She jumped to her feet. “Oh! Hi. You know, nobody would miss me if you want to go grab a sandwich at the bakery around the corner. I can just put a note on the door….”
“No, I was just hoping to talk.” He looked around. “The place looks great.”
“Thank you. We can sit down back where I hold classes.”
He fingered a few yarns on the way, but his expression remained serious.
Suzanne wanted to chatter brightly, but her stomach knotted with anxiety and she knew she couldn’t.
So she sat down, locked her hands together on her lap and asked, “What did you want to talk about, Tom?”
“Us.” He choose an upholstered chair, too, sitting gingerly, as if afraid he’d sink too deep in it.
Her laugh sounded fake. “Isn’t it women who are supposed to want to talk about the relationship?”
He just looked at her.
She swallowed. “What?”
“I’m wondering if we should have started this.”
Oh God, oh God, she’d been so afraid he would say that. Was she so inadequate?
“Why?” she whispered.
“I really liked being friends with you.”
“But you don’t like…” What could she call what they had? “…dating me?”
“Oh, I like it.” He cleared his throat. “Maybe I’m too impatient. Maybe I should let things unfold. I don’t know.”
“Let…what unfold?”
“Our relationship.” He gestured. “The trouble is, I kiss you on your front porch and go home to an empty house and wonder what the point was.”
“The…the point?” Suzanne was all but paralyzed.
“I’m frustrated.”
She bit her lip. “Um… I thought, this weekend I could ask Carrie to take the kids Friday or Saturday night.”
What was she doing? Bribing him? Saying, Don’t abandon me, I’ll give you myself?
Pure heat showed in his eyes, stealing what little ability she had left to breathe. But the next second, he’d banked it.
“I didn’t mean that. Well—” one corner of his mouth lifted in acknowledgment “—I’m frustrated that way, too.”
Too. They were back to the fact that somehow she wasn’t satisfying him. Drearily she asked herself why she was even surprised.
“Where did you see us going?” he asked.
What was the point in being shy? “I hoped we might end up married,” she admitted.
“You didn’t even glance at me during your brother’s ceremony.”
“I tried really hard not to look at you. We haven’t been dating that long. I thought it was too soon to hint at any kind of expectations.”
His fingers were working, tightening on his thighs, loosening, the knuckles once letting out a cracking sound. Voice hoarse, he said, “I had them, too.”
Stunned, she faltered, “Then…then why?”
“Let me ask you something.” He paused, his gaze steady. “Why did you want to marry me?”
“The first time I really met your eyes, I saw how kind you were. I think I knew then that you would be a wonderful husband and father.”
“So I’m nice.”
“I know you seem to hate that word, but is it so awful to be nice?”
He didn’t answer. “Have you been frustrated? When you went to bed, did you lie there wishing I’d come into the bedroom with you?”
Until she ached.
When she wasn’t worrying. Too often, she’d quit thinking about him as soon as she shut the door, already preoccupied with the bills she’d paid out of her savings, about the fact that Dylan seemed to have lost interest in Jack as a friend, about the overhead she was paying to knit somewhere besides her living room.
“Yes.”
But she could tell she’d been silent too long.
Tom stood up, as if he could no longer contain his tension. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his slacks and looked down at her.
“Do you love me, Suzanne?”
She actually let out a soft gasp of shock. And yet… How could she not have been prepared for him to ask her? Or to say, I love you, and anticipate a response?
“I… I hadn’t put it into words, but…”
Her floundering was as bad as silence.
Tom’s jaw flexed. “That’s what I thought. You see, I have fallen in love with you, Suzanne. And my gut feeling is, you either do right away or not at all.”
She’d have stood if she’d been sure she could. “Because I haven’t said the words…”
“Because you can’t.” He shook his head. “I don’t know that I want to be passionately in love with a woman who thinks I’m nice. And great husband and father material.”
She was still stuck on the question. Do I love him? What was the feeling of contentment when he was there and dissatisfaction when he wasn’t if not love? The rightness of being with him?
He sounded suddenly tired. “Suzanne, I’m not going away. I’ll be right there next door. I hope we can be friends again. I’ve…really become attached to Jack and Sophia. I’d like to keep helping out with them.”
Suzanne felt cold. “I miss you when you’re not with us.”
Immediately, she knew she’d said the wrong thing again. With me. That’s what she should have said.
He shook his head. “I’ll be around. Let’s just…do some thinking. Okay?”
“Yes.” Her voice was a thin thread. “Okay.”
He looked as if he were about to say something more, then dipped his head, turned and left. She knew the moment he was gone, as the bell tinkled and then went silent.
She sat mute, frozen.
If she didn’t love him, why did she hurt so much?
HE WAS THERE, WAVING when they left for an errand, helping carry in groceries, getting Sophia to bring over the tape of her first time anchoring the school newscast so he could see it, taking Jack out with his bike on Sunday. The kids didn’t seem to notice he hadn’t come to dinner in the last week.
Suzanne spent it struggling with self-doubt that might have crippled her, if she hadn’t had the kids depending on her.
Am I in love with him?
How could such a simple question be so hard to answer?
When she lay in bed at night, yearning, she thought she knew. Now that they weren’t even sneaking kisses, he was all she could think about. She would close her eyes, remember how he’d touched her, the scrape of his teeth on her lip, the vibration of his chest beneath her hands. Had she been crazy, to let weeks pass after their first kiss without them making love? Now, she would never know what his weight on her would feel like, whether he would be silent or talkative, unfailingly gentle or urgent.
Whether she wanted him wasn’t what he’d asked, she reminded herself. In theory, at least, it wasn’t the same thing, although she’d never known one without the other.
Did she not know him well enough, not trust him enough to let herself love him? Maybe she just didn’t recognize what she felt, given how little frame of reference she had.
Or was she really not in love at all? Had she just turned to him because she wanted someone to lean on?
She knew that was what Tom thought she’d done, and she tried to honestly decide for herself. It was true she’d been grateful for all he’d done—for the things she never could have managed, at least not as well as he did them. For having someone to talk to, someone to take responsibility for the kids, someone to hold her. For someone who made her feel like a woman.
Even having to ask the questions she did made Suzanne not like herself. She remembered the day almost a year ago when she’d decided to hire a private investigator, her bottomless feeling of despair. She’d known she had to become someone she respected. Apparently, she’d believed that just finding Carrie and Gary was enough.
But she hadn’t even found them herself; she’d had to pay someone else to accomplish what she couldn’t. Yes, she’d quit her job and opened a business, an act of daring that made her a little bit proud.
And then…then she’d applied to adopt, and no sooner taken in the kids than she’d been turning to Tom for help.
It hit her then that she wasn’t used to making big decisions on her own, that, in fact, a sense of helplessness had permeated her life. Her parents had died, and she’d had no choice whatsoever in her fate or the fate of her sister and brother. She would live with her aunt and uncle. Lucien and Linette had been taken away, while she’d stood there with her mother’s words ringing in her head.
You’re the big sister, Suzanne. Take care of your little brother and sister.
I can’t, Mama! I can’t.
She’d found a boyfriend, too young, who’d told her what to do. The helplessness had burrowed deeper into hiding within her, because she’d felt safe with him. But as he’d eroded her self-confidence, it had also spread, like a cancer. If he hadn’t hit her, she didn’t know if she’d have ever found the strength to tell him to go.
She’d lived alone only three years out of her entire life, and had had so few choices to make. She’d been grateful to already have a job and a house. Josh had been glad enough to trade his share of the equity for all their other investments. In the first two years, all Suzanne had done was walk through the routine of her days.
Until the day the phone had rung and a young woman’s voice had said, “Suzanne? Suzanne Chauvin?” She’d known immediately who’d been calling, even though Linette hadn’t yet spoken her first word when she’d been taken away.
She thought, after that day, that she’d made bold decisions, started to become the woman she’d never yet had the courage to be. But that encompassed less than a year of her life, and most of the time she’d other people to call—Carrie, Mark, eventually Rebecca and Gary. And finally, of course, Tom. Were you bold, she wondered, if you talked through every nuance of every decision with five other people?
A week passed; then another one. And she started to get mad. She had made decisions; had quit a safe job with benefits, borrowed a whole lot of money and opened her own business; had found her brother and sister, even if she’d ended up needing help. She could be a good parent without Tom.
She would be.
“I will be,” she said aloud, to her empty shop.
Nonetheless, she would have been very, very happy not to face any parenting challenges right then. Which was all but daring one to arise.
Thursday of that week, Sophia was in such a good mood after the school bus dropped them off, Suzanne didn’t notice for some time how quiet Jack was.
“Another new girl came today,” Sophia announced as soon as she plopped down in back. “Mr. Schroder put her next to me.”
“Is she nice?”
“Yeah. She’s taller than me. I was thinking.” She became busy with the zipper of her book bag. “Well, if maybe she could spend the night this weekend.”
Suzanne almost cheered, but instinct told her not to make too big a deal out of a moment that most girls had when they were much, much younger.
“Sure. Either night is okay with me. Except remember I have to open by ten Saturday morning.”
“Yeah, I thought Saturday night. So we could stay up late, and not have to get up. You know.”
“What’s her name?”
“Heather.” She took books out of her bag seemingly at random. “So I can ask her?”
Suzanne smiled. “Yes, you can ask her. We can order pizza and rent a couple of movies.”
Normally Jack would have asked if they could rent something he wanted to see. But instead he was quiet, head bent.
“Course, she may not want to come.” Sophia shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. “Or maybe her mom won’t let her. But I thought I’d ask.”
“That’s nice of you. Being new is always scary, isn’t it?”
Sophia nodded, finally looking down at the books and stuffing two back into her bag. “I have so-o much math homework!”
“How was your day?” Suzanne asked Jack.
He shrugged without looking up. One foot bounced rhythmically against the chair.
When it seemed as if he wouldn’t answer, he said, “This kid in my class. Zane?”
Suzanne nodded. Jack had been dropping Zane’s name with increasing frequency. She’d been keeping her fingers crossed.
“It’s his birthday. He’s having a sleepover Friday night. He asked a bunch of the guys.” Her heart sank at the pause. “And me, too.”
“That’s great!” she exclaimed, puzzled by his lack of animation. Friends would mean so much to him.
Jack looked up, his face despairing. “Everybody would make fun of me if…you know.”
Oh, no.
“You’ve been doing better lately.” He had. He’d only wet the bed twice in the past week.
“I said I didn’t think I could go.” His shoulders drooped.
“I’ll bet by a few months from now, you won’t have to worry about it at all.” How upbeat she sounded. But Jack was seven, and a few months from now might as well be years away.
“It’s okay. It just woulda been fun is all,” he mumbled. “I wish we could go home.”
Suzanne glanced at the clock. It was three forty-five. Tempting though it was to slap that Open sign to Closed, she resisted. If Knit One, Drop In was going to be successful, she had to be reliable. If even one knitter dashed by to pick up a needle to replace a broken one or a last skein of yarn and found her closed, she’d have lost a customer for good.
She hugged him. “It won’t be long. I’ll tell you what? Why don’t you and Sophia go pick out something yummy at the bakery? You can bring me a cookie, too.”
“Cool!” His sister shot to her feet. “Come on, Jack.”
Suzanne got money from her purse and watched them go out the door, Sophia with exuberance, Jack trailing dispiritedly.
Surely he’d make friends even if he didn’t go to one sleepover. There had to be other kids who didn’t. At seven and eight, some boys probably still got homesick, for example. If she made sure he had the chance to play Little League this spring…
She was cheerful when they got back, sitting while he read to her with painful slowness, glad she’d stayed open when two women who’d never been in before showed up at four-thirty and bought sixty-five dollars worth of yarn and patterns.
It was on the short drive home that inspiration struck her.
“Hey! I have an idea. What if you go to Zane’s party, only you come home right before bedtime?”
“You mean—” hope quickened his voice “—you pick me up? But…how come?”
“This,” Suzanne declared firmly, “is the time for a white lie. I won’t let you spend the night, because we have to go somewhere early the next morning.”
“Where?”
“Um…” She glanced to the side. “Sophia?”
“Aunt Carrie and Uncle Mark are taking us snowboarding.”
“Not bad. Except then he’d have to tell everyone how snowboarding was.”
“Yeah. And I never been.”
“Okay,” his sister conceded. “We’re just going to their house ’cause Suzanne has to go somewhere.”
“That’s good,” Suzanne said. “No one will care where I’m going.”
He bounced in the back seat, his voice ebullient. “So I can go to Zane’s party?”
She smiled into the rearview mirror as she turned onto their street. “Yes, you may.”
He was still cheering when he leaped out of the car in their driveway. Suzanne smiled at Sophia, who still hadn’t unbuckled her belt.
“So, do you think making up a story is so bad this time?”
“No-o,” the ten-year-old conceded. “I guess it’s okay. Course, now he has to buy a present.”
A small price to pay for his joy, in Suzanne’s book.
Today, she didn’t even look toward Tom’s house. With Jack’s cheers ringing in her ears, she was Supermom.
But she wished, all the same, that he’d happened to be outside to see the grin lighting Jack’s face, and would come o
utside to hear the good news. Or invite them to dinner, or call tonight and say, “You want to meet in two minutes on your front porch?”
She went on in the door without looking, because she could do this alone.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
KNOWING HE WAS THE BIGGEST fool on earth, Tom stood just inside his front window on Friday night and watched his next-door neighbors come home. Only Sophia and Suzanne got out of the car.
A few weeks ago, he could have wandered out and said, “Did you lose someone?”
Tonight, he could only wonder. Had Jack made a buddy? He hoped so. Last Sunday, the boy had been down. When Tom had asked about Dylan, he’d shrugged. “He laughed when I had to read aloud and I said ass instead of ash.”
Amazing how much anger you could feel toward a second grader. There was some sting in Tom’s voice when he’d said, “Because he’s perfect?”
“He reads better than me,” Jack had said, as if it were a matter of fact that everyone did.
“But you might be better in math.”
“You don’t hafta do math out loud.”
Which said it all.
“You think I’m ever gonna learn to ride by myself?” he’d asked later, sadly, after they’d wobbled their way up and down the street until Tom’s shoulders had hurt.
“Of course you will. It’s hard when you only get to practice once a week.”
It had already occurred to Tom that the moment when Jack sailed off on his own would be bittersweet. He’d liked being needed.
The urge tonight to call Suzanne was strong. He’d said they would be friends. Friends called. Had easy conversations about their week.
He wanted to tell her that his best friend was shipping out to Afghanistan. He hadn’t said—couldn’t say—what his unit’s role would be, but Tom guessed they’d be patrolling the Pakistani border or dealing with recalcitrant warlords.
Keeping it casual when he said, “You take care,” hadn’t been easy. There wasn’t anybody but Suzanne he could tell about his mixed feelings: the guilt that he wouldn’t be there to back up his buddy, the relief that he was out of it, the wondering if he served any real purpose anymore.
For a while there, he’d thought he had. Suzanne, Jack and Sophia had all seemed to need him, and not just for bike-riding lessons.
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