Lady in Waiting: A Novel (24 page)

“Get into what?”

“You know what I mean.”

The frustration, fueled by fear, mounted. “The fact that I miss you? That I don’t know how I am supposed to be working out the problems you think we have in our marriage when you aren’t even here? You didn’t want to get into that?”

“Jane.”

“I mean, really, Brad. I spend my days waiting to hear from you, waiting to see what it is you want, waiting to see if you still want to be
married to me. Is that what you didn’t want to get into on the phone?”

He looked away, toward the hallway and our bedroom. “I didn’t know what you wanted me to say.”

“You didn’t call me back last night because you didn’t know what I wanted you to say?”

“You said you felt lonely. What was I supposed to say to that, Jane? ‘Sorry for making you feel lonely’? Is that what you wanted me to say?”

The mix of disappointment and fear swirled inside me, gaining density like egg whites becoming meringue. A tiny part of me wanted to hurt him. “I wanted you to say you miss me too. Don’t you? Don’t you miss me at all?”

Brad turned back to me. “Sometimes. Yes.”

I flinched as if he’d poked me with a stick. “Sometimes?”

“I don’t miss the way things were between us, Jane. I don’t miss that.”

I could feel my eyes growing warm and moist. Brad’s brutal honesty after weeks of polite silence stung. “Why didn’t you say anything? If you were unhappy, why didn’t you say anything? We could’ve gone in for counseling.”

“I didn’t … I didn’t know I was unhappy. And to tell you the truth, I didn’t want to go in for counseling.”

His answer stunned me. “Why?”

“Because I just didn’t know if I wanted to fix it.”

He said it like he saw shattered bones in an x-ray and had absolutely no desire to see them mended. None.

“How can you just give up?” It was out of my mouth before I realized this is exactly what my mother said to me the morning before, when Leslie and I left to go shopping and I told her she had no idea what she was talking about.

“I never said I was giving up. I said we needed some space. When I left, I didn’t have the energy or motivation to try to fix anything. I’m not saying I never will.”

Hurt welled up within me. I lowered my head into my hands. “What makes you think I have the energy to live alone here, to come home every night to an empty apartment? What makes you think I have the motivation to keep hoping and praying and waiting to see if you will come back to me?”

Brad said nothing.

“What about what I want? What about how I feel about all this?” I lifted my head to face him. “I gave you your space. I’ve let you alone. I’ve not been on your case. I did everything you asked of me!”

My chest was heaving, and the tears were falling freely.

“I know this isn’t just about me.” His voice was a whisper.

Brad looked away again, toward the gauzy curtains quivering at our open patio doors. He didn’t answer.

I came to him and dropped to my knees. “Do you still love me?”

He took his time answering me. “I love the idea of us. I love the idea of marriage, of growing old with someone who completes me, of sharing my life with someone who is my soul mate. I love the idea of that.”

“But you don’t love me?”

He turned back from gazing at the curtains. “Do you love me?”

“Of course I do!”

“I know you think you do, Jane. But what if maybe you also just love the idea of marriage, just like I do? You love the idea of growing old with someone who completes you. You love the idea.”

“I love you, Brad.”

He looked into my eyes as if waiting to catch me in a lie.

I told him again that I loved him.

He inhaled deeply, looked away for a second, and then turned back. “I heard you, Jane. I heard you and Leslie talking at your parents’ anniversary party last year. I heard what you said.”

“What?”

“I heard you. In the kitchen. When you thought you two were alone. I heard you.”

The air around us seemed to stiffen and pucker. Color rose to my cheeks as mentally I placed myself back at my parents’ fiftieth anniversary party. Leslie and I were making punch in the kitchen. She was teasing me for wishing I had married Kyle instead of Brad, reminding me that at my bridal shower I confessed I thought I might be marrying the wrong man.

Oh, God
.

Perhaps I said God’s name out loud. It was as much a prayer for divine assistance as I have ever prayed.

“I heard you.”

“It was nothing!” I whispered. “Just silly talk!”

“Was it? Was it really? After all our years together, don’t we deserve to be honest with each other?”

“I didn’t mean it,” I whimpered.

“Think about it, Jane. We married each other because it made sense. Your parents, my mother, they were the ones who pushed us to get engaged. I let them because I didn’t like dating, and you let them because you didn’t like being alone. And we wanted the same things. A loyal spouse, a good home, children, security, friendship, companionship, physical intimacy. We got what we wanted. We got what other people wanted for us.”

“You have never loved me?” I could barely eke out the words. They fell off my tongue like splinters.

He paused before answering. “That’s not what I said. And I care for you very much. You are a wonderful mother and a kind, compassionate
person. But I’m just not sure about anything else. And I think you have the same doubts I do. You always have.”

I slumped down onto the couch, dizzy. “How long have you had doubts?” I asked him.

“How long have you?”

He said it gently. He had said everything gently.

“It started before your parents’ party, didn’t it?” he continued. “Long before then. Jane, I’ve been struggling with the same questions.”

I was drained of energy, of reason. As much as I wanted him to stay, I wanted him to go.

“Look, I didn’t come here to tell you all this,” he said. “Really, I didn’t. I waited for you to get back from your parents’ because I felt I owed you an apology for not calling you last night. And I wanted to make sure that you can come to Connor’s meet next weekend. You were right. Our separation has affected him. He needs to see us together. He needs to see that when it comes to him, we aren’t divided. You … you will still let me pick you up at the airport on Saturday morning, right?”

I nodded, numb.

Brad stood, hesitated, and then reached for his water bottle. “I need to head back.”

Again, I nodded.

He leaned over me and kissed my forehead. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to hold him. I shut my eyes as his lips touched my skin. The sensation was tender. And brutal.

He stepped back, and though my eyes were still closed, I could tell he was staring at me.

“Will you be all right?”

“A little late for compassion,” I whispered, but this time he did not hear me.

“Jane?”

“I’m fine.”

Again, Brad paused. “You’ll think about what I said?”

I opened my eyes. “Does it matter what I think?”

“It has always mattered.” He turned then, walked to our front door, and opened it. Brad was gone with a quiet click.

His water bottle had left a ring of condensation on the coffee table. I ran my fingers gently through the wetness, marring the perfect, glistening circle.

A
light rain was falling Monday morning as I walked down Amsterdam. My raincoat flapped open every time a car drove past me, inviting a spattering shower to christen my ankles. I held my umbrella with my right hand, and in the curl of my fist, Jane’s ring glimmered in the falling wetness on my pinkie. Even in the drizzle of a late April shower, the ring begged to be noticed, sparkling, even though there was no sun. In my other hand, I carried an insulated mug of Kona coffee. I made it extra strong that morning.

I stayed up late talking to Leslie, and then, of course, slept poorly.

Leslie said there had to be some truth in what Brad said. About me. About me having doubts about the reasons Brad and I married in the first place.

“If he really did hear the whole punch-bowl conversation, then he heard enough to know you can’t possibly be as surprised as you say you are that this is happening,” Leslie had said ten minutes into our phone conversation.

“That’s not fair.”

“Jane. He heard you say you sometimes wonder why you two ever got married. He heard you say you wonder that if you had stood up to Mom and Dad, if you might’ve married Kyle instead.”

“But you’re the one who brought it up! I was just scooping sherbet into the punch bowl! You brought it up.”

“And you’re the one who didn’t deny it.”

“For heaven’s sake. It was just one stupid comment in an unplanned conversation. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Brad thinks you did. I actually think you did.”

“Leslie!” I’d been incredulous. It wasn’t like I had been waiting to get Leslie alone at that party so I could tell her how mixed up I was feeling about my marriage. It was a comment made off the cuff.

“What?”

“I
didn’t
mean anything by it.”

“Brad’s right.”

“What do you mean, Brad’s right?”

“You have doubts, but you pretend you don’t.”

“Hey, I’m not the one who walked out.”

“Yeah, but we’re not talking about what he did, Jane. We’re talking about you.”

“You think I have doubts that I married the right man?” I challenged her.

“Noooo,” she said slowly, casually. “I think you love Brad, but maybe you just don’t know why. For the longest time, you haven’t had to know why, but now you do.”

Her words somersaulted in my head long after we’d said good-bye. Yet I still went to bed as keenly aware of Brad’s absence as I had been since the first night he left. I woke up five or six times to the sensation of falling, of reaching for the safety of strong arms and finding an empty pillow.

I sipped my coffee as I walked the last few yards to my shop. Wilson was waiting for me under the lavender and white awning, watching the rain fall.

I wore the ring every day to work that week. Wilson and Stacy both asked me several times, as the week wore on, if I’d heard anything from Emma about the ring’s origin, their interest growing steadily after I’d shared David Longmont’s assessment of the ring’s age.

Wilson had whistled when I told him. “Well, that would make it a fairly expensive ring, wouldn’t it?”

I’d simply nodded.

“So are you going to sell it?” Stacy asked.

“Well, actually, I want to see if I can figure out where it came from and perhaps who it belonged to. Dumb idea, huh?”

“Not at all,” Wilson had said. “It would be different perhaps if the name inside were Beatrice or Katherine. But it’s your name.”

And then I shared David’s other assessment, that the ring showed no sign it had been worn. Neither Wilson nor Stacy jumped to venture a guess as to why not. We all seemed to speculate it could not have been for happy reasons.

Late in the week, I had my second appointment with Jonah Kirtland. There was nothing in the bowl as I sat down at the glass-topped table in his office. No pistachios. Nothing at all. The bowl had been wiped clean.