The Miles Between Us (6 page)

“I failed you,” she
said. “I’m so sorry that I failed you.”

She’d failed not just Katie, but those three unborn babies as well
. She pictured them now, lined up like dominoes, those sweet, tender souls that she’d somehow managed to fail in the most horrible of ways. Maybe those lost babies were the penance she had to pay for letting Katie die. Because her daughter’s death had been her fault. What kind of mother would go off on a business trip, three thousand miles from home, and leave her five-year-old daughter in the care of her father? Certainly, Danny had loved Katie as much as she had. Losing her had nearly destroyed their marriage. But he’d been consumed by his career, so Casey was the one who’d nursed their daughter through ear infections and chicken pox and scarlet fever. While Danny was off playing rock star, she had breastfed Katie, potty-trained her, taught her to tie her shoes and drink from a straw. She had a mother’s instincts, an intuition that Danny lacked. It wasn’t his fault, what had happened. If she’d been home where she belonged, instead of in New York with Rob, being wined and dined by a big Broadway producer, she would have rushed her daughter to the hospital hours earlier. Early enough to save her.

But she hadn’t been home where she belonged
. The one time in her life when she’d put her own career ahead of her daughter, the one time when Katie needed her most, she’d been in New York, celebrating a new business partnership with filet mignon and champagne. Because she hadn’t been there to recognize the signs, she and Danny had lost their daughter. And the guilt was crushing.

It was why she was overprotective
of Emma. She knew she was, and so did Rob. The fact that he’d never called her on it was testament to his love and understanding. But the truth was there, hovering in the air between them, like a firefly that briefly flared, then disappeared in the darkness. She tried to temper it. She didn’t want Emmy growing up in a bubble. That was no way to raise a child. But sometimes it was hard, especially when she kept flashing back to all the mistakes she’d made with Katie.

She tried to imagine what
Katie would look like now. She’d be thirteen years old, and undoubtedly a head-turner, for she’d taken her looks from Danny. Would she still have the same sunny disposition, her smooth surface buffeted by the occasional storm cloud? Or would she be dark and angsty, a drama queen, like Paige had been when she first came to them?

It was pointless to speculate
. The past couldn’t be changed. Katie was lost to her, and she’d accepted that truth eight years ago. That was the only way she’d managed to survive. With the stoicism that was bred into her, she’d said her good-byes and moved on, deliberately ignoring the bad and focusing on the good: Rob, love of her life; Paige, daughter of her heart; and Emma. Beautiful, sweet Emma. She focused all her energies on the little girl who needed her now, and had closed the door on the one who needed her no longer.

So why had
this miscarriage unlocked all that negative energy and sent it swirling around her like a miniature tornado?

She’d managed so well all these years
. Sometimes a week or two would go by when she wouldn’t even think about Katie. And then something—a little girl’s laughter, a snippet of song on the radio—would bring back a rush of memory so strong it sent her reeling. But she always recovered. Always managed to hold herself together. What else could she do? Life went on, no matter how much something might hurt. It was a truth she’d learned at the age of fifteen, when she lost her mother, and everything in her life had changed. You kept on going. You raised your chin, threw back your shoulders, and put one foot in front of the other. You continued moving. Because standing still was the worst thing you could do. If you stood still, the demons might catch up to you.

And nobody
wanted the demons to catch up.

* * *

When she got home, Rob was on the porch swing, feet propped on the railing, bony ankles crossed, the swing moving with glorious indolence. His gaze followed her as she approached the house. She paused to deadhead a wilted marigold in the flower bed that lined the walkway, then climbed the steps and crossed the porch to him.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.” She sat beside him and drew her legs up under her. He raised an arm and she scooted closer to his side, her cheek cushioned against his bicep. He pressed a kiss to the back of her head and said, “Feeling better?”

She ran a finger down the soft flesh of his inner arm, elbow to wrist
. “I went to visit Katie.”

“Oh
,” he said, his tone rife with meaning.

“I’m sorry I was
snotty to you.”

“
I have broad shoulders. You’ve just been through hell. And your hormones are all messed up. Give it a little time. Things will eventually settle down, and you’ll start to feel more like yourself.”

“I need to see Emma
. Come with me?”

Hand in hand, they climbed the stairs to Emma’s bedroom, where the shades were drawn against the bright
midday sun. Still holding hands, they stood by the side of their daughter’s crib and watched her breathing. Her features softened by sleep, Emma lay on her stomach, arms flung haphazardly, her knees bent, her round little rump pointing heavenward.

“We did this,”
Casey said, leaning her head against his shoulder. “We made her. You and I.”

He wrapped
his arm around her and said, “We did.”

“It still takes my breath away
. The miracle of life. The fact that she’s half you and half me. Don’t you think that’s amazing?”

“I do
. I look at her and I see you. Then she changes expression, and I see me. She looks like Paige, and my sister Meg. Then I look at a picture of your mother, and I see a resemblance yet again.”

“She’s the
amazing, ultimate expression of the love I feel for you.”

He
lowered his head and, his breath warm on her ear, kissed her temple. “You worry about her, don’t you?”

“I can’t help it
. After so many losses…I’m not the same person I used to be. I’ve learned, through experience, just how cruel life can be.” In her sleep, Emma grimaced, those pink rosebud lips drawing together in an expression of distaste. Casey gently brushed her knuckles across her daughter’s cheek, and Emma flinched. “You understand, don’t you? Why I need another baby? Why I’m so unwilling to quit?”

“I’m trying, babe
. I’m trying to understand.”

“It’s the miracle.
It’s that inexpressibly sweet baby scent that I draw into my lungs, that hot rush of love when I see her smile. That fierce and primal protectiveness that means I’d kill anyone who tried to do harm to her. It’s looking into her face and seeing you looking back. It’s watching the two of you, walking hand in hand through my flower garden, picking a fistful to bring to me. It’s an addiction, like heroin. I need that feeling, that overwhelming, incomparable feeling of love that I can’t get any other place. And for some inexplicable reason, I need it over and over again. Which is why I can’t give up. I can’t stop trying.”

He pulled her closer, and she pressed her cheek to his chest, where his heart beat strong and steady
. “We’ll talk about it again,” he said, “when the time’s ready. But for now…you’ll come to New York with me?”

She closed her eyes,
exulted in his warmth, his tenderness. And let out a sigh. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll come to New York with you.”

PART II
: THE MILES

Casey

New York City
, the Big Apple, the city that never sleeps, was a loud, congested, smog-filled kaleidoscope. Five years had passed since the last time she visited this city she’d once called home, and although time had wrought changes, some things never changed. Yellow taxis still whizzed past slower vehicles, missing them by inches. City buses still lumbered along from stop to stop, spewing exhaust in their wake. Impatient motorists still honked at other drivers a half-second after the light turned green. Panhandlers still stood on corners, and discarded candy bar wrappers still littered the gutters. What was that French saying?
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. That perfectly described New York, where the players might come and go, but the energy level never faltered.

She’d always loved that energy,
had thrived on it, but for some inexplicable reason, this time around, it drained her. The city felt hostile, suffocating. Every time she stepped outside, she was surrounded by people in a hurry. Rude, pushy people who looked right through her as they shoved past, intent on their own agendas and oblivious to the fact that she stood there, a living, breathing human just like them. They gave off high-stress vibes that left her jittery and unsettled and desperate to go back indoors, where none of this madness could touch her.

Being
Casey, she stubbornly refused to let the anxiety control her. Instead, she forced herself to go out, even though her insides were screaming at her to hide in a safe, comforting place. While Rob spent long hours in the studio, she and the girls visited Macy’s, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty. They explored Times Square, Central Park, the Museum of Modern Art. One rainy afternoon, she took them to see a matinee performance of
Cats
. Another day, they ate lunch in the dining room at the Hotel Montpelier, where she and Danny had once worked, so long ago that she could barely remember being that young.

She spent
a morning with Rob in the studio, but her heart wasn’t in it. The music didn’t feel the same. She didn’t understand the stuff teenagers were listening to these days. As far as she was concerned, Phoenix Hightower’s music was little more than canned, electronic noise. She knew Rob felt the same way, but he was being paid well to produce, and that kind of money went a long way toward tolerance. Paige, on the other hand, was slightly star-struck at the prospect of meeting the pop idol. It made sense that the girl was deep into the current music scene. This was her era. She would be a high school senior in a few weeks. Someday, she would look back fondly on the music from this decade and wonder why her own kids listened to such awful stuff. It was the way of the world, the passing of the torch, the circle of life. Casey was a dinosaur, a throwback to an earlier time when pop music made sense, both lyrically and melodically, to her ears. So she packed up Emmy, left Paige there with her father and Phoenix, and returned to the apartment.

Peace
. Quiet, blissful peace. Three days into their stay, Rob had managed to find them a furnished sublet just a few blocks from the studio, on the sixth floor of a 1930s-era Art Deco building with an elevator and a doorman and broad casement windows that, after dark, transformed a mundane view of Midtown into something wondrous. If it had been just the two of them, the hotel would have sufficed, but it was too much to expect the girls to be happy cooped up in a hotel for a month or more. This two-bedroom apartment, furnished right down to the towels and silver, was a perfect temporary home for their family. All they had to do was bring in a crib, a high chair, and their clothes, and,
voilà! Chez
MacKenzie.

She put Emma down for a nap, then ran herself a bubble bath
. The tub wasn’t as big or as comfortable as the one at home, but it was deep, the water was hot, and the bubbles were satisfying. Best of all, she didn’t have to interact with anyone, didn’t have to think or feel. Here, in the hot, sudsy water, alone in the bathroom of her sixth-floor apartment while Emma slept in the next room, all she had to do was breathe in and breathe out, and let the frantic world rush by six stories below.

She closed her eyes and sank deeper into the bubbles
. Rubbed her temple, wondering where this staggering exhaustion had come from. Last night, Rob had told her she was pushing too hard. “Remember what the doctor said?” he’d scolded. “You need to give yourself time to recuperate.”

He was probably right
. Since they’d arrived in Manhattan, she’d barely given herself time to breathe, let alone recuperate. It would probably behoove her to slow down, but idleness didn’t sit well with her. She needed to be busy, needed to be doing something, needed to feel useful. Didn’t want to be dependent on anyone else. But this exhaustion was so complete, she wasn’t sure she had the energy to drag herself out of the tub.

The miscarriage certainly could—and probably did—account for the exhaustion. But not for the lethargy
. Not for the ennui, or the apathy. She was a woman of strong convictions. Never, in thirty-seven years, had she felt indecisive about anything. If you asked for her opinion about something, she always had one. Always cared deeply, one way or another.

But this was something entirely outside her frame of reference
. Yes, she’d carted the girls all over Manhattan. She’d done it because she felt it was what a good mother should do. Show them the sights, broaden their horizons, give them some nice memories while teaching them something. That was why she’d done it. That, and the fact that it filled up space and time in a way that sitting around the apartment, watching television, would never do. But she’d derived no joy from it. Her emotional investment in the edification of her daughter and stepdaughter was roughly equivalent to that of a paid tour guide.

In other words, she simply didn’t give a damn.

And that was so not like her.

* * *

Fifteen years ago, when they were both still wet behind the ears, Rob had taught her to play the guitar. None of that fancy fingering like he played; he was a musical genius, and she wasn’t a performer. She didn’t need to know how to make an electric guitar cry or sing. She just needed to know how to play a few chords to accompany the melodies that lived inside her brain. For her, the guitar was a compositional tool. So Rob had taught her, on his old, third-hand acoustic, how to play C and G and D
7
and E minor. Basic stuff, and just in case what was inside her head included a note or two not covered by those basic chords, he taught her how to turn a simple chord into an augmented or diminished. That was adequate for her needs, just enough knowledge so that if there was no piano available, she would always have access to an instrument on which to try out her new tunes.

So while he and Paige were in the studio and Emma was sleeping, Casey took his Gibson from its case, along with a few pieces of manuscript paper and a couple of stubby pencils—she didn’t think Rob had sharpened a pencil ever in his life—and she sat down to capture some of the music that had been playing in her head ever since the miscarriage.

To her surprise, the music flowed like a bubbling spring. But it was nothing like the songs she’d written in the past. This new work was dark and disturbing, rich and deep and discordant. Somehow, she’d tapped into some dark place she never knew existed inside her, and she was helpless to stop until the flow either bled out or stanched.

At some point, Emma awoke
. Casey took her to the potty, called the deli down the block and ordered a plate of their special home-style spaghetti. After the delivery boy left, they enjoyed some cuddle time while Emma ate, then Casey parked her in front of the TV and kept on writing.

When Rob
and Paige came home, she was asleep on the couch, Emma in her lap and a half-dozen new songs scattered about the room. “Hey,” Rob said, taking his sleeping daughter in his arms. “Looks like somebody’s been busy.”

Casey stretched and yawned
. “Did you eat?”

“We had pizza brought in
. What about you?”

“Emma ate
. I’m not hungry.”

“You
need to eat something. Want me to grill you a cheese sandwich?”

“I’m fine
. I’ll eat a big breakfast in the morning to make up for it.”

He carried Emma into the
bedroom she shared with Paige. Casey closed her eyes, listening to the soft murmur of conversation between Rob and his oldest daughter. He came back alone, gathered up the scattered sheets of music, and sat beside her on the couch. Slumped on his tailbone, he propped his feet on the coffee table. Brow wrinkled in concentration, he studied the music she’d written.

Wh
en he was done, he met her eyes. And said, “Wow.”

“
I know. It’s dark.”

“It’s brilliant.”

“I’d hardly call it brilliant.”

“
Are you kidding? You dug deep, babe. I’m impressed. Scared, but impressed.”

“Scared
? Why on earth? It’s just music.”

“It’s music like I’ve never seen from you before
. It’s like Carole King meets Stephen King.”

“That’s where my head is at these days. Do you have a problem with that?”

“I’m not criticizing. I’m just…wow.”

Later
, in the darkness of their bedroom, he drew her to him and kissed her shoulder, worked his way to her collarbone. When she failed to respond, he said, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing
. Nothing’s wrong.”

The silence from his side of the bed was dense and heavy
. He rolled away from her, and a moment later, the bedside lamp came on. “What?” she said.

“You aren’t yourself
at all. What’s going on?”

“I’m tired.
” She plumped her pillow. “I just had a miscarriage. I almost bled to death. You’re the one who told me I needed to slow down.”

“I told you to slow down
. I didn’t tell you to freeze every time I touch you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Is it me? Have I done something to offend you? Are you mad because I dragged you to New York with me?”

She let out a long-suffering sigh and rolled toward him
. “I am not mad at you,” she said. “I have a lot going on inside my head. None of it is related to you, except in the most peripheral of ways. I just need you to give me some space.”

He
squared his jaw. “When are you seeing Doctor Deb?”

“Wednesday
. I’ll fly home in the morning, see her, then fly back in the afternoon. You and Paige will have to take care of Emma while I’m gone.”

“Are you sure you’re up to it
? Flying home and back in the same day? Isn’t there somebody you could see right here in Manhattan?”

“I know her
. I trust her. She knows me. Why would I want to go to the trouble of finding another doctor when we’ll only be here for a few weeks? Deb’s my doctor. She’s the one who should be doing my follow-up exam.”

Those soft green eyes studied her speculatively before he reached out, turned the light back off, and drew her into his arms
. They lay together in the darkness, both of them thinking thoughts they didn’t choose to share. “You know,” he said, “all I did was kiss you. I wasn’t trying to hump you like a dog in heat.”

“You paint such lovely, romantic word pictures.”

“Oh, shut up. We’ve been through this before. I know enough not to try anything until you have the go-ahead from your doctor.”

“Sexually frustrated, are you
, Flash?”

“Stop playing games
. I’m serious. I’m worried about you. You’ve been distracted lately. Distant. Depressed. Not yourself at all.”

“I’m not depressed
. But the miscarriage hit me hard. I don’t know why. I just need you to be patient with me while I try to work it all out in my head. Can you do that?”

“Of course I can do that
. But promise me that when you see Deb, you’ll talk to her about what’s going on with you. Because you’re starting to scare me.”

“You worry too much
. You worry about things that aren’t real. Phantoms. This is one of those phantom things.”

“It looks pretty damn real
from where I’m standing.”

“That’s the nature of phantoms
. They masquerade as the real thing, but they’re made of sea smoke and half-remembered dreams. Far too insubstantial to be real.”

“Why is it I don’t feel better about that?”

“I love you, Flash. You know I do. But this is something you can’t help me through. I have to do it on my own.”

He sulked
. Even in the dark, she could tell that he was sulking. The vibrations sloughing off him were clear and vivid. “Just don’t pull any further away from me,” he said. “Don’t disappear. Because I need you. You’re my true north. And you’re not the only one who has to deal with this.”

She
reached out in the darkness and touched a hand to his cheek, brushed her knuckles along the line of his jaw. His skin was warm, the soft bristle of whiskers satisfying. “Sometimes,” she said, “I feel as though I’m seeing the world through the wrong end of a looking glass. Everything that should look familiar seems small and distant. Distorted. It’s very disconcerting.”