I moved out of the house I shared with Leah and back into my condo. I paced the halls, I drank Scotch. I waited.
Waited for what? For her to come to me? For me to go to her?
I walked to my sock drawer — infamous protector of engagement rings and other mementos — and ran my fingers along the bottom. The minute my fingers found it, I felt a surge of something. I rubbed the pad of my thumb across the slightly green surface of the ‘kissing’ penny. I looked at it for a full minute, conjuring up images of the many times it had been traded for kisses. It was a trinket, a cheap trick that had once worked, but it had evolved into so much more than that.
I put on my sweats and went for a run. Running helped me think. I went over everything in my head as I turned toward the beach, dodging a little girl and her mother as they walked along hand in hand. I smiled. The little girl had long, black hair and startling blue eyes — she looked like Olivia. Was that what our daughter would have looked like? I stopped jogging and bent over, hands on knees. It didn’t have to be a ‘would have’ situation. We could still have our daughter. I slipped my hand in my pocket and pulled out the kissing penny. I started jogging to my car.
There was no time like the present. If Turner got in the way, I’d just toss him off the balcony.
I was one mile from Olivia’s condo when I got the call.
It was a number I didn’t recognize. I hit talk.
“Caleb Drake?”
“Yes?” My words were clipped. I made a left onto Ocean and pressed down on the gas.
“There’s been an … incident with your wife.”
“My wife?” God, what has she done now? I thought about the feud she was currently having with the neighbors about their dog and wondered if she’d done something stupid.
“My name is Doctor Letche, I’m calling from West Boca Medical Center. Mr. Drake, your wife was admitted here a few hours ago.”
I hit the brake, swung the wheel around until my tires made a screeching sound, and gunned the car in the opposite direction. An SUV swerved around me and laid on the horn.
“Is she all right?”
The doctor cleared his throat. “She swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills. Your housekeeper found her and dialed 911. She’s stable right now, but we’d like for you to come in.”
I stopped at a light and ran my hand through my hair. This was my fault. I knew she took the separation hard, but suicide. It didn’t even seem like her.
“Of course — I’m on my way.”
I hung up. I hung up and I punched the steering wheel. Some things were not meant to be.
When I arrived at the hospital, Leah was awake and asking for me. I walked into her room, and my heart stopped. She was lying propped up by pillows, her hair a rat's nest and her skin so pale it almost looked translucent. Her eyes were closed so I had a moment to rearrange my face before she saw me.
When I took a few steps into the room, she opened her eyes. As soon as she saw me, she started crying. I sat on the edge of her bed and she latched onto me, sobbing with such passion I could feel her tears soak through my shirt. I held her like that for a long time.
“Leah,” I said finally, pulling her from my chest and settling her back onto the pillows. “Why?”
Her face was slimy and red. Dark half–moons camped around her eyes. She looked away.
“You left me.”
Three words. I felt so much guilt I could barely swallow.
“Caleb, please come home. I’m pregnant.”
I closed my eyes.
No!
No!
no…
Chapter Thirty-Six
Present
I send Sam upstairs with Estella and wait for Caleb.
Flick
Flick
Flick
Things have to go my way tonight. He knocks instead of using a key. That’s a bad sign. When I open the door, his face is grim. He won’t look at me.
“Hello, Caleb,” I say.
He waits for me to invite him in and then heads upstairs to see Estella. I follow him to the nursery. Sam nods at him in greeting, and Caleb takes the baby from him. She smiles as soon as she sees him and shakes her fists. I feel a little jealous that he gets smiles so easily.
Caleb kisses both her cheeks and then under her chin, which makes her giggle. He repeats this again and again until she’s laughing so hard, both Sam and I smile.
“We should talk,” I say, standing in the doorway. I feel like an outsider when he’s in the room with Estella.
He nods without looking at me, makes her giggle one more time from his kisses, and hands her back to Sam. She immediately starts to cry.
I hear Sam say “Traitor” as we leave the room and head downstairs. Caleb looks once over his shoulder, as if he’s tempted to go back.
“You can see her after…” I say.
I had the kettle on before he got here; it is just starting to whistle as we walk into the kitchen. I set about making him tea while he sits on a barstool with his hands clasped in front of his mouth. The fact that his leg is bouncing is not lost on me. I dunk a tea bag into the mug of hot water and avoid his eyes. I am transferring the tea bag to the trash, when he says —
“You went to see Olivia?”
My hand freezes, tea drips on the tile and onto my pants.
“Yes.”
Now I know why his leg is bouncing.
“You forced me to do it.” I step on the lever that opens the trashcan and drop the tea bag in. I can feel his eyes on me.
He cocks his head. “You really believe that, don’t you?”
I don’t know what he’s talking about. I fiddle with my thumbnail.
“Did she call you?” That tattletale bitch, I think bitterly. And then in an almost panic — What else did she tell him?
“You had no right, Leah.”
“I had every right. You bought her a house!”
“That was before you,” he says calmly.
“And you never thought to tell me? Really? I am your wife! She came back when you had your amnesia and lied to you! You couldn’t tell me that you bought that woman a house?”
He looks away.
“It’s more complicated than that,” he says. “I was making plans with her.”
Complicated? Complicated seems like too good of a word for Olivia. I definitely don’t want to know about the plans he made with her, either. He needs to see the truth. I need to make him see the truth.
“I found out on my own, Caleb. How she lied to you when you had the amnesia.”
He cocks his eyebrow at me. Maybe if I tell him the truth, he will finally see how loyal I am, how much I love him. “I paid her to leave town. Did she tell you that during my trial? She was willing to sell you out for a couple hundred bucks.”
I once watched a natural dam break on television. I remember seeing a scenic picture of a river surrounded by trees. All of a sudden, the trees disappeared — sucked away by the collapse of the riverbank. A swell of angry water rushed around the corner, wiping out everything in its path. It was sudden, and it was violent.
I see the dam break in Caleb’s eyes.
Human eyes are the sign language of the brain. If you watch them carefully, you can see the truth played out, raw and unguarded. When you are the bastard child of a prostitute and you need to know what your adoptive parents are thinking, you learn how to read eyes. You can see a lie prod the truth, a hurt be swept into a cranial recess, happiness as a wide luminescent light. You can see the crushing of a soul beneath a terrible loss. What I see in Caleb’s eyes is a leftover hurt; hurt with mold growing on it. Hurt so profound that blood and tears and regret cannot possibly do it justice.