Another Man's Wife

by Dallas Schulze

  A shower had revived him somewhat, but he’d found himself staring at his own reflection in the mirror, half expecting to see some visible sign of the radical changes that had occurred in his life in the past few hours. There was nothing, of course, unless he counted the dazed look that seemed to linger in his eyes.

  He’d wondered what to expect from Kelsey, how she was going to react to seeing him this morning. Now that he knew about the baby, was she going to be any less stiff with him? She had seemed to relax a little last night, but there was no telling how she’d feel after a night’s sleep. Weren’t pregnant women supposed to be moody and unpredictable? Or was that one of those old wives’ tales that were so politically incorrect these days?

  As it happened, Gage didn’t need to worry about it one way or another. With all that had happened, he’d forgotten that today was Saturday, which meant that Kelsey was at the farmers’ market in Santa Barbara, just as she was every Saturday morning. She’d left a note on the kitchen table to remind him.

  Gage had crumpled the note in his hand, his expression thoughtful. Was it a good thing that she was going on about business as usual? Did it mean that she was more relaxed about the baby—about him? Or did it just mean that she was glad of an excuse to get out of the house? Shaking his head, he had thrown the note in the trash and poured himself a cup of coffee. With Kelsey at the market and Danny with his grandparents, he had been on his own.

  Which was about the time his eyes had fallen on the Vette. Half an hour later, he’d been pulling out of the driveway. The top was off, the wind was in his hair and he could almost believe it was possible to outrun the questions that filled his mind.

  With no destination in mind, he simply drove, staying off the highways and sending the low-slung car bumping over country roads for which it was ill suited. It was late afternoon by the time he turned the car and headed for home. He’d left Kelsey a note—about as informative as hers had been—so she wouldn’t be concerned, but he was suddenly anxious to see her again.

  Since that was the case, Gage was a little surprised to find himself pulling up to the curb in front of his mother’s house. But as he pushed open the front door and stepped into the house where he’d spent most of his teenage years, he knew this was exactly where he’d needed to come. Maybe it was even where he’d been headed when he left Kelsey’s this morning.

  “Mom?” There was no answer, and he wandered through the house looking for her. He found her in the backyard, on her knees in her vegetable garden, a box of seedlings and a watering can beside her.

  “Has anyone ever mentioned that it’s not a good idea to leave the door unlocked,” he asked as he pushed open the screen door and stepped into the backyard.

  At the sound of his voice, Rachel tilted her head back, looking at him from under the brim of her scruffy straw hat. She didn’t seem at all surprised to see him, but then, he couldn’t remember her ever showing surprise at much of anything. Rachel Walker took just about everything life handed her in stride.

  “Gage. How are you?”

  “Practically good as new,” he told her, ignoring her critical assessment of his limping stride.

  “I guess you must be if you drove the Corvair over here.”

  “It’s a Corvette, Mom,” he corrected her, wincing a little. “A Corvair is something else entirely.”

  “They’re all cars,” she said, dismissing the differences with a wave of one gloved hand.

  “You shouldn’t leave the front door unlocked,” he said, knowing better than to get into a discussion of the finer points of automotive design.

  “Sam tells me that every time he comes up here. I thought it was because he was a police officer and just couldn’t help himself.” She gave Gage a reproachful look that said she’d expected better from him.

  “It’s because he’s worried about you, Mom.” Gage eased himself down onto the scraggly excuse for a lawn that butted up against her vegetable plot. “The world’s not a safe place anymore.”

  “It never was. That’s a fantasy held by people of your generation. Besides, it’s not like I’m all alone. Hippo is here. No one’s likely to argue with him.”

  Gage cast a doubtful look at the huge dog, who was currently sprawled in the shade of the big eucalyptus that dominated the back of the yard. It was true that his size could be intimidating until you realized that the biggest hazard he presented was if he ran over you in his hurry to get to his food.

  “The only way Hippo is going to offer any protection is if a burglar is covered in dog food and gets licked to death.”

  “I’m not worried,” Rachel said serenely, and Gage knew the conversation was effectively over. He could keep talking, but she’d stopped listening.

  Mouse, the cat, picked her way daintily across the lawn and presented her head so that Gage could scratch her ears. Both animals had been named by Cole’s daughter, Mary.

  The scene was so completely peaceful that Gage felt himself relaxing more than he had in a long time. This was why he’d come to see his mother, this sense of peace that always seemed to be wherever she was. She was content with the silence, busy digging a neat row of holes with her trowel. He knew the silence could continue indefinitely without it bothering her in the least.

  “Kelsey’s pregnant.” Gage hadn’t realized he was going to say it until he heard the words.

  Rachel tilted her head to look up at him. “I take it it’s your baby?”

  He nodded. “I just found out last night.”

  “Is she going to have it?” There was nothing in her tone to indicate that she had an opinion one way or another.

  “She says she wants it.” Gage reached down and plucked a blade of grass from the scraggly lawn. His mother had never been inclined to waste her gardening time on something as boring as a lawn.

  “What about you? Do you want this baby?”

  “More than I imagined possible,” he said softly.

  “Well, that makes things a bit easier,” Rachel said, nodding her head.

  She lifted a seedling from the box beside her and settled it into the hole she’d prepared. A tip of the watering can filled the hole with water. As the water oozed into the soil, she scooped dirt in around the small root ball, settling the tiny plant into its new home before moving on to the next plant.

  Gage watched her work, wondering how many times he’d seen her perform the same task. There was something ineffably soothing about the simple rhythm of the job.

  “I never planned on being a father,” he said suddenly.

  “A lot of things happen in life that we don’t plan for.” She set another seedling in the ground and carefully watered it into place.

  “I’ve always blamed myself for what happened to Shannon,” he said.

  “I know.” Rachel’s hands were not quite steady as she set the watering can down. She sat back on her heels and looked at him. “There was nothing you could have done.”

  “Wasn’t there?” Gage shook his head. “I knew it wasn’t Seth’s weekend to have her with him. We all knew what the visitation rules were.”

  “You were sixteen years old. He was her father.”

  “He was a son of a bitch.” Gage’s voice held the bite of twenty-year-old anger.

  “Yes, he was. If there’s any blame for what happened, it’s mine.” She held up her hand, silencing his protest. “I should never have married him.”

  “You didn’t know what he was,” Gage protested.

  “No, but I knew it was too soon after your father died.” Her dark eyes were unfocused as she looked back down the years, seeing mistakes that were so clear now, so impossible to see at the time. “I was lonely and I thought you boys needed a father. And Seth was kind.” She sighed and looked down, pressing her fingers around the seedling she’d just planted, as if to settle it deeper in its new home.

  “I should have divorced him sooner but I kept thinking it would work out. And then, after the divorce, when Shannon was born, it seemed as if it had all b
een worthwhile. She was like a gift from heaven. The four of you started smiling again. She made us laugh again, made us a family again. When Seth insisted on visitation rights, I didn’t worry because I knew it wouldn’t be long before he got bored with being a father and left us alone. And I didn’t worry about Shannon growing up without a father because I knew she’d have the four of you and that you’d do better than most men could.”

  Rachel lifted her head to look at him, and Gage saw the glint of tears in her dark eyes. “When Seth took her, I thought I was going to die from the pain of losing her,” she said slowly. “But I never, not even for a moment, thought you were to blame.”

  “I think I always knew that, but you didn’t have to blame me because I blamed myself. I kept thinking there was something I should have said, something I should have done, that I should have wrestled her away from him physically if I had to. But I let him bully me into letting him take her.”

  “You were a boy. He was a grown man. And if he was so far lost to sanity that he’d kidnap Shannon, he probably wouldn’t have hesitated to hurt you.”

  “But I might have been able to stop him.” That thought had been with him every day of his life for the past twenty years. If he hadn’t given in to Seth Hardesty’s threatening tone, maybe Shannon would still be with them instead of being God-knew-where.

  “You couldn’t have.” Rachel’s tone left no room for doubt. “You didn’t do anything wrong and don’t you ever think you did. I told you that at the time, but you didn’t believe me.”

  Gage shook his head. “Maybe you’re right. I always figured I’d failed Shannon and I never wanted to take that risk again. I decided I wouldn’t have kids because I couldn’t trust myself to take care of them.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then he heard Rachel click her tongue with exasperation. “I had no idea I’d raised such an idiot.”

  “What?” His eyes jerked to her face. He’d been expecting reassurance or sympathy or even, God forbid, confirmation of his feelings. But he hadn’t expected to be called an idiot.

  “Really, Gage. You’re much too old to be using this as an excuse for avoiding commitment.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  Rachel wasn’t listening. “I knew you were punishing yourself for what had happened to Shannon. I suspected that you still blamed yourself but I had no idea you were holding on to your guilt like it was a security blanket.”

  “I wasn’t,” he protested. Seeing the fire in her eyes, he suddenly felt as if he were five years old again and had been caught stealing his brothers’ baseball cards.

  “Do you know why you haven’t settled down and gotten married these past few years?”

  “Because I didn’t think I should,” he said, flinching at how weak the words sounded once he said them out loud.

  “Nonsense!” Rachel jabbed her trowel in his direction. “You haven’t been thinking about marriage because you’ve been in love with Kelsey.”

  “In love with— You’ve got to be kidding.” He stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Of course I haven’t been in love with Kelsey. She’s Rick’s wife. Well, not anymore. But she was his wife. And he was my best friend.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” she demanded. She jabbed the air with the trowel again.

  “I can’t be in love with my best friend’s wife.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because—” He stopped and stared at her, feeling something crack inside him. His chest actually hurt with the pain of realization. My God, she was right.

  He’d loved Kelsey for so long he couldn’t even remember when it had happened. At the wedding reception, when he’d touched her hand and felt that spark of awareness leap between them? Or had it been later, when she’d welcomed him as Rick’s friend, making him a part of their family? Or maybe it had been that moment when she’d asked him to be Danny’s godfather and laid the baby in his arms, offering him her trust in a way that had touched his deepest doubts about himself.

  “Sweet Jesus.” The words were more prayer than profanity. He stared past Rachel, seeing half a hundred scenes replay on the screen of his memory—Kelsey laughing, Kelsey’s eyes soft with tenderness when she looked at her son, her face twisted with grief as she cried in his arms after Rick’s death, Kelsey’s eyes smoky gray with passion, her arms reaching up to hold him.

  Of course he loved her. How could he not?

  “I do love her,” he whispered, speaking to himself as much as to Rachel.

  “Really, Gage, I’m starting to think you’re not as bright as you look.” Rachel’s voice was teasing, but her cheeks were damp with tears. “You seem to be the last one to figure it out. Sam’s already lost a hundred dollars to Keefe because he bet you’d ask her to marry you before you went back to work in July. And this past week, he bet Cole another hundred that you’d ask her before the end of the month.”

  “Was it that obvious?” Gage couldn’t believe he’d been the only one who hadn’t realized how he felt about Kelsey.

  “Only to those of us who know you very well,” she said, taking pity on his dazed expression. “If it makes you feel better, I don’t think Kelsey’s any brighter than you are.”

  Kelsey. It was one thing for him to have realized that he was in love with her. But that didn’t mean she felt the same way about him. Or ever would feel that way. She’d loved Rick a great deal.

  “I have to go,” he said, standing. He limped over to his mother, careful to avoid the newly planted seedlings. “Thanks, Mom.”

  She stood and put her arms around him, hugging him fiercely tight. “I love you, Gage. Kelsey and Danny and this new baby are all very lucky to have you. Don’t you forget it.”

  “I’ll try not to,” he promised, brushing a kiss over her cheek. “I love you, too.”

  At the back door, he turned back for a moment. “I’ll lock the front door on my way out,” he called. “Keep it that way.” She waved her trowel in acknowledgment, but he doubted she’d change her habits.

  Chapter 15

  Gage drove straight home. Now that he’d realized how he really felt about Kelsey, he was gripped by a driving need to see her. It was ridiculous. It wasn’t as if she was going to look any different, but knowing that didn’t lessen the strength of his need to see her.

  How could he have been so blind? The question ran through his mind again and again. How could he not have known? It had been understandable when Rick was alive. She’d been his best friend’s wife. If he’d admitted that his feelings for her were anything more than friendship, it would have made it impossible for him to see her—or Rick, for that matter.

  But Rick had been dead for four years now. In all that time, why hadn’t it occurred to him that his feelings for Kelsey went much deeper than friendship? The kiss they’d exchanged under that ratty bunch of mistletoe should have been a clue. And if that hadn’t been enough, what about the night Kelsey had spent in his bed? The night their child had been conceived? How could he have blinded himself to what that was really about?

  He’d actually agreed with Kelsey that they should just pretend that night never happened. All he could offer in his own defense was that he had realized the stupidity of that idea. He’d been coming home to tell Kelsey it wouldn’t work. But even then, he hadn’t seen the whole truth, hadn’t realized why he couldn’t get her out of his mind. His mother was right—he was an idiot!

  Gage pulled into the driveway and shut the engine off with a quick jerk of the key. He might have been blind, deaf and dumb for the past few years but he was wide-awake now, and he knew for the first time in a long time exactly what he wanted. He wanted Kelsey and the family he’d done his damnedest to deny himself. He wanted the white picket fence and the children and the two cars in the garage—the whole damned kit and caboodle.

  He slammed the car door behind him and stood for a moment, just looking at the house. This was home. Not because of the hours he’d spent painting it and making repairs. It was home
because it was where Kelsey was, Kelsey and Danny and his unborn child.

  He had a sudden memory of Rick, standing in front of this same house, his arm around Kelsey, who’d been holding Danny. The baby couldn’t have been more than six months old. They’d been arguing about what color to paint the house. Kelsey wanted white with blue trim, and Rick was accusing her of being too traditional. He’d made alternative suggestions, starting with lavender with purple trim and moving on from there, each more ridiculous than the last until they’d all ended up laughing.

  Gage felt grief clench tight and hard in his gut. Rick had been his best friend, almost as close to him as his own brothers. There would never be a time when he didn’t regret that Rick hadn’t lived out the life he should have had, hadn’t had the chance to see Danny learn to throw a ball or ride a bike for the first time. If he could have brought Rick back, could have given him that life, he’d have done it, even knowing how he felt about Kelsey. But nothing could bring Rick back, and life kept moving and you either moved with it or you stopped living. He had no intention of doing that or of letting Kelsey do it, either.

  Something, he didn’t know what, was telling him that he and Kelsey were meant to be together. Maybe it was pure wishful thinking, but he was going to give it his best shot to make it happen. He didn’t think Rick would have begrudged him that.

  “I’ll take good care of her and Danny,” he promised that half-seen ghost. “I’m not trying to take your place. I just want to make one of my own. I think you’d understand that.”

  He waited, half expecting lightning to strike or thunder to boom over his head. Some sign that he’d been heard, a celestial acknowledgment of his words. But there was nothing. Only this internal feeling of rightness. Maybe that was sign enough. Shaking his head at his own fanciful notions, Gage continued up to the house.