Treading Water (38 page)

“
Good morning. Did you
sleep well?” He kissed her cheek and set a dozen yellow roses in a
crystal vase on the table. Her dazzling blue eyes were filled with
life, the way he remembered them, and he was once again so grateful
to have her back. But when he thought about what he had to tell
her, his stomach ached and his heart raced.

“
The flowers are gorgeous.
You look exhausted. Didn’t you sleep?”

“
I’m fine. Have the doctors
been in yet?”

“
I talked to the
neurologist, but I couldn’t tell him much.” Her voice was already
stronger than it’d been the day before. “The psychiatrist will be
in later this morning to talk about the accident.”

“
What about
rehab?”

“
They’re arranging for me
to go to a facility here in the hospital to help me regain my
mobility. I’ll probably have to be there for quite a while, maybe
even six months. And it’s still possible I may never walk again.”
She looked down at her hands. “I’ll have to relearn everything,
from the simplest of tasks to the more complicated,” she continued.
“They said the physical therapy you made sure I got is the only
reason I have a chance to fully recover.”

“
They told me that at the
very beginning, so I always insisted you be cared for as if your
condition were temporary. I’m glad now that I did.”

“
You had hope, Jack. Even
in what must’ve seemed like a hopeless situation.”

“
Not always.” He dropped
into the chair by her bed. “I did for the first year. After that I
had to stop hoping. The girls were a mess. I was a mess. I had to
get back to taking care of them. I couldn’t rely on Frannie to fill
in for me anymore.”

“
I can’t imagine what it
was like for you.”

“
It was the worst thing
that’s ever happened to me, Clare. There’re no words to describe
how helpless I felt.” He’d felt almost as helpless the night before
watching Andi leave with Eric and his babies.

Clare tried to move her hand to take his.
“I’m sorry.”

He reached out to save her the trouble.
“Don’t be sorry. Nothing about this is your fault.”

“
Did you bring the
video?”

“
I did, but are you sure
you want to see it? It haunted me for months after I first saw it.
I’m not sure that showing it to you is the right thing to do. Maybe
we should ask the psychiatrist.”

“
I want to see it.
Please.”

He got up to put the disk into the DVD
player that was part of the hospital TV. After he turned it on, he
went back to Clare’s bedside and took her hand. The whole thing
happened quickly, but there was no denying she’d had time to get
out of the way.

“
Play it again.”

“
Clare—”

“
Please, I need to see it
again.”

Jack released her hand and got up to replay
it.

Her eyes were riveted to the screen until
the moment of impact when she was forced to look away. “Did I have
other injuries?” she asked in a small voice.

“
You broke your left arm
and leg, your liver was lacerated, and your spleen had to be
removed.”

“
I don’t understand. Why
didn’t I move?”

“
I don’t know, honey. I’ve
asked myself that question over and over again for three
years.”

“
What in the world was I
thinking? The girls must’ve been so traumatized.”

“
I got them into counseling
as soon as I saw the video. I felt so bad because I didn’t believe
them when they first told me how it happened.”

“
I don’t remember anything
about it. I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of a reason
why I’d do something so foolish.”

“
I’m sure you’ll remember
in time.” He took a deep breath, knowing he couldn’t put this off
any longer. “Listen, there’s…um…more I need to tell you—things I
don’t want you to hear from anyone else.”

“
What things?”

He struggled to find the words to tell her
about his life without her, the choices he’d made, and the other
woman he loved. “After I’d had you at home for a year, Frannie
talked to me. She helped me see that having you in the house in
that condition was hurting the girls, and me, too. The hospital
bed, the equipment, the nurses in and out. Our home was like a
hospital. We couldn’t go on any longer the way we were. So we moved
you to your own place. That was the lowest point for me. I felt
like I’d failed you so completely.” Battling the overwhelming
emotions that came with revisiting the darkest time in his life, he
glanced down at the floor.

“
Jack,” she said softly.
“You didn’t fail me.”

“
Frannie and Jamie helped
me so much, and I’m so grateful to them. I guess by helping me,
they found each other after all those years of being friends. In a
way, you can take some of the credit for them being
married.”

“
That’s something I still
can’t get over.”

“
Sometimes I still can’t
believe it myself, and I was there.” He smiled and forced himself
to continue. “I finally went back to work. I’d been gone fourteen
months by then. Can you imagine that?”

“
You never even wanted to
take two weeks at a time for a vacation.”

“
I proved I’m totally
dispensable.”

“
Did you feel better when
you went back to work?”

“
It was good to get back to
some sense of normalcy. We’d been hired to design and build an
Infinity hotel on Ocean Drive. I took over that project, and it
gave me something positive to focus on. Of course, I had the girls,
too, and they gave me a reason to get up and keep moving every
day.” He hesitated and must have looked pained, because she tuned
right into his dismay.

“
What is it?”

His heart beat frantically, and his hands
were suddenly damp. “The hotel project moved forward, and through
our work with Infinity, I met someone, Clare.”

“
What do you
mean?”

“
I met a woman in their
Chicago office, and we…I fell in love with her.”

Clare closed her eyes and sucked in a sharp
deep breath.

Jack had to force himself to press on. “I
hadn’t been dating or anything like that, so this wasn’t something
I was out there hoping to find. It found me, and I struggled with
it, believe me. Everyone was pushing me to get on with my life.
They told me I had to live, that you’d want me to be happy.”

“
This woman,” Clare said
haltingly.

“
Her name is
Andi.”

“
Do you still love
her?”

“
Yes.”

Clare turned away. “Where is she now?”

“
She and her son have lived
with us for more than a year.”

Her gaze whipped back
around to him. “In my house? You brought her into
my
house? The house you
built for
me
?”

He had to remind himself that to her it was
like five minutes had passed, not three years. “I thought about
moving when they came to live with us, but we didn’t think it would
be good for the girls to leave their home after they’d already lost
you. So we stayed there.”

“
Are we
divorced?”

“
No.” He held up the hand
where he still wore her ring. “It never crossed my mind, Clare. I
never would’ve done that. Ever.”

“
So my return from the
near-dead must not have been an entirely pleasant surprise for
you,” she said with a bitter edge to her voice.

“
That’s not true! I’m
thrilled to have you back, and the girls are, too. It’s what we’ve
wanted for three long years. But we had to stop spending every day
hoping it would happen so we could find a way to live without
you.”

“
Does she plan to continue
living in my house when I get home from the hospital?”

“
She left last
night.”

“
No wonder why you look so
devastated and exhausted,” she said in an accusatory
tone.

He couldn’t deny that, so he said
nothing.

“
Is there anything else the
rest of the world already knows?”

The look on his face must have told her
there was more—much more.

She gasped. “Do you have children with
her?”

“
Her son is important to
me. And we’re expecting twins in September.” He looked her in the
eye as he said it. He refused to be ashamed of his relationship
with Andi or of the children they were having together.

“
Please go.”

“
Clare…”

“
Please. Just leave me
alone.” She turned to look out the window.

“
We need to talk about
this.

“
Not today.”

Jack stood there for a long moment before he
turned and left the room.

Chapter 28

Frannie stepped off the elevator on the
seventh floor and found her brother in the waiting room, hunched
over, elbows on knees.

“
Jack? What’s
wrong?”

“
Hey, Fran.”

“
Why aren’t you in with
Clare?”

“
She asked me to
leave.”

She sat next to him. “Oh. You told her.”

“
I keep telling myself that
to her everything’s the same as it was three years ago. It’s like
time stopped for her. But it didn’t stop for us.”

“
Let me talk to her. Why
don’t you get out of here for a while? Mother and Dad are with the
twins, but they want to come in later to see Clare, so someone will
be here.”

“
The girls will be in after
school, too.”

“
You can spend some time
with Andi. How’s she coping?”

“
She left,” he said, still
unable to believe all that had happened.

“
Where’d she
go?”

“
To the hotel, for now
anyway.” He sighed. “She won’t see me, won’t take my
calls.”

“
Damn.”

“
My thoughts
exactly.”

“
What’ll you do
now?”

“
Go to work, I guess. I
don’t want to be at home without Andi, and I’m not welcome here
right now. I’ll come back later. Hopefully, Clare will cool
off.”

“
I’ll talk to her, and then
I’ll take a ride over to see Andi, just to make sure she’s
okay.”

He brightened. “Oh good. Thanks, Fran.”

“
Go on ahead. It’ll all
work out. Don’t worry.”

“
You have a lot more faith
than I do. It’s a goddamned mess, and I have no one to blame but
myself.”

She rested a hand on his arm. “Don’t do
this. You did the best you could every step of the way during this
whole thing. You never made promises you couldn’t keep to anyone,
especially not to Andi.”

“
I promised I’d never leave
her alone with the babies.”

“
And you won’t. Don’t drive
yourself crazy second-guessing every decision you’ve made over the
last three years. I know it seems awful right now, but you’ll
figure something out.”

“
I wish I could be as
optimistic.”

“
I’ll call you later.” She
kissed his cheek and pushed him toward the elevator.

As she walked into Clare’s room and saw that
her sister-in-law had been crying, Frannie wasn’t sure if she’d be
welcome, either. “Hi.”

“
Hey.”

“
I hear you’re having a
rough day.”

Clare shrugged and played with her fingers
but didn’t look at Frannie.

Frannie sat next to Clare’s bed. “Could I
tell you something? And will you listen to me as someone who loves
you?”

“
I guess.”

“
I’ve never seen anyone
suffer the way my brother did after your accident. There were times
when I feared he’d die of a broken heart. He was a wreck, for a
long, long time. Even after all the doctors told him there was
nothing they could do for you, he continued to hope. It was only
after he finally gave up hoping that he allowed himself to grieve
for you, and that’s when I worried we’d lose him, too.”

“
I get he’s a man with
needs, and three years is a long time, but did he have to bring her
to live in
my
house? With
my
children? What kind of woman moves into another woman’s home
and family like that?”

“
The loveliest kind of
woman,” Frannie said with a sigh. “She was nice to your girls,
cared for them as best she could, and never once tried to take your
place with them. She left everything in your home just as you had
it, except for the room she shared with Jack.”

“
That’s
my
room! I can see you love her, and
I suppose I’ll have to hear my own children tell me they love her,
too. You say she didn’t try to replace me with them, but she’s
probably managed to do a good job of it anyway.”

“
You’re way off, and you’re
being terribly unfair to Jack.”

“
Unfair to
Jack
? While I was lying
in a hospital bed, he was off starting a new life with someone
else, and
I’m
the
one being unfair?”