“Okay. When would you like to get back in to see us?”
“I, uh…” Another audible swallow. “I’ll be in touch. You can go ahead and cancel the procedure.”
“You got it, Doctor. Thanks for calling in! Have a great—”
George hung up and sat back in her chair, wishing for something to drink, something strong, with some bite. Or some other pain, maybe. A slap. With fingers that were thick and awkward, she pinched her arm, needing sensation, anything, to bring her back to reality. A flash of Clay smacking her bottom had her nerve endings flaring. Shame and pain, it turned out, might just be her aphrodisiacs.
And then it sank in: the importance of what she’d just done. For a while—too long, considering the patients sitting in the waiting room—George sat and let the pain and the sorrow and the regret wash over her.
Over and over, Thomas Hadley had broken George’s heart. By getting sick and then better and then worse again. By treating her so carefully as he’d wasted away. And then, one day, she’d been dozing in the chair in his room when the infernal beeping had started…and he’d left her. Swift and easy. Gone.
No, not just gone, because missing him hadn’t just been about losing something good in her life. From the day he’d shown up senior year, Tom had been her hero, her friend. He’d absolved her of the choices she’d made; he’d been her life.
How much of this desire to have a baby, she wondered, was about Tom, and how much was regretting the abortion? How was it that, after all these years, last night, her face curved into Clay Navarro’s chest, had been the first time she’d admitted the correlation.
I was too young to have a baby, too alone. She knew that, could admit today that she’d have been a horrible mother back then, but even so, the guilt hurt. It hurt to know that she could have had an eighteen-year-old today. Seeing Jessie with Gabe, a woman who’d managed somehow to survive teenage pregnancy, had brought home her shortcomings, compounded them, made it worse.
After the guilt and the shame and the regret, Tom had come in and taught her to want to make the right decisions instead of always rebelling—he’d been the one who’d made sure she went to college, pushed her toward med school.
Tom had taken her young, shattered heart, beaten raw by one tragedy after another, and he’d added to her. He’d made her whole, so when he died, it had been so much worse than if he’d never been there at all. He’d gone and taken it all away. At least that was how it had felt. Like he’d grafted a new heart onto hers and then ripped it out again.
She owed him her life. Her confidence, her desire to be a good person. Everything. And she’d wanted to make it up to him somehow. To carry on the goodness he’d given her, while maybe giving a tiny life back to the world.
And now, sitting in her office all alone, George closed her eyes and said good-bye to the baby Tom Hadley would never have.
This is my life. With her next breath, the words echoed through her, full of an unexpected hope, and she let herself wonder, for the first time in forever, just what it would be like to live life for herself.
* * *
Clay was getting too old to sleep in the back of a truck. Not only that, but for the first time in weeks, the air felt cool, and he was freezing, pressed up against his new toolbox.
He shifted, with barely enough room to move, and hit something hard with his foot. The vodka bottle—empty, judging from the throbbing of his skull and the sound of hollow glass rolling before it thumped onto the ground behind the tailgate. After a good long, unhealthy cough, he sat up to spit over the side and felt the landscape in front of him like a physical blow.
Whoa.
Beautiful. Breathtaking. And so fucking real.
Rolling, lush green, tufted here and there with soft hills. The scattered buildings he assumed to be Blackwood, and if he looked to the right… There. Right there was her house with its bright-red roof. From here, he couldn’t tell that it needed repainting. It was a perfect, miniscule train set model.
His chest hurt, right where his heart was supposed to be, and he curved into himself, hating the emptiness inside. Hating the hurt and self-loathing.
For a minute or two, he pictured himself staying in Blackwood, coming back here after the trial.
Which was stupid, since there wasn’t anything for him to do in this lost corner of the world.
Fixing up George’s place, if she’d let him, was all well and good, but what would he possibly do after the work was done?
Nothing. Because his life was in Baltimore, where he had a job waiting for him and friends, like Tyler Olson. The thought of Tyler hurt a little bit too. Tyler and Jayda and their kids, inviting him out on their boat in the summers. He’d gone only that one time, despite their numerous invitations, because the close quarters and the family atmosphere had been overwhelming to a man who did best on his own.
He pictured George on the boat, her hair blowing into her face, the tips of her shoulders red from the sun. He pictured the way she smiled, full of humor, but just a little restrained. Then he imagined her secret laugh, the warm one he’d heard only once or twice. That made him feel special, he realized in that moment—how private she was, how she’d let him inside.
It’s time to go, he thought, looking out over this place he’d actually come to… What? To love? No. Absolutely no way.
And because it was time to go, he got down, picked up the empty vodka bottle, and chucked it into the back, then made his way around the truck, took a piss, and dragged himself into the cab.
His eyes caught on his rearview mirror. It took the breathtaking vista and transformed it into a diorama—a tiny, inconsequential window that was no more real than those scenes of cavemen in natural history exhibits.
He shut his eyes on the view, tightened them, straining to think through the throbbing pain in the back of his head, but nothing worked, nothing straightened out the pieces. Nothing made sense of the clusterfuck his life had turned him into.
