Lady in Waiting: A Novel

by Susan Meissner

  “I thought you did great.”

  Twilight had started to steal across the field, and the promise of an evening chill made me wish, just for a second, that I was wearing the chunky blue sweater instead of Molly’s loose-weave clothes. The field was emptying quickly.

  “I’m glad you came,” Connor said.

  “I am too.”

  My son wiped his brow with the back of his arm, and I marveled at how strong he’d become. The tendons and muscles in his upper arms were distinct and thick.

  “I’m really bummed Dad couldn’t be here,” he said.

  “So am I. And so is he. He really wanted to see you compete.”

  Connor crinkled his forehead. “I’m not bummed for me.”

  He looked past me to where Brad might have been, had he come. I could see in his eyes the unease he felt about Brad’s and my separation. He looked untethered.

  “Dad and I are going to talk when I get back to Manchester,” I assured him.

  Connor’s eyes found mine. “What are you going to talk about?”

  I couldn’t tell Connor that I didn’t know what Brad wanted to tell me. I could see that Connor was already worried we might start talking about who would get what in the divorce settlement. I didn’t want to consider that prospect either. Connor needed reassurance. And so did I.

  “Well, I guess about how to make things right.”

  My son silently gauged my words and decided, I supposed, he could live with them for now.

  He slung his gym bag over his shoulder. “I’m starving.”

  “Pizza?”

  “Sure.”

  He said good-bye to some friends, politely declined an offer to eat with them, and we headed toward the Jeep.

  I avoided the topic of my marriage as we ate a large mushroom-and-black-olive pizza at a local Italian place. Instead, I told him about the ring. He seemed genuinely intrigued when I showed him that my name was engraved inside.

  When I took him back to the campus a little after nine, I hugged him until he laughed and pulled away. I handed him the shoe box of cookies and told him I would call him in a couple of days.

  Connor watched me pull away in Brad’s Jeep, the shoe box in his hands. As he stood there with a tender crease of concern on his face, he looked like me.

  On the drive back to Manchester, I alternately listened to the radio, twisted Jane’s ring on my finger, and recited the things I appreciated about Brad. I wished I had the onyx rosary too. I found myself whispering prayers to God to make Brad love me again. And to silence the questioning in my own heart. An easy fix.

  I could almost hear Stacy, who prayed without a rosary, telling me it doesn’t work like that.

  I called Brad when I was five minutes away from the hospital, like he’d asked. He was waiting outside for me when I pulled into the parking lot.

  I moved over to the passenger side, and we spent the ten-minute drive to his rented town house talking about the meet, Connor, his busy day at the hospital. Just like old times.

  I fell silent when we turned onto a quiet, tree-lined street. A black wrought-iron fence was sprawled across the entrance to a housing complex of Georgian design. White accents glistened in the moonlight. Mature oaks rustled in a breeze. Brad pressed a button on an opener on the visor, and the gates opened in a welcoming, sweeping fashion.

  I said nothing as we made our way to a unit near the back on a hushed cul-de-sac. Brad pressed another button and a garage door ahead of us began to open. Brad drove into as pristine a garage as I’d ever seen. There was nothing in it except for a garbage can, a broom, and Brad’s canoe.

  We got out of the Jeep in silence; the only sound was the garage door shimmying down on its rails behind us.

  Brad unlocked a door with a red welcome mat in front of it, pushed it open and then turned to me.

  “Come on in. I’ll get your bag.”

  I said nothing as I stepped inside the furnished home where Brad had been living for the last nine weeks. The kitchen was tiled in terrazzo. Black granite counters and stainless appliances sparkled under recessed lights, and the walls were painted a warm brick red. An empty juice glass, coffee mug, and plate lay on a wooden dish drainer near the sink. Black and cream striped curtains hung above them. A ceramic bowl of wooden apples graced the center of an island in the middle where two tall stools seemed to wait for us.

  “So this is the kitchen,” Brad said from behind. He moved past me with his gym bag in one hand and my overnight bag in the other.

  I followed him.

  We entered the living room. It was decorated in shades of green. The couches were a calming shade the color of french vanilla ice cream. Mahogany woodwork. Impressionist paintings on the wall. A great vase of silk calla lilies sat on the white marble hearth. To the right of where we stood was an open dining room and a table for eight with all the chairs pushed tightly in.

  “There’s a study in there,” Brad pointed to a set of closed french doors. “And the bedrooms are upstairs. The couple who own this place are living in Saudi for the year. He’s a civil engineer or something.”

  I simply could not speak. Being in Brad’s house was like waking up from a coma and feeling like an amnesiac. Brad was watching me, wondering, I supposed, what I thought of the place he’d chosen to live in. He turned to an L-shaped staircase and began to ascend the steps. I mutely followed. He pointed to a room to the right of the landing.

  “That’s the uh … guest room.” Then he stepped inside the other room at the top of the stairs. “And this is the master bedroom.”

  His room.

  I walked inside. More mahogany. More pastoral hues. More French impressionists. I didn’t know this room. I saw Brad’s shoes on the floor, his favorite cologne on the dresser, and on a chair back the hat he wears when he fishes. But I did not know this lovely room.

  Brad stood next to me with my bag and his, surely wondering what he should do with them.

  “Why don’t we go downstairs? I’ll make some decaf,” he said.

  I heard him, but I didn’t answer. I reached out to touch the pole of the poster on his footboard. The wood was smooth and cool to my touch. The bed was made, but the spread was crooked and the throw pillows had no symmetry at all in their placement.

  Brad never did have much decorating sense. He never did know how to make a bed or arrange a pillow. And I had always found that endearing.

  Must add that to the list.

  I opened my mouth to laugh, but a laugh is not what came out.

  As a stifled sob erupted from me, I heard Brad behind me take a step and then stop. A second later, the bags were on the floor, and Brad took me in his arms, tentative and slow.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry …,” I muttered through the tears I couldn’t seem to stop.

  “I’m the one who is sorry.”

  He stroked my hair and back, telling me he hadn’t wanted to hurt me, never meant to hurt me.

  “I know,” I whispered. Because I did.

  Brad was thoughtful.

  After several moments I lifted my head from his chest and wiped my cheeks, apologizing again for my meltdown.

  He rubbed his thumb across my jaw line where a ribbon of tears had formed. As he was looking at me, regret and tenderness mixed in his expression, he leaned toward me.

  And kissed me.

  The next moment was a blur of desire, hope, nostalgia, fabric, and the steady practice of two bodies that knew each other.

  Molly’s scarf was the first thing that fluttered to the floor.

  Twenty-Five

  I was alone when I woke in a strange bed. My first thought was one of panic—I didn’t know where I was. I opened my eyes and nothing was familiar. It was a full second before I remembered whose bed I lay upon.

  And what had happened.

  I sat up in Brad’s bed and turned my head toward his bathroom. The door was open, and sunlight streamed through the skylight. A wet towel hung askew on the glass shower door. I stretched out my hand t
o his side of the bed. It was cool to the touch.

  I eased myself out of his bed, grabbed for my overnight bag, and headed into the bathroom, unsure what to expect from Brad that morning. I didn’t know if we took a giant step forward the night before or if we simply gave in to loneliness and desire. We didn’t talk, but it seemed to me we reconnected at a level we had not experienced in years. I was afraid to believe what happened between Brad and me was more than just sex. I wanted to believe it was more, but I was afraid to.

  I dressed in my own clothes—a denim skirt and a red blouse. I sprayed on a dash of Molly’s perfume and ran a wet comb through my hair. My makeup from the day before was still on my face. I fixed the smudges and then slipped on a pair of white flats, anxious to see Brad.

  I grabbed Jane’s ring from the bedside table and slipped it into my pocket. And then I headed downstairs.

  Brad wasn’t in the kitchen, but a fresh pot of coffee was on the counter and a black stoneware mug. I poured myself a cup and peeked inside the living room. No Brad. He wasn’t in the dining room either, but I could see from the dining room a set of doors that opened out onto a patio. The curtains that hung on them were moving as a morning breeze caught them.

  When I reached the doors, I could see Brad seated at a glass-topped patio table with his own mug of coffee. He sat back on the cushions with his legs stretched out in front of him. The morning newspaper was on the table by his mug, but it was still tightly folded. I stepped outside, but he didn’t hear me.

  “Mind if I join you?” I asked.

  Brad turned his head and smiled, but it was a smile with regret behind it. “Sure.”

  I slipped into the chair across from him and took as deep a breath as I could without being obvious. I set my coffee mug down and waited for him to speak first.

  A moment later, he sat forward and folded his hands in front of him. “I owe you an apology. I am really very sorry for what happened last night.”

  “I’m not sorry.”

  He held up a hand. “No, you need to know I had no intention of … I didn’t bring you here to …” But he didn’t finish. He just stopped in the middle of his sentence like an actor who’d forgotten his lines.

  “Brad?”

  Silence followed for a second or two.

  “I wanted you to come here so we could talk,” he finally said. “I never should’ve come upstairs last night. I should’ve just stayed downstairs.”

  His softly spoken apology stung a little with the unintended force of his rejection. The sensation silenced me.

  “There is something I need to tell you.” Brad looked away.

  I breathed in and out like a practiced athlete. “What is it?” I asked calmly, though inside I trembled.

  “I … I haven’t been completely honest with you.”

  Oh, God. Oh, God.

  “You’re having an affair?” The words tasted like metal off my tongue.

  “No. I’m not.”

  And I exhaled.

  “But I almost did.”

  For a second, I was frozen to my chair.

  “What did you say?”

  He cleared his throat and repeated his confession using different words. “I wanted to have one.”

  I bolted to my feet and walked the length of the patio, unable to absorb what I had heard. This couldn’t be happening. Couldn’t. A huge container of pansies nodded their heads as I moved past them, and I wanted to grab them by their skinny necks and yank them out of the dirt they grew in.

  “You lied to me.” My voice was a rasping reprimand.

  “You asked me if I was having an affair. And I told you I wasn’t. I am not. Whatever it was I had is over. And I never slept with her, Jane.”

  The word “slept” nearly cut me in two, and I screwed my eyes shut. “Stop it.”

  “I didn’t. I never slept with her!”

  Anger and nausea tumbled inside my stomach. I rushed past him and headed for the dining room doors and the billowing curtains, but he stood and grabbed my arm to stop me.

  “You needed to know. It wasn’t fair to you that you didn’t know.”

  “Fair to me?” I whirled to face him. “You’re worried about what’s fair to me? Is this what being treated fairly feels like?”

  He said nothing.

  “Who was she?”

  “No one you know.”

  “Who was she?”

  “Someone I worked with at Memorial. Her name is Dana. She’s one of the reasons I had to leave. I couldn’t work anymore with her there.”

  I turned from him to face his fence and a hedge of happy forsythia. I felt stupid, ignorant. Duped. Leslie was right. It was better not knowing there was—or had been—another woman. I needed to get myself back to New York. How could I get to the airport? I needed a taxi. I needed to call a taxi.

  “We met on a surgical team last year, and we became friends.”

  I needed a taxi. Where was my purse? Where was my phone? I turned toward the house. My purse was in his bedroom.

  “I didn’t want anything like this to happen, Jane. I didn’t want to be attracted to her.” He sought my gaze. “I didn’t! When I realized that I was, I knew something was already wrong between us. The doubts were already there.”

  “That’s very convenient,” I murmured, and I moved past him into the dining room. He followed me. I needed a taxi. I needed my phone. I needed to get out of there.

  He reached out for my arm. “When I overheard you having that conversation with Leslie at your parents’ party, I was already struggling to figure out what was wrong with us. Just like you. This thing with Dana started after that, several weeks after that.”

  I yanked my arm out of his grasp. “This is not my fault! I can’t believe you’re equating a stupid conversation I had with my sister over a punch bowl with what you have done. How can you compare what I said to Leslie with what you’re telling me now?”

  “I didn’t say it was the same! And I didn’t have an affair, Jane. It never went that far.”

  “Lucky me.” I pivoted away from him and headed for the stairs. I needed my phone.

  Again, he followed me. “I don’t know how it happened. We were just good friends. She was easy to talk to, made me laugh, gave me good advice, asked me about my canoe trips. I didn’t want to look forward to those times I spent with her, but I did.”

  I wanted to plug my ears. I didn’t want to hear any more of it. Somehow it was all an indictment against me. All of it. I was on the first stair when, again, he grabbed my arm and turned me to face him.

  “It was all one-sided, Jane. It was just me. Not her. I … kissed her one night. In the parking lot. It was nothing I planned. It just … happened.”

  I reached for the banister. Taxi. Phone. I took another step.

  “But she didn’t want me to kiss her.” Brad’s grip was still firm on my arm. “She was upset that I did. She knew I was married. She told me we needed to back off, that nothing good could come from us continuing to spend time together. But I saw her nearly every day. She went out of her way to avoid me. But we kept running into each other. I needed to get out of that hospital. I had to get out of there. So I did.”

  Tears had sprung and now slipped unchecked down my checks. “But you didn’t just leave her, Brad! You left me!”

  The pain in his face tore at me. I looked away from him.

  “I couldn’t pretend that it hadn’t happened, Jane. I had to get out. I had to get away. I needed time to think.”

  “Do you love her?” I whispered.

  “No. I don’t know.”

  I breathed in and out. In and out. “You don’t know?”

  He hesitated only a second. “I’m not in love with her. I just … I just miss how I felt when I was with her.” Brad leaned forward. “I am really sorry. For everything.”

  “Are you sorry we made love last night?” I didn’t look at him.

  “Jane.”

  I wouldn’t look at him.

  “I knew I was go
ing to be telling you this. I should never have taken advantage of you like that. It was wrong.”

  A few long moments passed between us. Birdsong from the open patio doors behind us filled the silence.

  “I want to go home,” I said.

  “I’m so sorry, Jane. I … I just don’t want to go back to the way things were. Back to where I could be attracted to someone I wasn’t married to and like it.”

  The impact of his words made me shudder. I felt Jane’s ring poke me in my hip.

  I wanted to go home. I took a step.

  “About last night—,” he began.

  But I stopped him. “Please let me have this one little delusion that you wanted me.”

  “Jane—”

  I released myself from his grasp and ascended the rest of the stairs to his bedroom. I threw my things into my overnight bag and was back down in less than two minutes.

  I yanked my phone out of my purse, but I couldn’t summon the wits to figure out how to call for a taxi. I felt numb and disoriented. I stood there staring at my phone, crying.

  Brad asked me to let him take me to the airport. I asked him to please call a taxi for me.

  While we waited in silence for the taxi, Brad brought in our coffee mugs from the patio. He set the two mugs, full to the brim, side by side in the sink.

  Molly and Jeff were at Newark to pick me up. They wanted to take me to brunch as we headed over the bridge to Manhattan, especially when they heard I had missed breakfast. I just wanted to go home and disappear for a while.

  Molly turned from the front seat, concern deeply etched in her face. She wanted to ask me how things went, but I could see she was afraid I couldn’t talk about it with Jeff in the car with us.

  Actually, I didn’t care. I really didn’t. And I had this feeling Jeff already knew about Dana anyway.

  “Brad liked the clothes you picked out,” I offered as an answer to her wordless question. The sarcastic edge to my voice was grating, even to me.

  “Oh, Jane. Did it go terribly?”

  I could see Jeff’s eyes in the rearview mirror as he looked at me. When he saw me looking at him, his eyes darted back to the road.