Days Like This (40 page)

“When I was in my early twenties,”
he said, “I met my first wife.  Her name was Nancy.  Nancy Chen.  She was a
Chinese-American girl from the upper east side of Manhattan, and the only woman
besides Casey that I ever truly loved.  Her father was a surgeon.  Big money.  Her
parents were very traditional in their beliefs, which didn’t include
interracial marriage.  When they tried to force her into an arranged marriage,
she came to me for help.  So we went down to City Hall and we got married. 

“It was a huge mistake.  A
disaster right from the start.”  He grew quiet, lost in the past.  “I’d
committed the dual cardinal sins of being not only poor, but Caucasian.  Her
parents freaked.  But I was in love, and in savior mode, and when they did
their best to split us up, I dug in my heels.  Until they took out a court
order barring her from seeing her little sister.  It broke her heart.  I’d
never heard a woman cry that way.  And because I loved her, it broke my heart.  So
I confronted her parents.  They told me that they’d welcome her back to the
fold with open arms, if only she’d divorce me.”

“Oh, boy.”

“I thought about it for a long
time.  I loved her so damn much.  They’d already cut off her tuition money. 
She was planning to be a doctor, like her father.  I could’ve found a way to
work around that.  There’s always a way, if you want something bad enough.  But
there was no way I could work around this.  Her sister meant the world to her—more
than me, if I wanted to be honest—and her parents wielded all the power.  So I
caved.  I loved her enough to let her go.  I sent her home to her family, and I
filed for divorce.  It almost killed me, but I knew it was the best thing for
her.  I still do.  I’m sure she’s a doctor now, with an appropriate Chinese husband
and a houseful of kids.  And I bet she doesn’t even remember me.”

Something clicked in some tiny
corner of her heart.  Softly, she said, “I doubt that.”

He let out a soft snort.  “Yeah.
Well.”

“Thank you,” she said.  “For not
asking.  For not throwing buckets of sympathy all over me.  For sharing.”

He squeezed her hand again, then
released it.  And said, “Better head off to bed, kiddo.  It’s getting late. 
Things will look better in the morning.  They always do.”

“Yeah,” she said.  “Of course.  They
always do.”

With her hands at ten and two on
the wheel and a prescription for prenatal vitamins tucked inside her purse, she
sat in the parking lot outside the doctor’s office, her heart nearly exploding
with joy.  A baby. 
A baby!
  Not just
a
baby, but more
importantly,
their
baby.  After more than a year of trying, the
indefatigable team of Fiore and MacKenzie had finally succeeded at their most
significant collaboration.  Sitting here in her car, mentally journeying back
through their years together, through everything they’d survived together,
everything they’d meant to each other, she was nearly overwhelmed by the
absolute rightness of this.

Pregnant.
  It explained so
much.  The exhaustion.  The random nausea.  The fluctuating emotions.  The
anxiety she’d experienced when he’d left her for those three weeks that had
turned into six.  The terror she’d felt when he returned and she realized how
far in love she’d fallen.  The tears she’d shed, she who never cried, because
he hadn’t been there sleeping beside her.  Even the sexual
aggressiveness—something so unlike her—could be blamed on pregnancy hormones.

She couldn’t believe she’d missed
the signs.  It wasn’t as though this was her first rodeo.  But she’d been dealing
with Rob’s absence and Paige’s presence, and she simply hadn’t been paying
attention to the calendar.  Hadn’t registered the significance of the rising
fatigue or the mild tenderness in her breasts.

Ten weeks along.  That was what
the doctor had told her.  Once she was able to stem the flow of joyful tears,
they’d had a brief but serious discussion about how much she and Rob wanted
this baby.  About the sobering fact that she’d be thirty-six by the time it was
born.  About how her first pregnancy, at twenty-two, had ended in a
miscarriage. 

About the statistics indicating
that scary things like miscarriages and birth defects were more likely with
older mothers.

Dr. Levasseur had been calm and
reassuring.  “Your second pregnancy was normal,” she’d said, “and there’s no
reason to think you won’t carry this baby to term.  Nowadays, thirty-six is not
considered old to be giving birth.  And you’re in the bloom of good health. 
Just look at you.  You have that glow!”

Now, sitting behind the wheel of
her car, Casey took a deep, cleansing breath.  Released it, and with that
exhalation, everything simply fell into place.  All the fear, all the confusion
of the past few months just melted away, replaced by a certainty she’d felt
this strongly only once before in her life:  at the age of eighteen, when she’d
walked away from Jesse to follow Danny Fiore to the moon and back.  She’d been
certain then, a certainty she’d felt clear to the marrow.  And she was certain
now.  This was exactly where she was supposed to be at this point in her life. 

Her time with Danny—and with
Katie—had been finite.  That season had been achingly bittersweet, but it was
over.  She’d moved on to a different season, with Rob and Paige and this new
life she carried inside her womb.  She couldn’t wait to tell him about the baby. 
He would be so excited.  They’d wanted this for so long. 
He’d
wanted
this for so long.  They’d been blessed with Paige, who had stormed into their
life and stolen their hearts, but this was different.  This was the two of
them, Casey and Rob, making a baby together.  Half of that child was his
genetic material, and half of it was hers, all stirred together to create
someone entirely new and breathtakingly perfect.

Any way you looked at it, this
was a miracle.

Both her other pregnancies had
initially brought confusion, dread, torn loyalties.  The first time around, at
twenty-two, she’d been on the pill.  The pregnancy hadn’t been planned.  But
she’d wanted that baby so much, in spite of knowing what Danny’s reaction would
be. Years earlier, they’d agreed to wait until the time was right, but the
timing couldn’t have been more wrong.  Their marriage was faltering, they were
living in that godawful roach-infested apartment in the Village, and they were
starving.  There’d been no way she could justify bringing a child into that
situation. 

So she’d made the brutally
painful decision to terminate the pregnancy.  She hadn’t even told Danny she
was pregnant.  It had been Rob, her dearest friend, who had grudgingly checked
around, found a doctor who did abortions, scheduled an appointment for her.  It
had been Rob who accompanied her to that appointment.  And it had been Rob,
with his no-nonsense Catholic upbringing, who’d taken her in his arms and
breathed a huge sigh of relief when she changed her mind because she couldn’t
go through with it.

And then nature, in its infinite
wisdom, had taken the decision out of her hands.

She’d grieved so much for that
lost baby, had grieved for years, right up until she became pregnant with Katie. 
With that second pregnancy, her loyalties shifted from her husband to her
unborn child.  She knew Danny had only agreed to having a baby because it was
what she wanted.  And she’d wondered, more than once during the course of that
pregnancy, how she would manage to give her child a normal upbringing in the
midst of the circus that was their life.  She had adored Katie from the moment
of conception, and had been determined that no matter what Danny did or said,
their child would be raised with immense love and care.

She should have known better than
to worry.  His daughter had been the center of Danny  Fiore’s world.  Life
certainly had its way of playing ironic little tricks.  When they lost Katie to
meningitis, it was Danny—he who hadn’t wanted a child in the first place—who
had lost himself for a time.  While Casey, in spite of battling unparalleled
grief over her loss, had somehow managed to find herself in the aftermath.

She took another cleansing
breath.  All that was behind her now.  The craziness, the drama, the tears, had
all been part of another life.  This time around, there was no confusion, no
dread.  Only joy and thrilling anticipation.  This child, this new little
green-eyed MacKenzie, would be wanted and adored by both its parents, as well as
by a vast extended family.

She would tell him tonight, in
their room, at bedtime, just the two of them.  Candles, soft music. 
Champagne?  No, sparkling cider.  She had a bottle in the pantry.  No more
tippling for her, not until after the baby came.  Her finest stemware, of
course.  Maybe she’d even wear the infamous dress, just so he could peel it off
her.  Because she had no doubt he’d peel it off.  She knew her husband to the
marrow.  Knew the MacKenzie school of thought regarding celebrations and nakedness.

How was it possible to love a man
this much?  She’d adored him for decades, but that love had evolved into
something so big she couldn’t have imagined it just a few short years ago.  It
hadn’t happened all at once.  Loving him like this had been a process.  An
evolution.  It had taken a year and then some of being his wife, of sleeping
beside him at night and facing each new day together, of exploring her
blossoming sexuality with him, to bring her to the place she stood now.  It was
a good place, the best place she’d ever been.  MacKenzie might not be the first
boy she’d kissed, but he would be the last. 

If they were fortunate, they’d
have the full sixty years he’d promised her on the day they wed.  It wouldn’t
be enough.  There would never be enough time.  But they’d gotten such a late
start on their forever that she knew better than to take it for granted.  Life
was too short, too unpredictable, to ever lose sight of how precious it was. 
Of how precious love was.  Whatever time they had together, she would cherish
each moment.

She inserted her key into the
ignition and started the car.  Just a half-hour left before dusk, and it was
starting to spit snow.  Rob would be looking for her soon.  She hadn’t told him
where she was going, and he had a tendency to worry.  She didn’t want to leave
him hanging.  But there was business to be taken care of.  Someplace she had to
go first, before she embarked on this next stage of her life.

***

She parked atop the hill, beneath
the towering elm, now shed of its leaves.  Here at the top of the world, it was
raw and blustery.  She left the car running—she wouldn’t be here long enough to
shut it off—pulled on her leather driving gloves and got out.  The snow that
had been just a flake here and there when she left town had now become a soft blanket
of white, and she picked her way cautiously over slippery ground to his grave.

While fluffy flakes of snow peppered
her face and swirled around her head, she studied that gravestone.  Then she
reached into her pocket, pulled out the cufflink, and leaned to set it on top
of the stone.

“I’m giving this back to you,”
she said.  “I have no idea how you managed this, or what message you were
trying to give me, but I can’t keep it, Danny.  I can’t accept gifts from you. 
I’m not your wife any longer.  It’s over, you and me.  I can’t do this to
myself anymore.  Or to Rob.  It’s killing him, and I won’t risk my marriage for
anybody.  Not even for you. 

“I made a mistake, taking you
back.  A mistake I’ll regret for the rest of my life, because if I’d made the
right choice, you’d still be alive.  It’s my fault that you’re dead, and the
guilt has been crushing me.  I loved you so much.  So very much, for so many
years.” 

Her voice softened.  “We really
had something special, didn’t we?  You were my magic man, my love, my life. 
And I’ll never, ever regret it.  Not even the bad parts.  You’ll always have a
place here—”  She touched her chest.  “—in my heart.  But our time ran out.  I
don’t think it was meant to last.  When I took you back that last time,
although I still loved you—I’ll always love you—I wasn’t in love with you any
more.  Not the way I once was.  Because by then, I’d fallen in love with Rob.”

She tucked her hands into her
pockets and hunched her shoulders against the bitter cold.  “But we’d been
married for so long, and you’d worked so hard to turn your life around, to
regain my trust.  I was so proud of you.  I did what I thought was the right
thing.  And you know what?  I can’t explain why, but those last months we had
together, even though I was in love with another man, those were good months. 
Some of the best of our marriage.  Until it all backfired on me, in a messy,
terrible, irrevocable way.  I was devastated when you died.  And so very sorry
for my part in it.  I hope you can forgive me.”  The wind whipped at her hair,
and she swept it back from her face.  “God knows, I’ve tried for four years to
forgive myself.”

It was snowing hard now, and she
needed to get home.  Rob would be worried.  Holding her hair away from her face,
she said, “I won’t be coming here for our little chats any more.  It feels too
much like cheating on my husband.  Marriage vows mean something to me, Danny. 
This ring I’m wearing—it means something to me.  Love and trust and fidelity.  He’s
my husband now.  He’s the one I owe that fidelity to.  I’ve moved on with my
life, with the man who’s my soul mate, and we’re starting a family together.  And
while I hope you’re happy for us, it really doesn’t matter, because I don’t
need your approval any more.” 

She stood there a moment longer,
snow falling all around, big flakes now, wet and splotchy and beautiful.  Said
to him, “This is my last goodbye.”

And turned and walked back to her
car.