Finding Home (3 page)

She
wasn't going to tell him.

As the weekend inched closer to reality, Stacey swore to herself that this time, she wasn't going to tell Brad that their anniversary was coming up. Wasn't going to spend her time dropping broad hints that even a cerebrally challenged person to whom English was a completely foreign language could pick up on. She'd done that once or twice before, but not this time. This time Brad was on his own when it came to remembering their anniversary.

She was still arguing with herself when Friday finally arrived, settled in and drifted into afternoon. The argument continued as she drove home that evening. She had a lot of time for it. MacArthur Boulevard had turned into a pricey parking lot with cars lodged nose to bumper.

A new element had entered her mental tug-of-war. The very real fear of disappointment. She'd given no hints, left no pictures of brides and grooms or wedding cakes. Left the ball entirely in Brad's court.

Can you stand the disappointment when he doesn't remember?

Given how preoccupied her husband seemed to be these days, there was more than a fifty-fifty chance that he would forget.

Fifty-fifty? Hell, she really was an optimist, wasn't she? The odds were more like five to ninety-five. That he would forget. Because their anniversary no longer meant anything to him. It was just something that came and went, like Arbor Day. A date on the calendar, but not something of any great consequence—except maybe to a nurseryman here and there who wanted to move a few trees and used the day as leverage.

Who remembered Arbor Day, anyway?

That wasn't fair, she argued, jockeying for position in the right-hand lane. Their anniversary meant something to Brad.

When he remembered.

Blowing out an exasperated breath, Stacey shook her head. It was catch-22 reasoning and she was going to wind up going in circles and getting a headache. A bigger one than the one she already had.

The opening in the right-hand lane disappeared. She resigned herself to remaining in her current lane. When the time came to turn off, she hoped she would be able to get over.

A song played on the radio, but it was only so much noise in the background. None of the words penetrated.

Kathy had called in this morning, saying that she and Ethan were taking off on a romantic weekend, thanks to her. A romantic weekend. She would have killed for a romantic weekend.

Why was it that she could give everyone else advice, see the way to solutions for other people, but when it came to her own life, everything became this horrible, tangled mess? It hadn't always been that way. Once upon a time, everything had been crystal clear, spread out before her like the waters beneath a glass-bottom boat. It had come to her almost like
an epiphany. She was going to marry Brad, have a couple of kids and be the best damn wife and mother ever created.

Unlike the women around her, she had no burning ambition to leave her mark on the world, to cure some dread disease, write the great American novel, have a rose named after her or break fresh, new ground. She wanted the old ground. She wanted home, hearth, husband, kids to love and to love her back. She'd never been ashamed or embarrassed by the fact that all her goals seemed so old-fashioned, so out of step with today's modern woman. Her mother had wanted more for her, but to her, this
was
more. Brad, Julie and Jim had been everything she'd ever wanted.

But somewhere along the line, she hadn't been allowed to enjoy being a wife and mother. Or rather, hadn't been allowed to enjoy just that part in her life. Because there were mouths to feed and Brad's loans to pay off, and they couldn't get by on what he was earning as a resident. So she'd left the kids with her mother and went back to work for a little while.

A “little while” stretched out until it became her life. Until she could hardly remember when she wasn't working. And when money was no longer of paramount importance—to everyone but Brad—she continued working because she liked the people, liked the contact. Liked having the patients talk to her, asking her for advice. She was, she supposed, a people person. A people person who liked helping others.

So why couldn't she help herself? she silently demanded again as she narrowly managed to get her car over in time to make the turn onto University Drive. Why couldn't she get the people she loved the most in the world to do what she needed them to do?

Her advice to Kathy had certainly gotten the desired results. And her assurances that Ethan really didn't want a divorce turned out to be right on the money as well. Ethan had been feeling a little neglected. The romantic dinner had been exactly the right move on Kathy's part.

Kathy had come into the office half an hour late the next morning, with a very goofy smile on her face and a dreamy look in her eyes. The latter remained in place all day and part of the next. And then she'd announced that they were going away together on a romantic weekend.

Her
romantic weekend, Stacey thought with more than a little tinge of envy. A little romance, just a little romance, that was all she wanted. No grand gestures, no protestations of undying love shouted from the top of the Eiffel Tower. He could murmur it from the sewer if he wanted to. Just something to let her know that she still mattered in Brad's world. That he didn't take absolutely everything she did for granted. That he didn't just notice her whenever she did something to irritate or displease him.

That sometimes he noticed her just to notice her.

Was that asking for too much?

Stacey blinked back the tears, calling herself an idiot. She was wasting time, feeling sorry for herself like this. Brad probably had something planned and she was going to feel like a fool for wallowing in self-pity like this.

The road opened up as she took the turn off. Stacey pressed down on the accelerator.

 

Ten more minutes found her home. In time to watch Jim pack the last of his belongings into the trunk of his car. Stacey
suddenly realized that the loneliness that threatened to explode inside of her had only intensified.

Julie was already out on her own, living off campus in student housing that the UCLA Medical School helped subsidize. She didn't want Jim to leave, too. Because that would leave her alone in the house. Alone, waiting for Brad to come home. And even when he would come home, somehow, having the kids gone would just make the growing separation between the two of them that much more prominent.

There was a time when she cherished being alone with Brad. But now, just thinking about that, thinking about coming face-to-face with the fact that they had nothing to say to each other, was filling her with a sense of dread.

Damn, where were all these negative feelings coming from?

She didn't want to be one of those women who had to be medicated with three different colored pills just to face the day. She was made of stronger stuff than that. Stacey couldn't shake the uneasiness. She tried denial. And didn't get very far. Only as far as Jim's car as she helped him carry a box of his things.

“You know, this isn't really practical,” she told him, easing the box into the fold-down space he'd created in the rear of his vehicle. “You only have that part-time job of yours.” Dusting her hands off, she leaned against the side of the car. “How are you going to manage paying for everything?”

Jim gave her a mysterious look. “I can always sell my body.” And when he saw the horror on her face, he ran his hands up and down her arms, as if to reassure her. “I'm kidding, Mom. I'm kidding.” He dropped his hands to his sides. “I'm a musician. I'm supposed to starve.”

She laughed shortly. “Said the boy who has never lived more than fifty feet away from a fully stocked refrigerator.”

He took offense instantly. “Man, Mom. I'm a man.”

“Sorry.” She held her hands up in mute surrender. “Said the man who has never lived more than fifty feet—”

“I get it, Mom, I get it,” he said sharply, cutting her off. He tried again, lowering his voice and doing his best to sound civil. “Look, maybe a little deprivation will be good for me. Make me appreciate you more.” As if to drive his point home, Jim paused and kissed the top of her head.

She could feel a lump rising in her throat, but she refused to give in to it. If she cried, Jim would just think she was trying to manipulate him, which she wasn't. She just wanted him to stay. Wanted time to stop moving ahead. To at least freeze in place if it couldn't go back and retrieve the better moments of her life.

Stacey forced a smile to her lips. “You might even get to appreciate your father.”

“I might,” he agreed, nodding his head slowly. “Right after they outfit penguins with ice skates so they can skate over hell.”

Stacey opened her mouth and then shut it again. She wasn't going to get sucked into another argument. Not on her son's last day at home.

She tried again. “So, am I allowed to know where my son's going to be living?” When he said nothing in response, she added, “Or is it a state secret?”

He paused, leaning his lanky body against the side of the vehicle, his eyes on hers. His expression was completely sober. “It's on a need-to-know basis.”

She gave him that look that had him confessing pilfering
candy from the supermarket when he was six. It could still put him on the straight and narrow if he let it. “I
need
to know.”

He let go of the pretense and laughed. “Just kidding, Mom. I'm going to be in L.A. Pete Michaels's roommate moved out—”

The address brought a chill to her mother's heart. There were places in the middle of a war zone that were safer. “Are you sure he moved out and he's not some chalk outline on the sidewalk?”

Jim frowned, his expression telling her to back off. “This is a safe area, Mom.”

“Nothing is safe these days.” But she knew that there was no arguing him out of it, unless it were strictly his idea. Sometimes she wished she were versed in post-hypnotic suggestions. “By the way, I had a microchip implanted behind your ear while you were sleeping. It's a tracking device.” And then she laughed, banking down the urge to tousle his hair the way she used to. “Don't worry, I'm not that neurotic.”

He looked at her knowingly. “We both know that if you could have, you would have. You've got to stop worrying, Mom.” Jim made little effort to hide his irritation.

“You show me where it says that in the Mom's Handbook, and I will.” She sighed. “Sorry, it's a package deal. You give birth and you worry. Can't have one without the other.”

Jim's mouth curved. “I thought Sinatra said that was love and marriage.”

“That, too,” she agreed. She walked him to the front of the car and watched as he got in behind the steering wheel. “So, no fooling around until after you're married.”

His grin was nothing short of wicked. “Too late.”

Stacey sighed. “I was afraid of that.” He started the car. She fought the urge to pull him out and throw her arms around him. “You'll be careful?”

He nodded. “I won't play in traffic unless I absolutely have to.”

“And you'll come for dinner?”

“How about I meet you for lunch every so often?” he countered.

She took what she could get. “Deal—but I'm not giving up on dinners.”

He grinned, pulling out of the driveway. “You wouldn't be Mom if you did.”

Stacey stood and watched until there was nothing left of the car to see. And then she stood there a little longer.

The walk back into the house was a long one.

Stacey
lifted the glass lid from the serving dish filled with the beef stroganoff she'd made earlier. Warmth wafted up, following the curved lid like a vaporous shadow. The condensation inside reminded her of tears. Or maybe it was just her mood.

With a sigh, she replaced the lid. At least something was working right. She'd bought the warming tray years ago in a naive effort to attempt to keep Brad's dinners fresh when he didn't get home in time. Back then, it had been the insane hours he'd kept as a resident that were responsible for his coming in hours after he was supposed to. Once he'd gotten his certification in his chosen field of neurology, she'd assumed that the tray could go into storage.

Really naive, Stace.

Although residency was long in the past, unfortunately, late evenings were not.

She fidgeted, debating whether or not to take off the long, dangling earrings she wore. The ones that went with the little black dress she also had on. Her black high-heeled pumps had come off more than half an hour ago. It seemed that every week, something unexpected would come up. Something that wound up keeping Brad from coming home.
She knew his lateness was legitimate. But legitimate or not, that didn't mean she still couldn't be jealous. And she was. Jealous of his practice. Jealous of the patients who took him away from her during the hours when he should be hers.

Stacey closed her eyes and sighed, wishing that Brad had gotten a nine-to-five job like so many of the people who'd graduated college with them. But then he wouldn't have been Brad. Wouldn't have been the man she'd fallen in love with.

Was he now?

There were times when she caught herself looking at him over the breakfast table, wondering who this man with Brad's face was. Those were the times when she felt he was almost a stranger. A stranger she knew so little about. A stranger who somehow managed to keep her at arm's length, away from his innermost thoughts.

She was making a mountain out of a grain of sand. Brad was dedicated, that's all. Dedicated to a fault. He really enjoyed being a doctor, enjoyed making a difference in the lives of the people who came to him, looking to be helped. A sad smile twisted her lips as she stared at the flame of the candle that was closest to her on the dining room table. Too bad Brad didn't enjoy making a difference in hers.

She glanced over toward the telephone on the hutch. Because Brad always worried about missing a call and misplaced his cell phone like clockwork, there was a phone in every room of the house. Except for someone who'd wanted to clean her rugs, all the phones in the house had conspiratorially remained silent. There'd been no call from Brad, saying he was going to be late. It was rare that he remembered to call about being late these days. Most of the time, he forgot
or took it for granted that she would instinctively know that one of his patients needed him.

Took for granted.

There was a lot of that going around, Stacey thought ruefully, pushing back from the table where she'd sat for the past hour, hoping for a miracle. Hoping for her husband to walk through the door, sweep her into his arms and murmur “Happy anniversary.”

Stacey bit her lower lip. Damn it, she wasn't going to cry, she wasn't. After twenty-six years, why should this hurt?

Because it did.

She didn't even want a gift. All she wanted from Brad was to have him remember that this day was supposed to be special. To both of them, not just her. And she wanted him to give her a card. Cards meant someone had taken the time to stop the routine of their day and think of her. She would have settled for one created with crayons and construction paper, as long as Brad had been the one creating.

“You're selling yourself cheap again.”

The words echoed in her head. Words her late mother had said to her more than once whenever she gave in, or met Brad ninety-five percent of the way.

But her mother didn't know what it was like to love a man with all your heart, love him so much that it ached inside. Her mother and father had had a pleasant-enough marriage, one unmarred by demonstrations of anger. One also unmarred by demonstrations of affection. There were no highs, no lows in her parents' union, just a marriage that flatlined the duration of its life.

She couldn't complain about that. Her mouth curved as
she remembered what it was like when she and Brad had first fallen in love. When they couldn't keep their hands off each other. She'd had highs. Oh, God, she'd had highs. And it was the memory of those highs that had sustained her all these years. Sustained her through the unbearable loneliness that had leaked in now and then.

With a sigh, Stacey rose in her seat and leaned over the table. She blew out first one candle, then the other. And just as she did on her birthday, amid much teasing from Brad and the kids, she made a wish. She made the same wish twice, once for each candle.

But the door didn't open.

 

Brad eased the door open softly. Then, just as softly, he pushed it back into the doorjamb, taking care not to make noise in case Stacey had gone to bed. He didn't want to take a chance on the door slipping out of his hand and slamming, waking her up.

His wife had been looking a little tired lately. He worried about her, although he hadn't had the occasion to say anything to her. Which was just as well, he supposed. Stacey saw herself as some kind of superwoman. Superwomen didn't like to be reminded that kryptonite existed in the world they inhabited. Stacey took pride in being able to juggle all the balls without dropping a single one.

He didn't know how she did it. Nothing short of pure magic, he mused.

As he crossed to the staircase, he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. Rosie trotted up to greet him. Probably roused herself from a dead sleep. The dog was
getting on in years, and when she wasn't chasing away the visiting neighborhood cat, she dozed.

There was a time when he would go out in the wee hours of the morning and run with her, but a bum knee and lack of time had changed all that. He missed those quiet hours. Missed a lot about his life. Sometimes he felt as if he had no control over anything anymore.

Just the tiredness talking, Brad.

He paused to rub the dog's fur with both hands, savoring the tranquillity of the act.

“How're you doing, girl?” he asked affectionately. “Chase any cats away today?”

“No. And I'm doing better than my mistress,” Stacey said as she crossed to him from the living room. She was using the high-pitched voice she always used when she pretended to be the dog answering him.

Surprised, Brad turned around to look at her. He was even more surprised to see that instead of jeans or shorts, she wore a dress. The little black one he always liked on her. It fit a little more snugly than usual and he wondered if he should point that out to her. But she'd only get defensive, so he decided against it.

“Stacey.” He stopped petting Rosie. “I thought you'd be in bed.”

“It's just nine. Even Cinderella got to stay up past midnight.”

“Why are you all dressed up like that?” he asked.

“I thought you were going to come home early.”

She didn't even have to say anything else. A certain look came into her eyes, a look that made him feel guilty. And angry with her for making him feel that way. He wasn't up to
it tonight. He felt more drained than a tank of gasoline at the end of a NASCAR meet.

“I was,” he replied evenly. “But I got a call from the hospital just as I was leaving the office. There was a car accident three miles from the hospital and they were rushing the survivor into emergency surgery.”

There was no emotion in her voice as she said, “And they needed you.”

Why did she make that sound like a bad thing? She was happy enough to be the wife of a surgeon and to have the lifestyle that came with it. Didn't she realize that it came with a price?

“They wouldn't have called if they didn't,” he replied evenly.

She wasn't going to start a fight tonight, she wasn't. So instead, she tried to sound sympathetic. Because she really was. She knew how hard he worked. Did he know how hard she waited? “Wasn't there any other neurosurgeon they could have called?”

His eyes met hers and held for a long moment. “I didn't ask.”

She sighed. “No, you wouldn't have.” Instead, he'd ridden to the rescue. And she was proud of him, but she just wanted her fair share of him.

Life's not fair, Stacey.

She could hear Kathy's voice in her head, but she just didn't want to believe it. Didn't want to be forced to believe it.

Brad looked at her, puzzled. Concerned. “Stacey, what's wrong? You know that this is what I do—”

She stopped him, wanting to get her two cents in before he got rolling and there was no space for any of her words. Or her.

“I know that you're a doctor. A surgeon. A damn fine
surgeon,” she amended. “But I know other doctors, other surgeons, some even almost as good as you—”

“Stacey—”

“And I talk to their wives,” she went on, raising her voice to drown out his. “They go on vacations. Together. They have nights out. Together. And some of the time, they even take a break from saving the world. Together.”

“Stacey, what's wrong?” he repeated. And then, almost as if his eyes were programmed to take in the sight right at this moment, he glanced toward the dining room. And saw the set table, saw the flower arrangement in the center, saw the fancy tablecloth with the dormant tapered candles.

“Did I forget something?” It was a rhetorical question. She never set the table like that unless it was for a special occasion. “What did I forget?” he asked. Then, because she said nothing, he tried to figure it out on his own. “Not your birthday. Your birthday's in July and this is August.” And then his eyes widened as his own words sank in. “This is August.” A huge neon sign went off in his head. “I forgot our anniversary, didn't I?”

She pressed her lips together. “Looks like.”

Damn it, he'd never forgotten the day before. But then, he thought, she'd always left him enough hints before the day came along. Why hadn't she hinted this year? “Today's our anniversary.”

She looked at him impassively. “For another two hours and forty-two minutes.”

He took hold of both her arms and drew her into his, folding them around her. “Oh, God, Stacey, I'm sorry.”

She closed her eyes and pretended that all the years hadn't
happened. Pretended, just for a second, that they were still living in that one-room furnished apartment where they kept tripping over their own shadows. The Brad she'd loved then would have never forgotten. The Brad who'd lived in that apartment with her had brought her a cupcake because it was all they could afford, stuck a single candle into it and wished her happy anniversary.

“Yes,” she murmured, “I know you are.”