Hidden in the Heart (11 page)

He turned quickly, tipped his head and gave a wry smile. “Morning. You okay?”

“Yes. I have a bit of a headache, but I’m good.” She hugged herself and watched the dogs playing on the lawn outside. The rain had stopped and a few rays of sunlight poked through the thick grove of trees that surrounded the property.

She pulled out a chair and sat at the table. “Are you going to work?”

“Maybe later.” He handed her a steaming mug of coffee and took a seat opposite her. His eyes were restless, wouldn’t settle on her. For a long moment he said nothing, just stared. “Uh…so last night. That probably wasn’t a great idea.”

Claire sipped and tried to ignore the sudden sick feeling working its way upward. “Okay. Not sure what I’m supposed to say to that.” She attempted a laugh that went nowhere. “We’re still married. It’s not like we did anything wrong.”

“No, but…I shouldn’t have let it happen. I’m sorry, Claire.” He concentrated on his coffee instead of looking at her.

“Sorry?” A knife plunged through her, ripping out the happiness she’d felt just moments ago. He was sorry. “Why? You…” Seeds of doubt began to take root. “…is there…someone…” She bit her lip, unable to speak it. Unable to fathom it really, but under the circumstances she could hardly blame him.

James looked up and narrowed his eyes. “What are you asking me?”

Claire put down her mug and clenched her hands. The trembling started up again and she waited a moment. “I…I guess I wouldn’t be that surprised. After everything I’ve done and…”

“Claire, are you serious?” He raked his fingers through his hair, eyebrows shooting skyward. “You think I’m having an affair?”

“We’re separated,” she whispered, studying the weaving grain in the oak. She ran a finger around a dark brown circle on the wood, her vision blurring.

“Do you honestly think I would do something like that?” His voice lowered and he let out a muted curse. “Claire, look at me.”

She raised her head, afraid of what she might see.

James reached across the table and took her hands in his. “I love you. You’re my wife. End of story. But you’re worrying me to death. I can see you’re still not sleeping well. When was the last time you ate a proper meal? You’re as thin as a rail. And this drinking…”

Claire shrugged off his acute observations and looked away, but his touch burned on her skin. She pulled her fingers from his grasp. “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

James grabbed her hand again, forcing her to look at him. His eyes glinted in the soft morning light, capturing her own within them. She could quite happily lose herself in those eyes and pretend…

“No, Claire,” he told her, his voice catching. “You’re not fine, you’re existing. There’s a big difference.”

“I don’t know how else to get through it.”

“You’ve got options. People who love you and want to help you. You’ve shut us all out. Me, Mel, everyone at church, they’d all be there for you in a second.”

Yeah, right. That’s why none of them had called or come to see her in months. She’d been silently excommunicated. But who could blame them? Communion wine wasn’t safe
when she was around. “What do you want me to do?”

“I’ve told you.” He sat back and folded his arms across his chest, resolute.

“Counseling. A.A.” Claire wiped her eyes.

James nodded. “I can’t do this, Claire. I don’t want to live with an alcoholic. You know what we went through with my father. I’m not going through it with my wife.”

Claire blinked at his words, her hope fading. “Your dad’s good now, though, right? I mean…I…I could be fine too.
We
could be fine.” She felt about as fine as a patient coming out of brain surgery and the tremor in his hands told her he wasn’t doing much better. “I mean…last night…”

He shrugged, pulling at the collar of his shirt. “One night together doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t magically solve our problems. You didn’t expect it would, did you?”

Heat rushed to her cheeks and she stared into her half empty mug. “I wanted it to.”

But life wasn’t that simple.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” James pushed his fingers through his hair. “You’ve made it quite clear you don’t want to be with me. But then you…you let me in again…you give me hope. It’s confusing. I need to know what you want, Claire. What you’re willing to do to save this marriage. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

The pain of their past stood in his eyes. Things longed for and dreamed of that would not now come to pass. The realization dragged her heart to her feet. She did understand. And he had every right to feel the way he did.

“Claire? Will you go to counseling, A.A? Come back to church with me?”

“Church?” And listen to how great God was? The same God who’d allowed her mother to wither away to a mere skeleton, struggling for her last breath, her eyes glazed with pain and morphine. The same God who’d snatched precious life from her womb as she slept, given no warning and no consolation after the crime had been committed.

A God who offered no comfort, no compassion, only condemnation each time she looked in the mirror.

Claire pressed her back against the chair and clenched her fists.

“No.” She shook her head and watched a shadow creep across his face. Outside the dogs barked, probably chasing birds or the mail truck. “No. I’m not going back to church. God is just…I don’t know what to think anymore.”

James scowled. “You’re blaming God?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

He leaned forward, his eyes intent as they bore into her. “You can’t blame God for your mother’s death or the miscarriages or our problems.”

Claire studied her husband, raw, blistering emotion oozing over the pleasure she’d found in his arms only hours ago. She remembered the look on his face the days following her return from the hospital. The unspoken accusation that ran between them reared its ugly head once more. The same one he consistently denied, yet she constantly felt whenever they were together.

“If it’s not God’s fault, then it’s mine.”

The seething silence that followed annihilated what was left of her heart.

Eventually he spoke. “So where do we go from here?”

“I don’t know.”

He pushed back his chair and walked across the room, opening the screen door to allow the dogs in. They raced to their water bowls. Claire listened to their lapping and tamped the dark thoughts as they made their approach like a sleek panther snaking through the jungle ready to pounce on unsuspecting prey.

She rose and went to where he stood, placed a hand on his cheek. “I’m so sorry I hurt you, Jamie.” Deep sorrow rolled in like a morning tide. Birdsong filtered in through the open
window. A reminder of an ordinary day in which the sun rose and would set as usual, but everything in her world had already changed. “It’s not that I don’t love you. It was never that.”

He emitted a faltering laugh and pinched his eyes shut with his thumb and forefinger. “If I didn’t know you so well, I’d think you were playing games with me.”

Claire fought against the insidious emotion that threatened to derail her at any second. Falling apart would serve no purpose. “I’m not.”

“I know you’re not.”

The tears in his eyes brought Claire’s hand to her mouth. James shifted slightly, turning from her. After a moment, he faced her again, cupping her face between his hands, his fingers cold as they pressed into her cheeks.

“I don’t want to lose you. If I could change things, make it so none of it ever happened, I would.” The pain and tremor of regret in his voice only intensified her guilt.

Claire put some distance between them. “I know you would. And I…I know I’m not handling this well. I just...I can’t seem to get through it.”

“It doesn’t seem like you’re trying very hard.” His blunt tone scared her.

“I don’t know what life is supposed to look like anymore, Jamie. How do we just go on?”

“We don’t have a choice.”

“We keep trying?”

His eyes clouded. “We could talk about adoption. If…”

Claire sat down again, wound her thumbs together and glanced his way. “I don’t know. I’m scared.”

He went back to stand at the door, stretched out his arms and shot her a sidelong look. “Mel told me you were talking about searching for your birth parents. You really think that’s
a good idea?”

“I suppose you don’t.”

“Well, you’re not exactly the picture of stability right now, are you?”

Claire pushed her chair back and went to the sink, her eyes burning. Her mug slipped from her shaking hand and crashed against yesterday’s dishes. “Maybe this is my way of moving on, Jamie. Maybe if I knew...”

“Claire, for the last time, it wasn’t your fault.” James gave a muted groan and covered his face with one hand.

Claire walked across the room, pulled his hand down and met his startled eyes. “I need to know that for myself. I can’t go on wondering…thinking you’re wondering…I need to know. I need to find my birth mother.”

“And just how do you plan to that?”

“I think she was from Maine. I was planning a trip there, to see if I could uncover anything.” She explained her findings in her father’s study, but it was almost as though he didn’t hear her.

“You’re going away.” His eyes shone with disbelief. “When?”

“In a few weeks. Next month, the beginning of May.”

“You know what next month is.”

“Our anniversary.” Claire moved around the kitchen, her throat thick. Her mother’s prized violets, long dead, sat on the granite counter by the stove, mocking in silent witness to all the failures of the past year. “I already booked a room. But I can change it. If you want me to stay.”

James tapped his bare foot against the hardwood. A thin smile crossed his face. “And if I said I did? That would just give you one more thing to hold against me, wouldn’t it?”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“Am I?” He raised an eyebrow, his jaw tight. “I’m tired of you doing whatever you want, Claire. I’m always giving in, letting you have your own way regardless of how I feel. Maybe you don’t even realize it. You’ve always lived that way. You snap your fingers and everybody jumps. Well, maybe for once, you should consider somebody else’s feelings besides your own.”

Claire shivered and rubbed her arms. “I’m just trying to get some answers. You don’t know what it’s like…not knowing where you came from or why you were given up.”

“That’s a load of crap, Claire. This has never come up before. Why now? I’ll tell you why. You’re running away. And you know it.” James stepped back, challenging her to deny it as he stared unflinching.

“Have you lost your mind?”

“No, I think I’ve found it.” His hazel eyes glinted in the sunlight streaming through the glass door. “I’m your husband and I’m telling you to stay home. We’re going to fix this marriage. You’re going to counseling with me. You’re going to quit drinking, get off the pills and start taking responsibility for your actions. I’m not letting you go, Claire.”

Claire opened her mouth to speak but shut it quickly. What she wanted to say would not go over well. “Get over yourself, Jamie. You can’t demand I stay. You sound like some throwback husband from the fifties. I
need
to get away. I’m going to get the answers I’m looking for and maybe…maybe I’ll be able to get over all this and put my life back together. I can’t do that here.”

He huffed out a sigh and she watched defeat move over him like an approaching storm. “I think you’re making a big mistake. I don’t see what good can come of it.”

“Now you’re sounding like my father.”

“For once your father and I agree on something.”

Anger rushed in and brought more tension with it. James’ low voiced echoed around
her and bounced off the wall she’d built around her heart. Part of her just wanted to smack him, yet she realized that some of what he’d said was true. She
was
running away.

He opened the door and went outside. Claire followed, paced the back patio and tried to find some semblance of calm while she searched for words to explain how she really felt. James sat on the low wall that bordered the spacious courtyard. Leaves blew over the black tarp that covered the swimming pool.

“Would you just…please listen to me?”

He hunched over, tapped out a beat on his knees and shrugged. “Go on.”

Claire breathed in the fresh morning air and latched onto courage. “It’s always been in the back of my mind, the unanswered questions, not knowing where I really came from. I just never talked about it. The first time I found out I was pregnant, I thought about it more. That baby was the first real connection I ever had to
me
. I wondered if she would have my nose. My hair.” Claire exhaled, pushing back memories of happier days. “And every time…I ask those same questions. I’ve never known anyone that looked like me.”

James gave a muted groan, put his head in his hands and sat like that for a long while.

Claire found her voice again. “Maybe you can’t understand that. And yes, it might seem like I’m running away, and maybe I am, but I know I can’t stay here anymore. Not like this.”

“What do you want me to say, Claire?” James looked up and stared at her through haunted eyes. “What’s it going to take for you to heal? Do you really want me to say I blame you? You’re pretty convinced of it anyway. Do you want me to tell you that you probably didn’t take good enough care of yourself, that maybe you worked too hard, ran too much, that you didn’t deserve to have a baby…that maybe…”

“Stop it!” Claire put up a hand, as if that would stop the awful words assaulting her.

He jumped off the wall, marched over and gripped her arms, his face pinched in fury.
“Do you see how ridiculous that sounds?
You didn’t do anything wrong, Claire!
You just need to believe that.” His expression switched from anger to deep sorrow in a matter of seconds and Claire had to force herself to keep her eyes fixed on him. “But I can’t make you,” he breathed out, his voice lowering. “I don’t know, maybe you should leave. Maybe we’re not ready to work things out.”

Tension ran like livewire between them. Somehow, in the recesses of her muddled mind, Claire knew they’d come to the end of the road.