For Life
Page 13
“In Delaware we had a moment,” he insists.
“Yes.” I lick my lips. “But that’s all it was. A moment.”
He shakes his head. “That’s not all it was, Cass.”
I take another step back and he closes the space between us, hulking over me.
“Is that all it was to you?” he asks softly. “Just a moment? Can you honestly say that’s all it was?”
“I—” The words freeze in my mouth. I can’t say that. If it was just a moment it wouldn’t have kept me up at night. I wouldn’t have replayed it in my mind over and over again. I wouldn’t have wished I could go back to it every day since it happened.
I wouldn’t have touched myself to the memory of it.
“There’s a reason you can’t. You and me? We belong together. We fell in love when we were kids, for Christ’s sake. We’ve loved each other our whole lives. We hit a rough spot and both of us—” He shakes his head at me and gives me a warning look when I try to protest. “Both of us made mistakes. And then we did the worst thing of all, Cass. We gave up on each other.”
He brushes his thumb down the curve of my jaw and follows the line of my throat, right down to the hammering pulse between my collarbones. When he speaks again his voice is quieter. “My brother is dead and either one of us could be dead tomorrow. I’m not living one more day without you in my life, Cass. Not one more fucking day.”
April 2, 1997
Grady
I watch the steady rise and fall of her chest and twine my fingers through her hair, brushing the ends of one thick lock over my lips, loving the way it tickles. She does that to me sometimes, and though I pretend it gets on my nerves, it doesn’t. I live for the moments when it’s just us together in this bed, nothing but our love between us.
When I bury my face in the warmth of her neck, she stirs against me and I make my move. Or I try to, because Cassie’s fingers have swelled with the pregnancy. As soon as I slide the gold band onto her finger, it sticks at the knuckle and the pressure wakes her. The diamond ring I put a deposit on last summer and have been paying off ever since doesn’t fit, and though I was sure of the size when I bought it, I hadn’t even thought about the possibility of her fingers changing along with the rest of her body once I found out she was pregnant. I’m an idiot.
“What are you doing?” she asks, her voice still scratchy from sleep.
“Cassandra Leigh Daley,” I begin, the words I’ve been rehearsing in my head for months on the tip of my tongue. And then my voice breaks. Like a pussy.
Her big dark eyes open and fix on me. “What are you doing?” she repeats.
“Cass,” I try again, and everything I wanted to say disappears. All I can do is croak, “Marry me.”
She blinks and stares at me.
“Marry me.” I repeat myself, squeezing her fingers. I need her to say something.
Stretching out her hand, she admires her ring silently, tears glistening in the light as she turns it, letting the sparkle set her eyes on fire. “It’s beautiful,” she whispers. Thank God, she’s not disappointed.
Even swollen, her fingers are still small, and the diamond I couldn’t afford looks substantial on her hand. Not big. But big enough that she can be proud of it when she shows it off to her friends. I kiss her ring finger just above the sparkling gem and she turns to face me. Drawing her knees up as far as her belly will allow, she takes my hand and presses it against her distended side. As always, I’m entranced by the energetic movements of our baby inside her and in awe of Cassie.
“I know you’ll take good care of us,” she whispers.
“It’s not just because you’re pregnant,” I whisper fiercely. “Don’t ever think that. I love you. I want to spend my whole life with you, Cass. Just like we planned.” She studies my face as I slide my hands to cradle the sides of her neck. “I bought it in August. I’ve been chewing my arm off trying not to tell you. I wanted to so many times.”
At my confession she flings her arms around me. My skin underneath her face is suddenly wet but she doesn’t move. She just lies there, letting the tears drip down her cheeks and collect between us.
Fuck. Is my timing that horrible? Is this a pregnancy thing, or does she not want to marry me? She still hasn’t actually said yes.
“Cass?”
She doesn’t speak for a long time, and when she does her voice is thick and halting.
“I’m just afraid,” she whispers.
Afraid I can work with. “Tell me what you’re afraid of, baby.” I kiss her forehead, her nose, her temple. She closes her eyes and I touch my lips to her eyelids in turn.
“I’m afraid I’m a failure.” The chokes sob wrestles its way from her throat, tearing free. “I’m not going to be a good wife. I’m not going to be a good mother. How can I be?”
Her fucking parents have done this to her. “Listen to me.” I cup her face so I can look at her. She tries to look away but I kiss her and hold her still. “Cass, please.”
Her dark eyes finally settle on mine again. She looks so vulnerable I almost don’t want to press her. But I know this is right and I know we can put whatever she’s afraid of behind us.
“I. Love. You,” I whisper fiercely. “You’re going to be an amazing mother. And there’s no one else I’ll ever want as my wife, not as long as I live.”
“Do you promise?” Her lip trembles and she looks like she must’ve when she was a little girl, sad and scared, alone in her room because her shithead parents were too wrapped up in their own drama. And I know that’s what she’s afraid of. She’s afraid of being like them, as if she ever could be.
“I swear it, Cass,” I vow. “Please say yes.”
She nods, and finally she whispers, “Yes, Grady. I’ll marry you.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Cassie
I almost didn’t survive when Grady left.
Every single day I opened my eyes to pain and walked through a fog, only able to do the bare minimum to get the kids taken care of. There were days I dropped them off at school and day care, turned the car around, drove home, and spent the next five or six hours sobbing in my room with the shades pulled. My sad cocoon, I always thought of it. Dark, safe, alone.
The way my chest tightens when Grady says he’s not living one more day without me makes me want to shove him away and isolate myself, even though I haven’t had a sad cocoon day in years.
What does he even mean?
How can something that was ruptured, decimated, obliterated at the cellular level ever exist again?
Does he think we can re-create love and trust out of thin air?
Is he fucking crazy?
“Stop,” I whisper. His fingers pause in the hollow of my throat, but he doesn’t take them away.
“Cass,” he pleads softly.
“Please.” I can’t look at him. If I look at him, even for a second, I will undo everything I worked for over the past eleven years. I will lose the battle for resolve and my dignity and my common sense and all the things I lost and had to find again.
Grady might be sure that he doesn’t want to live without me one more day, but the only thing I’m sure of is that I want to leap out of my skin. He’s too close. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I stand frozen against the wall as if pinned there by his fingers like some dying moth.
“Okay,” he says softly. “I’m sorry, Cass.” His fingers are gone and I feel the loss of them like ice in my veins, but I still can’t bring myself to look at him. “I don’t want to overwhelm you.”
“You’re not,” I lie.
“Please don’t lie to me.”
“Fine. You are. You’re freaking me out.” My voice trembles with the effort it takes to even speak. “Is that what you want to hear?”
He sighs. “If it’s honest, then yeah. Fuck.” Rubbing his forehead, he steps back, into the doorway, as if to show me he’s not a threat.
But he’s still a threat. To my sanity, to my heart, to my traitorous body that won’
t stop keening for his touch, Grady is public enemy number one.
“I’m gonna go,” he says after a moment. “I think… Yeah. I’m gonna go.” He taps the door frame twice, turns, and heads back down the hallway. I hear his measured steps in the kitchen before the front door opens and closes, and I realize he was checking the back door. Locking up. Keeping me safe.
I draw the shades against the darkness outside but keep the lights on. I wait for the kids to come home, and I try not to think of the mess I’m making of my life.
* * * *
Chloe groans the second she walks through the door and smells chicken. “Oh my God,” she complains. “Can we ever just not have meat?”
“Feel free to eat cereal,” I reply. “Or don’t eat. The next meal’s breakfast.”
Caden stops in his tracks at my sharp tone and studies me warily. “Ma, you okay?”
“I’m fine, sweetie. Hungry?”
“Starving.” He grins and I ignore Chloe’s eye roll as my son wraps his long arms around me.
“Practice good?” I ask both of them, but of course only Caden responds.
“It went okay,” he shrugs. “It was pretty cold tonight. Last meet is next Saturday, then I can sleep every morning.” Grinning, he adds, “Unless I decide to try out for wrestling.”
“Do I even want to know what the practice schedule is like for wrestling?”
“Nope.”
“That’s what I was afraid of. Can you guys set the table, please? We’re eating in about half an hour.”
Caden immediately starts pulling plates and silverware from the cabinets while Chloe remains glued to her phone for another few minutes. She’s probably doing it on purpose, but I can’t deal with her attitude tonight. I just can’t do it. I have a flash of gratitude that she’ll be in a dorm this time next year, and then I chastise myself for being a horrible mother. I love her, I do. But the limits of my patience are not generous this evening, and I don’t deserve the attitude for whatever imagined injustice she thinks I’ve perpetrated by what, cooking her dinner?
Ignoring my daughter, I set about mixing a salad dressing, all the while cursing my own skittishness. If I’d just reacted a bit more calmly, Grady would be here right now, eating with us. There wouldn’t be any talking or kissing or shocking confessions, just us and the kids having a family dinner. I want that. I ache for that. And he says he can give me that.
But I feel like I’m clinging to the edge of a cliff, and my only chance for survival is to hold on tight with everything I’ve got. I’m not strong enough to support myself with one hand, and although he’s offering his, I’m afraid if I reach for it, I’ll fall.
It may have been a long time ago, but the searing pain of my last fall hasn’t left me yet. Maybe it never will.
* * * *
“I just don’t think I can go through that kind of pain again.”
Unburdening myself to Renée is like slipping into a hot, soothing bath. My sister-in-law is the most comforting human being in the world, even more so than Donna. When the kids head upstairs to do their homework, I call to check on her. She murmurs a few words that basically add up to “I’m fine” and skillfully turns the conversation around to me and Grady. Like a lovesick teenager, I spill everything to her in a manic jumble - the hug, the marshmallow, the dance, the kiss. Finally I confess what happened yesterday, and she stops me in my tracks by asking why on earth I won’t just go for it.
When I tell her, she’s quiet for a moment before replying sadly, “Oh, Cass… That would be like me saying I should never have married Carl because I was going to lose him anyway.”
I’m horrified with my selfishness that I didn’t think of that before I opened my big mouth. “Oh my God, Renée, please… I didn’t mean to—”
“You didn’t.” Her voice is kind. “No one can measure another person’s pain. No one can say how it feels except the person who’s feeling it. I can’t imagine how hard it must’ve been for you to see Grady become who he was at the end of your marriage. It’s a death of its own, when a person changes like that.”
“Yes,” I choke. “It was like that. I grieved. I could barely get out of bed. I didn’t laugh again for months. And it took me five years to let another man into my life again. That’s what I’m scared of.”
“Five years is a long time to be alone, hon.”
“It was a long time.” And then I ask the question I’ve wanted to ask her. “Do you think you’ll be over Carl in five years?”
“No,” she answers. “I’ll never be over Carl. I’ll love him until I die, and then we’ll be together again and I’ll love him for eternity. But maybe I’ll also love someone else. Maybe someone is out there with whom I can be happy again.”
“How does that work, seriously? What if you meet another man, and you fall in love with him and you grow old together. When you die you’ll be with both him and Carl?”
“Carl will get the threesome he always joked about.” She laughs, and I’m so thirsty for some joy I drink up the sound of it. “No, totally kidding. I don’t think Heaven works that way. I think our earthly ideas about possession of another human beings don’t exist there. I think you get to be with everyone you ever loved, not in our human roles, but as pure souls who love each other with the same love we feel for God.”
She’s so confident in her beliefs. I wonder for the millionth time if I might be a little less loony if I had a little more faith in my heart. “I have to admit I’ve never thought of it that way.”
“I have a lot of time to think,” she reminds me. “Sometimes I make myself crazy with all the thinking.”
We’re both quiet for a minute. “I’m sure the last thing you want to do is hear me whine about Grady,” I say finally. “Sorry, I just… I didn’t know who else to talk to. You know both of us, and you know our history. Am I stupid to worry? Should I just let it happen?”
“I can’t answer that for you, hon. But I can lay down some truth for you, if that will help.”
“Please do. I’m a fucking mess. Please, please help me make sense of this.”
“Okay. So, first - Grady loves you. I’m not saying he won’t screw something up, but his intentions are pure, Cass. You have to believe that. He’s a good man. The best. He wants to make you happy. That counts for a lot.”
“He is a good man.”
“And he loves you. You know that, right?”
“Yes.” It’s easy to say, because I’ve seen it in his eyes. I’m as sure of it as I am of my own confusion. “I know that.”
“Then, second - life is short. I’m not saying that because I just lost my husband. I’m saying that because I’ve lived my entire life shooting first and asking questions later. I’m not sure you want to take your cues from me, but sometimes you just have to ask if what you have to gain, even if you only have it for a minute, is worth bleeding for.”
I mull over her words for a moment. “Yeah… I guess I didn’t think of it like that.”
“Okay. Let me ask you this. What’s your happiest memory with Grady? Like the absolute best, most unforgettable day?”
I don’t even have to think about it. “That’s easy. When I told him I was pregnant with Caden. He’d taken me to this amazing B & B for a belated honeymoon, and I knew I was pregnant but I’d been scared to tell him. It was perfect.”
“Would you give that up for the pain you suffered afterward?”
“No. Not for any of it.” I remember the look in Grady’s eyes as he made love to me. It used to gut me to recall it, but right now when it comes back to me it’s as beautiful as it was then, so sweet I ache with it.
“And what if that isn’t even as good as it gets?”
I’m shocked into silence.
“I’m serious. What if there are memories to be made with Grady that are infinitely more beautiful than that day?”
“Impossible.” My protest is out before I can even stop to think about it. But what if she’s right?
“Hon?” she asks g
ently.
“Yeah?”
“Do you know how many times I’ve said that word and been totally wrong?”
“I’ll think on it,” I concede.
“You have absolutely nothing to lose except more lonely years, Cass.”
“Hey! They haven’t been so miserable.”
“No? When was the last time you laughed so hard you thought you’d piss yourself? When was the last time you spent the entire day in bed worshiping a man who worshiped you right back?”
Oh, God. She’s right.
“When was the last time you cried happy tears?”
“I can’t remember,” I whisper.
“Grady’s handing you all that on a platter. Sleep on it, hon. You’re too tweaked out right now to make a decision, but give it some thought. See what you come up with.”
“I can do that.” I realize, though, that if I spend one more restless night thinking about Grady, I might need to start taking sleeping pills to get through my days. And that’s an unappealing thought and one I know Dr. Gaul will wholeheartedly disapprove of.
“Love you,” Renée says. “Sophie’s stirring, so I’m going to go feed her, but I’m serious. And call me anytime.”
“Love you, too, sweetie. Thank you so much for talking me down from the edge.”
When she hangs up I grab my phone and text Grady.
—I’m sorry I overreacted. Can we talk sometime this week?
He responds almost immediately. —Just say when.
—Call you when the kids are at practice tomorrow?
—I’ll come over. What time do you get home from work? 4:30?
My heart pounds, but I have to face him sometime. —Yes.
—See you tomorrow. Sleep well.
I silence my phone and get ready for bed, still nervous but no longer terrified.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
August 6, 1997
Grady
She weighs next to nothing and her cries sound like a kitten’s. I hold her carefully, completely terrified by the nurse’s warnings about her neck and the soft spot on top of her head. They put her in my arms in the chair and I don’t move from there, because I’m deathly afraid of dropping her.