. “You think it’s some sort of consolation?”

  “He’s their father! I have to give him another chance!”

  “So go. Do it.”

&nbs
p; “I don’t understand. What is it you want from me?” I cry helplessly.

  His dark eyes blaze, and there is such raw heat in his expression that a fierce answering pulse of lust beats between my legs. My nipples tighten, and suddenly I can feel his warm mouth on them. His hands are skimming the surface of my skin, following the curve of my hips, sliding into the damp shadow beneath my breasts, exploring the warm, wet folds and crevices of my most intimate places. He hasn’t touched me, and yet I can feel him in every cell of my body.

  “I can’t,” I whisper. “The twins need their father. I can’t just turn my back on Marc. He needs me—”

  “I need you.”

  “You’re stronger than he is. You’ll be fine without me. In a few weeks’ time, you won’t even remember—”

  “Your husband needs a wife. A housekeeper. Someone to look after him. I need you.” He pulls me into a tense embrace, his hands on my shoulders, his mouth inches from my ear. “No one else sees you, Clare. No one else knows you the way I do. You don’t need another child to look after. You need a man who can butt heads with you and win. It won’t be easy. It’ll be hard, and we’ll have to work at it every single day. But it’ll be worth it, because we’ll have each other. Don’t settle for second best. Don’t take the easy way out.”

  “What easy way? There is no easy way!”

  “What do you want, Clare?”

  “It’s not that simple—”

  “Stop thinking about what the twins need, what Marc needs! What about what you need? What is it you want, Clare?”

  “I can’t just—”

  “Damn it, Clare! What do you want?”

  I break away, panting as if I’ve just run a mile. Cooper drops his hands and opens his arms, letting me go.

  “I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t.”

  I turn and run, as if the hounds of hell are behind me.