Reconciled for Easter (6 page)

He wrapped an arm around her. “I know. I did too.” He sighed. “Shit, I drank too much.”

“Is the room spinning for you?”

“Nope.”

She huffed. “Party-pooper.” Then, when a wave of dizziness hit her, she said, “Oh.”

“Tell me if you’re gonna be sick.”

“Nope.” She grinned up at him, pleased that she’d thought of such a witty retort.

“Nope—you won’t tell me? Or nope—you won’t be sick?”

“Nope, won’t tell you and won’t be sick,” she said with more confidence than was entirely warranted.

With an uneven laugh, Thomas tightened his arm.

Abigail sighed, rubbing her cheek against his shirt. “You feel nice.”

“You think so?”

“I do. I’ve always loved how you feel.”

“You feel nice too.” He tilted his head down and nuzzled her hair.

She didn’t see anything wrong with that. She felt like nuzzling too. So she nuzzled his shirt, since it was the only thing she could reach in her present position. “I do?”

“Mm hmm,” he murmured, blowing her hair with his breath. “Soft and warm and...”

“And what?”

“Abigail-like.”

That sounded perfectly reasonable to her so she smiled against his shirt.

She turned a little, vaguely looking toward his face, although she couldn’t really focus on it. “You okay?”

“I’m good.”

“Good,” she sighed. Her head still spinning, she nestled against him and closed her eyes.

The world went dark before she could process anything else.

***

When Abigail woke up, her head pounded, and her mouth felt like it was filled with foul-tasting cotton.

She edged her eyes open just slightly and smacked her lips a few times. “Oh God,” she groaned, as she realized how bad she felt.

With some effort, she managed to sit up, although her head hurt so much she squeezed her forehead with one hand. She looked down at herself to find she still wore her yoga pants and tank top from last night.

And suddenly she knew why. A flood of knowledge hit her like a wave.

“Oh God,” she groaned again, as the previous night came back to her.

“That bad?”

She gasped at the male voice from her doorway. Thomas stood, fully dressed and relatively presentable in the clothes he’d worn last night. He must have already showered since he looked fully awake. There were dark circles under his eyes, however. He held two glasses of water.

She reached out for one as she tried to think of something to say. A glance beside her revealed that the other side of the bed had been slept in. Her eyes shot over to Thomas. “What...what happened?”

He sat cautiously on the edge of the bed beside her. “You don’t remember?”

“I remember…Oh no, fumbling around on the couch, groping and…Oh no!” Blazing with mortification, she fell back in the bed again. “Is that all we did?”

“Yes. That’s all.”

“Did I pass out?”

“I think you just fell asleep. I carried you to bed.”

Abigail looked over at the opposite side of her bed. “You slept over?”

Thomas’s face was very still, very careful. “I did. I wasn’t in any shape to go home. I hope that’s all right.”

“Yeah. Of course.” She rubbed her face and groaned a little more. Then she found the initiative to sit up again and drink some water.

“I’m making coffee,” Thomas told her, his eyes scanning her face closely.

“Thanks.”

She groaned, remembering how shamelessly she’d been pawing at him last night. “I can’t believe I did that. I’ll never live this down.”

Her father had always been impatient of any sort of weakness, any sort of foolishness. He’d believed human nature needed to be rigorously kept under control. She no longer believed the same things her father had about that, but it was hard to kick the feeling of never being good enough.

Of shame. At being weak. At being foolish. At doing things a good girl would never do.

“I’m the only other person who was there,” Thomas said softly.

That was true. There was a kind of safety in that, in only his knowing her foolishness. More than once during their marriage, Thomas had left her feeling not-good-enough too, but he wasn’t acting like that now. He didn’t look like he was judging her, resenting her.

He’d changed. She had too.

This wasn’t the end of the world.

She smiled at him shakily. “Thank you.”

“For what?” He looked genuinely confused.

“For stopping us. I appreciate it. I remember enough to know what happened.”

“I’m sorry I let it go as far as it did.” He rubbed a hand over his face.

“Well, if truth be told, you were a little buzzed too.” Before he could object or reply, she added, “Okay. No big deal really. We drank too much. These things happen.”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” She groaned one more time as it felt like someone was taking a hammer to her head. “Shoot, it’s after eight. Mia. I’ve got to go get her.”

“Let me drive you,” Thomas said. Before she could object, he said, “I’ve got to get to the hospital anyway, and you’re in no shape to drive this morning. I’ll drop you all back and then head to work.”

“Thanks,” she said, holding onto her head but feeling another wave of appreciation for Thomas’s consideration. He’d never been particularly romantic, but he’d always seemed to think of little things and take care of them for her. “Did you say there was coffee?”

***

Abigail relaxed against the passenger seat of Thomas’s car.

Her headache had eased some, and now she just felt bone tired and kind of achy about last night.

She wished she hadn’t been so silly, but it wasn’t as bad as it felt. It was embarrassing. And it would have been nice if it had never happened.

But it seemed like it wasn’t going to change the positive progress that had happened between them.

They still had a few months before they had to jump back into all the struggle and angst of really working on their marriage. If things kept going the way they were, maybe both of them would have grown and changed enough for them to finally settle everything that was wrong.

Praying silently over their marriage, Abigail sipped her coffee and looked out the window. They were stopped at a red light, about to turn onto the highway, which was the closest way to get to the other side of town, where Thomas’s parents lived.

The light turned green and Thomas started off.

An unspecified noise caused Abigail to look across the intersection. She stared in a blurred haze at an approaching vehicle.

A vehicle approaching way too fast.

Her final thought was that the pick-up truck would never be able to stop in time to brake for the red light.

The pick-up didn’t stop at all.

It just crashed into the passenger side of Thomas’s car, in a deafening impact of noise, metal, and glass.

Please be okay, please be okay, please be okay.

She heard the words, the vaguely familiar voice, coming out of the darkness.

And then somehow she was saying them, knocking on the door to Thomas’s study, a small finished porch off the back of their rented house in Durham. It was only seven months after they’d gotten married, and she was muttering under her breath, “Please be okay, please be okay with it.”

She was so nervous her hands were shaking, but she steeled her will and knocked louder when her first faint tap got no response.

He’d been at the hospital for nearly twenty hours straight, and he’d gone right to his study when he got home.

She understood that his surgical residency program was high stress and incredibly hard work, even more so now than it had been when she’d first met him, but it felt like days went by without her ever seeing him. And she hated the feeling of being afraid to interrupt her own husband.

Her father had been that way. He’d be reading the Bible or doing devotions, and she and her mom were never allowed to bother him.

She’d sworn her own family wasn’t going to be like that.

But here she was. Knocking on the closed door. Absolutely terrified.

When he called out a monosyllabic response, she opened the door and stuck her head in. “Hey. Do you have a minute?”

Thomas looked up at her from the book he was pouring over and smiled. He looked tired and a little distracted, and stress was evident in his eyes, in the lines on his forehead.

When they’d first gotten married, she’d been determined to help him really relax when he was home, but she’d given up on that fairytale eventually. He simply wouldn’t relax.

“Hi,” he said, leaning back in his chair and rubbing a hand over his brown hair. “Is everything all right?”

“Yeah. I just needed to talk to you for a few minutes.”

“Sure.” Thomas glanced back at his book. “Give me five minutes and I’ll be done in here.”

Abigail let out her held breath and ducked out of the study. Restless and anxious, she paced the hall and then wandered into the one bathroom in the two bedroom house.

There, she picked up the plastic stick from the home pregnancy kit she’d been staring at for the last hour. “Please be okay, please be okay, please be okay with it,” she murmured, closing her eyes as a new wave of fear washed over her.

They hadn’t been married for very long. She was still working on her Master’s, and Thomas wasn’t anywhere close to finishing his residency. They’d talked about kids before they got married and agreed they would wait until they were settled.

This wasn’t supposed to have happened.

She was praying silently, desperately, her eyes closed, when she heard his voice in the hall and came out to meet him, holding the little stick behind her back.

“Are you all right?” Thomas asked, eyeing her with a quiet scrutiny that was very familiar. “You look a little shaky.”

Sometimes she wondered what he was thinking, what secret flaws and failures he thought he would find, when he peered at her with such intent observation.

“I’m all right.” Her voice cracked on the last word.

His brows drew together, and he glanced back at the bathroom. “Are you sick again? If you are, I’m calling the doctor. No arguments this time. You shouldn’t have gone to class or Bible study this week.”

“I enjoy Bible study.” She’d only begun a new women’s Bible study a month ago, but she felt closer to God than she ever had before, for the first time understanding how grace meant she didn’t always have to try to be good enough. The study felt like a revelation to her, and she didn’t want to miss a single week. “And I have to go to class if I want to pass.”

“Yeah, but you don’t really need to pass, do you? It’s just something you’re doing to kill time, so what does it matter? If you’re sick, then you should stay home and get better.”

She started to object. She’d started the degree primarily for something to do outside her mostly empty home, but she’d begun to enjoy her coursework and was invested now in the degree—something he should know since she’d told him all about it quite often this semester—so it bothered her that he kept referring to it like a hobby that had no real significance.

But this was hardly the time to get into an argument.

“I’m not sick,” she said instead, taking a breath and steeling her will again. “But I will need to see a doctor.”

She handed him the plastic stick with a slightly trembling hand.

Thomas took the stick and stared down at it. He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just appeared frozen for a long time. For far too long.

Abigail gulped over the lump in her throat. “The little plus means yes.”

“Wha—?” Finally breaking out of his stupor, Thomas cut off the word and shook his head hard. “I don’t—”

“I’ve been good about the birth control,” she said in a rush, with a surge of fear that he’d assume she’d done it on purpose. “I must just be in that small percentage that gets pregnant anyway.”

Thomas opened his mouth but no sound came out. His gaze shifted from the stick to Abigail’s face.

“I know we didn’t plan this,” Abigail said, her voice breaking a few times. She put a hand on her belly. “But...our baby. Are you...are you okay?”

He walked into the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed abruptly. “Yes. Yes, of course, I’m okay. I’m just surprised.”

Abigail hugged her arms to her middle, following him and shaking even more now than before. “Are you sure?” she whispered. “I know we were going to wait until you were done your residency and everything, but I want you to be happy.”

“Of course, I’m happy,” Thomas said, his voice soothing now and natural. He held out his arms. “Come here, baby. Of course, I’m happy.”

She went to him, let him gather her into his lap, hold her in a tight embrace, and murmur out reassurances.

After a few minutes, her shaking stopped. And soon they were able to talk about it, make plans for the future.

Abigail didn’t leave the security of Thomas’s arms for a long time, but she also didn’t look too deeply into his eyes.

She was too afraid of what she might see there.

***

Please be okay. Please be okay. Please be okay.

Like before, she heard the voice through the darkness until it morphed into words she was saying herself as she once again knocked on the door to Thomas’s study in Durham. This time, four years had gone by, but she was once again muttering under her breath, “Please be okay, please be okay with it.”

She didn’t hear a response, but she didn’t wait for one. She just opened the door. It was a room in her house. She was allowed to enter without permission.

Thomas blinked up at her from the book he’d been pouring over. He still spent most of his downtime from the hospital studying. “What?”

“I wanted to talk to you, if that’s allowed.” Her tone might have been a little snippy, but she was so, so tired of waiting for spare moments to talk to her own husband. Over the years, it had just gotten worse.

“About what?”

“I was looking around at jobs,” she began, going into her prepared speech.

“For me?” he interrupted.

She stiffened in annoyance. “For
me
.”

This seemed to get his attention. He put down his book and straightened his shoulders. “Why are you looking for a job?”

“Why shouldn’t I look for a job? I’ve got two Master’s degrees now, and I’ve done exactly nothing with them. Why shouldn’t I look around and see if there’s something I’d be good at, work that could make me happy.”

Something went cold on his face. She saw it happen the way she’d seen it happen dozens of times before—whenever she tried to talk to him about how she’d changed, matured, grown out of the insecure girl he had married. “We don’t know where we’ll be next year.”

“I know that, but it can’t hurt to look around. There aren’t that many jobs I can do that use my degrees.” She cleared her throat, her heart dropping heavily as she saw nothing of kindness or understanding in his expression. “It’s not like I have to work, but I don’t see why I shouldn’t look around, just in case it works out. Anyway, I found this. It looks perfect for us.”

She handed him the job ad she’d printed off and had been praying over for a week now.

He accepted the wrinkled page on the open position at Milbourne House in the mountains of North Carolina and stared down at it for far longer than it would take him to read.

Finally, she couldn’t stand it any longer. “That’s near Willow Park,” she said.

“I see that.” He still hadn’t looked up from the page.

“We always talked about moving back to that area, since your family is there and everything, so I noticed it right away. You could easily get a job at a hospital nearby, so I thought it might be worth…worth looking into. Just to consider.”

He wasn’t happy. She could tell he wasn’t happy from the lines of his face, the posture of his shoulders, the tension in the air.

He wasn’t happy at all.

“What about Mia?” he asked, finally looking up to meet her eyes.

“What
about
Mia?”

“You’re planning to take this job and just leave her—”

“I’m thinking of getting a job—not abandoning our child on the street. Why shouldn’t I considering getting a job I’d be good at, one I’d enjoy?” She felt sick and put a hand on her belly. She was angry and terrified and hurt and betrayed and uncertain, the conflicting feelings all tightening into a hard knot.

“Of course, you can consider getting a job,” Thomas said at last, the tension on his face relaxing but not into anything like peace or acceptance. It was that cool, superior irony she disliked more than any of his other expressions. “You know perfectly well I’m okay with that. But it seems like the priority should be our family—and not some fantasy job to fulfill your own personal dreams. So maybe you should just hold off and see where we end up, and then start looking for a job that works out with our whole situation.”

She stared at him, experiencing a hot and familiar wave of shame. He thought she was being selfish—thinking of herself at the expense of their family. And maybe he was right.

She’d spent most of her life assuming she wouldn’t work outside of the home. It was the lifestyle she’d been raised to believe was the only one appropriate for women. She’d started changing after she’d first joined that Bible study, and she no longer believed what she used to. But maybe she’d taken it too far. Maybe she had somehow become selfish. She knew so many women who prayed for the day they could stay at home with their children. And here she was…

“Okay?” Thomas prompted, with a lift of his eyebrows.

She nodded, swallowing hard, feeling the way she always had as a child when her father gave her a sermon, telling her how God expected her to be a better girl. She picked up the paper and crumpled it with her hand. She murmured, “Okay. That makes sense.”

***

Abigail, wake up. Abigail, baby, wake up.

The voice was coming out of the darkness again, and this time it was paired with a soft shake of her shoulder. “Abigail, wake up.”

Four months had passed since that conversation in the study about the job, and Thomas was now trying to wake her up.

Abigail groaned reluctantly, attempting to turn away from the intrusive presence.

“I’m sorry, Abigail, but you need to wake up.” The grip on her shoulder tightened slightly and the shaking grew more forceful.

“Too early,” she mumbled, trying to keep her eyes closed.

“I know it’s early, but I have to leave.”

And that jarred away the last remnants of sleep. Her eyes popped open, and she was confronted with a vision of Thomas—fully dressed in a suit and tie—sitting on the edge of their bed and looking down at her. “What?
What
?”

“My plane leaves in a couple of hours.”

“But,” she croaked, forcing her foggy mind to work. “I thought you weren’t going.”

“I said I’d think about it. But it’s too good an opportunity not to consider. I’m not saying I’ll take it, but I have to at least give it a chance. It would make my entire career.”

Of course, it would. Thomas was brilliant, and he had almost completed his residency program at Duke. Hospitals and medical groups were falling all over themselves to get him. But this particular opportunity meant moving halfway across the country and taking a high-stress job that guaranteed she and Mia would hardly ever see him.

“But we were going to stay in North Carolina.” Abigail was becoming more and more aware of what was happening now, and a heavy weight of dread started sinking in her gut. “It was all working out. Being close to our families, a low-stress position for you so you could be around more, the job for me...”

She’d applied for the job at Milbourne House after all, a few weeks after she’d agreed to wait and see, since the position was closing and she would have lost her chance completely. She’d talked to Thomas about it, and he hadn’t looked happy but he hadn’t objected.