“I’m here,” she said.
“I know.”
For now, that was enough.
CHAPTER 22
gray: leaving
What almost-thirty-five-year-old woman in her right mind blames her dead brother for taking her mother away from her? I knew it was insane; I knew it was irrational. But I knew now that it was true. Diana had been right. I was mad at my mother. I felt like she had just left me here to sort out all these problems.
When I put it in perspective, my mom dying when I was already a mom, after she had loved me and raised me and brought me up day in and day out forever, that wasn’t leaving me. Leaving was when you did something like Diana’s mom. Leaving was when you left your kids there by themselves to rot. But, as I’d told Diana earlier, she must have had a reason.
I felt my stomach clench, and I closed my eyes and took three deep breaths. Wagner was fine. Wagner was going to be fine. Nothing was going to happen to my son. I wondered if this was every mother’s most common fear, if every motherpictured her child being ripped away from her, or if this was my fear because of my brother.
Everything is fine. Well, everything except Andrew. And it was all my fault. I had pushed him away. I had let him go. I deserved what I was getting now. Even worse, I had let Price, a man I could have really loved and made a life with, go too. What the hell was wrong with me? Was this what divorce did to women, made them terminally insane and bad with men?
Even still, I knew that what Diana was going through was so much worse than all of that put together. My problems were temporary. Hers was something that had haunted her for a lifetime and, no matter the outcome, would continue to. I had come outside because she’d asked for some time alone and, even though I was more of the smothering kind, I let her have that.
I knew as well as anyone who had grown up coming to this little part of the coast that warm September air didn’t equal warm water, but I couldn’t shake this overwhelming need to go for a swim. I almost wanted the cold, the pins-and-needles burning, the shock of it all pulling the breath right out of my lungs. It was the closest thing to a lobotomy that I knew of.
I slipped on my smallest bikini and checked out the now pointless progress of all those squats I’d been doing. Walking across the yard into the setting sun, I dropped my towel on the dock and dove in. It was like that day in the British Virgin Islands, the day when Greg told me he didn’t love me anymore, all over again.
The tears I’d been pushing away finally came. I could see Diana watching me from the glass French doors of the living room. I composed myself because I didn’t want her to know that I was upset, especially because if anyone had a right to be upset, it was her.
But she knew anyway. She opened the door and came out. “What’s wrong?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, the late afternoon swim in freezing-ass water is not necessarily your normal behavior.”
I shrugged, walking up the sand until I was about waist-deep. “I’m just worried about you.” That was true.
She looked at me sideways. “I know, and thank you. But what?”
“I think you’re having a real problem right now. I’m not going to bore you with my absurdly trivial one.”
I smiled at her expanding belly. She looked so cute it almost made me want to do it again.Via in vitro, I thought,because I am going to be alone forever.Wagner had turned out pretty good. Maybe I could have some of Greg’s sperm.… I shook my head. Now I really was going off the rails.
“Yeah,” Diana said, “but I think your trivial problem might help take my mind off my real one.”
I wrung my hair out, my bangles tinkling on my wrist, and said, “I was too late.”
“Whoa!” I heard his voice before I could see him. “Is that Bo Derek?”
“Maybe you weren’t too late after all.” Diana winked at me, then turned and walked back into the house.
I managed a small smile. “Andrew, I’m sorry. I know I put you in a bad spot. Please go back to your girlfriend.”
He pulled his shirt over his head. “Good Lord,” he said as he waded into the cold water, clutching his arms and shivering. Then he wrapped his arms around me. “Sorry. There’s no way I’ll survive this temperature without a little body heat.” He looked at me earnestly. “The girl is not a girlfriend. She was a date to an oyster roast that my parents insisted I go to.”
I nodded. “So, do you like her?”
He shrugged. “Do you like me?”
I started to answer, but he put his finger over my lips. “Wait. I need to talk for a minute.”
I nodded.
