by Shirley Jump
The words no longer hurt. It had been over a year, and Mack had gotten over the divorce. But he still had regrets. Wished he could get a giant do-over, for Samantha’s sake.
He stood and went to Samantha, standing just behind her, not touching her, but close enough that he could catch whispers of her perfume. It wasn’t the same scent she’d worn when they’d been married. This one was richer, deeper. Maybe chosen by the new husband. “I blamed myself, Samantha, not you. If I’d been better—”
She wheeled around. “See? That’s exactly what I was talking about. You can’t fix the world, Mack, no matter how many tools you use. We weren’t meant for each other, and I was too chicken to tell you that. Instead, I went looking elsewhere for what I wanted. I was the one who was wrong, Mack, not you.”
“You can’t take all the blame, Samantha. I wasn’t exactly Mr. Communication.”
She smiled. “Yeah, you could have been better at the emotions thing. But all the heart-to-hearts in the world can’t create love where there isn’t any to begin with.”
He turned away and went back to the loveseat, gripping the cherry wood that curved along the back. “What if there is love? How do I keep it from going into the ditch?”
“Like we did?”
“Yeah.” He turned back toward her. “You’re happy now, aren’t you?”
The soft contentment that filled her face slammed into Mack with a bullet of envy, not because he wanted Samantha, but because he wanted what Samantha had. “Very.”
“Good. I’m glad.” And he was. He and Samantha might be divorced, but he had never wished her ill. They had, as she’d said, made a mistake, and at least been smart enough to undo it before they’d brought children into the mix.
“Mack, I’m no expert at this marriage thing, God knows, but I know you well enough to say this.” Samantha laid a hand on his shoulder and met his gaze. “You’re so busy fixing things for the people you care about that you don’t take time to get involved. To be vulnerable. You don’t need to rescue anyone, Mack. You just have to do the one thing that’s hardest.”
“What’s that?”
She smiled. “Let someone into your heart.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Renee stood in her empty apartment and cried. She was too late. Tony was gone.
“How many boxes did he take with him?” she asked the sitter for the third time.
The poor teenager shook her head, causing a quiver in her spiky pink-tipped blond hair. “I dunno, Mrs. Wendell. Maybe three? Four? It was kinda busy, with the kids and all.”
Renee paced the living room floor, navigating past toys and Game Boys, in the quick-stepping dance of a mother long-used to children’s clutter on the carpet. Two of the kids were wrapped up in Dora the Explorer, their eyes glued to the television, the third was chatting on the telephone, but all three had their hands busy in separate cans of Pringles.
“Did he say when he was coming back?” Renee asked, keeping her voice beneath the range of Dora’s.
The babysitter did a one-shoulder shrug.
“Did he say where he was going? Who he was going with?”
A double pump of the single shoulder. Renee was half-tempted to break the girl’s clavicle. “I dunno. Like I said, Mrs. Wendell, the kids kept me kinda busy. Good thing I’ve got the TV, or I’d never catch a break.”
“Yeah, good thing.” Renee vowed to find another babysitter with the memory of an elephant and the child-entertaining skills of Bozo the Clown. For ten bucks an hour, she should get more than a Dora-watching buddy.
“Mommy?” Anthony asked. “Where’s Daddy?”
“Is he going to be here for dinner?” Kylie piped in. “I have to do a science project and I need his help. It’s a model. He’s good at that. If he’s not going to be here, I need to know.” She glanced at her mother, waiting for an answer, a solution to this limbo.
All three kids stared at Renee, their small faces looking like giant question marks. Would their father ever be home and stay there for good? Would their lives ever stay on an even keel? In that trio of the blend of her genes and Tony’s, Renee knew one thing: she would do whatever it took to save her marriage.
Because those three kids were counting on her and Tony to be the heroes, to be the ones who stepped up and played adult. And lately, she’d been acting like a kid who hadn’t gotten dessert.
Renee grabbed her purse from the hall table. “Sarah, can you watch the kids for a little while longer? I’m going to”—she cut herself off before she said “find Tony” because she didn’t want to alarm the kids—“run an errand.”
This time, the babysitter shrugged both shoulders. “Whatever. What do you want me to feed them?”
Love and attention, Renee thought of shouting back, but instead she just said, “Order in some pizza. There’s money on the kitchen table. I’ll be back. And so will Daddy,” she told the kids. “I promise.”
“Everything’s different now, isn’t it?” Alex asked.
“Yeah, it is.” Mack stood beside her, wishing he could disagree. In the days since their conversation in the upstairs bedroom, Alex had managed to avoid him by staying late at work and leaving early in the morning. He had poured himself into his own work, collapsing into bed every night, hoping that enough physical labor would help him sleep. And forget. And try like hell to figure out how to put Samantha’s advice into action.
It didn’t. He’d lain awake, staring at the Spanish lace pattern of his ceiling and seeing Alex’s face in every swirl. Hearing her voice in the whispers of the wind, the calls of the night birds, the gurgles of the pool filter.
“I can’t thank you enough,” she said, turning toward him, her arms opening, as if she meant to hug him. Then they dropped to her sides, and she looked away. Uncomfortable silence filled the gap between them.
Yeah, everything was different. Different in a way that sucked. Royally.
“The house is beautiful, Mack.” Alex stepped away and began circling the rooms, taking in the finished woodwork, paint, flooring. In a matter of days, Mack and his crew had taken the Dorchester Cape from a disaster to a dream. He’d used his own guys, putting the work schedule on hyperdrive because he couldn’t stand to spend one more minute working on a place Alex was probably going to live in with Steve. Now the fresh, clean scent of new paint and carpet hung in the air, coupled with the sweet summer breeze blowing in through the opened windows. It was as if spring had exploded inside the walls, bursting into colors of cinnamon, cranberry and vanilla.
Except for answering the occasional question about a lighting fixture or paint color, Alex had barely talked to Mack in the last few days. The two of them had gone from being best friends to near strangers in a matter of weeks. And Mack was miserable.
“Thank you,” Alex said again. “I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”
“You could start talking to me again.”
“I am talking to you.”
“I meant really talking to me.” He picked up an empty paint can and stacked it on top of the others in the corner. “You’ve done nothing but avoid me for days.”
“I’m just trying to work through a few things in my mind. I had a lot going on.”
“Yeah, I bet,” Mack grumbled. The paint cans toppled over, and he let out a curse.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He restacked the paint, avoided looking at Alex. “Steve told me he bought you a ring.”
“I didn’t accept it.”
The four words seemed to echo off the empty rooms, bouncing from wall to wall, until they hit Mack square in the chest. He turned around, slowly, and met her gaze. “You aren’t marrying Steve?”
“No.” Alex’s green eyes were clear, direct with honesty. “I couldn’t because…I don’t love him.”
Mack waited for her to say she loved him instead, that she’d broken up with Steve because she couldn’t imagine marrying another man when she had Mack in her life. “Is that all?”
Sh
e held his gaze a moment longer, then swallowed and moved toward the pile of leftover cleaning supplies, reaching for the glass cleaner and a rag. “Yes. That’s it.” She went to work on one of the windows, even though the new surfaces already gleamed.
“What about the baby?”
“I’m fine, Mack. We’ll be fine.”
He let out a gust. “Damn it, Alex, you are the most infuriating woman I know.”
She wheeled around. “And you butt into my life way too much. I told you, I can handle this on my own. I don’t need you to play the knight on the white horse.”
He advanced on her, closing the distance between them, his frustration with this entire game they’d been playing for the past week at a Mount Everest peak. “Is that what you think I’m trying to do?”
She looked away. “Let it go, Mack. Please.”
“What the hell is the matter with you? I don’t get it. I am trying here, trying my damnedest, to get you to understand that—”
“That you want to marry me to take care of the baby? That you want to start us off on the wrong foot? And do what? End up like Renee and Tony? Why don’t we just skip straight to divorce court right now? We can join them down there and maybe get a two-for-one deal.” She shook her head and moved over to the next window. “No thanks. I’m not signing up for that.”
“What about you wanting a guy you could settle down with? A one-woman man?”
“I still want that.”
“As long as he’s not me, you mean.”
She stilled, her hand in the middle of swiping a circle of sprayed ammonia. “It’s not that I don’t care about you, Mack. Or that I don’t think you’d make a wonderful husband. But you’re my best friend. And I can’t…” She bit her lip. “I can’t lose that.”
Mack realized then, as he looked at her, that he had fallen in love, and that there was no way he could turn back the clock and go back to where they had been before. He had moved forward with their relationship and now he wanted more.
But she didn’t.
He couldn’t do this, not anymore. If he couldn’t have all of Alex, he’d rather not have anything. And knowing that made his heart ache, the pain so deep, Mack hadn’t thought his chest could ever recover. “You already did, Alex.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
“I know what you’re going to say.” Tony put up his hands, warding off Renee’s objections before she could voice them. “But hear me out first. I’ve got a really good reason for being here.”
Renee’s throat tightened. The pile of boxes on the front stoop of the house, marked LIVING ROOM, KITCHEN, HOME OFFICE, said everything she needed to know. Tony had moved into one of the houses built by Mack’s company, leaving her and the kids for good. She’d gone too far, and lost everything. Lost her husband, lost her marriage. She strode forward and pressed a finger to Tony’s lips. “Don’t. Don’t say anything. Please, let me talk first.”
“Renee, I have to tell you something.”
She shook her head, insistent. “No, Tony. Please. I…” She took in a breath, let it out. “I can’t let it end this way.”
“End? But, Renee—”
“I was wrong, Tony,” she said, barreling on before he could say what she knew he was about to. Before he could explain the boxes. The move he’d already made. “It wasn’t just you. I kept saying you checked out of the marriage, but you were right, I let it happen. When I got pregnant, and we had to get married, I felt”—she threw up her hands, searching for the words, a sentence that could sum up the past eleven years of their lives—“trapped, and I blamed you. So I closed myself off. I took control of the family, and did everything I was supposed to do as a mom, as a wife, but I didn’t let you in here.”
She pressed a fist to her heart. Tears welled and burned in her eyes. She held them back, her gut twisting in agony. She prayed she wasn’t too late, that those boxes hadn’t been unpacked, that she and Tony could still fix this, if only she could find the right words to reach him. “I didn’t let you in, into my heart, into what mattered to me, into what I cared about. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Renee held her breath. Was it too late? Were they over? Were there too many cracks in their union to repair?
And then Tony took her face in his work-calloused hands. The tender connection pushed her tears to the surface, and they trickled down her cheeks. “Oh, God, Renee, you weren’t the one at fault here. Ever. I’m the man in the family, the one who’s supposed to be the head of the household, and I never stepped up to that role. I was eighteen when you got pregnant, and, hell, I didn’t want to grow up yet. I know, that sounds selfish and it was. But I was just a kid. Barely out of high school. I had plans, dreams. I was…angry. With you, with myself.”
And there it was, finally. The thorn in the side of their marriage. The words both of them had left unsaid, as if speaking them aloud would fracture the delicate balance they had created. Puncture a hole in the belief that they were happy. That they were both okay with giving up their entire world—friends, college, parties—to become instant grown-ups. But now that the worst had been voiced, it hadn’t pushed them apart. Instead, their connection tightened.
Renee curved into Tony’s embrace. “Me, too,” she said. The tears kept coming, but she didn’t brush them away. “I love the kids, but if I could do it all over again—”
“I know. I know.” He swallowed hard, and his eyes welled. “We made a lot of mistakes. No, I made a lot of mistakes.” He traced the outline of her jaw with his thumbs, and she leaned into that touch, the one she knew so well, the only one she wanted to know. “I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to lose my family. Ever. It would kill me.”
“You don’t?” The words choked out of her, caught on a sob of disbelief. “But the boxes…the house…?”
Tony cut off her questions with a kiss, the gesture sweet and gentle. It was the kiss of a man who was still in love with his wife. A man who wanted nothing in return, only to show her he loved her. “I’ve been too selfish for too long. Not thinking of what we really need, only of how much I missed out on. And you know what? If I lost you, if I lost the kids, I’d be missing out on everything that ever mattered. I’d lose my life.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead, another to her lips, a third to her cheek. “I want us to move forward. To start fresh. Do you want to try, too?”
She nodded, crying now, so damn grateful she hadn’t thrown away her marriage for a temporary fix. She had everything she wanted here, in Tony’s arms, and always had. All it took was trying harder. Being plugged in to him, as much as she’d been with Bill. She’d gone outside looking for what she already had right in front of her. What if she had invested as much effort in her marriage over the past three months as she had in getting to know Bill? What if she had talked to Tony that way? Spent three days a week having lunch alone with her husband, sharing her thoughts, her dreams, her feelings? Snuck off to a hotel room in the middle of the day with Tony instead?
How would that have shifted the dynamics between them?
Her arms stole around his waist and she pressed her cheek to his chest. She listened to his heart beat, the steady thump-thump that had beat beside her own for more than three thousand nights. “Will you move back home, Tony?”
“We are home, Renee.”
She lifted her head from his chest and looked up at him. “What?”
“I wanted to prove to you that I’m in this for the long haul. First, I called my dad and told him I’m ready to take charge when he’s ready to retire. Then”—he pivoted and waved a hand toward the Colonial behind him—“I bought that house, the one you loved. Remember? You came out and visited me when I was laying the driveway a few months ago, and thought it was gorgeous.”
“Yeah, I do, but…” She gaped, not quite putting all the pieces together. “How? Why?”
“Mack hadn’t sold it yet. He finished construction and it just sat on the market.” Tony looked back at the house and grinned. “I don’t know why. Maybe nobody like
d the concrete job.”
She laughed. “I think the concrete’s the best part.”
“Yeah, me, too.” He slipped his hand into hers and together, they walked up the stamped concrete walk. “There are four bedrooms, you know. And a big kitchen. A home office. And a fenced-in yard for the kids.”
“We can’t afford this, Tony.”
“I called in a favor with Mack. I’m going to work it out with him. I’ll be laying concrete for free for the rest of my natural life,” he laughed, “but we’ll make it work, Renee. We’ll make it work.”
She looked up at her husband, and saw in his eyes a determination and strength that hadn’t been there before. For the first time since they’d gotten married, Tony had fully filled the shoes of husband and father. They’d undoubtedly have rocky days ahead—no marriage ran smoothly every day—but she’d never feel alone again. The partner she’d been seeking had been right here, all along.
“I love you, Renee,” Tony said.
“I love you, too.” She leaned her head on Tony’s chest. His arm stole around her waist and drew her tighter into his embrace.
“Are you ready to move in?”
“Not yet.” She smiled up at him. “I have to bring you home first. I made a promise to the kids. This time, Mommy found the backpack, and it had Daddy in it.”
Tony’s laughter echoed hers. “Thank God. I never thought the monkey had it in him to track it down to begin with.”
By the time Mack got home, she was gone. The house stood empty, as sterile as a hospital. He checked the guestroom and found it just as devoid of Alex’s personality, her things.
He sank onto the double bed and dropped his head into his hands. He’d hoped against hope that maybe Alex would still be in his house, that some miracle would occur and everything he’d ever wanted would be waiting for him inside these walls.
Chester nosed at him. “Yeah, I thought she’d be here, too, boy,” Mack said.
Chester whined.