Marriage in Jeopardy

She nodded, empathy in her eyes. “I finally understand why no one goes in Clara’s room.”

Josh climbed the stairs. He was starting to hate his own home. He stood in front of the door he’d closed that first night when the town house had bounced emptiness from every wall.

Treat it like a Band-Aid. Yank it off. He grabbed the doorknob and walked inside. Like a man gasping his last breath, he went to the changing table. Two shopping bags, each filled with diapers and two huge sacks of candy, sat on the plastic surface that smelled new. Unused. They wouldn’t even have memories of their child.

Josh snatched at the candy and turned. Only to face the crib. Where his son would have slept in a few more months. Where his child would never sleep now.

He stumbled. The candy slipped from his fingers, a bag at a time. He reached the crib on his knees.

He could barely see through his tears. He clutched the rails and pressed his face between two of them, crying so loudly the neighbors could hear him.

Lydia could hear him. He had to shut up.

“Josh.” She was at his back, dropping to her knees with her arms around him.

He yanked her close, and for once, she didn’t pull away. Choking into her hair, he fought for control.

“We can’t do this,” she said. “I’ve been hiding from everything that mattered to me here, and I can’t stand seeing you like this. Let’s go.”

Telling himself to be a man, Josh climbed to his feet and helped Lydia up. Pressing his arm to his eyes, he leaned down for the bags he’d dropped and then followed Lydia.

“I won’t go to my parents’,” he said. “Forget it.”

Stopping in the hall, she nodded. She closed the door, and he swore the pressure on his chest eased.

“I’m going,” Lydia said, robbing him of the ability to breathe at all. “You can come. I want you to come, but I’m going.”

CHAPTER THREE

“WHAT MAKES my mother and father our answer?” Josh pulled Lydia to face him as she tried to walk away. From such a large man, his insistence should have been intimidating, but she shared his grief and understood his reluctance.

“They’re family. We need them, whether you know it or not. I don’t care about the past anymore. I want a future.”

“With me?”

His taunting barely touched her. “You don’t seem to believe me, but yes. Are you coming?”

“Clara’s all over that place.”

And maybe he was, too—a bereft teenage version of Josh that wouldn’t loosen his grip on the grown man. “It might be time to face her and yourself.”

“You’re a psychologist all of a sudden?”

She shrugged. “Is this house any easier to be in?”

His face turned ruddy, as if he were ashamed of the tears that had turned her back into a fighter. “I haven’t stayed in that house for longer than a weekend since I left for college.” And he’d left the second he was able to.

She stood, still and silent. He had to decide. She’d made her decision, but she couldn’t force Josh to try again.

He turned. She let him reach the stairs before she spoke, and she spoke over the feeling she was strangling.

“Wait.”

He stopped without looking back. “What?”

“Maybe I’m not being fair, but I do wish you’d come.”

With his back to her, he tensed his shoulders. More eloquent than words, resentment carried him downstairs.

Lydia grabbed at the wall. Suddenly exhausted, she limped to their bedroom. They’d already perfected the silent sharing of a bed, each clinging to one side. She kicked off her shoes, lay down and pulled the quilt Evelyn had given her on her last birthday up to her shoulders.

SITTING AT the family room desk, Josh tried to concentrate on paying the bills that had piled up while Lydia was in the hospital. He ruined four checks and five envelopes.

Memories, never far from his mind, rushed at him, claws outstretched. His parents had been unconscious when he’d come home from his first day of high school. Revolted at the sight of his mother and father sprawled on matching sofas, he’d expected the worst—with no idea how bad it would be. He’d searched the house for Clara.

He’d found her dollhouse, abandoned, her lunch, half eaten. He’d found her body, floating in the filthy swimming pool in their back yard. He couldn’t save her. He barely remembered the paramedics dragging him away from Clara after his mother had finally awakened to his screams and dialed 911.

Though he couldn’t stop loving his parents, he’d also hated them since that day. Nothing—not a visit, not brainwashing—could change the facts.

But his hard feelings couldn’t help Lydia. If she needed comfort—and for some ungodly reason, his parents were love enough for her, how could he refuse to go?

Swearing inside his head, he climbed the stairs. He’d expected to find Lydia reading. Instead, she was burrowed inside a quilt his mom had made for her. The vulnerability of her slight body sealed his fate.

He eased the door shut and started packing the car. He turned their Halloween candy over to the neighbors, asking them to hand it out, and he packed his clothes. Then, he called his parents.

His father answered. “Josh, is something wrong?”

“Lydia’s fine. She mentioned that Mom asked us to come up for a few weeks?”

“Yeah.” His dad sounded stunned. Too stunned to make it easier on Josh.

“Well, do you mind if we take her up on that?”

“No, son. Come. Yes, Evelyn, he wants to come up.”

His mother’s voice came through the phone. “You’re coming? I’m so happy. When?”

“Lydia’s been napping. I’m going to wake her up so I can pack some of her things. We should be there by dinner.”

“Tonight?” He might have offered her the recipe for turning lead into gold. “We’ll be ready. I need to make the bed in your old room. We’ll have lobster. Bart, run down to the market and get some corn. Even if it’s not fresh, it’s Lydia’s favorite. I think I’ll make homemade peach ice cream.”

“Okay, Mom. Thanks. I’ll call when we’re almost there.”

“Don’t bother. Just come and we’ll see you when you get here. Josh, I’m so pleased.”

“Thanks for the invite.” His parents were already talking to each other when he hung up. He put his bag in the back of the car and spread a sheet on the backseat, hoping he could persuade Lydia to rest on the drive up, rather than sitting for four hours.

Finally, he eased to her side of the bed and rubbed her shoulder. She opened her eyes and focused on him. “Hi.”