by Allison Rios
“She may have heard me telling Gramps I was acting like a fool over a girl.”
“Then her anger is much deserved.”
“She’ll get over it.” He patted next to him on the bed, and she hesitated. “Honestly, you are the last person I expected to see here, Rae. Would you mind closing the shades? I feel like a science experiment with people able to peer in here.”
She honored his request before she opted against his seating invitation and pushed the uncomfortable chair closer to his bed.
“It’s sort of hard to ignore someone who ends up in the hospital because of you.”
“Who said it was because of you, Rae?”
“Micah squealed to Nella. Well, whistled is more like it with that missing tooth. Then Nella proceeded to yell at me for a bit.”
“He’s a traitor.”
“So is she. But their heart is in the right place. Want to tell me what happened last night?”
“I got caught up in the moment.”
“So you hopped in the back of a truck and decided to what, windsurf?”
“I just wanted to feel something again,” he said. Pain surged through his entire right side as he struggled to sit up. “And I’m feeling plenty right now. I just didn’t anticipate it would be this much agony.”
She stood to help him adjust to a more comfortable position. The bandages around his torso were still soaked in dried blood, and he couldn’t even look down at them because of the shame he felt in his stupidity. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” she replied.
“Why did you come here today?”
“I wanted to see if you were okay.”
“You could have asked someone. Nella would have known. Hell, in Jessup, the whole town would know. Why are you really here?”
“I wanted to say I’m sorry. I feel like this is my fault.”
“It’s my fault, Rae. I’m an adult. I made a bad decision.
This is the consequence I have to live with. Decisions and consequences. That’s what life is all about. You didn’t just come here to say you’re sorry. Why are you so afraid to say what you’re really thinking?”
“If I hadn’t of kissed you and then yelled at you, you wouldn’t have pulled that stupid stunt.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it was the whole reunion thing. Maybe it’s the gray hair I have. Maybe I just wanted to feel young again.”
“You’re hardly old,” she said with a laugh. “You have your whole life ahead of you still.”
“And so do you. That’s why I don’t understand why you are so hell bent on being alone.”
“I don’t want to be alone, James. It’s just that for right now, that’s the best option.”
“The best option for a person is never loneliness.”
“I told you, there are complications. I can’t ask you to take on my problems or give up on your dream of a family. This is the path I’m choosing in life, and it’s not a weight I am going to put on anyone else’s shoulders. It’s my punishment alone.”
“Why do you keep referring to your inability to have kids as karmic retribution or punishment? What’s that got to do with it? You made some stupid mistakes as a kid, but that doesn’t equate to deserving misery.”
“You just told me life is about decisions and consequences. Punishment is a consequence of bad decisions.”
“Quit talking in code, Rae. What decision did you make that is so bad that you believe you deserve to never have children?”
He watched her shift nervously in her seat. He knew she’d been keeping secrets; she’d never had a good poker face. “Promise me you’re not going to do anything stupid when I tell you? Like jump on the back of a moving truck?” she asked.
“Cross my heart I won’t do that. Again.”
“You are now only one of three people who know this, so
I’d appreciate it if you kept it between us.”
“You’re freaking me out a little,” he said nervously.
“Nella said the same thing.”
“I can’t take the suspense.”
“I had a baby.”
Silence filled the air, and she couldn't be sure whether the humidity or the anxiety was making it hard to breathe. Both of them found themselves struggling to speak.
“What?” he asked.
“In college. I had a baby. I didn’t tell anyone. Not Nella, not the girls. No one but my mom.”
“How?”
“How did I keep it a secret? I went to school far away. I didn’t come home on breaks. I worked and worked and worked and studied. I didn’t answer phone calls or return emails. I did whatever I could to keep others from finding out.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because I knew I wasn’t going to keep the baby. I didn’t want anyone trying to pressure me otherwise. I was scared of what people in a small town would think of the girl who got pregnant and gave her child away. Then when I started to get my act together and thought I’d confide in the girls, Ava had her miscarriages, and I knew that sometimes, we just have secrets we need to take to the grave with us. And now you need to take it to your grave, too.”
“I thought you said you couldn’t have children?”
“I can’t. Something happened during the delivery. I won’t get into details, but I can’t have kids anymore. The only thing I’m able to carry now is regret.”
“Regret that you didn’t keep him? Or was it a girl?”
“I don’t know what I had; I didn’t want to know. It would have been too painful. I don’t regret giving him or her a better chance at life with someone else, but I do regret how everything happened.”
“Who is the father?”
Rae’s shoulders shifted in the slightest of shrugs.
“Do I know him?”
“I wasn’t such an innocent girl in college. I let myself get a little out of control. I’m really not proud of the person I was. I was so far away from home, and I thought I could do anything I wanted.”
“I never knew how bad it had gotten for you. I should have tried harder to keep contact.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” she replied, pulling his hand into hers. “You can't keep feeling like you could have been my knight in shining armor, James. I needed to hit bottom before I found a way to bring myself back up to the surface. I kept my distance for a reason. I was so angry and ashamed of myself and the woman I'd become. No one could have convinced me I was anything other than a drain on my family and my friends. I went through a string of terrible relationships before I realized I was about to self-destruct. That’s when I moved to Chicago and turned it all around.”
“You could have come home, Rae. I would have been here for you. We all would have.”
“You had someone by then, James. I couldn't come back to this small town and hear everyone gossip about how I fell flat on my face instead of landing the big job I'd always talked about. And I definitely couldn't come back here and hear all about you being in love with someone else,” she said. He watched her gaze out the window at the horizon of town she’d lived in more than half her life and barely even knew anymore. “These are all old, unimportant facts. We have to keep moving forward, not reliving old sins.”
“You can still be a mother, Rae. You could move back here and help me raise Ruth.”
She laughed, and he took a slight offense at her response to a serious offer.
“James, you don’t even know me. You know the teenage Rae, not the person I am today. I could be a serial killer for all you know. You can’t just make rash decisions. You’re raising a teenager, and you have to think about her.”
“I don’t really know how I can make the way I feel about you any clearer, Rae. She’ll be happiest if I’m happy, too. And
I’d be happy with you.”
“I’ve had my heart broken by two men in my lifetime, men I deeply loved, just in different ways,” she said. “The only thing that could possibly hurt worse is if I fell in love with one all o
ver again and caused him any more pain than he deserves.”
“Tell me what you want me to do or say, Rae. Tell me not what you think you deserve, but what you actually want out of life.”
He savored the sensation of her hand wrapped around his and her thumb stroking the back of his hand, just as she had done when they were younger. With the other hand, she reached up to her head and slowly pulled off a wig so realistic, he hadn’t even noticed it wasn’t her true hair.
“Rae,” he said.
“I want you to find happiness in your life, James. I want you to find someone who is going to make you forget that I even existed because every part of you is so in love with every part of them. My story is lingering dangerously close to its last chapters.”
“What?”
Rae shifted nervously and with a small laugh only uttered to keep her from crying, she ran her hand through the short, curly tufts adorning her head – the evidence of her next secret.
“Leukemia. I’ve pretty much exhausted treatments, minus a bone marrow transplant. I’m on a list for the donor, but so are more people than I can count.”
“Shit, Rae,” he whispered. “How long have you known?”
“A little over three years ago I was first diagnosed and managed to beat it. But about six months ago now it came back pretty aggressively.”
“You’re going through treatment? What kind? Chemo? Radiation?”
“You name it, I’m trying it.”
“We can fight this together,” he said.
“No, we can’t,” she replied, this time with agitation lingering in her voice.
“Rae, you can beat this! You’ve always been a strong woman. If you give me a chance, I can fight this with you. I can be there for you.”
“There is no more fighting, James,” she replied, her eyes pleading with him to stop. “I’ve been seeing the best doctors in Chicago. I’ve sought third and fourth and fifth opinions. I am rapidly running out of treatment options, and I can feel my strength starting to get weaker. Right now, my fight is for some quality time to get my affairs in order and make amends with those I need to make amends with – like you. I don’t want the last memories my friends and family have of me to be a terribly sick and emaciated woman. I finally came back to Jessup to say goodbye as the person I want you all to remember.”
Her words trailed off as she willed herself not to cry.
Words escaped him. He tried to speak and found that the closer he came to getting a word out, the closer he came to letting the tears fall. He’d been waiting so long for the opportunity to love her again.
“How much time do you have?”
“I don’t know. Quite frankly, I’m scared to ask. I don’t want to get my hopes up or spend whatever time I have left fearing that every day is my last. I just want to move on and finish out my time without the burden of secrets or regret.”
“You’re staying here, right?”
“Not right away. I have stuff to finish up in Chicago, and I don't want pity and sadness. James, do you understand why I can’t be with you?”
He nodded, though he didn’t exactly agree.
“I don’t know what’s worse,” he said. “I thought you not loving me would be the worst possible outcome, but I think knowing you love me and that we still can’t be together might surpass that. I’ve been waiting so long with this hope buried deep in my heart that we would find our way back to each other. I don’t know how to describe it, Rae. I’ve never believed that our story was over. Every time the thought of you would start to fade, someone or something would bring up your name, and it was a reminder that we weren’t done yet. I don’t know how to let that go.”
“I didn’t expect you to still love me, James. I honestly didn’t think you’d even speak to me when I came home. I wanted to come here and find you in a beautifully happy life with a wife and a family because I have been convincing myself all these years I didn’t feel that love for you anymore. Then I got here and saw you with Ruth and immediately felt this sense of dread that you were happy with a family – and it wasn’t with me. I wanted to get out of here before I made things worse because I still wanted that fairytale ending where you sweep me off my feet and we live happily ever after, but those stories never end with the princess dying. If I knew that what happened the last few days was going to happen, I wouldn’t have come home. I wouldn’t have put you through this. I only wanted to apologize to an old friend before it was too late. I didn’t anticipate how many feelings would play into all of this.”
“So, what happens next?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about that a lot over the last few hours. I say we write our own fairytale; one where the prince and princess let go of the past and live the rest of their lives to the best of their ability. I’m going to go back to Chicago to give my notice at work a lot sooner than I anticipated, and then I’m moving back here to make up for lost time with my family. You and I can’t be together, but I could always use another friend.”
“And what if I can’t be just your friend, Rae?”
“You don’t have a choice,” she replied. “Ruth has already lost her mother. She’s losing Katie, too. You can’t bring in another woman to her life who is going to go away before she even gets to know her. It’s not fair. And you can’t base your happiness on me, James. You need to live for yourself and the little girl you’re raising.”
She glanced away to hide her trembling. Without another word, he knew from the distance in her eyes that her mind was filled with something else; perhaps another secret she wasn’t brave enough to share.
Chapter 23
Sunday, October 4
She gently kissed his hand and stood to exit the room.
James fought to ignore the tears lingering in his eyes.
“Rae,” he said as she walked. “Rae?”
She ignored his calls. The quivering in his voice nearly made her change her mind, and she pushed back tears of her own as she hurried out the door.
As she shut the metal barrier behind her, she noticed a woman she’d seen only once many years ago. Though her hair was shorter and a few wrinkles decorated her otherwise perfect skin, Rae recognized her from a campus she’d once visited. She prayed in silence that the woman wouldn’t recognize her and that she’d be able to brush past and continue out the doors without incident.
“Hi Rae,” she said. “I’m Katie.”
No such luck escaping unnoticed, Rae thought.
“James is in room four-hundred-nineteen,” Rae replied softly.
“I know,” she said as she flashed a hospital guest badge. “Wow, this is more awkward than I imagined.”
“You imagined this scenario?” Rae asked.
“When your husband is in love with another woman, you tend to imagine a lot of scenarios. Like what you’d say if you ever met her.”
“Now probably isn’t the best time,” Rae replied. Sweat began to bead on her brows, and she prepared for the verbal onslaught that would most certainly be coming. She had readied herself for every possible conversation during her trip home – except for this one.
“You're probably wondering why I’m here, seeing as how
James and I are, well, divorced. Or on our way.”
“You’re here for James,” Rae said. “I imagine you're here for the same reasons as me.”
“I guess just because he and I are heading in different directions doesn’t mean I don’t care about him. Or maybe I’m just that pathetic woman who can’t seem to let go of her ex.”
Rae held her breath and prayed for an exit. There was no right response to that statement.
“Mostly I just want to make sure he’s okay, especially for
Ruth’s sake.”
“I understand,” Rae replied. She nodded and searched for an opportunity to excuse herself.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been up here on this wing. The last time was a car accident, too. Brian’s accident. We sat in that waiting room right down the hall
and paced while everyone took turns saying their goodbyes to him. It seems surreal to be here again for another one.”
“James is going to be fine.”
“Gramps told me the wreck caused some damage but nothing he won’t survive. I’m more worried about the emotional scars he’s going to have. I can only imagine why he was in the back of that truck.” Katie’s tone led Rae to believe she already knew the answer.
“Boys will be boys,” Rae said, desperate for an escape.
“I haven’t felt this awkward in I don’t know how long,” Katie replied.
“Something we can agree on!”
The nervous smiles faded away, and Katie stepped in front of Rae to prevent her from leaving. Rae prepared for a conversation she’d had only in her nightmares – and one of the reasons she’d never answered any of James’ emails.
“I hope you’re good to him,” Katie said.
Rae looked up and locked eyes with a woman who, under any other circumstances, would be her enemy. Her heart broke for the second woman James had ever loved and simultaneously filled with envy for her. Katie had a clean escape from Jessup, which is all Rae longed for.
“I hope that he can finally find everything he’s been missing all these years, Rae. He’ll follow you to the ends of the earth if you ask him.”
“You should go be with him,” Rae said. “He’s going to need some help as he recovers.”
Katie didn’t seem to catch her drift, and Rae knew the woman likely assumed she was stepping square into their new relationship.
“He doesn’t want to be with me.”
“Katie,” Rae said as she placed her hand on the woman’s arm, “he doesn’t really want to be with me. He’s holding onto a childhood dream. A silly idea that he just needed to sort out. It’s sorted out.”