Someone to Hold, page 10
“I don’t like it.”
“Thank you for caring.”
“I do care. So many people care about you. None of us wants to see you hurt any further.”
“I’ll be all right. I promise.” Because I can’t stop her, I let her up to retrieve the phone, which comes to life with a beep. “Did you go through Natasha’s phone after she died?”
“My sister uploaded the pictures from Nat’s phone to the cloud, so I’d have them, but I’ve never looked at anything else. I just couldn’t look at the rest.”
“I felt like I’d be invading his privacy or something if I went through his phone, which is silly when you think about it. He’s dead. What does he care about his privacy? But I always prided myself on being the kind of wife who didn’t pry. Turns out I should’ve been prying.”
“No, you shouldn’t have. Living like that is no kind of marriage. You either trust the person you’ve committed to spend your life with, or you don’t.”
“I trusted him,” she says sadly. “After that first time, he gave me no reason not to, or so I thought. I really believed he’d learned his lesson from nearly losing me the first time.”
“Why can’t you take what you already know, deal with it to the best of your ability and go forward from here? Knowing the full extent of it is only going to make everything worse.” I’m as certain of that as I’ve ever been of anything.
“It could make things better if I find out why.”
“Will it, though? What if you find out he never loved you, or he thought of you and the kids as a terrible burden, or some other awful thing you didn’t need to know? Please, Iris. Don’t go through his phone. Nothing good will come of that.”
She stares at the phone for a long time before she powers it down.
I’m so relieved, I’m nearly faint with it. I’m not sure why I’m so positive that looking at the phone is a bad idea, but I feel it in my bones. “Come here.”
She returns to her perch on my lap, and I wrap my arms around her while pressing my lips to her forehead.
“I’m not saying I’ll never look, but I hear what you’re saying, and you’re right. Now is not the time.”
“Here’s what I know for sure. You had a life with him, a life that you loved and cherished. Those are the memories you need to hold on to now. The rest of it had nothing to do with you.”
“Didn’t it, though?”
“No, it didn’t. It would matter very much if he was still alive. What does it matter now? He’s gone, and you’re left to finish raising his children alone. Why should you have terrible thoughts in your head about their father while you’re doing that? I mean, what we know is awful enough. The dirty details aren’t going to make it better.”
“Thank you for being the voice of reason.”
“I understand the need to know everything that happened. I’ve been that way as the case against the driver who killed Nat and the girls works its way through court. I’m obsessed. I want every single detail, and some of them made an already unbearable situation a thousand times worse, such as finding out that his friends knew he was loaded and did nothing to stop him from driving. I didn’t need to know that.”
She rests her head on my shoulder. “No, you didn’t.”
“That’s what I mean… Just when we think something hurts as much as it possibly can, something comes along that makes that pain seem like nothing. You have to protect yourself from that, Iris. You’ve worked so hard to get where you are now, and you’ve been such an inspiration to so many people just starting this journey. I don’t want to see you set yourself backward by accessing information that won’t change anything. Mike will still be dead, and you’ll still be here to carry on without him, but with information that’ll make your journey more excruciating than it needs to be.”
“I hate him a little bit today.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“There was this one time when we were on a family vacation at the beach when he got called to work for something in Denver. I wonder if that’s when the baby was born.”
“Again, what does it matter? It’s in the past. Please don’t drive yourself crazy asking questions like that. Having those answers will hurt you more than help you.”
“What am I going to do if she sues me?”
“You’ll get a lawyer, like Joy, to fight her tooth and nail. I wouldn’t want to go up against Joy in a courtroom.”
That draws a laugh from her. “Me neither. Girlfriend is fierce.”
“She’ll make it go away.”
“Maybe I need to start accepting some of the sponsorship offers so I’ll have extra money to fight a lawsuit.”
“Wait to see what happens. She may be advised that there’s no point suing you because Mike’s estate has already been closed. It has, right?”
“A while ago.”
“The time to sue has passed. She might be able to go after some of the insurance money he had through work, but with him being blamed for the crash, that gets trickier, too.”
“I’d planned to put the rest of the insurance money away for the kids’ college funds, but I probably won’t get it now that they’re blaming him for the accident.”
“You’ll have what you need for the kids.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just what I said. I don’t have kids to put through college anymore. I can help you with that.”
“Gage… Stop.”
“Stop what?”
“You’re not paying for my kids to go to college.”
“I can if I want to.”
“No, you can’t.”
“We can have that fight in twelve years.”
“We’re having it now, and you’re not paying.”
“My company makes a lot of money. Like, a lot a lot. If your kids need college tuition, they’ll have it. End of story.”
“You’re too kind, but the answer is still no.”
“We’ll see.”
“Gage?”
“Yes?”
“You said you don’t want a relationship, right?”
“That’s right.”
“I’d just like to point out that by running to me in my time of need, by holding me and making love to me all night long, by talking me through the calamity and wanting to pay for my kids to go to college… This is starting to feel like a relationship.”
“It’s not.”
Her body shakes, and for a second, I’m alarmed, until I realize she’s laughing. At me. “You think that’s funny?”
She nods because she’s laughing too hard to speak.
“How dare you laugh at me?” I ask in pretend outrage.
“Can’t help it,” she says, gasping for air. “You’re in a relationship,” she adds in a singsong voice. “Gage plus Iris, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”
The only way to shut her up is to kiss her. I can’t be in a relationship with her or her kids, not when I promised myself I’d never again love anything or anyone I can’t live without.
11
IRIS
I decide I want to be with my kids. When they’re around, I have no time to think about anything but them and their endless wants and needs, their arguments, their sweet commentary and their sweeter love. I text my mom to let her know I’m feeling stronger and will pick them up after school.
Are you sure? I don’t mind having them another night.
I’m sure. After being away from them for the weekend and then last night, too, I don’t want them to think something is wrong. And when they’re around, I don’t have time to think.
Understand completely. I made a lasagna for dinner that I’ll drop off so you don’t have to cook.
I don’t deserve you.
Quit saying that. LOL
For the longest time, she thought LOL meant lots of love. When I told her it actually means laugh out loud, we laughed so hard, we had to hold each other up. So now she says it stands for both. No one has ever loved me the way she does, and I’m thankful for her every day, especially since I lost Mike. She’s always been one of my greatest sources of support, but never more so than the last few years.
Without her to help, encourage and support me, I probably would’ve rolled into a ball after Mike died, when the idea of raising three heartbroken little kids on my own was more than I could bear to contemplate.
“I’m going to pick up my kids,” I tell Gage at two forty-five. He’s been strangely quiet since I teased him about being in a relationship. “You want to come for the ride?”
“Will it confuse them if I’m around?”
“I don’t think so. They know we’re friends and are used to seeing you.”
“I don’t even know what I’m doing here.”
“I do,” I say with a knowing smile.
“Really, Iris… I probably should just go.”
“Don’t go unless you really want or need to.”
“I don’t want to, but…”
I lay my finger over his lips. “Let’s spend some time with the kids and talk about the rest of it later.”
His entire body goes slack with relief at being given a reprieve.
I love having him around, especially during this latest upheaval, but I’m not sure what I’m dealing with when it comes to his relationship issues. I hope he’ll eventually share his thoughts on the matter, because I feel ready for the R-word, and he’s my leading—and only—candidate.
And it’s not just because we had sex. For the last year or so, any time I pictured myself with someone new, it was his face I saw, and I’ve only realized that in the last few days.
He gets into the passenger side of my silver Toyota Sienna minivan and puts on his seat belt. “This is fancy.”
“No one grows up saying they can’t wait to drive a minivan, but I love this one. Although by the time I finish paying for it, it won’t be worth a dime with the way my kids treat it.”
“Like Nat’s rolling Superfund site, and she couldn’t even blame the kids. It was like that before them.”
“I may borrow that description.”
“Feel free. I used to joke that I needed to don a hazmat suit to clean it.” After a long pause, he says, “She’d like you.”
At a stoplight, I glance over at him, floored by the comment. “You think so?”
“Definitely. She had the same snarky sense of humor you have, and she was funny like you are with the commentary on everything. She had a very small circle of girlfriends because she said women were catty beasts most of the time, and she had no patience for that or mom drama or any of that crap.”
“I feel the same way. From everything you’ve told me about her, I bet we would’ve been best friends.”
“Definitely.”
“I try to surround myself with supportive, loving, thoughtful women who raise each other up rather than tear each other down.”
“Like I said… She would’ve liked you.”
“That’s an amazing compliment, Gage. Thank you.”
He shrugs. “It’s true.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“What’s your objection to the R-word?”
He doesn’t answer for almost a full minute, as if he needs that long to decide what to say. “I promised myself after I lost Nat and the girls that I’d go forward on my own. It’s just easier that way.”
“How did you get into the Wild Widows with that philosophy?”
“When Christy said the only rule was being open to a second chance at love, I said, fine, I’m open to it, because I was desperate to meet some people who got it, you know? Even though I agreed to the group’s rule, I’ve planned to stay single.”
“I can understand why it’s easier that way, but isn’t it lonelier, too?”
“It can be, but it’s better.”
“How so?”
“It just is. It’s what works for me.”
As I pull up to Laney’s preschool, I ponder that reply and grapple with the disappointment that comes with realizing this bond between us will never go beyond friends with benefits. I can live with that if he’s still my friend, but as much as I wish it could be more, I won’t force myself—or my three young kids—on a man who doesn’t want what I do.
Laney is full of delightful chatter and news as always, and as we drive to the elementary school to get her brother and sister, we hear a long story about an exploding juice box that has her laughing so hard, she can barely breathe. She’s so damned cute and sweet, and I love her unreasonably, which is such a relief.
For a time after Mike died, I was so overwhelmed by caring for an infant on top of two other children that I resented her. It’s not something I’m proud of now—and I’ve never told another living soul I felt that way about her, even my mother. It was all caught up in my anger at him for dying after talking me into a third child. I don’t think about that time very much anymore, but the little girl I once saw as a burden has become my daily ray of sunshine.
Tyler comes bursting out of school and runs for the car, holding a box in his hand that he waves around as he comes toward us. “I won a Titanic model today! Can we put it together when we get home? I bet there’s a YouTube video on how to do it.”
Sophia, my dawdler, gets in the car, buckles in and blows a kiss to Laney, who is always thrilled to see her big sister after a long day apart.
“Mom!” Tyler says as I pull out of the pickup line. “Can we make the model?”
“I’ll check after dinner,” I tell him.
“I can help,” Gage says. “I used to build models all the time.”
“Awesome,” Tyler says. “We learned all about the Titanic today in the library. Did you know it hit an iceberg and sank?”
“What’s an iceberg?” Sophia asks.
“Duh,” Tyler says, “it’s a block of ice in the water.”
“Be nice, Tyler,” I tell him.
“Did people die?” Sophia asks.
“Like fifteen hundred. They froze like Popsicles.”
“Tyler!”
Gage shakes with silent laughter, and it’s all I can do not to lose it laughing, too. Honestly, the things that come out of Tyler’s mouth. And why are they teaching second graders about fifteen hundred people dying on the Titanic?
“They weren’t like Popsicles,” I tell Sophia, concerned that she’ll never eat another one.
“What’s a Popsicles?” Laney asks.
“Duh,” Tyler says.
“We’re going to have a conversation about kindness if you keep saying that D-word, young man.”
“It’s a frozen treat on a stick,” Sophia tells her sister. “We had them last summer, and they turned your lips red, remember?”
I catch Laney nodding when I glance in the mirror.
“Did my daddy like Popsicles?” Laney asks.
“He loved orange ones,” I tell her. She asks questions about Mike every day. I never know what it’s going to be as she builds a profile of the father she never knew. She was a newborn when he died. We have only thirty-two photos of the two of them together that I put into a picture book that she looks at so often, I’ve had to reprint it twice.
“Mommy, are you going to have more babies?” Sophia asks. “Lauren’s mom is having another baby, but she said you can’t because we don’t have a daddy.”
“Jesus,” Gage says under his breath.
“I have all the babies I could ever want,” I tell her, even as my heart breaks once again.
“I want an orange Popsicles,” Laney says. “Like my daddy.”
I catch her staring at pictures of Mike all the time, looking for answers to questions she doesn’t know how to ask yet. But she will. I worry about all three of them, but her thirst for details about Mike makes me worry about how she’ll fill the blank places where he should be.
“Mr. Gage, can you stay for dinner so we can work on the model?” Tyler asks. “Mom, can he stay?”
“Of course he can, if he wants to. Grandma made lasagna.”
“Her lasagna is sick,” Tyler says. “You don’t want to miss that.”
“I’m sold,” Gage says.
“Yes!” Tyler’s fist in the air pops into the rearview mirror.
“Homework and chores first,” I remind him.
He groans loudly.
“The faster you get your work done, the sooner you can build your model.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
We pull into the garage, and Tyler launches out of his booster seat like he’s been shot out of a cannon, backpack dragging behind him.
Sophia, the helpful big sister, releases the latch on Laney’s seat that confounds most adults and helps her down from the car. They take off inside in hot pursuit of Tyler.
“Holy. Shit.”
Gage’s two-word summary cracks me up. “Just another day in paradise.”
“Is every day like that?”
“They went a little easy on me today.”
“How do you do it?”
“One minute at a time.” I look over at him. “No pressure on dinner and the model. I can help him with it.”
He raises a brow, his expression skeptical. “Have you ever built a model?”
“No, but I learn everything I need to know on YouTube.”
“It would take you four days of doing nothing but that.”
“No way.”
“Way. They’re crazy complicated, but I’ve got you covered. I told him I’d help him, and I’d never disappoint him.”
“Thank you.”
He looks straight ahead, seeming lost in thoughts, or memories maybe. “I’d forgotten.”
“What?”
“How intense kids can be. I remember the big things, like how Ivy liked dark chocolate and hated peanut butter, and Hazel would’ve eaten spaghetti three meals a day if we’d let her. But the questions, the bickering, the sheer insanity of it. I’d forgotten that, and I never wanted to forget any of it.”
“Mom! I can’t find the trash bags!” Tyler says from the doorway to the garage.
“I’m coming.” I look over at Gage, smiling. “Duty calls. I’m sorry if we made you sad.”
“It’s okay. I enjoyed listening to them. They’re delightful.”
