Unforgettable You (25 page)

We both call out our thanks as she closes the door behind her, and I take a look at my baby. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I’m just sorry for everything. That was so stupid of me . . .”

I take her chin in my hand and put a finger to her lips. “Stop it. We both got hurt. We both learned a lot of lessons. We accept them, deal with it, and go on. I love you and you love me. That’s all that matters.”

“Do you want me to get rid of the piercings? Because I will if you want. I’m not sure why I did them.”

I look at them and feel a clenching in my stomach. “That’s up to you. If you want to keep them, you can, but frankly, they just remind me of all of this and I want us to move forward.”

“Then consider them gone as soon as I can get somewhere to have the rings cut.” She stands to get dressed and weaves a little, then catches herself with a hand on the examining table. “Oh, god, I think I’m still a little hung over from that muscle relaxant.”

“Sit down. Let me help you.” She sits on the table and I help her get her panties on, then hook her bra, and help her with her jeans and her tee shirt. When all of that is done, she puts on her athletic shoes and I tie them for her.

“Thanks.” She slides down off the table and takes my arm. “I’m kind of lightheaded. Can we get something to eat?”

“We’ll go wherever you want to go.”

“Can we go to the German place?”

“If that’s what you want, we’re there.” When she’s paid her copay and gotten her prescription, we head to the car for lunch downtown. As we walk in the sunlight from the building to the car, I turn my face up to the sunshine and I can’t remember a more beautiful day.

Over lunch, I can’t help but ask her, “Do you remember what you said to me last night?”

“When?”

“When you were really out of it.”

Her face goes pink. “Oh, god, what did I say?”

I try not to laugh. “You said you loved me and wanted to marry me and have my babies. And that you wanted to do it right then. I assume you meant the marrying part, not the babies part, because they take a while.”

Now she’s flaming red, and it’s spreading from her face down her neck. “Oh, god, please tell me I didn’t say that.”

“What would be wrong with it if you did?” She doesn’t answer me. “You told me you need a ring. Is that what you want?”

“Steffen, I . . .”

“Look, I’m not trying to trap you with something you said under the influence. I just want to know if you meant any of it, that’s all.”

“Well, I mean, I was just . . .”

“Because if you didn’t, that’s okay. I mean, I’ll be disappointed, but that’s okay.”

“Wait.” Her jaw goes slack. “You mean that’s what
you
want?”

“More than anything.”

Her eyes go round. “You want to marry me? Really?”

She catches the scowl on my face. “Is that so hard to believe?”

“Wow.” Those baby blues are staring at me like I’ve just sprouted an ear out of my forehead. “Wow. Would you really want to?”

I purse my lips. “If I didn’t want to, I would’ve just made like you hadn’t said anything and hoped you wouldn’t remember. No, I’m not proposing. I would do that more formally. But I need to know if I need to be looking at jewelry, that’s all.”

“If you asked me, I would say yes.”

“Then there’s something you need to know.” She waits to see what I’m going to say. “My mom has terminal cancer. Her doctor has said probably about four months. I’m just asking because if we’re going to do anything like that, I’d like to do it while my mom is still around to be there.”

“In that case, you ask me anytime you want and I’ll say yes. And I don’t have to have any kind of fancy get-together, as long as the family and friends who want to be there can be.”

I close my eyes and try to pull myself together. I just got a fiancée. And I’m about to lose my mother. I really don’t know how to process all of this except that I know making these plans with Sheila is right. I finally manage to come out with, “Good.”

We eat in thoughtful silence for about five minutes and then she takes my hand. “Can I ask you a couple of things?”

I nod. “Sure. Anything.”

She thinks for a few seconds, then says, “Why weren’t you honest with me? About Adele, I mean?”

The sigh I let out is painful and long overdue. “At first, I forgot – I really did. We’d started building our relationship before Clint mentioned it and reminded me. Then I didn’t want to tell you because I hate talking about it. It’s been years and it still hurts. Frankly, if I’d been able to, I would’ve had the marriage annulled. I didn’t really consider us married after everything that happened. I wanted to finalize it and then tell you later when I’d had a chance to find a way to explain it all.” I drop my eyes to the tablecloth. “Because by most people’s standards, it’s inexplicable.”

One eyebrow shoots up. “You guys keep talking about the awful things Adele did. What were they? What did she do to you? I’d just like to know. I don’t want to accidentally do the same thing.”

I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and sigh it out. I knew this would come up sooner or later, and I should probably go ahead and get it out of the way. It makes me so sad to talk about it that I can barely breathe, but I need to do it. And there’s no delicate way to say it. “You could never ‘accidentally’ do what she did, Sheila. She tricked me into marrying her. She said she was pregnant, and she wasn’t, but I did care for her, so I just stayed in the relationship.”

Sheila grimaces. “Well, at least you were honorable.”

Then I cap it off with the rest of the story. “And while we were married, she had four abortions.”

Her brow shoots down into a deep “V.” “What?” I just nod. “First she tricked you by telling you she was pregnant so you’d marry her, and then she had four abortions? What the hell? Why on earth did she do that? I mean, did you want her to? Had you told her you never wanted kids?”

“No! I never said that to her, and I never knew about them. I don’t know why she did it. I guess she just didn’t want them. And when she showed up with Morris, that was like plunging in a knife and drawing it out, only to plunge it in again. She’d aborted four fetuses that I assumed were mine, and yet when she decides to not abort one, she runs away and doesn’t come back for all these years. And the kid she comes back with and tries to stick me with isn’t even mine. I have no idea what was going on in her head.”

“Oh my god, Steffen, now I see why you were so upset with her.”

“Yeah.” My fingers rub tight little circles on my temples because my head feels so tight that I think my brain’s going to explode just from talking about it all. “When I said I forgot about her, I think what I was trying to say was that it was all too painful for me to remember. I tried to block it out because it hurt so much. She dumped all of that delightful info on me and then disappeared the next week. And I had no idea when she left that she was pregnant. None.”

“Honey, I’m so sorry.” She takes my hand and holds it tight, and I want to just hug her to me and never let go. “Why do you think she came back?”

“She said because she found out that I was happy and she wanted to ruin it for me. I still don’t understand that, why she’d even care after all that time. Or why she’d hate me that much, for that matter. I was always good to her.”

“How long is she in for?”

I shake my head. “I think eighteen months. I’m not sure. It’s not a long time, but it’ll buy Clint time to sue for custody and win.” Our eyes meet and I say something I don’t want to say, but I have to. “I think I need to go to the detention facility and talk to her.” Sheila’s eyes question. “I have to at least go and try to make things right with her as far as my behavior was concerned. We were married for all those years and I never once told her that I loved her. That had to be a real personality-bending mindfuck for her, and I do regret that. I just feel the need to own up to my portion of the disaster.”

“I can appreciate that.” She looks around for the server, and I’m guessing she wants our check. “I need to go home. My head is splitting from that damn drug and I’m worn out. Why don’t you take me home and then go to the facility?”

I nod. “Like bad medicine – just swallow it down and get it over with. Yeah, I already took the day off from work and today’s as good a time as any.” Right now, clearing up anything left over before we start a life together is my number one goal.

“I
t’ll just take a few minutes and the guard will bring her in. You can go ahead and have a seat.”

“Thanks.” I sit down in a chair by the window. It’s a comfortable room, more like a den than a visitation room in a detention facility, cheerful even. There are pictures taped to the walls that I assume are drawings or pages torn from coloring books and sent in by inmates’ children. It’s a nice touch to an already nice room.

The door opens and as soon as she sees me, Adele glares at me from the corner of her eye. “What the hell are
you
doing here?”

Keeping my face passive and my voice calm, I give her a tiny smile. “I just came to talk to you, that’s all. I have some things I need to say to you.”

She sits down across from me warily, and I understand her hesitation. With no idea what I want, she probably thinks I want to blast her again. “What could you possibly want to say to me except to give me a hard time? Don’t you think I’ve got enough of that around here?” She just continues to stare at me, then drops her gaze to her hands in her lap.

“Adele.” She just sits there, eyes down. “Adele, please look at me.” Her eyes finally rotate upward, and I say, “I’m sorry.”

The glare she gives me is wild-eyed and she snorts out, “For what?”

“For all the years we were married and I never told you I loved you. And I did, you know.”

Now her eyes are sad, and it pains me to know I’m the reason. “No, I didn’t know. You never told me.”

“I know.” I move to sit beside her on the sofa, and she doesn’t make a move to get up and move away. “That was wrong of me. In my defense, I’d never told anyone that I loved them. When I was growing up, my dad made me believe that real men didn’t say that, so I just bit it back, even though I wanted to tell you, I really did.”

“You did?” I see her tremble slightly, and I know she’s wondering what I’m going to say next.

“Yes, I did. I did love you, and I wanted to tell you, I really did. But I just couldn’t.”

I can tell she doesn’t believe me. “So what changed?”

I close my eyes; it hurts to even think about it. “Losing Sheila. I had to really think about what had happened and my role in all of it. And then when you said that at my house that morning, about why you did what you did, I had to admit to myself that you were right. You needed to hear those three words, and I’d withheld them the whole time we were together. But please, can you tell me, why did you do what you did?”

“You mean with the abortions?” My heart breaks when I see that tear roll down her cheek.

“Yeah, why? I just don’t understand.”

“Because you didn’t love me. And I couldn’t have a child with someone who didn’t love me.”

Now I’m really confused. “But then why did you run away and have Morris when you found out you were pregnant again?”

“Because.” She takes a deep breath and lets out a long, harsh sigh. “Because I wanted a child so badly, and I decided that I’d be better off to raise it by myself than to raise it in a home with someone who didn’t love me, us.”

The ache of grief in my chest doubles. “But I still don’t understand. If that was the case, why did you come back?”

I’ve never seen a face as sad as hers when she answers me, her eyes lonely and haunted. “I’d been raising him alone all that time. I was tired and lonely and broke. I lost my job and I’d run out of money. I sold my house and I’d been spending what I had from it just to have a place to stay. I’m not sure what I thought would happen when I showed up here, but when I found out that you were seeing someone and you were happy, I was furious. I wanted it to be me, but I was so stuck that I just couldn’t even hope for any happiness. I wanted someone else to be as miserable as I was.” She looks back down at her lap. “I know what you think of me. I know you think I’m trash, that I’m a slut, but I don’t care. I like sex. And I like a lot of variety. But I never meant to hurt you, Steffen, honestly, I didn’t. But when you just wouldn’t, well, you know . . . oh, I’m so confused.” For reasons I can’t understand, the sound of her despair really gets to me. It may be the culmination of all of the things that have been and are going on with me, but I’m truly sad for her.

It’s quiet for a few minutes before I say, “Adele, I really am sorry. And I hope you get all of this worked out for your own good. I’m sorry you’ve been separated from Morris too, but you had to know what you were doing and weren’t doing for and with him was wrong.”

“I swear, Steffen, I didn’t know he was Clint’s.” I have a really hard time believing that. Then she adds, “He looks a lot like my father, so I thought he just favored after that part of the family.” Her dad’s face flashes in my mind and she’s right – Morris
does
look a good deal like her dad. I can definitely see how she’d think that.