Almost Forever (45 page)

It was so bad, so banal, so utterly unreal, that Andie almost found herself regretting what she and Clay had shared on the night of the storm. She almost wished she could turn back the clock, let Clay go out on the deck into the storm alone and stay in bed herself.

Because if they hadn't made love in that shattering, total way, she probably never would have said the things she'd said later. She might have kept to herself those painful truths, truths that cut so close to the bone that now Clay wouldn't come near her, much less take her in his arms.

Each day, Andie woke positive that it couldn't go on like this. Something would happen to turn things around.

But each day would slide by, artificial and stifling as ever.

She talked to Ruth Ann. Ruth Ann said she had to keep trying.

So she did, she tried again, though she felt battered and bloody from all the trying she'd done.

It was Friday night and they were watching television.

“Clay. Clay, could we turn this off?”

“What for?”

“Clay, we need to talk.”

He looked at her. A look of such weary patience that all her will to confront him faded to nothing.

She couldn't do it. She was as tired of it as he was. “Never mind,” she said.

They watched the rest of the program and then went to bed.

And bed was the worst of all. In bed there were miles, continents, between them.

Andie had a premonition that the day would come when Clay would begin to sleep in one of the spare rooms. He'd wait for some reasonable excuse, of course. That he was keeping her up with his reading, which he often stayed up late to do. Or maybe he'd catch a cold and decide he was disturbing her with his coughing and sniffling. He'd move to another room. And never move back.

Andie thought,
This is how it happens between men and women. The love is there, but some hard truth can't be faced. They live a lie with each other. And all the warmth and closeness slowly dries up and blows away.

Two weeks after the storm, Andie knew she wouldn't be able to bear this forever. She simply would not become a dried-up woman, living an empty life beside a cold, distant man.

She was better off alone.

It hurt, just thinking it. But sometimes the truth hurt.

She wasn't yet to the point where she was ready to take action. She wasn't ready to pack her suitcase or consider the awful effect her leaving might have on Emily. She wasn't even ready to start scanning Apartment For Rent ads.

But the idea was in her mind. The idea was like a tiny seed that had found fertile soil in the cold silence that lay between
herself and her husband. A little sprout was unfurling from the seed, though no one could see it yet; it was still underground.

Soon, Andie started thinking to herself. Soon something has to give.

On the second Friday in November, Andie and Clay sat in the family room after Emily was in bed. Clay read a spy novel.

Andie did nothing. She leaned back in her big comfortable chair and closed her eyes.

She thought about how normal they would look to any outsider. A lovely young couple relaxing on a Friday night from the fulfilling demands of their new family and their growing business.

She glanced over at Clay. He was a handsome, successful man. And to any casual observer, she would appear to be his female counterpart. They had a beautiful daughter, a wonderful home. And Barrett & Co. was doing just fine. They had it all.

But together, just the two of them alone, they had nothing. Nothing but walls and distance and lies.

The doorbell rang, cutting through her grim thoughts.

Clay glanced up from his book. “Who's that?”

Andie shrugged. “I don't know.”

“Do you want me to get it?”

Andie pushed herself out of the deep, soft chair. “No. Read your book. I'll see who it is.”

Andie walked down the hall to the front door, her mind on the walls that were unscalable, the distance so vast it had become immeasurable. And the lies. The lies that were sacred now. Never to be disturbed.

Something has to happen,
Andie thought for the hundredth time. She turned the handle and pulled back the door.

Madeline Kirkland was waiting on the other side.

M
adeline shivered a little and stuck her hands deeper into the pockets of her expensive trench coat. “I would have called. But I was afraid you wouldn't see me. So I found my way out here. I figured I'd be harder to say no to face-to-face.”

Andie only stared, thinking that Madeline looked thinner, and that she'd cut her hair.

“You look…thinner,” Madeline said.

“I was just thinking the same thing about you.”

Madeline glanced away, into the darkness beyond the porch, and then back. “Your baby?”

“She was a little early. But she's fine.”

“A girl, then?”

“Yes. We named her Emily.”

“Emily. I like that.” Somewhere off in the oaks, an owl hooted.

“Well?” A laugh that sounded a little like a sob escaped Jeff's widow. “May I come in?”

Andie stepped back. “Yes, of course.”

“Is Clay here?”

“Yes, he's here.”

“I want…I must talk with you. With both of you.”

“All right.” Andie closed the door and gestured toward the family room. “Through that way.”

Madeline turned where Andie pointed.

“Wait.”

Madeline froze, then looked back, a question in her eyes.

“Your coat,” Andie said lamely. “Why don't you give it to me and I'll hang it up?”

“Oh. Certainly.” Madeline took off the coat and handed it over. Then she squared her shoulders and headed toward the family room.

Clay looked up when he heard the sound of high-heeled shoes on the hall floor.

When Madeline appeared, he stared, just as Andie had done. “Madeline?”

“Yes. It's me.” She stood awkwardly before him.

He swallowed. Dread curled in his stomach.

Andie appeared from the hall. “Madeline wants to talk with us, Clay.”

“What about?” He tried not to sound harsh, but somehow it came out that way.

Madeline said softly, “I think you know.”

Clay set his book down. He understood the urge trapped animals had, to chew off their own limbs in order to escape. But Clay wasn't an animal. He looked from Madeline's grim, set face to Andie's and then he tried one last time to avoid the inevitable. “Are you sure this is necessary?”

“Yes,” Madeline said.

“All right.”

There was an agonized silence, then Andie indicated the
couch. “Please. Sit down. Can I get you something? Coffee? Are you hungry?”

Madeline sat and shook her head. “Nothing. Really. I'm fine.”

Andie sank into the chair she'd left when she answered the door.

Madeline said, “Oh. This is difficult. I don't know quite where to begin.”

“Just do it,” Andie said. “Start anywhere.”

“All right, I…Jeff never balanced his checkbook.” Clay stared at Madeline, wondering what in the hell Jeff's checkbook had to do with anything. Madeline went on. “Just think of that. I probably never would have figured out the truth if he hadn't turned over all the money matters to me when we got married.”

Beside Clay, Andie made a little noise, a sound of dawning awareness. “You found the canceled check.”

Madeline nodded. “I found a check he wrote to someone named Andrea McCreary. I never connected the name with you, Andie, because I don't think anyone had ever mentioned your last name. And Clay never called you Andrea—that I remember. It was always Andie, when he talked about you. But anyway, I found a check for five thousand dollars made out to someone I'd never heard of named Andrea McCreary. I asked Jeff about it. He gave me some story about splitting a commission with another real estate agent. The story didn't make a lot of sense to me, but I let it go. After all, it was a check he had written
before
we were married and how he spent his money then wasn't really any of my business. But it bothered me. It stayed there, unresolved, in the back of my mind.”

Madeline looked at Clay. “I didn't put it together until Andie said her maiden name the day of the funeral. And at that moment, it all made hideous sense. The check. And the way you came that day at the very end of February, Clay. You went off with Jeff and he came back with his face all battered.
He said you two had been mugged. But of course you'd had a fight with each other, right?”

Gruffly, he answered her. “Yeah.”

“And then there were the half-truths you told me, about Andie being pregnant already when you got married. I assumed you meant she was pregnant by
you,
but you never actually said that in so many words. And then you said you'd never contacted Jeff and me again because you were so wrapped up in your new life. Well, of course, I'm sure that was part of it. But the main reason was that you and Jeff had agreed never to see each other again. Isn't that so?”

“Yeah. It's so.”

“I knew it. I knew it all, at that moment when Andie said her maiden name. I saw the truth. And I couldn't face it. Not then, anyway.”

Madeline's hand lay along the arm of the couch. She moved it to her lap to join her other hand. She looked down at her folded hands. Clay thought she appeared very demure, almost schoolgirlish, sitting that way, with her slim legs pressed so close together and both of her feet placed primly on the floor.

But then she looked up and he saw a grown woman's agony in her eyes. “But now I see that I
have
to face the truth. That I can't go on without knowing for sure.”

Madeline dragged in a breath, looked down at her hands again. “Jeff was…well, you know how he was. He lit up a room when he entered it, but he often left disaster in his wake. When I married him, I knew what he was like. And I accepted him just as he was. We'd grown up together and I…I understood him. He was an only child and his parents spoiled him—and yet also expected so much of him. He could never live up to what they wanted. And then they both died, before he'd come to any sort of peace with them. He was…”

Madeline seemed not to know how to go on. She put her hands to her cheeks, as if to steady the thoughts inside her head. Then she folded her hands in her lap once more and took another long breath. “I guess what I mean is, I
knew
Jeff. I never knew anyone the way I knew him. There was such intimacy between us. And yet—he feared our closeness. Sometimes he'd run away from it. But for me, there was just never anyone else. I could never imagine a world without him in it. But now I have to do more than imagine it. I have to
live
with it. I have to make my own peace with Jeff's memory and go on.”

Madeline turned to Andie. “That's why I have to know. I can't seem to get on with my life until I know.”

Andie said softly, “It's all right. I understand.”

And Madeline asked the question at last. “Is your baby my husband's child?”

Clay felt as if someone had punched him in the gut.

But Andie looked so calm.

And when she spoke, her voice was as composed as her expression. “In all the ways that matter,” she said, “Clay is Emily's father. He's the one who's been there from the first. And Emily already knows how important he is in her life.” Andie smiled, a bemused, wondering smile. “If you could just see her face, when she hears his voice or when he bends over her crib and she can make out his features. She looks so…happy, so totally trusting and content, when she recognizes him. She's a lucky little girl. To have a dad like Clay.”

Andie sat forward a little in her chair. “But I'm not answering the question the way you meant it, I know. And so I'll tell you this. Yes, I spent one night with Jeff Kirkland during the holidays last year. I found out, after it was too late, that Jeff was only trying to forget how much he was missing
you.
It was a…foolish act, by two foolish people. And it had consequences.”

“You became…pregnant.” Madeline's voice broke on the last word.

“Yes. I became pregnant by Jeff. But I was fortunate. Clay found out and wanted to marry me. So it turned out that Emily got a real father, after all.”

Madeline's clasped hands were white at the knuckles, though her face was composed. She coughed. “I see.”

No one seemed to know what to say then. Silence echoed in the room.

Madeline opened the small purse she carried and lifted out a handkerchief. She dabbed at her upper lip with it before she went on in a clipped tone. “There's something else. One more thing. There's money from the Kirkland trust for the baby. For Emily. I would be glad to arrange for that money to be put aside for her.”

Andie turned then, to look at Clay. “What do you think?”

Clay didn't know what he thought. The world seemed to have spun right off its axis and whirled into a whole new dimension. He was still reeling from the way Andie was dealing with all this. She had so serenely described him as Emily's true father. And she'd mentioned Jeff so frankly and dispassionately—as if she was completely over him, as if whatever she might have shared with him was long, long in the past.

“Clay?” Andie prompted.

Clay did his best to collect his scattered wits. It seemed only fitting that he should approach this situation fairly and rationally—as both Andie and Madeline seemed to be doing. “Well, I think when she's old enough, she should probably be told something about Jeff. And I think it would be right for Jeff to have left her some money.”

“All right, then,” Madeline said. She stood. “We don't have to go into the particulars of it now, I don't think. But it should be set up so Emily can claim the money when she reaches her
majority. And of course the money should also be available for her education.”

“Yes,” Clay said. “That sounds right.”

Andie urged, “Madeline. Stay awhile.”

Clay blinked. He wasn't catching on too fast here. He hadn't realized that Madeline was ready to go. But now he could see that she meant to leave right away.

“No.” Madeline opened her purse again, put her handkerchief away. “I can't. Not now. I need some time. This was hard. Please understand.”

“Yes,” Andie said. “We do. We understand. Maybe later, then…”

“Yes,” Madeline agreed. “Maybe later. I think someday I'd like that.”

Andie rose to her feet and Clay, feeling slow and confused, followed suit. They trailed behind Madeline to the front door, with Andie stopping at the coat closet to retrieve Madeline's coat.

Moments later, Madeline had disappeared down the gravel walk to the driveway. Andie closed the door and leaned back against it.

Clay stared at her, feeling as if he was seeing her for the very first time. Damned if he didn't admire what he saw. “You said we'd be hearing from her again.”

“Yes. I did.” She pushed herself away from the door. “All at once, I'm beat.”

“I know what you mean.”

“I think I'll go on upstairs. Will you turn off the lights when you come?”

“Sure. No problem.”

Andie left Clay standing there, left him wondering what in the world to do next.

He watched her climbing the stairs. She held on to the
banister the whole way, her exhaustion clear in every line of her slim form.

Eventually, Clay shook himself. He went to the family room and turned off the lights. Then he, too, mounted the stairs.

He checked on Emily. She was sleeping peacefully. He couldn't resist touching her hand. As always, she curled her fingers around his. She gave a little sigh and a trace of a smile curled her tiny mouth.

Emily was a happy baby. She trusted her world and the people in it. So far, Clay realized, he'd done right by his daughter.

But he couldn't be so proud of himself when it came to her mother.

“There was such intimacy between us,” Madeline had said about her relationship with Jeff. “And yet—he feared our closeness. Sometimes he'd run away from it….”

Clay sank to the rocker by Emily's crib. It hurt to think of Madeline's words. They were too true. And not only in reference to Madeline and Jeff.

What was that other thing Madeline had said?

It was so close to what Andie had said on the night before Jeff's funeral. That she and Clay had to face the truth between them. They had to drag it into the light and see it for what it was.

Slowly, Clay rose from the rocker. He could hide here in the baby's room no longer. He went looking for his wife.