by Kilby, Joan
“I had no idea.” Nor did she understand or even believe it. How could something that big, that fundamental, be true and she not know it about herself?
“Now, about what I wanted to tell you—”
“Hang on. I’m struggling with what you just said. Can you give me an example of me holding back?”
“I don’t mean you were passive-aggressive or anything. You were always warm and loving. But if we disagreed you didn’t want to talk about it. Instead, you tried to smooth it over and sweep things under the carpet.”
“I don’t believe it’s necessary or good to dwell on problems,” she said uncomfortably. “People disagree, sure, but that doesn’t mean they have to argue and get angry.”
“Our final argument was about life-and-death. Of course I was angry when you refused to discuss your treatment or change your mind.”
“Let’s not go there.” A topic that divisive wasn’t open for discussion, not when their relationship was so fraught with emotional minefields. “You still haven’t given me an example of me being too self-sufficient.”
“Okay, whenever I tried to pin you down for a wedding date, you would discuss the pros and cons of different seasons but never come to a conclusion about the best time. So we never set a date. When I talked about having kids someday you raved about how much you loved children but never said when we would start a family.”
“We were in our early twenties, in no hurry,” she protested. “We had our future ahead of us.”
“What does it hurt to talk about it, to plan, to dream?”
“I had dreams.” Marrying John and having a family, being a writer, teaching and working with children. She’d worked hard to fulfill those dreams. Could she help it if the first one took two people to make it come true? When one of those people left how could it happen?
Unless John had left because he didn’t feel she was fully committed. But that was crazy. She’d wanted to marry him since she was sixteen years old. That hadn’t wavered until the decision was taken out of her hands by his abrupt departure. Then it had been as though someone had died and she’d gone through all the stages of grief. By the time he’d returned she’d detached from their love and arrived at acceptance. She was cured of cancer—and of her love for him. But before that she’d been as committed as he was.
Now he was saying she hadn’t been, or that he hadn’t felt it. If true, this negated her image of herself as someone who lived life to the fullest, loving and laughing with abandon. The bigger question was, was she still withholding a part of herself? How could she tell? Currently there was no man in her life. Maybe that in itself said something about her.
But she wasn’t finished asking about Nena. Hopefully, like lancing a boil, it would be painful but the wound would heal cleanly. She had to brace herself to ask the next question. “Did you love her?”
“I knew her for three months. I don’t fall in love that quickly. When I do, I stay in love for a long time.”
Did he mean he was still in love with her? Something flared inside that for once she couldn’t—or didn’t want to—squash. A glimmer of hope that what they had wasn’t dead after all, that with a little fanning of the flames they could resurrect the spark.
But could they, really? Did she want to go there? She was healed. Why pick at the scab, reopen the wound? Suddenly she felt very tired. Her foot ached and she wanted to go to bed.
John seemed to sense her change of mood. “I should go.”
“You were going to tell me something.”
“It’s late. Another time.”
Katie grabbed the crutches and hobbled after him out the front door onto the veranda. She stood beneath the porch light, questions still buzzing in her brain. “When you found out about Tuti did you consider going back to Nena, trying to make it work?”
John sighed. “I did. But Nena was smarter than I was. She knew we liked each other but without love that wasn’t enough, not with all the cultural differences we would have had to overcome. She didn’t believe I would stick around. She didn’t want Tuti being devastated when I left, as she was sure I would inevitably do.”
“But if she’d said yes, would you have stuck it out?” For some stupid reason she hoped he would have tried at least. Better he’d left her when she was sick because his love wasn’t strong enough than that he was a person who couldn’t be counted on.
“I’ve asked myself that over the years. But until I’m actually put in that position, I can’t say. Who can say staying with Nena would have been the right thing to do? Marriage is difficult and messy at times. It takes solid love and commitment to see it through, even in the best of circumstances.”
Katie propped herself against the rail and set her crutches aside. In bad circumstances even greater love and strength were needed. Her father had been a rock for her mother, never wavering all through her long illness, remission, then recurrence and final stages when the breast cancer traveled to her ovaries, then to her spine and then everywhere.
“My parents had a perfect marriage. There was no messiness. My dad gave my mother unconditional love and support, even when she refused a third round of chemotherapy. That was her choice and he respected it.” She’d hoped for that kind of unconditional love from John but he hadn’t measured up.
“Are you so sure about that?” John looked skeptical. “No one really knows what goes on behind the scenes in a marriage.”
“I know.” She didn’t like him doubting her parents’ love. Without that ideal to strive for, her whole grievance against John would come tumbling down and the past seven years they’d spent apart would have been a huge mistake. But he was wrong. He didn’t know her mother and father the way she did. “One thing I never understood. Why, if you loved me as much as I thought you did, did you leave me? You’ve never wanted to talk about it. I can only assume you felt so guilty—”
“Guilty? No, I was angry you wouldn’t do everything possible to get well. It’s like you were giving up on yourself, on us and our future.” He gripped her shoulders. Beneath the porch light shadows darkened his eyes. “I did try to talk to you about it when I came back to Summerside seven years ago. It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all night.”
“How dare you be angry because I didn’t want to chop off both my breasts?” She pulled away from him and got onto her crutches. “How do you think it feels to be a woman and lose one of the most important elements of femininity? You just admitted you were in love with my breasts from an early age. How long could I have held you with no breasts? And if I lost you, what other man would want me? Angry? I had a right to be angry. Not you.”
“That’s from your perspective. If you’d died, what difference would it make if you kept your breasts? I watched your mother die. I saw what that did to you and Riley. To your father. I didn’t want to watch you die.”
She drew herself up as tall as she could on her sore ankle. “I’m very much alive, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Oh, I’ve noticed.” All at once the atmosphere changed, became charged. He moved closer. Before she knew what was happening his warm, firm lips pressed against hers. Her mouth opened and his tongue slipped inside. Blood surged in her veins. She felt fully alive, just as she had rushing down the hill on her mountain bike. Then just as she was about to push him away, his lips softened and lingered.
Katie felt like crying and didn’t know why.
“I was angry,” he said, easing away. “But there was more to it than that. I left so you wouldn
’t keep your breasts for my sake, so you would get the mastectomy and live. I’m so grateful you survived.” The back of his knuckles brushed lightly down her breast, grazing her nipple. “I’m glad your breasts did, too, despite the fact I still think you were wrong.” He sucked in a breath. “There, I’ve finally told you. Before you ream me out for being an idiot, I’ll go and you can rest.”
Before she could react he’d backed away, stepped off the porch and was striding to his vehicle. The motor started.
She watched his taillights move off down the street. Her lips still tingled with the imprint of his mouth.
He’d left to try to save her? That was crazy. But she believed he meant it. It was just the noble nutty kind of thing he would do.
She’d been so sure she was over him. And she had been.
And yet…with one kiss he’d set her alight.
But she was confused. What had the kiss meant to him? He went out with a lot of women. Kissing her might have been simply the way he closed an evening. Or a way of closing out the past. It didn’t necessarily mean he was attracted to her.
He’d said he was angry. Did that mean he hadn’t forgiven her for not taking him back seven years ago? Had he confessed just to get this off his chest? He hadn’t stuck around to find out what she thought about it all.
The truth was, she didn’t know what she thought.
She went inside and closed the door. The evening had raised more questions than it had answered. Slowly she made her way down the hall. Baby steps. Wait and see. Don’t rush into anything. Que sera sera.
* * *
WHY HAD HE gone and kissed her?
John thumped the steering wheel as he drove away from Katie’s house. He’d taken her by surprise. She hadn’t been ready. The circumstances were all wrong given the nature of their conversation. But he hadn’t been able to help himself. They’d been talking, openly and honestly for the first time in years. And standing on the porch in the dark, feeling her so close, the years had fallen away. He’d kissed her without thinking.
He slowed to make the turn onto his parents’ street to pick up Tuti. And reminiscing about perving at her in a bikini? He winced. Not cool. Not a mature relationship based on more than sexual attraction. Which was what he wanted to have with her.
At first he’d simply wanted her to be civil to him. Then he was content for them to be friends. Now, now he wanted much more. He wanted Katie back in his life permanently. He was falling in love with her again, or, more accurately, doubting that he had ever fallen out of love. And he wanted her to love him.
Brief as the kiss was, it reminded him of everything they’d once had. And all that he’d lost. One little kiss with Katie was worth more than all his sexual adventures in the intervening years combined.
The anger between them still festered away below the surface. He thought he’d forgotten, gotten over the past. But ever since Tuti’s arrival memories and emotions had been surfacing.
Like his lack of security in their relationship. It had been only annoying when she wouldn’t commit to a wedding date. Terrifying and out of control when she was sick with cancer and possibly dying. All he’d ever wanted was for them to be together and raise a family. He’d thought he had her…and then she’d slipped away from him.
He felt a glimmer of hope that he and Katie could forge a new relationship, one based on the present and not the past. They’d both moved on with their lives, accomplished important things on their own. Now they needed to approach the future from a different perspective, without always harking back to the past. He needed to not second-guess her, always expecting she would balk at the last hurdle. It would be hard to do but Katie would be worth the effort.
He pulled into his parents’ driveway and hurried up the path. He knocked once and let himself in. Every light in the house was ablaze. A Disney movie was playing on the TV in the lounge room. The radio was on in the kitchen, barely audible over the sound of his mother and father squabbling good-naturedly, as was their habit. Also in the conversation was another voice he couldn’t place. No sign of Tuti.
He walked through the house, glancing into rooms. And stopped in the doorway of the kitchen. His mother was seated at the table, addressing brightly colored invitations. His dad was on Skype talking to someone while his mother kept interrupting with her two cents. Tuti was lying on the tiled floor, sleepily stroking the cat.
“Mum, Dad. Sorry I’m so late.” He bent to touch Tuti on the shoulder. She glanced up and smiled. “Hey, sweetheart.”
“Get a second estimate on that transmission,” Marty Forster was saying to his laptop computer.
John glanced at the screen and recognized his dad’s sister, Gena, in Brisbane. He waved hello. “Hey, Aunt Gena. Dad’s right. Get another estimate.”
“Mechanics see a single woman walk in the garage and rub their hands in glee,” Marty went on. “Crooks, the lot of them.”
“They’re not all crooks,” Alison objected, licking an envelope. “Gena can handle herself. She’s not stupid.”
“Did I say she was stupid?” Marty huffed. “I said mechanics are crooks.”
“They’re not all crooks—” Alison began again.
“I’ve got to go,” John said. “Tuti needs to get to bed.”
“Of course she does.” Alison reached around to hug Tuti, but the girl sidestepped into the safety of John’s arms. Pressing her lips together, Alison turned back to the invitations. “I’m almost finished,” she said brightly. “Tuti, you’re going to have the best birthday party ever.”
John noted the thick stack of invitations. His mother turned every social occasion into a major event. Tuti wasn’t prepared for this. “How many people are you inviting? I thought it would be just close family.”
“Plus a few friends. You having a daughter is a big deal.”
“Have you got an invitation there for Katie? I can give it to her myself.”
Alison frowned. “Do you really want her there? She’s—”
“She’s giving Tuti extra help with her English skills,” he said, cutting his mother off before she could say anything mean about Katie in front of Tuti. “Tuti is crazy about her.”
“What about you?” His mother’s blue eyes searched his. “Don’t go getting your heart broken again.”
“No fear of that,” he said lightly. Even though he could still taste Katie’s lips and feel the soft skin of her cheek beneath his fingers. “We’re friends, that’s all.”
His mother had been almost as gutted as he when Katie hadn’t taken him back. She was prejudiced against her. No way was he confiding in her about his hopes for a new beginning with Katie.
Alison sniffed. “She’s got you running after her again, rescuing her, waiting around the hospital till all hours. Was anything wrong with her ankle in the end?”
“A bad sprain. She’s on crutches.” John gently pushed his daughter in the direction of the hall. “Go get your backpack and put your shoes on. Then wait for me at the front door. I’ll be right there.”
When she’d left the room John pulled out a chair next to his mother. “You used to be fond of Katie. Said she was like a daughter to you.”
“That was before.” Alison grudgingly handed him an invitation. “I suppose she can come if you and Tuti want her.”
“We do.” His mother was only being loyal out of love for him, but her antagonism added another layer to his conflicted emotions. It made him realize that while part of him wanted to explore a fr
esh relationship with Katie, to see where it took them, part of him agreed he would do well to keep his distance.
Their breakup seven years ago had been the first time he’d faced the loss of something really important to him. Katie, despite saying she loved him and wanted to marry him, had disregarded his feelings and dismissed his fears about her long-term health. If she’d truly loved him she would have found a way to compromise.
And what about her comment tonight about her father’s perfect love for her mother? She’d said as much years ago when they were teenagers, but he’d put that down to the romantic idealism of a young girl. Clearly she still thought that way. But how much would Katie know about what went on between her parents? She’d only been ten years old when her mother died at a relatively young age. Barry Henning’s love for his wife had been enshrined in Katie’s eyes as perfect and unsullied. How could he compete with that?
“Bapa!” Tuti called from the front door. “Tie shoes.”
“She hasn’t learned that yet?” Alison shook her head.
“She’s only had laced shoes for a few weeks. Give her a break.” He shifted impatiently. “I should go help her.”
“Let her try a little longer,” Alison said. “I want to hear about you and Katie. Are you dating?”
“Don’t make a big deal,” his father said. “If John says they’re just friends, that’s what he means.”
“It’s not that simple, though, is it?” his mother said. “You’re fooling yourself if you think you’re over her.”
“It is complicated,” John admitted. “We have a history. But neither of us is interested in getting back together.” Truth was, he didn’t know how to read Katie’s response to his kiss. She’d seemed confused by it and by his parting words. Well, she’d confused him plenty in the old days. He took the envelope and rose. “Can you do something for me?”
“Anything, you know that, darling,” his mother said before licking an envelope.