A Week in the Snow (22 page)

The last night in her apartment, she set up a camera with a timer, and every twenty seconds a picture flashed, capturing their lovemaking on film. They kept going even after the memory card was full, and greeted the morning sun with moans and sighs.

When Rebecca took him to the airport, there were still tears, but not nearly as many as there had been when she had to leave Iowa. Now they knew they were committed to making the long-distance relationship work, and they had handled the separation without losing their attraction for one another. There was also the added element of having a future to discuss, where once there had been no discussion to be had. They kissed at the terminal and let people walk around them, ignoring both the indulgent smiles and the impatient scowls, until the final call for his plane came over the loudspeaker.

“I’ll call you in a few hours,” he said, and she touched his face as he moved away.

“I’ll see you in a few weeks,” she promised, and with one final wave he was gone.

Richard fell into a dark, sullen mood when he landed at the airport in Des Moines.

There was no pretty woman in a yellow dress to meet him, the weather was cold as hell, and he had to drive his truck back to his lonely house all by himself. Now that he knew what it was like to be happy again, he wanted her around all the time.

He called her as soon as he was out of the airport, and they talked as he drove home, both of them excited about the weekend they had just enjoyed. They discussed plans for her next trip to Iowa. This time she would fly, and he could already imagine what they would do with those beautiful days.

When he pulled into his driveway, the light in the kitchen was on. Strange, he thought, then remembered that his mother had grudgingly agreed to watch over the house while he was gone. He grinned at the thought of having something good and homemade to eat when he walked in the door, and, though it wasn’t the same as greeting Rebecca in the kitchen, it was still a good welcome home.

“Ma is in my house,” he said into the phone. “I’ve got to go.”

“Call me tomorrow,” she said.

Richard walked through the door, announcing his arrival. “Thanks for watching over the house, Ma,” he called. “I’m back, I’m hungry and I’m tired.”

He stopped short in the kitchen doorway, staring at the table. The woman sitting there looked right back at him, her smile tight and fake, her eyes blank.

“Hello, Richard,” Amanda said.

Richard thought he was going to be sick. He grabbed the doorframe until the world settled down again. When he looked back up at the table, she was still there, as real as anything. Her smile was no longer fake—now it was slightly amused.

“Aren’t you going to welcome me home?” she asked.

It was the same voice he was so familiar with, the one he had thought he would never hear again. “Amanda?”

“Don’t you remember your wife?”

He stared at her, letting the reality sink in. He had filed for divorce only a few days ago, but he had felt divorced for so long that it seemed like just a formality to the situation.

Now she was here, and there underneath her coffee cup were the divorce papers.

“That was fast,” he said, finally finding some equilibrium.

“I wasn’t far away.” She was still smiling, as if this were a discussion on the weather, not a wife confronting her husband after disappearing from his life for three solid years.

Richard took off his coat and carefully pulled off his gloves. He kicked his boots into the garage and shut the door behind him, careful not to face her. He wasn’t sure what there was to say. He wasn’t sure why she was even there. It had been over for a long time, and her presence felt like an unnecessary slap in the face. Was she just coming back to rub things in, to make him remember how helpless he had felt way back then?

She watched him, her expression unreadable. He finally turned to her and put his hands on the back of a kitchen chair. For years he had thought about what he would say when she came back, if she ever did, and he had even rehearsed a speech or two. He had a carefully-worded response to everything she might come up with, but now that she was sitting in front of him again, all those rehearsed words disappeared like a puff of smoke. He had no idea what to say, so he just said what was in his heart—the most honest truth he had.

“I don’t know where you’ve been, and I don’t much care anymore, Amanda. You made the decision to leave me, and I licked my wounds for years. Now I’ve made the decision to leave you. It’s pretty simple to me, and it should be simple to you, too. I don’t know why you’re here.”

She suddenly glared at him, and her words were filled with venom. “You were the one who drove me away,” she hissed. “You were the one who was too interested in your paper and your precious community and your farmland to pay attention to the wife you had at home. You were the one who came home late at night with no explanation, and you were the one who spent every weekend running that damn paper! You were the one who left me here alone.” There were tears of anger in her eyes as she looked at him. “What was I supposed to do? I figured when I ran you would come after me, but you didn’t care enough to do that. Did you even love me in the first place?”

Richard shook his head slowly. “I didn’t make you leave.”

“You’ve spent so much time convincing yourself of that, I’m sure,” she spat. “But you always were good at writing your own stories, Richard. You created a story that made you look better, rather than worse, and now you’re trying to tell me it was my fault? Spare me, sweetheart.”

Richard stared at the table, unsure what to say. The first little questions started creeping in on the weight of her words. Had he ignored her? Had he worked too much? Why hadn’t he gone after her when she left, instead of thinking she was the one who wanted out?

Had he really missed all the signs?

When he raised his eyes back to her, he was shocked to see the tears running down her face. She picked up the divorce papers and flung them at him. They hit his chest, some of them ripping loose from the staple, falling to the floor at his feet like a perverse kind of offering.

“You filed for divorce and now you’re blaming me for it? I gave you three years to see the error of your ways, which was about three years too long. I should have been the one to file, but I still had hope you would really love me, Richard.” She was sobbing now, in a way he hadn’t seen before. “I still had hope that one day you would come to find me and show up on my doorstep and tell me how sorry you were.”

He shook his head, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Was all this really happening? None of it made any sense. He needed time to back away, to process all she had said, to get a handle on all those questions he had harboured for so long. Now that she was here, he was more confused than ever.

“Amanda, if you felt this way, you should have said so a long time ago. You should have tried to get through to me. You never said a word. I thought everything was fine.”

She raised her hands in frustration. “You never noticed me leaving our bed when you were too tired for sex? Or crying in the kitchen while I cooked breakfast? Or the way I stopped waiting up for you at night, and how sometimes I would be crying when you came home?”

Richard shook his head. He didn’t remember those things. But what if she was right? What if he had just missed them? Under her barrage of questions and accusations, his head was spinning.

“If you felt that badly about our marriage, you should have told me,” he said.

She pushed her chair back so hard it screeched on the tile and fell over with a clatter. She leaned over the table and screamed, “You should have noticed me!”

The aftermath of her anger echoed through the house. Richard took a step away from the table. Amanda glared at him with cold, hard eyes, the tears on her face the only thing soft about her. They stared at each other in silence, and when Richard dropped his eyes to the table, he noticed she was still wearing her wedding ring.

Something about that wedding ring finally broke him free of the paralysis. He had just filed for divorce after she had been gone for three long years—after he had dealt with the pain of being abandoned, the hurt, the disappointment, and yes, the fear that crept into the middle of his dreams from time to time—and now she was back, all this time later, and wearing that wedding band? The same one she had accepted when she said her vows?

For richer or poorer. In sickness and in health.

Until death do us part?

He slammed his hands down on the table, startling her so much that she was the one to take a step back. He pinned a glare on her that was furious enough to wither steel, and his voice was cold as ice.

“You spineless bitch.”

Amanda blinked at him. “What did you say?”

He didn’t take his eyes from her. “You. Spineless. Bitch.”

“How dare you!”

“No, how dare
you
! You walked away from this marriage and everything was fine and dandy until I called you on that bullshit, wasn’t it, Mandy? Then you had to come running back and make yourself look like the good little girl when the truth is that you ran out on your husband. Where have you been these last three years, anyway? Where did you go? Better yet, who were you with?”

She shrank back with every question, and finally the hardness in her eyes was gone, replaced by sadness and fear. “Who was I with?”

“That’s what I said.”

“How could you think such things?”

“Answer me.”

“I don’t have to answer to you!” She straightened her back and met his glare head-on. “From what I hear, you’re the one who has some answering to do.”

Richard refused to back down. “Funny how it took me moving on to get you back here, isn’t it? I’ll have you know I didn’t even look at another woman for years. I was faithful to you until I knew you weren’t coming back.”

“Well, now I’m back, so who was wrong?”

Richard flinched inwardly, but was determined not to show it. “You came back after I filed.”

“But I came back,” she said, pleading now. “I came back and I want to make it work. Richard…I’m your wife. We’re still married. Give me a chance to make up for things, and meet me halfway?”

Richard shook his head. “I want a divorce.”

“But don’t you remember how it was?” she asked, coming around the table towards him. “Don’t you remember how good it was once?”

Richard nodded. Why lie to her? “I remember. I held on to that for three years.”

“Hold on to it now,” she coaxed, and put her hand on his arm. Her familiar touch sent all kinds of emotions tumbling through him, from every corner of the spectrum. This was the woman he had loved for so long, the one he had promised to love forever, the one who had broken his heart. She was both the woman he married and the bitch he couldn’t stand. The two aspects of her collided as she stood in front of him, her lips puffy from crying, the tears still making silver trails down her cheeks, her eyes wide and questioning.

“Hold on to it,” she said again, and he closed his eyes to her voice. It was too much to handle. He wasn’t equipped for this.

Amanda slid her hand across his chest. She rested it on his heart and he thought of all the times she had done that before, when they were lying in bed together. She claimed the beat of his heart helped her go to sleep, and sure enough, her hand would seek his chest even when she was out cold and dreaming.

He was thinking of that when she pressed her lips to his ear. “Hold on to me,” she implored, and he reached up to put his hand over hers. Her fingers were cool, like they always were—she was never warm, even in the middle of summer. He pressed her hand to his heart while she stood beside him, her body so close he could smell her shampoo, the same brand she had always used.

When she brushed her lips against his cheek, it was as natural as breathing to turn his head to her. She kissed him gently, not much more than a kiss between two old friends.

When he suddenly began to pull away, she ran her hand into his hair and pulled him to her, kissing him harder.

Richard forgot where he was. Was this a winter day in Iowa, three years after his wife left, or was this before she was gone, when things were good and her kisses were the most welcome thing in the world? Had he really been without that touch for so long, and had he really decided he didn’t want it, ever again?

Amanda kissed him the way he liked best, taking control of his mouth, stealing his breath. She held his head as she kissed him, her body pressing against him like it belonged there. Her hands stole to the front of his shirt and she unbuttoned it with practised hands, opening it like she had done a thousand times before. She kissed down his neck and found the pulse at the base of his throat. Her tongue played there as he put his hands in her hair.

“That’s it,” she whispered, and the words jerked him back to reality.

That voice was not Rebecca’s.

Richard pushed her away. She was unprepared for such a thing and she lost her balance, falling gracelessly into one of the kitchen chairs. She looked at him in surprise, but he watched the dawning realisation in her eyes, followed by the furious anger.

“I’m in love with someone else,” he told her.

“You son of a bitch!” she shouted.

She came up from the chair so fast he had no time to react. Her hand landed against the side of his face. She slapped him hard enough to rock his head back on his shoulders. Her fists slammed into his chest and he took a few steps back before he caught her arms and held her still. She was beyond listening to reason, and when her foot connected with his shin, he let out a yelp of surprise. She tried to knee him where it counted, and he moved to the side just in time to avoid the blow. She lunged towards him, and for one terrifying moment he thought she might actually bite him.

He shoved her back into the chair and yelled into her face.

“Stop it, Amanda! Stop it right now!”

She stopped. She gave him another of those withering glares. He stepped away from her, his chest smarting, his shin hurting even worse. He could feel the redness of her handprint on his face.