David rounded the corner, and I caught his hand in mine. “This is really great of your mother to do. Really generous. I know I’ve said some bitchy things these past few weeks, but I may have misjudged her, I admit it…” I broke off when I saw his expression. “Oh no. What now?”
Before he could answer, Renée strolled up behind him. She had her coat on, and a fresh coat of lipstick.
Son of a… “What a surprise, Renée,” I choked out. “Are you going out, too?”
She clutched her sequined black evening purse. “Well, dear, I wanted to stay home and let you kids enjoy yourself—”
“And we appreciate that,” I cried. “We do! So we’re just going to—”
She shook her head sadly. “But I can’t stay here.” Her voice dropped to a sepulchral whisper. “I forgot about the dog.”
“Honestly, Mom, the dog will be fine,” David snapped.
“You say that, but you weren’t here when he growled at me.” Renée fluttered her eyelashes like a Southern belle who’d laced her corset too tightly. “I won’t feel safe all alone with him.”
Inspiration struck. “You could ask Henry to come over,” I suggested. “I’m sure he’d be glad to protect you.”
Her face was like stone.
“Renée.” I forced a smile. “I know you and Cash got off to a bad start, but he’s a pussycat, I promise. Casey gave me some chew toys for him—we’ll just toss him a few and he’ll be good as gold all night.”
My mother-in-law and I locked gazes in a staredown for a few seconds before I relented. “Okay, okay, you can put him down in the basement if you’re really that scared.”
“But what if he got out somehow?” She tugged her collar up around her chin. “Imagine if you came home and that dog had killed me. How would you feel then?”
A deafening crash came from the next room, followed by a series of frenzied yelps.
I skidded into the kitchen on my high heels to discover that Cash had overturned the stainless steel trash can and was strewing coffee grounds, banana peels, and empty yogurt containers all over the floor.
“You see?” Renée crowed. “He’s a menace. Who knows what he’ll do next?”
David ran his hand through his hair as he surveyed the wreckage. “That’s the spirit, Mom. The glass is half-full.”
“I’m only thinking of you, dear. You and your safety. Now come along, let’s go to dinner. The reservations are for seven thirty.”
I picked up a sodden paper towel and dropped it back in the trash can. “Reservations?”
“I called while you were getting dressed,” she cooed. “To make sure we’d get a good table.”
“Well, we can’t leave until I clean this up.” I pushed up the sleeves of my new shirt. “It’s Monday night; we’re not going to need reservations.”
David rested his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, hon. I’ll take care of this.”
My mother-in-law tapped her foot and glanced at her watch. “Well, I’m ready to go. I’m positively famished.”
David got that familiar, dazed look in his eyes. He had shut down and tuned her out. It was his only defense after a lifetime of Renée.
This is what the entire evening was going to be like. So much for date night.
“Why don’t you two go on ahead,” I ground out. “You and David go have dinner and I’ll stay here with the dog.”
“Really? You wouldn’t mind?” From the way her face lit up, I knew that this had been her plan all along. Damn. She was shrewd, I had to give her that. “Come on, David, start the car.”
But David dug in his heels. “I’m not going anywhere without Erin. I’m not leaving my wife to pick up garbage while you and I have dinner, and that’s final, Mom.” He loosened his tie. “We’ll go to the White Birch another night.”
“But…” Renée put on a pouty face.
“Why don’t you start dinner while Erin and I clean up the mess?” David asked.
“I’ve lost my appetite,” she snitted, then marched upstairs.
“Alone at last,” I remarked as the guest room door slammed. “Just what we wanted.”
I bent down to scoop up a handful of eggshells and glanced at the piece of paper lying underneath them. How many times had I told Renée: recycle, recycle, recycle. Then I noticed the hospital letterhead on the paper.
Dear Dr. Maye:
Dr. Witkowski has informed us of your ongoing interest in our facility. We are pleased to inform you that we have several openings on our general pediatric service and would be happy to speak to you at your earliest convenience…
A job offer. They were asking me back to Boston, to the hospital I’d turned down when David and I had decided to move out to Alden. But why was this letter in the trash?
“David.” I handed him the stationery. “Did you see this?”
He scanned the text. “Dr. Witkowski? What is Jonathan doing telling them you want to move back to Boston?”
“I emailed him when we had that big fight last week and—”
“Of course you did.” His eyes flashed. “The minute we have a problem, you go running back to Jonathan. Typical.”
“David! Give me a break. I did not go running back to anyone. But yes, I have been thinking about that job offer I passed up in back to Boston, and I emailed him—”
“He’s still in love with you,” David accused. “He’s always had a thing for you!”
“Okay, now you’re just talking crazy.” I waved the letter at him. “And you didn’t answer my question. Did you see this and throw it out?”
He looked insulted. “No. I don’t open your mail. Although maybe I should start, seeing how you and Jonathan are sending love notes to each other.”
I didn’t even dignify that with a response. “Well, if you didn’t throw it out, who did?”
Both of us looked up toward the guest room.
“I knew it!” I hissed. “That woman has absolutely no boundaries. She won’t be happy until I’m barefoot, pregnant, and chained to the stove. Actually, she’ll probably make me live down in the basement with the dog.”
He squeezed my shoulder to calm me. “We don’t know what happened, so let’s not rush to judgment.”
My jaw dropped. “You cannot be serious.”
“Even if she did throw that letter out—and we don’t know that she did—I’m sure it was a mistake. She’s getting older, she gets confused.”
“She’s sharp as a tack and she’s out for blood!” I cried. “Don’t you dare take her side on this!”
He was getting that blank, autopilot look again. “I’m not taking sides, Erin.”
“That’s the problem! You need to take a side, and it needs to be mine. She intercepted my job offer and threw it out without telling me!” I knew I should lower my voice, but how could he not see what a huge deal this was?
“Well, you told Jonathan Witkowski you’d move back to Boston, so I guess we’re even.”
I grabbed his jacket lapels and pulled his face closer to mine. “Stop that, David. Jonathan has nothing to do with this. This is about you, me, and Renée. She can’t treat me like this in my own house. You need to decide who you’re going to be with: her or me.”
The top stair creaked. “Is everything all right down there?” Renée called.
I glared at David and whispered, “Tell her. Tell her she cannot do this to me.”
“David?” Renée’s voice got louder. “Are you all right?”
“Tell her,” I begged.
“Everything’s fine, Mom,” he called back. “Don’t worry.”
I let go of his lapels and took a giant step back.
He reached out to catch my hand. “Don’t get upset, honey. Give me a chance to—”
“I’ve given you enough chances.” I put my coat back on and snatched up the dog’s leash. “Pack up your chew toys, Cash. We’re done.”
An hour later, I knocked on Casey’s door.
“Beat it, Nick!” she called from inside the a
partment. “I said no and I meant it!”
I knocked again. “It’s not Nick. It’s me!”
The door swung open. Stella and Casey peered out.
“Hey.” I tried to look cheery, surrounded by suitcases and one very jazzed-up dog. “Do you guys have room for two more?”
19
STELLA
Listen, Mom, I have to tell you something and you’re not going to like it.” I had Casey’s apartment all to myself on Tuesday afternoon, and the time had come to break the bad news to my mother. “Mark and I are still having problems and I don’t know what’s going to happen. I moved out on Thanksgiving.”
My mother choked as if I’d just said I had leprosy. “Stella, no!”
I took a deep breath and kept going. “I know you’re disappointed—”
“Not disappointed; I am ashamed. Marriage is a sacred vow. You do not just give up when the going gets tough.”
I curled deeper into Casey’s cushy sofa, gnawing the inside of my cheek. “We haven’t given up yet, but…”
“You made promises! In front of your friends, family, in front of God…”
“But the pastor never signed the marriage certificate. I told you before, Mom, Mark and I aren’t even legal.”
“Well, you hunt down that slipshod pastor and you make him sign it, missy.”
“He’s dead.”
She started wailing, a thin, reedy swan song of despair. I hadn’t heard her this upset since my father’s arraignment.
“You can’t leave him, Stella! You’ll get nothing in the divorce!”
“Well, really, there can’t be any divorce without a marriage,” I pointed out. “I’ll try to work things out, I really will, but—”
The wailing got louder. “Who’s going to take care of you?”
“Well.” I sat up straight. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I put in applications at a bunch of child-care centers.”
“Stella, please.” She sniffed. “No one’s going to hire you as an au pair after you ran off with your last employer’s poker buddy.”
“I’m not trying to be an au pair. I’m talking about teaching preschool.”
“Teaching preschool?” As if my diagnosis had just progressed from leprosy to bubonic plague.
“Well, assistant teaching, anyway. Until I can finish my B.A. The pay’s not great, but I was thinking I could do that during the day and maybe take classes at night. I have this friend who’s a doctor, who offered to help me if I sign up for some science classes.”
“A female friend or a male friend?”
“Female.”
“Then what good is she?”
“She’s smart, Mom. She went to Harvard. Anyway, she and I were talking, and you know, I might want to get my nursing degree. There’s a real shortage of nurses out here, and I could specialize in pediatrics.”
“Oh my Lord. Do you have any idea how much nurses make?”
“A lot more than assistant preschool teachers,” I guessed. “My friend says—”
“Enough about your friend! Is she married to a nationally renowned heart surgeon?”
“No, her husband’s a pharmacologist. Although, actually, it turns out they’re not really married, either. They got married over Labor Day weekend, too, the day after me and Mark, and they had the same pastor. And he didn’t sign their marriage license either, which turned out to be a good thing because she just left her husband last night.”
“Then she’s not the best person to be going to for marriage advice, is she?”
And you are? My mother had looked the other way for years while my dad had taken off for “business trips” and come home reeking of expensive cigars and cheap perfume. She and I both knew what had really gone on at all those conferences in Vegas, golf weekends in South Carolina, and lavish retirement parties on rented yachts, but neither of us ever said a word.
I closed my eyes. “What do you want from me, Mom?”
“I want you to go home to your husband and work this out.”
“But how? There’s no way to compromise about babies—either you have them or you don’t. You can’t have half a kid.”
“Do you love him?”
I didn’t answer.
“Well? Do you?”
I curled back into the pillows. “Yes.”
“All right, then. He loves you, Stella. His face when you walked down that aisle—love like that doesn’t come along every day.”
“But he lied to me,” I whispered. “On purpose. A lot.”
“Maybe he’ll change his mind about children.” Her tone brightened. “Maybe you’ll get a medical miracle.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Or…well, I don’t know how to phrase this delicately, but Mark’s not going to live forever, you know.”
“Mom!”
“Well, you have to be practical. He is thirty years older than you, and his family has a history of heart disease.”
“So what are you saying? Wait till he croaks, then take his money and run to the sperm bank?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Forget it!” I waved my fist in the air. “I don’t care what everybody thinks—I didn’t marry him for money, and I’m not staying with him for money. I am not a ho. I am going to be a pediatric nurse.”
“Stella—”
“No! Don’t argue with me! I can take care of myself!”
“You’re going to miss that big house and all your fancy clothes,” she warned.
“I’d rather have a baby than a designer wardrobe.”
“You’ll be lonely without Mark.”
“No, I won’t. I’ll have my trusty dog to keep me company.”
“You have a dog?”
“Kind of.” I flinched as I tasted blood in my mouth—time to ease up on the cheek-gnawing. “I’m sorry, Mom. I know you think I’m screwing everything up. But I have to do what’s right for me.”
She broke out the heavy artillery. “This is going to kill your father. Why don’t you just move back in, wait a year, see how it goes?”
I knew if I went back to Mark, I’d never get up the nerve to leave again. I had to make a last stand, and it had to be now. “That’s not fair to either of us.”
“Give it six months!” she cried, sounding like an auctioneer.
“Mom. Please try to be on my side.”
“Well…at least if you become a nurse, you might be able to meet another rich doctor.”
“Right. Way to look on the bright side.”
When Mark opened the door, he looked like I felt—sleep-deprived and pale. He’d tried to hide this from me by putting on an obnoxiously red sweater vest that he knew I hated, but I wasn’t fooled.
“Hey,” I said, suddenly wanting to reach up and stroke the stubble on his cheek. “You look…”
He half-smiled. “Yeah. You, too.”
“I just need to pick up a few of my things. I’ve got some boxes in the car—oh, I guess you’ll probably want the car back, won’t you?”
He cleared his throat, then said gruffly, “Keep it.”
I shook my head. “No, that wouldn’t be right. Just give me a few days to find something else; I’ll look through the auto classifieds tonight—”
“Keep it. Please. What else am I going to do with a little BMW convertible? Drive around and advertise my midlife crisis?”
I finally cracked a smile. “You could always give it to Taylor.”
He started to laugh. “God, she’d love that.”
“I saw her the other day, at the mall,” I confessed.
“I know.” He got serious again. “Brenda called.”
“Oh. Well, she was really nice about the whole thing. It could have been pretty awkward,” I babbled, very aware that I should shut up but unable to stop the stream of verbal diarrhea. “I mean, the new wife runs into the ex-wife, worlds collide, could get tricky, but she—”
“You’re still wearing your rings.” He reached out to examine my hand.
I stared down at our entwined fingers. “So are you.”
“Of course I am.” His voice was thick. “I’m not the one who left.”
“I left because I had to, not because I wanted to.”
“I love you so much, Stell. I’ll always love you.”
And now I was crying. Crap. “I’ll always love you, too. But that’s not enough. We don’t want the same things.”
He tugged me closer, until we were pressing together. “Don’t leave.”
I turned my face into the scratchy nub of his sweater, letting the wool soak up my tears. “But I can’t…you don’t…I want a baby, Mark. I can’t explain it. If I could talk myself out of it, I would, but when I see a mother with a stroller, my whole body hurts.”
“That’s exactly how I’ve felt since you walked out on Thanksgiving,” he murmured. “My whole body hurts.”
“Why does it have to be this hard? Why do I have to pick one or the other?” I started to hiccup as I cried.
“You don’t.” He tucked my head in the crook between his neck and shoulder. “Not right now.”
“Maybe not today, but someday, and every minute we spend together just makes it more and more—” Hiccup.
“Sweetheart, don’t cry.”
I breathed in his clean, cedar scent and cried harder. “I miss you so much.”
He hugged me tighter.
“I—hic—hate that we can’t stay like this forever.”
“Don’t leave,” he repeated, kissing the top of my head. “We can make this work. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“But you said—”
“You’re the most important thing in my life. If having a baby is what it takes to make you stay, then…”
I blinked up at him through wet, spiky eyelashes. “Then what?”
He grazed my temple with his thumb. “Then I’ll call a urologist tomorrow and make an appointment.”
“Really?” My hiccup echoed through the foyer.
He laughed even as his eyes misted up. “Really. Anything. Just stay.”
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