Sleeping in Eden (48 page)

The woman beside him had gotten what she wanted, but it came at a cost. So had Dylan. So had Meg. They had all paid for wanting what they didn't have and for going to any length to get it. Was it narcissistic to take what hadn't been given? Was it unpardonably selfish to expect things that had never been promised? How could people account for their carelessness? Their hasty decisions and wild impulses born out of thinly veiled self-interest?

Suddenly, with the snow falling and his house framed in a glowing globe of early winter peace, everything was thrust into sharp perspective for Lucas. The air outside was cold and draped with points of snow like accumulating evidence of all the things he had overlooked. Dylan and Meg and Angela weren't the only ones who had paid dearly for wanting what they didn't have, who had forfeited the happiness they could have known for the sake of hollow dreams they couldn't. So had he. This wasn't about Jim Sparks or a crumpled, forgotten body in a wasted barn. It wasn't even about uncovering the truth.

“It's snowing,” Angela said.

“I know,” Lucas choked out. He was so anxious to flee the car, he felt stifled, claustrophobic. Desperate to find Jenna.

If Angela noticed his impatience, she didn't seem to notice. She said slowly, as if she was trying to measure his response, “I'm leaving.”

“Okay.”

“Right now.”

Lucas didn't try to talk her out of it, though he guessed she wanted him to. He didn't try to stop her. The decision was hers to make and for once in his life he was going to forget about doing the right thing and focus on doing what he needed to do. For himself. For Jenna.

Angela's bag was packed in ten minutes, her things hastily thrown in with no regard for the mess she would have to deal with when she got back to California. It was as if she couldn't get away from Blackhawk fast enough, and though Lucas didn't blame her—in fact, he couldn't wait for her to go—he held on to the hope that it wouldn't always be this way. That they would meet again, under different circumstances, and the good of what they had shared would outweigh the bad. He wanted to wake Jenna and share the moment with her, to point out the possibility with the same anticipation that made his heart rise at the sight of snow.

But Angela didn't want to say good-bye to Jenna.

“Just give her a hug for me,” the young woman said, huddling in the chill of the entryway.

“You don't want me to wake her?”

“It's almost five o'clock in the morning. You never wake someone at such an ungodly hour unless it's important.”

“Saying good-bye isn't important?” Lucas questioned, half hoping she'd change her mind and half wishing that she wouldn't.

Angela forced a smile, and already there was the faintest trace of humor there. Of warmth. She wouldn't be cold forever. “Jenna's important to me,” she said. “But don't wake her. Tell her I love her. Tell her I'll call her soon.”

“We'll see each other again,” Lucas finished for her. She didn't argue.

For some unexplored reason, Lucas felt brave, and he strode purposefully toward Angela and pulled her into his arms. It was a brotherly hug, laced with the shelter of a father and the solidarity of a friend. He could be a bit of all three to Angela, and although they had endured their share of relational confusion, he determined that tonight was a fresh start. A chance to step back to the place they should have always been.

“Take care of yourself, okay?”

“I will,” she whispered against his chest.

He watched her get into her car and pull away, wondering where she would drive. Back to Sioux Falls to catch an early-morning flight? To Omaha and the place where Meg had stepped into a truck instead of onto a plane? Or maybe she would follow the path that Dylan and Meg had hoped to take: through the Black Hills and Yellowstone and the canyons of Nevada. A honeymoon of sorts turned into a requiem. Whichever way she decided to wander, he hoped it would take her where she needed to go.

Lucas's own journey consisted of climbing a few stairs, but the distance seemed much greater.

The door to the attic was closed, and in all the time that Jenna had been sleeping there, Lucas had respected her privacy and never once opened it. Now, with his palm cold on the handle, he felt a thrill of anticipation. He was storming the tower for her, breaking all their unspoken rules to lay his soul before her. And there was no guarantee that she wouldn't walk away.

Jenna was curled up in the double bed, tucked in a fetal position that took up exactly half of the mattress. Lucas instinctively knew that the other half was for him, but it seemed that there was no welcome in the space she saved, only habit born of routine and preserved through practice. But for once he didn't feel sorry for himself. He simply crossed the expanse of hardwood floor between them and slipped out of his clothes,
tracing with his gaze the outline of his wife as she lay beneath the sheet in the soft glow of light from the window.

Crawling in beside her, breaking all the unwritten rules of their so-called separation, Lucas slid across the bed until he was cocooned around her. He buried his face in her hair and draped his hand across her narrow abdomen. For some reason he could never understand, she hated to have him touch her bare stomach, but this morning he didn't care. He curled his fingers beneath the curve of her waist and pulled her tight against him, enveloping her as if he longed to take her in, to make her a part of himself.

Jenna was awake and he knew it.

“Did you do it?” she asked into the darkness, abandoning any attempt at subterfuge.

Lucas kissed the back of her head through a tangle of dark hair. She didn't flinch or pull away. “Do what?”

“Have an affair with Angela?”

“No.”

“Did you want to?”

“Did you want me to?”

Jenna made a noise of disgust and tried to pry his hand from her waist. But Lucas refused to let go. He wove his legs through hers and held on for all he was worth.

“I did not have an affair with Angela,” he told her, his mouth close to her ear. “I did not want to have an affair with Angela. But I think you wanted me to.”

“That's ridiculous.”

“I think you wanted me to do something terrible so that you would have an excuse to finally leave.”

Jenna breathed slowly in and out, in and out.

He considered her silence an invitation to continue. “We grew apart every day, a little more and a little more, until suddenly we woke up one morning, strangers in bed . . . I don't know you anymore.”

“I don't know you,” she echoed.

“Why?”

Lucas meant the question to be rhetorical; he didn't expect her to answer. It hung in the space between them, covering the long history of all they had been through and obscuring it beneath a blanket of regret. Did it matter why?

But apparently it mattered to Jenna. “We lost our baby,” she told him, replying to his muttered inquiry with a sob that told him just how close her pain still was. How real.

“I'm so sorry,” he whispered, holding her tighter, willing her to cry. “I'm so, so sorry.”

“Don't you miss her at all?”

“Of course I do.”

“Doesn't it kill you?”

“Yes.”

“No, it doesn't,” she sputtered. “You have no idea what I've been through, how much it hurts. It feels like I was the only one in this marriage to lose a baby.” Jenna tried to wriggle out of his grasp, but he refused to loosen his hold on her. After struggling for a few moments, yanking desperately at the iron of his hands, she gave up and gave in to gut-wrenching sobs, the likes of which he hadn't heard for years. It was as if everything she had bottled up since they put Audrey's tiny casket in the ground was all at once bubbling to the surface. He rocked her as she wept.

“I haven't been there for you,” he murmured against her neck. “I didn't give you what you needed. I wanted you to get over it, to move on, to start again. I wanted to fix you.”

“You want to fix everything.” She sniffed, wiping the back of her hand against her eyes, her nose.

“You used to like that about me.”

“Until you started trying to fix
me
.”

“I just wanted things to go back to the way they had been.”

“Everything changes, Lucas. Audrey changed me. Angela changed me. I can't be the person I was when you married me.”

“I know.”

“No,” she told him. “I don't think you get that at all.”

They lay there in silence for a few moments, Jenna's quiet whimpers creating an undertone of loss in their dark room and
Lucas's heart keeping pace with the furious racing of his battered mind. He knew what he wanted, but he didn't know how to get there from here.

“What did happen? Where were you last night?” Jenna finally asked, still wiping tears, though her voice had a characteristic edge.

“I stole a ring,” he confessed, starting at the beginning.

“Excuse me?”

“Remember the body? The woman in the floor of the barn?”

“Of course.”

“I found her ring in the barn. And I took it.”

Jenna gave a little gasp and wiggled around to face him. This time, he let her go. “You did what? That's a crime, Lucas. A felony . . . I don't know. But you stole, you tampered . . .”

“I know.”

“Why?”

“I couldn't have articulated this at the time, but I think I took it because I wanted to make it right. I was failing us, but this seemed like something I could do. I could take what was broken and make it new.”

“I can't believe you did that.”

“I know.” And then, with his wife facing him in the dim light of a newly snowy world, he began to tell her everything.

Jenna listened willingly enough, and Lucas thrilled to the intimacy of sharing his story with her. At some point he reached out to touch the line of her slender arm with his fingers, and when she didn't pull away, he felt a rush of affection fill his chest. Maybe there was hope for them after all.

Lucas's story faded as the world began to slowly fill with morning light. The snow was still falling, Lucas could tell by the accumulation that continued to deepen on the outside window ledge. He loved the sight of all that white, the sky turning dove-gray with clouds that seemed a comfort. And his heart leaped and stumbled as his wife regarded him across their rumpled bed.

“I don't know what you want me to say,” she admitted finally, holding his gaze.

“You don't have to say anything.”

“I have to say something. One of us does. You crawled into my bed after months of avoiding it. And now you've just told me that your life for the past few weeks has been a lie.”

“I'm sorry.”

But she didn't seem angry. “You've already said that.”

“I know.”

Jenna stared at him hard, and he tried to fill his eyes with every hope and longing that he had secreted away in the years that came between them. He wanted her. He always had. All he needed was to hear her say it, too.

“What do you want?” he asked, his heart thick and suffocating at the back of his throat.

She sighed and closed her eyes. “I don't know. But I don't think your little story is enough to make everything okay. This isn't a fairy tale, Lucas. I'm no princess.”

He didn't know what made him do it, but he leaned over and kissed each of her eyelids in turn. Then her forehead, her nose, her cheeks. Her mouth. Just once. A sweet, soft kiss. “Yes, you are,” he said.

Jenna smiled a little, a thin, sad smile that accused Lucas of being naive. Foolish. He didn't care.

“I love you,” he told her.

She didn't say it back, but she didn't leave either. Lucas knew that it was a start. Nothing more. It didn't erase all they had been through or negate the hard work that they would have to do to get back to the place they had been. But it was something. It was real. And in that moment, with light on their shoulders in a blessing of a new day, it was everything he wanted.

It was a beginning.

L
ucas stepped out of the car into a bright, spring morning edged with cool. Behind the cobwebbed veil of lifting fog, everything had sharp edges, winter-hardened corners, biting lines. But today was another start, a softening of the world that had seemed chiseled from ice for months on end. Lucas lifted his face toward the sun. It slanted between high bursts of clouds like dollops of whipped cream and filtered lower through ground-clinging mist in wisps of pulled cotton. It was a promise of more to come.

Leaving the car door open, Lucas stretched, spreading his arms overhead to loosen stiff muscles that rebelled against the early-morning, two-hour drive. Though the spring sunrise was a balm, his heart twisted at the sight of a loose knot of people near the top of a tree-lined hill. They marked his destination, and though he had imagined himself ready to face what awaited him there, he wasn't so sure anymore.