Balancing Act (Silhouette Special Edition)

by Darcy, Lilian

  “Practising my French,” she said, putting on a smile.

  Okay, so I did, she decided. It was miserable, and I didn’t do the right things to try and make it better. But how does admitting to this help now?

  Brady had said that it would, but she couldn’t see it. He’d predicted that their own marriage was headed the same way. Toward the rocks.

  Regret and pain coiled deep in her gut, and the sense of loss she felt was her own. It wasn’t just for Colleen or Scarlett.

  I’m the one who’ll grieve for what we could have had. I’m the one who’ll really lose.

  She loved Brady.

  The fullness of her heart came as a revelation, and wasn’t welcome. Love wasn’t enough. She had mistakes to undo, blocks to work through—and without fully understanding what those blocks were, she still knew she’d been trying to work through them for months and probably longer, without a huge amount of success, so what on earth made her hope she’d be able to succeed now, just because one thing in her life had changed? Just because she’d discovered that she loved Brady?

  What a slippery, misty, intangible word it was, too! So she had a name for it? Did that mean it was real?

  Yes. Oh, yes.

  It was like putting her eye to a telescope and seeing only a blur, then twisting a lens and suddenly discovering a million stars, crystal-clear. She wanted Brady in her life forever. She wanted him throwing his daughters up to the ceiling, and making them shriek with delight. She wanted him accidentally dyeing his undershirts blue. She wanted him closing his eyes when he was lying in her arms, as if he could see heaven behind his lids because of the way they’d touched.

  He told me to give up my job. Did I need to hear that?

  No.

  But he hadn’t forced the issue. He’d just made his feelings known.

  I need to get better at doing the same thing.

  Scary. Impossible. Because—because—

  Because when I do that, I lose. I learned that when I was twelve.

  No, loving him didn’t solve anything. It was only the start.

  Colleen stirred in her lap, and the plane began its descent, bringing Libby back to earth and back to the rest of her life.

  “Hi, Val,” Brady said. Libby hadn’t been gone for long. Her mother must have been hoping to catch her. “You’ve missed her by an hour, I’m sorry.”

  “Oh. Oh, all right. I just thought of a question about the surgery. Did she drive to the airport?”

  “No, she took a cab. What surgery?”

  “That’s good, because with some procedures you’re not supposed to drive for a couple of weeks. Or except…I know she’s planning on renting a car in St. Paul, so I hope it’ll be okay for her to return it.”

  “What surgery, Val?”

  There was a blank silence at the other end of the phone. “Well, she told you, didn’t she?”

  “No.” His voice sounded as if it was coming from a long way away. “If she’d told me, I wouldn’t be asking.”

  “Oh, I’ve caused a problem. She should have told me she didn’t want you to—”

  “No. She should have told me. I’m her husband. What’s this about?”

  Cancer.

  She’d mentioned it once.

  He’d assumed she was talking about Glenn.

  And she’d let him hang on to that assumption.

  “She has some fibroids in her uterus that have been giving her trouble, and they have to come out,” Val said.

  “Fibroids,” he echoed, dizzy with relief. “They’re not dangerous, are they? Are they?”

  “No, they’re just troublesome.”

  Troublesome. Meaning “painful,” he guessed. Of course Libby hadn’t said a word. If she’d been taking pain medication at any point, she certainly hadn’t let him see. And if she’d suffered, she’d, as usual, suffered in silence. Sweet damn, but it made him angry!

  “She wanted her doctor in St. Paul to do it,” Val was saying. “Dr. Crichton. Even though it’s just routine. I guess that’s why she didn’t tell you. Because it’s routine.”

  It wasn’t why. Brady knew it. But he let it pass. He wasn’t going to have his mother-in-law presiding over the death of his marriage. Or over its resurrection. He didn’t yet know which it was going to be.

  His whole scalp was tight with anger, and he couldn’t keep the emotion out of his voice when he told her, “I’m cancelling everything here and I’m flying up. First flight I can get.”

  “Libby will be fine. She’s strong.”

  “Libby is not fine. She’s a mess inside, only she runs her whole life so other people won’t realize the fact, and so she doesn’t have to face it herself. She tries too damned hard! And I’m not letting this go. I’ve been dealing with it for long enough.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll see you in St. Paul, then, Brady.”

  “Look, no, is it possible for you to—” He stopped and tried again. “I want to handle this on my own. I’d appreciate it if you could at least delay your trip. I’ll look after Colleen and Scarlett until you get there. If our marriage has even the slightest chance—”

  “My lord, your marriage?” Val gasped.

  “That’s where we’re at right now. I’m sorry to have to say it so bluntly. But I spent eleven years with a woman I couldn’t have an honest, productive conversation with, and I’m not going through that again. This time, if it comes to the crunch, if we can’t find a way to talk this weekend, I’m going to burn my boats and get out.”

  It hurt him even to think of it, but he knew it would be worse if he hung on to something that was just an empty, dishonest shell.

  Libby picked up a rental car at the airport and checked into the motel room she would be sharing with her mother and Colleen. It was still only just after 4:30 in the afternoon, and her mom’s flight wasn’t due in until eight this evening. She had said she would take a cab to the motel, in case Colleen was already asleep.

  The motel felt claustrophobic, and Libby decided she might as well go to the house, try and get something done and a decision made.

  Rent out, or sell?

  She could order in a pizza when Colleen got hungry, and meet Mom back at the motel later in the evening.

  The sun was dipping low in a clear, ice-cold sky when she reached the familiar street where she’d lived for most of her marriage and for more than four years afterward. Beneath its white winter frosting, the house looked dark, and inside it was cold. Her friends, Stephanie and Richard Sawyer, had left the place looking nice when they’d moved out on the weekend, but they’d lowered the thermostat way down.

  Libby turned on the lights and turned up the heat. If the two little Sawyer boys had left finger marks on the walls or spills on the carpets, everything had now been thoroughly cleaned.

  She wandered the rooms slowly, as the temperature quickly began to rise, while Colleen ran back and forth. “Do you remember this house, honey?” she asked. “Yeah, you do. It’s not so long ago, even in your little life.”

  But Colleen was too young to feel any nostalgia or regret.

  Searching her own heart, Libby couldn’t find those emotions, either. She’d expected to be swept with far stronger feelings about leaving this place, but any regret she felt concerned Brady. They’d both been angry. She couldn’t believe that Brady would sabotage Colleen and Scarlett’s relationship, even if he gave up on their marriage. He wasn’t that kind of man. Lord, he just wasn’t!

  She had to cling to this knowledge. She had to attempt to trust it, and to trust him. He would never use a child as a weapon or a pawn or a bargaining point. He would never harm an innocent soul that way. He wouldn’t drop Colleen from his life, the way Libby’s own father had dropped her. It was one of the reasons she’d fallen in love with Brady. He never played those kinds of games. Any games. He was straight as an arrow. He knew what loving a child meant. And he wasn’t a coward.

  “I’m going to sell the house,” Libby said aloud—to Colleen, or maybe just to herself, t
o hear how it sounded.

  And it didn’t hurt to say it. It felt like a step forward.

  She went down into the basement with Colleen, and there was the big plastic climbing fort and slide she’d left for Stephanie and Richard’s boys. It was the one that Colleen and Scarlett had first played on together, that day four months ago when Brady and his daughter had come to the house.

  A few weeks later, Libby had brought it in for the winter, and she hadn’t shipped it to Ohio because she hadn’t known if it would fit in an apartment, or if she’d get a place with a yard.

  It would fit just fine in the yard or the basement at Brady’s.

  She stood for a long time in front of the climbing fort, while Colleen played peek-a-boo with her through the big round holes in the sides, and slid up and down. Finally, she peeled off a blue sticker—her code for items she wanted shipped back to Ohio—and stuck it onto the thick plastic.

  It was a statement of determination and faith that almost gave her vertigo. If Brady wanted to abandon their marriage, her own determination wouldn’t count, but she had to recognize that determination in herself, all the same. No matter what happened, she was staying in Ohio, at least. She couldn’t do anything that would part her from Scarlett, or part the girls from each other. After an hour, she’d used up two sheets of blue stickers, and only a few red and green ones—code for items to be sold or given away.

  She and Colleen had finished eating pizza in front of cartoons on TV when headlights beamed into her driveway at around seven. She at first thought this might be Richard and Stephanie, dropping in to check that she was satisfied with how she’d found the house.

  But it wasn’t Steph and Rich at the door. It was Brady, with Scarlett in his arms.

  For about twenty seconds, the two adults just stared at each other, while arctic air flowed past them into the house. Brady had his thick, navy-blue padded coat on, with the collar pulled up around his ears. It emphasized the strength of his shoulders. His head was bare, and his breath plumed like white cotton candy.

  “Come in,” Libby finally said. “It’s freezing out there.”

  “I took a chance that you’d be here,” he told her, striding past.

  “Well, yes, I’m—”

  “And not at the hospital. Your mom called just after you left.”

  Her stomach gave a lurch that made her instantly queasy. “I guess she told you.”

  “She didn’t say when the surgery is scheduled for. We didn’t get that far.” He put Scarlett down, while Libby shut the door behind them, and they both watched as the two girls caught sight of each other.

  Colleen immediately said, “Tarlett!” and scrambled off the couch. “Mommy, Tarlett’s here!”

  “I know, honey. Isn’t that great?”

  “P’ay toys inna basement.” Colleen pulled on her sister’s arm and they trundled off together.

  “We’d better go down with them,” Libby said.

  “Sure. Your mom’s not coming till tomorrow, by the way.” Brady’s voice was heavy.

  “I don’t—I talked to her this morning. Is she sick?” She opened the basement door and switched on the light, and they followed the girls down.

  “I told her she wasn’t needed right away. That I could take care of you for a day or two.” Still that same heavy, wooden tone, angry and implacable.

  Her scalp prickled. “Shouldn’t that have been my decision?”

  “I’m your husband, Libby. You’re talking about decisions, and who has the right to make them? You don’t even give me basic information!”

  “Because I don’t want you to react like this. Barging in. Taking control. Dictating procedures and outcomes. Not giving me a choice.”

  “That’s incredibly unfair.” His voice had dropped now.

  The girls were playing together on the climbing fort, and he obviously didn’t want them knowing that something was wrong. He didn’t want them getting used to the sounds of hostility between two adults, the way some children quickly had to. His care didn’t surprise Libby, but wasn’t enough to put out the fire of her anger.

  “You told my mother not to come,” she said in a fierce whisper. “That’s not taking control?”

  “You’re saying I did it with no provocation? You’re telling me this didn’t start with you, Libby?” He was standing closer than she wanted him, leaning his hand on one of the basement’s supporting metal poles. She was aware of all the things about him that sent her dizzy—his strength, the fire and unflinching steadiness in his eyes, the male smell of him like fresh-cut wood. “You must have known for weeks that you were having this surgery,” he said. “Dear God, when Val first let it slip, I thought it must be cancer.”

  “So did I,” she blurted out. “For a whole week. When I was waiting to have the scans and hear the results from Dr. Peel.”

  “Who the hell is Dr. Peel? Your mom said Dr. K-something. Keighton.”

  “Crichton.”

  “So who’s Dr. Peel?” He hadn’t taken his eyes from her face.

  “The gynecologist I saw in Columbus. The one who diagnosed the problem. But I didn’t like him, so I decided to have it done here.”

  “Where—conveniently—you could get away with not telling me, the way you try to get away with not telling me anything you don’t absolutely have to, in case… What, Lib? In case what?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “You do. I can’t believe that. You damn well do!”

  “I’ve talked about Glenn. You got more out of me— You helped me,” she corrected herself carefully, “to say more, and see more, about Glenn and about my marriage than anyone else has. You’re right. My marriage was miserable.”

  “Yeah, good. You said it.”

  “And I got so sick of—oh, lord!—of not being heard, that I stopped talking. Can’t you see why that might happen? And somehow, even when I started to understand that, it didn’t help me to stop reacting that way. It didn’t help me to start talking again. I tried to tell you. A couple of times. I got up my courage, then something would happen—”

  “Convenient, again.”

  “Yes, it was convenient! Sure, you’re right. I grabbed on to those convenient moments—when you’d…kiss me, or something…and the courage slipped away again.”

  “You couldn’t be that scared of what I’d say. There aren’t that many terrifying options, are there?”

  “You could have said, ‘Get over yourself with Dr. Peel and have the surgery in Columbus.’ You could have said—”

  “Would that have destroyed you?”

  “Would you have said that?”

  “No, not if it was important to you to see the K doctor.”

  “C. Crichton. Anne Crichton.”

  “C. X. Q. Hell!”

  “Maybe I was just afraid of getting disappointed. I didn’t want to find out that you didn’t know how to listen.” She spread her hands. “That doesn’t sound like much. I don’t know why this is such a problem, Brady. I know you’re not Glenn. I know I’m not Stacey.”

  “Yeah, this is our marriage,” he said on a growl, “and we’ll destroy it in our own way, right?”

  “Right,” she echoed thinly. “Except I don’t want that to happen.” She looked at him, and then at Scarlett and Colleen on the plastic slide.

  “Neither do I.” They were both silent for a moment, knowing that nothing had really been decided about the future. Brady cleared his throat and said, “So, the surgery. Tell me about it. When is it?”

  “I have an appointment for a preliminary checkup tomorrow, and if everything is okay, I have to fast from midnight and get to the hospital at seven on Friday morning. I should get discharged Saturday, and I’m scheduled to fly back Wednesday. You knew I was flying home Wednesday.”

  “Yeah, but I had a different picture in my mind about what you’d be doing while you were here. Isn’t Wednesday too soon to fly?”

  “I’ve asked. Dr. Crichton said it would be okay. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”r />
  He made an impatient, disgusted sound, levered himself off the pole he’d been leaning on and paced around. “There should be word police, and they should outlaw you from using that word.”

  “What word?”

  “Fine.” He turned back to her. “Do you have any idea how often you say that? It’s fine. I’m fine. I’ll be fine. Particularly when it isn’t true. I wish you’d work out why. Okay, so I’ll take you to your appointment tomorrow, and take care of the girls while you’re with the doctor.”

  “I was going to leave Colleen at a friend’s, having a play-date.”

  “You can do that and hopefully she’ll take Scarlett as well, but let me come with you to the doctor, Libby, please? I’m not ordering. I’m just asking. I want to be there. And I’m taking you to the hospital on Friday, too. I’ll be there when you wake up, if they’ll let me. I checked into your motel, by the way. Same floor. Different room. Which I think is about where we are in our marriage, right now, don’t you?”

  Libby couldn’t disagree with that.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Feeling okay?” Brady asked quietly.

  Libby’s friend Angie had kindly agreed to look after both girls this morning while he brought her to the hospital for the surgery. She had disappeared for a while, in care of a nurse, and he’d had to sit in the waiting room for close to half an hour, stomach tight with tension.

  A different nurse had just called him in to say that he could stay with his wife, now, if he wanted, until she was wheeled into the operating theater. Yes, Brady had told the nurse decisively. He wanted.

  “Getting a little drowsy,” Libby said. “Which is kind of nice. I’m not nervous anymore. Dr. Crichton came and said hi. And the anesthesiologist. They asked some questions. Same questions.”

  “I think they do that in case you remember something you forgot before.”

  “Guess so.”

  She’d had a premed injection, and she was lying on a gurney in a blue hospital gown, with a sheet covering most of her body. She slid a hand out from beneath the sheet and Brady took it, folded it in half across her palm, chafed at it. Fiddled with it, you’d have to say. He was more nervous than she was, at this point.