Just one moment

by Poppy J. Anderson

  “And I don’t think you should talk about it!” she barked at him: “You weren’t interested in what was going on three years ago, so why are you suddenly so interested now?”

  Her words were like a slap to the face.

  Shocked, James fought against the unbearable pain that had suddenly gripped his entire body. “I wasn’t interested in what was going on?” he repeated hoarsely, balling his free hand into a fist. “Do you really think I didn’t care, wasn’t interested? Barbara …” He gasped for breath, agonized and hurting. “How … How can you say a thing like that? How the hell can you say that?”

  There was dead silence on the other end.

  James didn’t even notice, blind and deaf to everything as he struggled to get a grip. Her accusation had smashed into the wall of his reticence, a bulwark he’d trained himself to practice over those first few months so that he wouldn’t add to her pain. When his wife suddenly fell into a severe depression, he hadn’t allowed her to see his true feelings, his grief, because he didn’t want to add to her burden. But that was exactly what she was reproaching him for now. He felt suffocated, like a drowning man.

  “How could you believe I wasn’t interested in Elizabeth?” he demanded in a voice full of agony. And then he hung up, because he didn’t want her to hear him cry.

  Chapter 9

  When James unlocked the front door, he did so cautiously, so hesitantly that he might have been mistaken for a burglar.

  He actually felt like a felon as he gingerly set down his bag in the hallway and started looking around for his wife and children. He was usually excited to return home after a business trip, but today he’d had to force himself to leave the airport and get in a taxi. He’d hung around in an airport lounge for nearly two hours, scribbling dozens of apology speeches on dozens of paper napkins, but he’d thrown them all in the trash in the end.

  How could he tell his wife that he’d been unfaithful to her the night before? That he’d slept with another woman for the first time in twelve years? How could he meet her eyes after everything that had happened last night? And how could he expect her to forgive him if he couldn’t even forgive himself?

  But the more vital question was whether Barbara would even care that he’d slept with another woman. After all, before he’d left for this trip to Toronto, she’d told him in no uncertain terms that she wanted him to move into the guest room.

  She hadn’t given him a reason, but it hadn’t been necessary.

  For half a year now, she’d been giving him the cold shoulder, reducing communication to the absolutely necessary, though James did everything he could to get through to her. It had gotten so bad that he was desperate. Some days, he wanted to shake her until she’d snap back into her old self—the cheerful, fun-loving woman he’d married, the woman she’d been up until six months ago.

  Only a month earlier, they’d celebrated Scott’s birthday, and James had hoped that Barbara would be a little more relaxed, a little happier on that occasion. But when he’d tried to take her in his arms as Scott was unwrapping his presents, she’d been so cold and abrasive that he’d feared getting his eyes scratched out.

  He was at the end of his wits.

  Barbara barely looked at him anymore. She didn’t want to talk to him. And least of all did she want to touch him. And when he tried to convince her to look for a therapist, it was to no avail. She merely yelled that she was fine and he should leave her alone. That was obviously not true, which Barbara probably knew full well.

  By now, James feared that his wife hated him.

  He didn’t know when or for what reason she’d begun to despise him, but he sensed it had to do with the baby.

  His throat constricted as he remembered how he’d unburdened his heart to Anna last night over a double vodka, how he’d burst into tears. He’d wanted to be strong for Barbara, so he’d never allowed himself to shed even a single tear for the baby. But yesterday, he’d broken down completely.

  First, he’d brooded in silence, staring into his glass as he listened to Anna’s stories of her fucked-up relationship. Then, he’d haltingly told her that Barbara had demanded he move into the guest room, that she hadn’t been the same person since giving birth prematurely. It had been such a relief to be able to voice his sorrow and grief to another person, he’d bared his soul to Anna entirely, until he broke down and sobbed, crying for the tiny girl who’d lived no longer than half an hour before a doctor had declared the perfect, beautiful infant dead.

  His eyes stung again as he recalled holding the lifeless body of his baby daughter in his arms, admiring her translucent little ears while he didn’t yet know whether Barbara would survive her emergency surgery. All he’d known for certain during those hours, the worst of his life, was that he needed to see his dead daughter, so he could later tell Barbara what their tiny daughter had looked like. He knew Barbara would never forgive him if he couldn’t tell her about the girl they’d wanted to call Elizabeth.

  But when Barbara finally woke up from her narcosis, after James had spent agonizing hours waiting, he didn’t get a chance to describe Elizabeth’s tiny jutting ears. Because Barbara had already started to ignore him.

  Anna had not ignored him when he’d sobbingly told her that little Elizabeth couldn’t have been any more beautiful. And, unlike Barbara, Anna had not pushed him away when he’d clung to her with all his unhappiness plain in his eyes. When they’d slipped into physical intimacy, he’d known it was wrong, but at the same time, he’d found something akin to comfort for the first time in months.

  Panicking, he closed his eyes and took a trembling breath, then slipped out of his sports coat.

  Last night had been a terrible mistake. He loved Barbara, had never wanted to cheat on her, and didn’t feel anything for Anna, but at the same time, he felt a perverse hope that this might mark a new beginning. That they might start over. Maybe his misstep would force Barbara to speak to him again, and they could talk about their problems—and overcome them. All James wanted was to get his wife back!

  Thus, he squared his shoulders and exhaled forcefully before crossing the hallway and stepping into the kitchen. When he saw her there, busy chopping vegetables, a small voice in James’s head whispered that she didn’t need to know what had happened between him and Anna. It wouldn’t hurt her if he kept this from her. The idea of not telling her was so tempting that he stood in the doorway and considered it for a long moment. Finally, he came to his senses and dismissed the thought. He might have made a mistake, but he was neither a coward nor a liar.

  He studied his beautiful wife, who was standing with her back to him, her hair done up in a messy bun. She was wearing the pretty jumpsuit he’d bought for her almost two years earlier on a trip to Paris. He’d been invited to a conference there and had spontaneously decided to take Barbara along, leaving Hamilton and Scott with his parents. It had been the first time they’d gone somewhere together without the children since Barbara’s father had died. And those days in Paris were heaven. When they weren’t sitting in small bistros holding hands and eating delicious food, they’d visited museums, taken endless walks, and slept in a beautiful hotel with a view of the Eiffel Tower.

  A few weeks ago, he’d suggested to Barbara that they take another trip—just the two of them. Maybe the distance from everything else would have helped them regain some strength and become closer again. But Barbara had merely looked right past him.

  He cleared his throat to announce his presence. “Hello, love. I’m back.”

  She must have heard him come in, because she didn’t flinch. Instead, she continued to cut the veggies and nodded without turning around. “Mm-hm.”

  Her rejection was still terribly painful. “Where are the boys?”

  Barbara threw a handful of cut-up bell peppers into a salad bowl. “Stuart took them to a movie,” she replied in a monotone.

  James shifted his weight nervously. He didn’t know what to say, so he commented lamely, “That was nice of your brother
.”

  He received no answer.

  He stared at her back helplessly, his stomach tightening more painfully with each passing second. “Barbara,” he whispered despondently. “We need to talk.”

  Even now, she didn’t give him the slightest bit of her attention but remained focused on the vegetables, which she was cutting much too small.

  James shifted his weight again and decided he would stand next to her, since she didn’t seem ready to turn around. He moved to the counter and stood very close, staring down at the top of her head, before his eyes followed her steady arms to her hands, which were cutting another bell pepper.

  “Barbara …”

  “I’m busy,” she cut him off listlessly. “Stuart wants to stay for dinner when he drops the boys off, so I need to make some more food.”

  Though his brother-in-law’s presence would complicate matters, James didn’t want to postpone his confession. He simply had to get it out.

  The rumbling in his stomach had a panicky quality to it, and he wondered with rising despair how on earth he could convince Barbara that he loved her with all of his heart and that the preceding night hadn’t meant anything. He was so scared of hurting her that it paralyzed him.

  He gingerly reached for her hand and took away the knife, murmuring hoarsely, “Could you please stop cutting this pepper for just a moment? We really need to talk.”

  Impatience flashed in her eyes. She frowned and crossed her arms in front of her chest as if to fend him off. “What is it?”

  When he stood before her and looked into her beautiful face, he recalled with a jolt how she had beamed at him when she was led to the altar on her father’s arm on their wedding day. He also remembered her smile when she’d presented him with a positive pregnancy test during their honeymoon on a Norwegian cruise ship. And he recalled holding her hand in the hospital after she’d lost such a large amount of blood during surgery that the doctors had doubted she’d make it.

  Without thinking it through, he blurted out: “I slept with Anna.”

  Although her face betrayed no emotion, her eyes became veiled with something he couldn’t interpret.

  He took a labored breath and croaked, “Barbara, it didn’t mean anything. I …” There, he faltered, because he didn’t know what he was supposed to say. If she had yelled at him or lost it, he wouldn’t have felt quite so helpless.

  “Do you love her?” Barbara asked in a chillingly sober voice. “Are you leaving me?”

  “No!” His reply came out a little too loud, too ferocious. “No! For Christ’s sake, of course not! Barbara, I love you—only you!”

  Still devoid of any palpable emotion, she murmured, “You have a strange way of showing it.”

  James didn’t know what he’d expected, but the indifferent, cold behavior was beyond what he might have imagined.

  “Would you let me prepare the salad now?” she asked calmly.

  “Barbara.” He swallowed hard. “We need to talk about this.”

  “No, we don’t.” She shrugged one shoulder. “You slept with your coworker, and I still want you to move into the guest room. There’s nothing else to talk about.”

  “Jesus Christ, Barbara!” he burst out, grabbing her by the arms and shaking her fiercely. “I slept with another woman! I kissed her, undressed her, I had sex with her! Are you completely unaffected by that? Anyone else would throw a fit, tell me to go to hell, and file for divorce! But all you want to do is finish your goddamned salad?”

  She finally showed a reaction, struggling against his grip like a berserker. When she managed to free her right arm, she slapped him across the face.

  James was shocked by the strength in her delicate arms. It felt as if his teeth had been rattled loose. She’d slapped him harder than anyone else ever had.

  “Fine!” she screamed at him. “If that’s what you want, you can have your divorce for all I care! At least then I’ll be left in peace, and you can screw around as much as you please!”

  His eyes widened in shock. “No! That is not what I want!”

  “But I want it!” She pushed him away with a force that seemed superhuman and then stood there, panting. “I can’t stand you anymore, James!”

  Panic hit him like an iron fist in the stomach. “What?”

  Barbara shook her head wildly. “Get out and leave me alone! I don’t want to see your face anymore, and I want nothing to do with you ever again!”

  He looked into her face, unable to believe or process what she had just said. An invisible hand was squeezing his neck, choking off the air supply to his lungs. “You don’t mean that.”

  “I’m dead serious.” Barbara wrung her hands. “Don’t you see that I don’t want to be with you anymore?”

  “It’s because of the baby, right?” James croaked, hurt and confused. “You’re just depressed. You just have—”

  “What I have is a husband I can’t bear to look at anymore. A husband who cheats on me,” she countered sharply. “I don’t want Hamilton and Scott to suffer under a marriage as broken as ours.”

  James couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Dazed, he shook his head.

  But Barbara was adamant. “We need to get a divorce, James. Or else I will suffocate in this marriage.”

  Chapter 10

  Barbara had known it was a mistake to drive to her mom’s house today of all days, but after a night filled with nightmares, she hadn’t possessed the strength to argue with her mother. She’d had no choice but to comply with her request for a visit.

  Now she was standing in her mother’s spacious kitchen, helping her prepare lunch while Eleanore fussed about like a concerned mother hen.

  While it felt good to chat with her, Barbara would have preferred to be alone. On this day, she wanted to curl up in her bed, pull the covers over her head, and not do anything at all. Instead, she was peeling potatoes and listening to her mother’s stories. She didn’t bother interrupting once until she noticed how strange it was that the twins hadn’t been mentioned once so far, and even stranger, there was no sign of Patrick, Amy, or the babies.

  She put down the peeler, wrinkled her nose, and looked at her mother, who was getting something out of the fridge. “Mom? Did you send Patrick and Amy away with the babies?”

  Although Barbara could only see her mother’s back, the way her posture stiffened was evidence enough that she was about to lie. “What gives you that idea, honey? Patrick and Amy wanted to drive to New Haven with the twins.”

  “Did they?” Barbara frowned. “Patrick and Amy voluntarily drove two newborns to New Haven—on a Saturday. That sounds very reasonable.”

  “How am I supposed to know what the five of them are up to?” Eleanore Ashcroft did not sound convincing or, for that matter, convinced.

  “Mom.” Barbara sighed heavily. “What made you think the babies had to be out of the house when I came over? That’s totally unnecessary. I was actually looking forward to seeing the two little sweethearts. They grow so quickly, after all.”

  When Eleanore turned around, she was chewing on her lower lip. “I don’t know, honey.” She shrugged a helpless shoulder. “We … I wanted to distract you. I thought the twins might make you sad.”

  Barbara shook her head. “That’s nonsense. How could the twins make me sad? I love them both dearly. Aaron and Alex have nothing to do with Elizabeth.”

  Once she said the name, she felt her eyes sting and her throat constrict, despite her show of confidence. Even after three years, the mere thought of her baby girl hurt. She’d never laid eyes on the darling, and yet she thought about her every day.

  However, despite this intense and relentless pain, she meant what she’d just said to her mom. Her two nephews had nothing to do with her dead daughter, and she was able to hold Aaron in her arm or cuddle Alex without getting sad. She didn’t resent Patrick or Amy for their happiness, for being a family of five; she was happy for her brother. Before she’d gotten married, Barbara had always dreamed of having two boys and
a girl—the perfect constellation, a replica of the family she’d grown up in. She’d wanted three children—and James had wanted them, too. The perfect family.

  Now she had two sons she loved to distraction. Two sons she wouldn’t give up for anything in the world.

  And she had an ex-husband she missed, while at the same time she could hardly bear to look into his eyes. An ex-husband who had never said her dead daughter’s name until a few days ago. Who had never even once made an attempt to grieve with her, not in three years. She had never seen him shed a single tear for Elizabeth, but during their phone call, he’d sounded as if he was going to cry any moment.

  “I’m so glad you see it that way,” her mother interrupted her thoughts. She moved closer, put a comforting hand on Barbara’s back, and stroked it. “The family was worried about how you would react to the babies. I hope you’re not mad at us.”

  “Of course not,” Barbara murmured distractedly and lowered her head, taking in a trembling breath. “Could we please talk about something else now?”

  “Of course.” Eleanore squeezed her daughter’s shoulders. “How are things going with Marcus?”

  “I was thinking of a different change of subject, Mom,” Barbara replied dryly. “Like the weather, maybe, or the situation in the Middle East. Much more enjoyable, and innocuous, too.”

  “Oh.” Her mother sounded surprised. “Does that mean you two had a quarrel?”

  Barbara picked up the potato peeler again and resumed her work. “No, we did not have a quarrel,” she replied briskly.

  “Then what happened?”

  She had no mind and no energy to mislead her mother, so she casually explained, “There is nothing to quarrel about, Mom. I went out with Marcus exactly once, and then he accompanied me to Scott’s soccer tournament, but it didn’t feel right. So we’re not going out again. That’s it—no big deal.”

  “What do you mean it didn’t feel right?”

  Barbara shrugged a dismissive shoulder and prayed for some kind of interruption. “I didn’t feel relaxed and comfortable in his presence. Not as comfortable as in my …” She stopped herself. “You know.”