"You're a very conscientious mother, Carrie," Jessica said and then turned to Ethel. "Has Josh gotten those problems ironed out at the paper mill? He was telling me last night that— No, I spoke to him on the phone last night. It was the night before last when he came by the house. Anyway, the minute I saw him I knew something was wrong. He said a dozen employees have been out with the flu and two of the machines were out of order."
Carrie realized that she was clutching an empty cup and abruptly set it down. Then she twisted her hands together in her lap as the implication in Jessica's rambling monologue hit her. Josh had been with Jessica at her house two nights ago when he had said he was working late.
"I know they got the machines running again," Ethel was saying, seeming oblivious to the clear evidence that Josh was carrying on an affair with Jessica.
Carrie got to her feet and Ethel stopped what she was saying to glance at her. "Do you want more tea, dear?"
"No. I think I'd better go check on Mike." She started for the door.
"Don't forget I want to see him," Jessica called after her.
Carrie stopped with her hand on the knob but did not look back. "If you're still here when he wakes up, I'll have Miss Hastings bring him down."
She didn't go to the nursery but to her bedroom, where she was still sitting in the armchair, an afghan over her legs, trying not to think about Josh and Jessica together, when Ethel tapped at the door and called her name.
It was the first time her mother-in-law had ever come to her room, and Carrie hurried to open the door. "What is it, Mother? Are you ill?"
"Gracious, no. I was worried about you."
When they were seated, Ethel went on, "It's growing dark already. Jessie waited as long as she dared, but she finally said she would have to see Mike another time. She didn't want to drive after dark." When Carrie did not respond, Ethel's tone became sympathetic. "Jessie upset you, didn't she? You looked so—well, crushed, when you left."
"That shouldn't surprise you," Carrie said, unable for once to hide her resentment from her mother-in-law.
"Carrie," said Ethel seriously, "I know it was what she said about Josh being at her house recently. My dear, you're making too much of it. They've known each other for years. I'm sure there is an innocent explanation. Josh could have married Jessica if he had wanted, but he married you." How simple it was for Ethel with her rose-colored glasses.
"I wish I could be as optimistic as you are," Carrie said, meaning it.
"You must ask Josh why he went to Jessie's when he comes home. Don't let these little misunderstandings fester."
Little misunderstandings! Carrie felt an impulse toward hysterical laughter at the understatement. Looking into Ethel's pale, gentle face, however, she couldn't bring herself to give voice to the recriminations against Josh that were flying around in her brain. Instead, she managed a weak smile. "Thank you for always being kind and understanding. You have made me feel so welcome since I came here."
"Carrie, this is your home because it is Josh's."
"I know," said Carrie, "but it's sweet of you to say it, anyway."
When Ethel left her, Carrie stared out a window into the late-afternoon gloom. She felt a nerve jumping in her temple and another jerking along her arm. She had to get away, if only for a little while, in order to admit to herself what a part of her had known for a long time. She and Josh could not stay together. She had to leave him and get a divorce, and she had to take Mike with her. She did not know how to accomplish this or when, except that it would have to be soon. Perhaps if she were separated from him she could begin to get over him. But even as she sat thinking this, she knew it was a futile hope. The child she was carrying would be a constant reminder of him.
She stripped down to her slip and got into bed, lying on her back with the covers pulled up to her chin. She stared unseeing at the ceiling for a long time before she napped, wondering how she would manage to leave with Mike without anyone's knowing until it was too late to stop her.
Chapter Eleven
In the event, it proved to be easier than she could have imagined. An uncommonly bright winter sun shone for the next two days, melting some of the snow, and the snowplows finally cleared the road leading from town past the Revell estate. On the morning of the third day, Carrie was having her breakfast in the kitchen when Adam mentioned to Betty that he was going to town to pick up some yard tools. It was the opportunity Carrie had been waiting for.
"Adam," she said, "would you mind if Mike and I rode into town with you? I'd like to spend the day with Julia Freemont."
"It will be good for you to go," Betty commented.
"Oh, yes," Carrie assured her, "and I've been promising Julia to bring Mike in to see her."
"Can you be ready to go by ten?" Adam wanted to know. Carrie said that she could and after breakfast went back up to her bedroom to phone the airport and reserve a seat on the eleven o'clock flight to Boise. The timing would be close, but it was the only flight leaving that day.
The next problem was how to take along clothing for herself and Mike without arousing suspicion. The diaper bag could be filled with Mike's things, of course, since she would be expected to take it along even for a short trip to town. She finally decided to carry an overlarge shoulder bag, too, which would hold several more changes of clothing for Mike and a nightgown and toiletries for herself. She would have to borrow clothing from Jan for a few days.
Before going to the nursery she called Jan and told her she and Mike wanted to come for a visit. Jan welcomed them eagerly, vowing that she hadn't imagined how dreadfully she would miss Carrie and Mike until they had moved out.
With so many things to do, she had little time to think about how Josh would react to her disappearance until she was aboard the plane. She had directed Adam to drop her and Mike at the corner of the block where Julia Freemont's craft shop was located with the excuse that she needed something from the drugstore. When Adam had driven away, she walked around the corner to the town's only taxi company and took a cab to the airport.
Now, with Mike held securely on her lap and the plane lifting from the runway, she thought about Josh. She hadn't even left him a note. There hadn't been time; and, besides, what could she have written except what they both knew: their marriage had been a mistake. Carrie believed that Josh would probably be relieved to have her out of his life—but she had taken Mike. Once he had said to her: "If you ever decide to leave, Mike stays with me."
The fears that she had been too busy to acknowledge before came crowding into her thoughts. She had defied Josh, broken a promise to allow him to raise Mike, and she knew him well enough to be certain that such betrayal would not be accepted without a fight. Clutching Mike to her, she tried to remain calm. She would have to fight Josh in court if it came to that. At least now, as Mrs. Joshua Revell, money was available to her, even if she had to depend upon the law to get it. But, dear heaven, she did not want to engage in a bitter wrangle with Josh in a courtroom.
She could not even bear to think about that and, opening a picture book she had stuffed into the diaper bag, she began to read a child's story to Mike.
They took a cab from the Boise airport to Jan's apartment, where Jan had left the door key beneath the hall mat as she had promised. Inside the apartment, Carrie walked through the small rooms, carrying Mike. It looked just as it had when she left it, and yet somehow everything was different. It wasn't that the apartment had changed, she realized, but she had.
She had left, against her will, on her wedding day, hating Josh and everything he stood for. She had returned with even more reluctance but because there seemed to be nothing else she could do. And during the past three months hate had turned into deep love, a love from which she knew she would never be free. She felt tears starting down her cheeks and went into the kitchen, where she wiped her eyes and found something for lunch.
Mike was still napping when Jan burst into the apartment after work. The redhead flung her fake fur coat aside and
hugged Carrie tightly.
"Gosh, it's wonderful to see you! I'll bet Mike's asleep, but I can't wait to look at him." She tiptoed to the bedroom door and peeked inside. After a moment, she slid the door shut again and turned to Carrie. "How he has grown!"
"He's walking everywhere now," Carrie said. "I'm glad you didn't get rid of his old crib. He went right to sleep, as if he were at home." She hesitated, realizing that this was Mike's home now, at least until she could find a place for them to live permanently.
Watching her, Jan frowned. "Well, tell me how long you can stay."
Carrie walked to the couch and sat down. She fingered the frayed piping on the arm. "Jan, I've left Josh. If you can put up with Mike and me until I can find a place, I'd be grateful."
Obviously stunned, Jan lowered herself slowly into a chair. "Left Josh? Do you mean for good?"
Carrie nodded. "I'm going to see a lawyer about a divorce as soon as I'm settled."
"But this is awful, honey. What happened?"
"I can't talk about it now, Jan. Maybe later."
"Sure," Jan agreed, curiosity and sympathy mixing in her expressive eyes. "I think I hear Mike. No, you sit., I'll go get him."
When Jan came back into the living room carrying Mike, the little boy looked about eagerly and said, "Daddy," in a mournful tone of voice. Jan glanced quickly at Carrie, who managed to divert Mike's attention with his picture book for the moment, knowing it was only a temporary diversion. He would ask for Josh again—and again. But he was so young that he would forget quickly, Carrie told herself.
The days in Jan's apartment fell into a pattern. While Jan was at work, Carrie cared for Mike as well as doing the laundry and preparing the meals for the three of them. After a couple of days, Carrie stopped expecting to see Josh every time someone came to the door or hear his voice whenever she answered the phone. She began to have misgivings, too, about leaving without telling anyone where she was going. Each day she told herself she must find a lawyer, but the days continued to come to an end without her having made any real effort to do so.
Sometimes she almost wished that Josh would call or come after them. Slowly it dawned on her that a part of her had half counted on Josh's love for Mike to bring him to Boise. She berated herself for such foolishness, telling herself that she must start divorce proceedings. But the next day she found another reason for not contacting a lawyer.
She and Mike had been living with Jan for more than a week when, early one afternoon while Mike napped, she heard a foot on the stair and knew immediately that it was Josh. She began to shake even before he rang the doorbell. Her first impulse was not to answer, to pretend no one was at home. But the impulse was fleeting and she knew that she must face him. He would not be satisfied until she did.
She opened the door. He stood in the shadowy hallway, and she realized in dismay that he looked ill. His face was paler than she remembered, the hollows in his cheeks were more pronounced, and the lines alongside his mouth were deeper than ever.
Carrie gazed at him with stricken eyes. "Josh…"
He walked past her without speaking, taking off his topcoat and dropping it on a chair, striding through the living room and glancing into the bedroom where Mike was sleeping. Then he turned back to Carrie, and there was something in his eyes that pierced her heart.
"How—how did you find us?"
"I have known all along that you were here. It was the only place you could have gone. Besides, I checked with the airline and was given your destination." This was said with little inflection as he shoved his hands into his trousers pockets.
"Why have you come?"
He did not answer immediately. Instead he walked over to one of the windows overlooking the street and stared out, his back to Carrie. "I came to take you and Mike back Home with me." He paused. "I just now realized how pompous that must sound. I can't force you to stay where you don't wish to be, can I?"
"I know that you love Mike," Carrie said quietly, her eyes resting on his slumped shoulders with heart-twisting love, "and I know that I promised I would never take him from you. But, Josh, I can't let him go."
He turned to look at her across the narrow expanse of the living room. "Yes, I love Mike and I want him back, but that can wait. Right now I want to talk about you and me, Carrie. Before you left there was so much that I wanted to say to you, but suddenly you were gone without a word to anybody."
She turned her glance away and moved to sit uneasily on the arm of a chair. "I'm sorry for that, Josh. I should have left a note or telephoned. I didn't know what to say. I decided it would be easier for both of us if I just left and got a divorce. I knew that's what you wanted, and—"
"Wait a minute." He frowned. "You thought I wanted a divorce?"
"Yes," she murmured, looking at her hands. "It was obvious that you were miserable."
"That, at least, is true," he said quietly.
She took a deep breath. "When I learned that you were spending more and more time with Jessica, I knew I was only in the way."
"Let me understand this," he said slowly. "Where did you get the idea I was spending so much time with Jessica?"
Carrie raised her head and met his scowling look. "Jessica told me. She came to the house to—to see your mother. She said you had been at her house only two nights before, and she left the impression that she saw you frequently—like that."
His scowl deepened. "I see. Well, I've been dense about Jessica. I did go by her house one evening that week because she called and asked me to come. She has been calling me frequently lately asking for my advice about various investments. That evening she wanted to know whether to sell some municipal bonds her husband had left her. I'm afraid it took me a long time to realize that her so-called interest in investments was really an excuse to see me. I don't know how I could have been so obtuse except that I've known Jessica for years and I just couldn't believe she would be so devious. It was only after you had left and she began to call even more frequently and drop by my office with dinner invitations that I saw where her real interests lay."
"But it's been so obvious ever since I married you that you and Jessica were—that you—"
"That we were lovers?" he said. "You accused me of that before, but I was never sure you really believed it." He paused and the silence hung heavily between them. "Carrie," he said finally, "I don't know what good it will do now, but I want you to know that my relationship with Jessica has always been friendship, nothing more. I don't love her. I never have. She may have led you to believe otherwise, but—"
"She did!" Carrie interrupted incredulously. "That afternoon when she came to the house she only came to tell me that you had been at her house. That's why I had to get out. I didn't know what to do. I—"
"That's why?" He stared at her. "That's why you left? Because of some lies that Jessica told."
Her breath quivered in her throat and she looked away from him, nodding dismally.
"Why couldn't you have come and asked me for the truth?"
Her chin came up and she met his look. "I don't know," she said. "Why did you stay at the office every night and let me believe you were with Jessica? You knew that I suspected you of having an affair with her. Why didn't you tell me otherwise?"
"Because every time we seemed to move a little closer to one another, you did something to make me angry. It always seemed to me that you did it deliberately," he said in low, bitter tones. "It appears that I have managed to do and say all the wrong things right from the start. That must be some kind of record."
She spread her fingers in a helpless gesture. "Josh, if only we could have talked about things. You must have known how insecure I was feeling. You made it clear that it was only Mike you wanted when we married. I even began to understand why he meant so much to you when Ethel told me that you lost your own baby, that Helen was carrying your child when she died."
"Helen wasn't carrying my baby."
"But your mother said she was pregnant," Carrie said, confused
.
He stood looking at her for a moment, then he walked to the couch and sat down. He sat forward, his arms resting on his knees, and gazed at her. "Carrie, I think it is time we were honest with each other. I don't like to talk about Helen. I don't even like to think about her, but maybe I've been wrong in not telling you everything sooner. Helen was pregnant when she died, but it wasn't my child. She had been having an affair with a man named Darrell Wickersham for months before her death. He was a young doctor who was associated with Robert Marlow for a time. The child was Wickersham's. The two of them went to Toronto together. I'm sure they meant to stay there or somewhere in Canada. But they died in that fire."
Several things that had puzzled Carrie were beginning to come clear: the embarrassed silence at the table the night Jane Marlow mentioned Dr. Wickersham's name, Carrie's own feeling that it had seemed odd for Helen to go to Toronto alone… "Your mother must not have known that the baby wasn't yours."
Josh's lips twisted with irony. "I expect she is the only one in town who has never suspected the truth. She persists in believing that Helen had only gone on a short holiday and that, had she not died, she would have come back home."
"Josh, I know it's painful for you to tell me these things. You loved her very much, didn't you?"
His smile was faintly mocking. "I don't even know anymore. I suppose I did in the beginning, but I had stopped loving her long before she left me. Our last year together was hell. After she died, I vowed never to put myself at a woman's mercy again. Love wasn't for me."
"I see," she said in a small voice. "So you decided to marry me because I had Mike and you didn't even have to pretend to love me."
"Mike was part of it," he admitted, "but do you really want to know why I married you?"
She nodded reluctantly.
"I wanted to take you to bed."
She closed her eyes, her pulses hammering.
"When I walked in here that afternoon and saw you, I remembered that vulnerable young girl I'd met one evening at dinner with Danny and your sister and hadn't been able to get out of my mind for weeks afterward. When I saw you again, you were still young and vulnerable, but more beautiful than ever. I wanted you then, and I want you now. You are my wife, Carrie, and I can't let you go."
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