“Erica, please cut out the bullshit psychobabble. I can’t listen to it now.”
That made a lump swell in my throat. Jake almost never cursed, certainly not at me. He was more depressed than I’d realized.
“I have to go out there,” he muttered.
“You what?”
“I need to go home for my mother’s funeral.”
“Jake, she’s gone and nothing is going to change that. Going to her funeral isn’t going to help her. It’s just going to drag you back to a place you hate and bring back painful memories.”
“I’d rather have the painful memories than whitewash the past.”
“You’re so busy at work,” I pointed out. “They need you at the clinic. You can’t just leave them in the lurch.”
“Why? Because some starlet wouldn’t get her boob job? Or maybe some spoiled teenager wouldn’t get her bumpy nose fixed?”
“You’re picking ridiculous examples. You know you do wonderful work. Important work. Think of all the little kids you’ve helped.” Jake occasionally spent his weekends performing surgery, for free, on poor kids from the inner city whose parents could never have afforded to fix their cleft palates and other disfigurements.
He rubbed his temples. “It’s not enough.”
“Look, let’s make a donation in your mother’s honor. I was looking online, and there’s this one association that focuses on heart attack and stroke prevention for women.”
Jake stared at me for what felt like a very long time. “How did you know my mother died of a heart attack?”
“Oh, I…” I felt terrible for not telling him about the sheriff’s call sooner. But when he’d come home, he’d already known that his mother was dead, and he’d disappeared into his den before I’d had the chance to say anything. “The sheriff who found her called here, right before you came in. I was going to call you, but then I was thinking I should tell you in person, and then you came home and you already knew…”
He put his hand up. “I don’t want to hear it. Just leave me alone.”
I swallowed hard and backed out of the room. “Let me know if you need anything,” I said, pulling the door behind me. Just before it closed, I stopped and poked my head back in the room. “I love you, baby.”
Jake just stared at me. I shut the door and tried not to panic.
Jake surprised me late that night, leaving his den and joining me in bed. He didn’t want comfort or sleep. He wanted me. Maybe that was the only way he could forget his pain. By the time he was done, our sheets were sticky with lust and sweat, and I fell asleep in his arms, feeling at peace with the world.
In the morning, I woke up alone. Jake’s gym bag was gone, and I thought he’d gone to the club early to play squash. I was glad, because I thought that was a sign Jake had turned a corner, that the crisis I’d felt was impending was going to be averted.
But then I realized Jake’s laptop was gone. Sitting in its place on his desk was a white sheet from a company that made some sort of line-filling injectable gel.
I had to go home, it read.
I crumpled it into a ball and threw it against the wall. Home? He still thought of that hellhole in the sticks as home? That turned my stomach. What about our home together? What about our life together? I picked up the phone, looked at the numbers Jake had called recently, and hit redial. What did he think he was doing? Was he determined to ruin his life? Jake could be impulsive, acting first and worrying about consequences later. I had to save him from himself.
In theory, I knew where I was going. I got on a red-eye flight that night that took me from Los Angeles to Charlotte, and then a connecting flight on a commuter plane to Charleston, West Virginia. It was easy enough to rent a car and follow the highway west, to where it ran alongside the Ohio River, but once I crossed the bridge, I was on my own. Google Maps could only take me so far through the barren, miserable wilderness of hill country.
Jake had taken me to visit his family there only once, just before we got married. We’d been engaged forever, and he was close to finishing his medical residency. “I can’t marry a girl my family hasn’t met,” he told me. That settled it.
“They’re not going to like me,” I warned him. “They’re going to see me as some city snob in high heels.”
“They’ll love you,” Jake soothed me. “They already know how smart and hard-working you are. That you were a scholarship student like I was. They know you were raised by your mom, and that she died when you were in high school.”
“You told them that?”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Erica. You should be proud that you started with nothing and worked hard to get where you are.”
“What else did you tell them about me?” I seethed.
“Everything that’s wonderful about you,” he said, kissing me. “And I want you to see how wonderful it is there. You’re going to love it.”
I knew he was wrong about that, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him. I’d worked hard to break free from government housing and food stamps, and I hadn’t done that so I could live in a mountain shack. I had other plans.
The visit went just as badly as I knew it would. “Didn’t think I’d be seeing you ‘round here. Ain’t you able to come up with some excuse not to darken my doorstep?” Those were the first words out of Mrs. Carlow’s mouth when she saw us at the door. Jake, being his usual sweet self, mollified her. But she fixed her narrow blue eyes on me and pursed her lips, looking me up and down. Sometimes, when people met me, they told me I looked exotic and used that as cover to ask about my race. Mrs. Carlow didn’t ask that, but I felt those cold eyes parsing pieces out, not liking any of them. While Jake was able to thaw her out, she remained cold and rude with me. She didn’t come out and say anything directly. Her insults were carefully couched in statements that were hard to answer.
“Them’s some fine clothes you have,” she’d told me. “What’s that old saw? Fine feathers make fine birds?” She turned to Jake. “Cousin Hark’s wife just walked out on him. She was one who always thought real well of herself.” Her expression made it clear what she thought of women who thought well of themselves.
I knew, even then, that Mrs. Carlow believed she could chase me off. What she hadn’t realized was that I’d already made up my mind about Jake and my own future, and that there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. What she couldn’t have realized was how much I wanted her to hate me.
I was thinking of that visit as I steered my rental car along the roads. Nature was something I loved in healthy doses. Being surrounded by hills and fields with no indications of people nearby-except for occasional tractor-crossing signs-made me nervous. When it got to be too much for me, I stopped the car and turned on my cell phone. Jake had tried to call me several times before I’d boarded my flight; I hadn’t answered, and once I’d turned off my phone I hadn’t turned it back on. He had to be sweating by now, wondering why I wasn’t answering. I dialed his number and he answered immediately. “Why haven’t you been answering your phone? I’ve been worried sick about you.”
“Why did you go running off in the middle of the night? Why didn’t you tell me?”
He sighed. “I knew if I did, I’d never get here. I just had to do it then, Erica. It was important. Don’t be upset, okay?”
“Oh, I’m upset all right. Especially because I’m sitting in the middle of nowhere trying to figure out how to get to where you are.”
It took him a second to absorb that. “You flew out here? To be with me?”
“You didn’t think I was just going to wait at home for you, did you, baby?”
“I was worried you’d be so angry you might file for divorce,” he admitted in a sheepish tone.