Selling the Drama (39 page)

As a parent, rejoicing in first steps is
part and parcel of bringing up children. There is never the
expectation, as the parent, to have your children rejoicing when
you take your own first steps. Two months after the accident, Toby
walked from one side of the physiotherapy room to the other on his
new leg, completely unaided by crutches or railings. Gripped with
pain, and still weak beyond belief, it was a triumph like no other.
The deal he had made with his doctor was that the day he could walk
that distance unaided would be the day he was allowed to go
home.

So now, by the looks of it, he was going
home. He turned to face his doctor, a man he had begrudgingly come
to like over the last two months, and was no longer intent on
suing. Grinning at him widely, he called out: "I told you I
wouldn't take three months."

"I never thought you would," he replied. "I
just threw that out there to piss you off." Looking over at
Charlotte, he smiled warmly. "Congratulations. You can have him
back now."

Ashley and Bree bolted over to him, hugging
him from either side, cheering loudly at the news that they were
able to take him home at long last. Toby looked up at Charlotte,
who met his gaze with a teary smile. She never failed to stun him,
her capacity to hold everything together; she was in a class all of
her own. She was divine. Her smile widened and Toby was certain,
that if angels were mortal, they would look just like her.

The household had finally settled from the
excitement of having Toby come home, and after checking on the
children, Charlotte poked her head into her mother's room.

"Hey. Do you want a cup of tea?" Charlotte
offered from the doorway. Iris looked up from the book she was
reading. She had a pair of reading glasses perched on the end of
her nose, giving her a distinct grandmotherly appearance. Charlotte
grinned at the sight. "You look like a grandma," she stated.

"I am a grandma," Iris replied dryly, yet
she took the glasses off. "But heaven forbid I should actually look
like one." She cast Charlotte a heavy look. "Why aren't you
upstairs with Toby? He's going to need help-"

"He doesn't want help."

Iris paused, considering. She seemed on the
verge of saying something when a loud crash came from overhead.
Raising her eyes to the ceiling momentarily, she flicked her gaze
back to Charlotte. "Needs and wants are usually two very different
things."

Charlotte bit her lip anxiously, waiting.
Toby had been very clear about what he did and did not want her to
do for him. But still. Meeting her mother's eyes, she nodded once
before heading upstairs, taking them two at a time. She found him
on the bathroom floor, sitting upright. As soon as he saw her, he
put his hand out to prevent her from touching him.

"No! I can do it. I just need a minute. Just
to get my bearings." His face though, appeared to be creased with
pain, despite his endeavours to hide it from her.

Charlotte waited. She had put a plastic
chair into the shower for him, but he had taken it out, and by the
looks of it, fallen down in the process. Despite how much he didn't
want to use the chair, it was a necessity. He couldn't stand in the
shower on one leg. He knew this as much as she did, yet he had
still taken it out, unwilling to accept any concessions, unwilling
to bend to his disability. "Can I help you up?" she eventually
offered, unable to just stand by doing nothing.

Toby sighed heavily. "No."

"Do you want a bath instead of a shower?"
Charlotte persisted, looking down at him.

Toby seemed to be deliberately avoiding her
gaze. "I told you not to mother me. And I also told you not to put
that stupid chair in the shower." He gripped the side of the vanity
and hauled himself up, using his right arm for support given the
weakness that still existed throughout his left side.

"Then I'll leave you to it." Charlotte
turned to go but his voice stopped her before she actually made it
out of the bathroom.

"Charlotte, I'm sorry," he said in a
rush.

She turned back to face him. He did indeed
look sorry. Sorry to her, possibly also sorry for himself, but
either way, he looked very sorry indeed. "I know you want be like
you were. I'm sorry you can't." She remained in the doorway, taking
in the sight of him. The only evidence from the accident visible on
him now was a surgical scar across the side of his body and the
stump where his leg ended just below his knee. The stump was not
pretty to look at, not at all. Yet it was not hideous either. It
was simply what he looked like now. Fitted with his new leg,
wearing long pants, no one would ever know anything had ever
happened to him. But here, stripped bare, his vulnerability was on
display, and Charlotte knew this bothered him. Even before her.
Which was why he persisted in not meeting her eyes. She remembered
how exposed she had felt years ago when she had been left with that
awful scar down her neck after Porter's attack. Mortified. Yet,
Toby had been the one person she had felt she did not need to hide
it from. The only person.

"A bath might be good," he conceded.

"Are you in pain?" Charlotte walked over to
the bath, rinsing it out before putting in the plug so it could
fill with warm water.

"Yes."

She added bath gel and sat on the edge,
watching the water swirl and the bubbles foam. "Your arm and ribs?"
she probed, trying to get a bead on what he was going through right
now. He was so determined to try and have everyone believe he was
perfectly fine. Fully recovered. Yet, Charlotte could tell him if
he asked, just how many days and hours had passed since that moment
he had been wheeled into the hospital past her, almost dead. He
could fake it all he liked to everyone else, but she was not going
to let him get away with it with her.

"My leg. My arm and ribs don't hurt anymore.
It's only ever my leg now." His voice was taut with strain, his
answer clipped.

Still facing the water, she ventured further
into the discussion. "What does it feel like?"

"Right now, it's feels as though something
long and sharp is going in and out of the bottom of my foot. But
sometimes it just aches all over. Other times it's itchy."

She paused, looking over her shoulder at
him. He was leaning heavily on the vanity, his arms crossed in
front of his chest, looking at her at last. "You're talking about
your missing leg?" she clarified, frowning at him, confused by his
description. "It gets itchy? And aches? Where? At the stump?"

Toby shook his head. "No. Where it doesn't
exist anymore. Where there's only air now." He stared back at her,
as though assessing her reaction, testing her, yet for what,
Charlotte had no idea.

"You heard the doctor say this would
happen," he continued, gazing at her evenly.

"I know. I just…" She shrugged then, not
really knowing what to say, probably failing the test he had set
down for her. It must be awful, to feel something that wasn't even
there. She could not even begin to imagine what that must be like.
Surreal, at the very least. Reaching over the bath, she turned the
taps off. "It's ready." She stood, holding out her hand to him.
"How do you want to do this?"

Taking hold of her hand, Toby smiled down at
her, his grip sure and strong. "Preferably with you in there as
well."

She smiled back at him. "It might be a bit
squashy."

"There's more room in there now. One less
limb taking up space."

Charlotte pulled a face at that.

"Too soon for missing leg jokes?" Toby
asked.

"I don't know. It just seems…" she pondered,
grappling for the right words to say. "Like you're setting me up to
laugh when I shouldn't."

"I'm not that funny. I wouldn't think you'd
be in much danger of laughing when you shouldn't," he replied
dryly.

"You're right. You're not funny at all.
You're actually pretty sad," Charlotte teased, her hand still held
tight within his.

"You know what is sad?" Toby tugged on her
hand to draw her closer. "The saddest sad thing you'll ever hear?"
A side of him not seen for some time began to emerge right before
her eyes.

"That you haven't shaved in two months?"
Charlotte reached up with her other hand to pinch his cheek, the
scruff tickling her fingers, a teasing smile about her lips.

"Sadder than that is the fact that I haven't
had sex since before I shaved last. That's what's really sad. This
beard, it's like a living reminder of my celibacy. I'm almost a
monk, it's been that long."

Charlotte giggled at that. "You're an
idiot." She dropped his hand so she could get undressed, reaching
back out for him when she was done. "Lean on me whichever way you
need so you can get in," she said to him, gesturing to the
bath.

He grinned widely. "You keep talking dirty
like that and I might not make it into the bath," he teased as he
braced himself against her. Before attempting to get into the
bathtub, he looked down at her seriously, lowering his head so he
could press his lips to hers, kissing her firmly. "Thank you."

"For what?" she asked, brushing her cheek
against his, delighting in the feel of him against her, solid and
real, so very alive it almost brought her to tears. She blinked
them away, not wanting to ruin the moment by becoming all weepy and
needy.

"Just because. There are way too many things
to list. You know why."

Charlotte nodded. She supposed she did. "I
love you."

Toby pulled a face at her. "I'm not dying
anymore. Unless you're about to drown me," he kidded. "You don't
need to get all soppy with me now."

Curling her fingers into his hair, she
looked at him carefully. "I'm still in love with you. After all
these years, I am still in love with you. I've never stopped
feeling that way, not even when I left you. Saying that I love you,
it just always seemed to me like it wasn't enough to describe the
way I feel, but maybe I'm just being dramatic and looking at it all
the wrong way. So, I'm going to say it every day now. And you're
just going to have to put up with it."

Leaning her forehead against his, she looked
straight into his eyes. "This does not change who you are to me.
You are still that horny teenage boy who used to sneak into my room
every night; the moody, intensely focused on the bigger picture
guy, who eventually changed his whole career plan just to be with
me and our baby; my dynamic, ambitious and highly successful
fiancé; the father of my beautiful children; the man I always knew
I would spend my life with; one of the five reasons my heart beats.
What is missing from you now, does not change any of that. Not for
me."

Pressing her lips to his, she kissed him,
deep and drowning, giving him no chance to respond, no chance to
argue her down, no chance to do anything but accept what she had
told him and absorb it into his soul, to believe it, to harbour it,
and to own it.

"Dad?" Ashley put down his reading book,
looking up with a nervous expression on his face, his bottom lip
caught between his teeth.

Toby smiled at him, reaching over to ruffle
his hair. They were sitting side by side out on the back veranda,
the afternoon birds screeching in the trees around them, a breeze
at last breaking through the steamy heat of the day. "What's up
buddy?"

"Are you never going back to work? Like
Chad?"

Toby shook his head at that. "I'm going back
to work next week. Maybe not for as long each day as I used to."
Not at first anyway, but eventually he would. He was not made for
doing things by halves. "Chad has a different type of injury to
live with than me. His is much more limiting." He refused to use
the term disability. It was too much for him to concede.

"He builds stuff well," Ashley remarked.
"Chairs and stuff."

"Yeah, he does do that well." Toby
considered his next question for a few moments before going ahead
and asking it. "I don't suppose you've heard any talk around the
house about when Chad and Jenna might be moving into a place of
their own?"

Ashley frowned for a moment, as though
thinking hard. "Not really. I think they're going to live in the
shed." He scratched his head and then nodded, pointing down the
backyard to Royce's large shed.

Toby glanced over at it. He never went in
there; everything he needed for the lawn was in the small shed next
to the pool. He knew Iris banged about in there from time to time,
probably destroying things, but it had been years since he had
stepped foot in there. Looking back over at Ashely, he smiled
again, deliberately keeping his voice calm. "What gives you that
idea, buddy?" Shit, he hoped Ashley was wrong.

"Grandma said to Jenna lots of times before
you came home: 'Get your arse into gear and clear out that shed
before Toby comes home and hits the roof.' Sorry for swearing, but
that's what she said, and you asked."

Toby reached out and ruffled his hair once
more. "I did ask. No worries." He glanced down at the shed again, a
small flicker of anger igniting within him. He wondered if Iris had
withheld this plan from Charlotte also. Most likely. That was her
style.

"Dad?"

Returning his attention to Ashley, Toby put
his concerns aside, not wanting to ruin this quiet time with his
son with thoughts of Iris and her duplicity. "What's up?"

"How come, when you were in hospital, your
mum and dad didn't come and see you?"

Toby felt his heart slam around the walls of
his chest; a cold sweat prickled the palms of his hands. Ashley sat
before him, wide eyed and curious, his seven year old face so much
like what his own would have looked like at the same age, with one
exception. Ashley had very different eyes. His were not filled with
fear. Toby considered, entirely unprepared for this question. He
began with the obvious.