Dirty Red (Love Me With Lies) (6 page)

“Looking for this?”

Caleb is leaning against the doorframe watching me. In his hand is my precious iPhone. I study his face. He looks calm — that means he doesn’t know that I don’t have Estella with me — or maybe he thinks she’s with my mother. I haven’t told him that I took her to the airport this morning.

“You’re home early,” I say in genuine surprise.

He doesn’t smile or greet me with his usual warmness, instead he keeps his eyes trained on my face — the phone pinched between his fingers and extended toward me. I take a few precautionary steps in his direction, being careful not to let my remaining buzz show. Caleb reads me like a low-grade novel. I stand on my toes to give him a quick peck on the cheek before plucking the phone from his fingers. Now, if only I could get outside, I might be able to figure something out, call someone ... FIND THE BABY!

I back up a few steps.

“You missed a call. Fourteen, actually,” Caleb says casually — too casually — like the calm before a storm. The low, rumbling growl before the wolf rips out your trachea.

I swallow. There is sand in my throat and I’m drowning
… suffocating. My eyes dart around the room. God — what does he know? How am I going to fix this?

“Apparently, you forgot to pick Estella up at daycare
…” his voice trails off. An invisible hand cracks open my jaw and pours fear down my throat. I choke on it.

“Caleb
— ” I start. He holds up his hand for me to stop, and I do because I’m not even sure what excuse I can give.

I dropped our daughter off at a seedy daycare because…

Fuck.

I’m not that creative. My mind sieves out all of the possible excuses.

“Is she … is she here?” I whisper. The most expressive part of Caleb is his jaw. I use it to read his emotion. It is square, manly — only softened by his overly full lips. When that jaw is happy with you, you want to trace it with your fingertips, reach on your tiptoes to run kisses across it. The jaw is angry with me. His lips are white anger pulled tight. I am afraid.

Caleb doesn’t say anything. This is his fighting technique. He heats up the room with his anger and then waits for you to sweat out a confession. He’s never been violent toward a woman a day in his life, but I’d bet my life that little girl could make him do things he’d never considered.

I make the mistake of looking in the direction of the stairs. It makes him really angry. He bounces off the wall and walks toward me.

“She’s fine,” he says between his teeth. “I came back early because I was worried about you. Obviously, you were not the one I needed to be worried about.”

“It was only for a few hours,” I rush to say. “I needed some time alone, and my mother just up and left me…”

He studies me for a few beats, but not because he is gauging the truth of my words. He is asking himself how he could marry someone like me. I can see the utter disappointment. It scratches into the self-righteousness I am cradling to my chest. It makes me feel like a failure. Well, what did he expect
— that I was going to be a good mother? That I would fall right into a role that I don’t understand?

I don’t know what to do. The alcohol is still babysitting my brain, and all I can think about is the fact that he’s going to leave me.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, looking at the floor. Acting contrite is a cheap shot, especially since I’m sorrier for being caught than the actual deed.

“You’re sorry for getting caught,” he responds.

My head snaps up.
Fucking mind reader!

How dare he think the worst of me? I
am his wife! For better or worse, right? Or did the worse refer to the situation and not the person?

“You left your newborn daughter with complete strangers. She hadn’t eaten in hours!”

“There was breast milk in the diaper bag!” I argue.

“Not enough for seven hours!”

I frown down at the tiles. “I didn’t realize,” I say, defeated. Had I really been away for that long?

I feel a surge of self-righteous anger. Was it my fault that I wasn’t adhering to parental bliss like he was? I open my mouth to tell him so, but he cuts me off.

“Don’t, Leah,” he warns. “There are no excuses for this. If I had any sense, I’d take her and leave.” He turns and walks toward the stairs.

My thoughts blur as my anger rushes in. “She’s mine!”

He stops. It’s an abrupt stop, like my words have just freeze-sprayed his legs.

When he turns back ar
ound, his face is red. “You pull a stunt like this again, and you’ll be screaming that in court.”

I feel my chest heave as his threat wraps around me like a cold wind. He means it. Caleb has never spoken to me with this much coldness. He’s never threatened me. It’s the baby. She’s changing him, turning him against me. He stops right before he reaches the stairs.

“I’m getting a nanny.”

Words I wanted, but now they don’t feel like a victory. Caleb is conceding to a nanny because he no longer trusts me
— his wife. Suddenly, I don’t want one.

“No,” I say. “I can take care of her. I don’t need help.”

He ignores me, taking the stairs two at a time. I trail behind, deciding if I want to be pleading or aggressive.

“I made one mistake, it won’t happen again,” I say, taking the pleading route. “And, you can’t make that decision alone
— she’s my daughter, too.” A speckle of aggression for good measure.

He’s in our bedroom, rifling around in his bedside table. He pulls out his “little black book” which I have snooped in often. I follow him to his office, where he retrieves his cell phone from the charger.

“Who are you calling?” I demand.

He points to the door
, telling me to get out. I stand firm; hugging myself, worry coiling in my stomach.

“Hey,” he says into the receiver. His voice is intimate, insinuating. Obviously, he is on cozy terms with the person on the other end. I feel an icy chill hit my spine. There is only one person who makes his voice that soft, but why would he be calling her? He laughs at something the person has said and leans back in his chair.

Oh — God — oh — God. I feel sick.

“Yes, I do,” he says all chummy. “Can you make it happen?” He pauses as he listens. “I trust whoever you send. No
— no — I don’t have a problem with that. Okay then, tomorrow? Yes, I’ll forward you the address — oh you remember?” He smiles wryly. “Talk to you then.”

I jump to action as soon as he hangs up.

“Who was that? Was that her?”

He pauses in his paper sorting to look at me quizzically. “Her?”

“You know who I’m talking about.”

We don’t ever talk about that
— her. The muscles in his jaw clench. I have the urge to crawl under his desk and hide my head between my knees.

WHY

DID

I

SAY

THAT?

“No,” he says, resuming his shuffling. “It was an old friend who owns a nanny agency out of Boca. Someone will be coming over to meet me tomorrow.”

My jaw drops. Another secret part of his life that I know nothing about. How the hell is he connected to someone who owns a nanny agency?

“This is bullshit,” I say, stomping my foot. “Are you at least going to let me meet her?”

Caleb shrugs. “Perhaps, though I assume you are going to have a hangover tomorrow…”

I inwardly shrivel. He always knows. He sees everything. I wonder if my breath gave it away, or if somehow he had seen my banged up car bumper and guessed. I don’t care to ask. I make a quick exit from the room without explaining myself and run upstairs. I stand in the door to our bedroom and glance down the hall. I feel a pang of something. Should I go check on her? I did practically desert her today. I should at least make sure she is okay. I am glad she is not old enough to realize what I did. Kids hold things against you.

Walking quietly down the hall, I push the door to the nursery open with my toe and peer in. I don’t know why I feel so guilty looking at my own baby, but I do. I cross the space to her crib, holding my breath. She is asleep. Caleb has bathed and swaddled her, though she has managed to wiggle one of her hands free and is sucking on it. I can smell her from where I stand
— the lavender soap Caleb bought for her mixed with the oatmeal smell of a new baby. I reach a finger down and touch her fist, and then I bolt from the room.

Past

“Why do you have this?” I held up a pint of ice cream that had been sitting in his freezer since we met. It was Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia. I pried open the lid and saw that it was half eaten with a serious case of freezer burn. “You don’t like cherries. Can I throw it out?”

Caleb launched himself from the couch where he was watching TV and took the container from my hand. I blinked at him in surprise. I’d never seen a man move that quickly for ice cream.

“Leave it,” he said.

I watched him shove it behind a couple of frozen steaks and shut the door.

“That wasn’t creepy at all,” I said.
 

He looked seriously disoriented for a minute before taking my hand and leading me to the couch. He started kissing my neck, but my mind was still on the ice cream.

“Why don’t we move in together?” I asked casually.

He paused what he was doing and rested his forehead in the curve of my neck.

“No,” he said.

“No? Why not? We’ve been seeing each other for nine months. I’m here practically every night.”

He sat up and ran his fingers through his hair, making it stand on end.

“I thought we weren’t doing anything serious?”

My eyes bulged. “Yeah, in the beginning. You don’t think this is serious? We’ve been exclusive for five months now.”

That wasn’t true. I had been exclusive from the day I met him. I hadn’t as much as looked at another guy since the yacht. Caleb had admittedly gone on a few other dates, but in the end, he always landed back in my bed. What could I say? Sexually, I was a force to be reckoned with. Obviously, not enough of a force.

“Why is that ice cream in your freezer?”

“That’s where you keep ice cream,” he said dryly.

Caleb had a scar near his eye. I’d tried to get him to see my plastic surgeon about it, but he’d refused. Scars should stay where fate put them, he’d said. I laughed at the time. It was one of the most ridiculous things I’d ever heard.

Now, staring at my almost boyfriend, I knew I was right. Scars
should be removed. Ice cream scars especially. I reached up and ran my finger across it. I didn’t know where he got the scar. I’d never asked. What else did I not know about him?

“Was it hers?”

We rarely spoke about his ex, but when we did, Caleb’s mood became damp and remote. Normally, I tried to avoid the subject — not wanting to look like the jealous new girlfriend, but if the guy couldn’t get rid of her ice cream…

“Caleb?” I crawled onto his lap and straddled him. “Was it hers?”

He couldn’t get away from me, so he opted to look me right in the eyes. That always made me nervous. Caleb had very intense eyes — the kind of eyes that stripped you right down to your sins.

He sighed. “Yes.”

I was a little taken aback that he actually admitted it. I shifted uncomfortably on his lap, not sure whether I should ask the inevitable follow up questions.

“O
kay,” I said, hoping he’d offer some sort of explanation. “Can we talk about this?”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” he said with finality.

I knew what that meant. There’s nothing to talk about meant — I can’t talk about it because it still hurts. And — I don’t want to talk about it because I haven’t dealt with it yet. Swinging my leg around, I slid off his lap and onto the couch. I felt paper-thin. I am seasoned in the art of men, and I know from experience that nothing can compete with a memory. It is uncharacteristic for me to not be the memory, so I was unsure of how to act.  

“Am I not enough for you?” I ask
ed.

“You’re more than e
nough,” he said seriously. “I was completely empty until you came along.”

Normally, something like this coming from any man
would sound cheesy…cliché. I’ve dated poets and musicians, all of which were verbally gifted enough to give me goosebumps, though none ever had. But I felt warmth saturate my heart when Caleb said it.

“But, I told you from the start that I am not ready. You can’t fix me, Leah.”

I registered what he’d just said, but I didn’t believe him. Of course I could fix him. He’d just told me that I filled his empty. What I didn’t want to think about was who had created the empty…and how big of a hole she had left.

“I’m not trying to fix you,” I said. “But, I am developing serious feelings for you, and you’re basically rejecting me for a tub of Cherry Garcia.”

He laughed and pulled me back onto his lap.