I scratched at Annie’s neck and my fingers bumped up against something unfamiliar. I pulled back to find a brand new, pretty pink collar on her. “What is this?” My heart rate picked up, even as I realized it must have been Nick.
She licked at my chin, anxious for me to get back to petting. “Did Nick stop by?” I asked the dog. She just kept licking me. “What else did he get you?”
She didn’t answer.
I flicked on more lights. I wasn’t afraid of Nick by any means, but knowing someone had been in my house while I was gone still freaked me out. I seriously needed to get his key from him.
I walked into the living room, needing to make sure he locked the front door after he left when I tripped over the new dog bed nestled up next to the couch.
“What in the world?”
Annie dove from my arms for her new bed. She turned in circles as if showing off for me before settling down with a big doggie sigh. Her cute little nose rested on her outstretched front paws and I found myself smiling.
“He spoiled you.” There was a big rawhide bone tucked in the corner and a new chew toy under the coffee table. “I suppose you love him more now. I only got you a new brush.”
She let out another big sigh and I took that as a yes.
“Well, listen, if his lawyer puts you on the stand, would you please pick me? I can spoil you too.”
Her brown puppy eyes lifted to stare at me with an indolent, “Yeah, right.”
I stuck my tongue out at her and walked to the front door. “He’s not going to get you. Get that thought out of your head right now.”
It still made me sick that he would even consider taking Annie from me. She was my dog. I was happy that he didn’t hate her like I thought he did. But that didn’t mean he should win her in our divorce.
And I hated him for trying to.
The door was at least locked. That should have soothed some of my anger, but by the time I reached it, I was really starting to get worked up.
What had started as melancholy remorse quickly turned into outraged fury. How dare he try to take Annie from me! How dare he try to take my house and get partial custody of a kid that didn’t even exist!
If he wanted this divorce as much as I did, then why did he have to make it so difficult?
Why couldn’t he just let me go?
Why couldn’t he just walk away and leave me to the embarrassing remnants of my shattered life?
When I turned around and saw Annie happily lounging in the new bed he bought her I saw red. It was even gray to match the living room as if he thought he wasn’t just going to win the house, but everything inside the house too!
I pulled out my phone and jabbed my finger at it. He had officially ruined Christmas for me.
Okay, maybe it hadn’t been that great to begin with, but this was the last straw. He had pushed me over the edge and he was going to get a piece of my mind.
“Did you find it?” his rough, low voice asked. There was no hello, no merry Christmas, only the slightly nervous question that stripped all the wind from my sails.
“The dog bed?”
“The picture.”
“What picture?”
“Were you calling about the dog bed?”
“I was… I was calling… What picture?”
“Where are you?”
“At home.”
His low chuckle carried through the phone and I felt my anger begin to disintegrate. “I mean, where are you in the house?”
“Oh.” I took a needed breath. “In the living room. By the dog bed.”
“Look up.”
I did. I looked at the far wall and at the new picture hanging there. It had an ornately golden frame. Antique, I thought immediately. The picture wasn’t of people, but words. I couldn’t read them from here. They were written with curly black letters on a soft gray background.
Even though I didn’t know what it said, I could tell that it matched everything perfectly. It looked amazing on the wall. It brought everything together and added a bit of flare.
But why would there be a picture on the wall?
“What is it?” I whispered.
“You should go read it?” His voice pitched lower, trying to disguise his nerves. If I hadn’t known him so well, I wouldn’t have noticed. But I did know him. I knew him so well.
I didn’t move.
“Kate,” he whispered as if he could see my feet stuck in place and the way my hands trembled. “Go read it.”
I shook my head, but he couldn’t see me.
“Please.”
It was the broken plea that scratched from his throat that made me finally move. I couldn’t say no to that. No matter how much I wanted to. No matter how much I wanted to believe I could move on from this man, I couldn’t. Not if he said please like that.
Not if he sounded like he needed me to look at this picture more than he needed to breathe.
I had only turned on the lamp in the living room, so it was still fairly dark as I walked over to the wall. I bumped into the coffee table and clipped my shin because I couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to where I was going.
I found it harder and harder to swallow as I made my way to the wall. It took seconds, but I had myself so worked up by the time I reached the picture that I was worried I would pass out.
I propped one knee on a chair and leaned in.
Love that is enough.
Love that is big enough for two.
Love that is endless enough for more.
Love that is just between me and you.
My voice trembled as I asked, “What is it?”
I had heard his breath quiver before he asked, “Do you like it?”
“Nick, what is it?”
His sigh told me everything he didn’t say. He didn’t want to tell me what it was. He didn’t want to explain his actions or motives or anything. He just wanted me to like it.
But I couldn’t do that. I had to know. I had to know where it came from.
What made him do it?
“Do you remember Jared’s old girlfriend? The weird artist one?” I sucked in a sharp breath while he paused. Finally, he admitted, “Last year. I had it made for you last Christmas.”
“Why didn’t you give it to me?” I closed my eyes to stop the tears that threatened to spill over. Last year he’d gotten me a new Kindle. Mine had stopped turning on and I asked him for one. He’d gotten the exact one I’d picked out.
It had been a great gift. It had been exactly what I wanted.
But this… This was something… else.
His laugh was bitter. “Do you remember last Christmas?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “No… I mean, I don’t know.”
“We were not in a good place.” His voice was a roughened rasp against the phone. “Jared had asked to borrow money and we argued about it. I had to work Christmas Eve and you were mad and… and I chickened out. I didn’t want to upset you again. I didn’t want to fight with you on Christmas. It was easier to get you what you wanted.”
My heart thumped painfully against my chest. “Why did you think this would upset me?” Even though I knew why he would think that. Even though I knew, I could be mean.
More than mean.
I could be house-falling-on-me-because-I’m-the-wicked-witch-of-the-east kind of mean.
“I was afraid to remind you about… about having a baby. You were so confident it couldn’t happen. You still are.”
“Nick,” I hiccupped. I didn’t want to fight with him about this again. “It’s…” Too late. “Lovely.”
“We’re a mess, Kate.” His voice sounded stronger. It was absolutely silent on his end of the phone, so when he shifted I could tell that he was in bed. I pictured him in athletic shorts and a t-shirt, his long runner’s legs stretched out in front of him, his hair tousled from his fingers running through it all day.
“I wish you would have given this to me last Christmas.” I licked dry lips and stopped fighting the tear
s.
His voice was infinitely sad when he whispered, “I do too.” There was silence between us for a full minute, but I didn’t feel compelled to hang up with him.
Despite the pain of this moment, the poignant sense of loss, I needed to be near him in some way. It was like we were both acknowledging the magnitude of what we’d lost. We were both admitting how things could have been different between us.
When the heavy moment passed, Nick let out a long sigh and asked, “How was your Christmas?”
“Ugh,” I sighed. “My mother was extra special today.”
I swear I could hear his smile through the phone. “She’s usually super special.”
“Whatever,” I grumbled. “She’s like your new best friend. All I ever hear about anymore is how great you are, how I’m the biggest idiot ever for letting you go.”
“Well, that’s clear to everyone,” he teased.
I should have been irritated, but I smiled instead. “At least your ego is still intact.”
“You have your mom to thank for that.”
I laughed at his sarcasm. “I’m pretty sure your ego was just fine before my mom decided she approved of you.”
“It’s weird, though.” When I didn’t immediately agree, he added. “That she suddenly wants to be my friend. I went through years of hell with that woman and now she decides to like me.”
“Oh, my god, I’ve thought the exact same thing!” I plopped down in the chair I’d been kneeling on, unable to look at the picture anymore. “Do you think it’s your new job?”
“No,” he answered immediately, “she doesn’t know about it. Unless you told her.”
“Oh.” I had, but not until recently. When she invited him over for lunch that one Sunday, she didn’t know.
“I’m pretty sure she had a partial lobotomy. That’s the only reason I can come up with.”
“I don’t think you’re wrong.” I felt myself smile even though I felt as if I were spinning out of control. I forced myself to form words and ask, “How was your Christmas?”
“It was fine,” he sighed. “Jared and I went to our parents. We played Super Nintendo all day and ate too much. I felt thirteen again.”
I smiled again at the picture. Jared could be an absolute asshole, but I had always appreciated Nick’s relationship with him. They were good brothers to each other.
“He told me about when he saw you in Starbucks by the way,” Nick added. “He won’t talk to you like that again, Kate. I promise you that.”
My heart thumped in my chest. I believed him. “Thank you.” After another minute of silence, I asked, “How are your parents handling the divorce?”
He coughed suddenly and I could tell he didn’t want to answer the question. “Not as well as yours.”
“They blame me.”
“They blame both of us.”
I didn’t know what to say after that. I looked back at the art he’d made for me and felt a brand new sense of loss. “Did you write it?”
He knew exactly what I was talking about. “I did.”
“For me?”
“It’s not the first song I’ve written for you.”
“It’s a song?”
He didn’t say anything for a minute. I wasn’t sure he took a breath. There was only silence on his end, so much so that I had to check to make sure he didn’t hang up on me.
“It is a song,” he finally breathed.
Something I couldn’t name buzzed through me and made me breathless. “Have I heard it?”
“Nobody’s heard it.”
“Sing it.” I had to hear it. I had to know. I had to listen to these words he wrote for me a year ago, these words he had been too afraid to share with me while our marriage dissolved.
“Kate…”
“Please,” I whispered.
And just like me, he couldn’t say no. “I, uh, hold on a sec.”
I heard movement on his side of the phone while he moved around his room. The entire time I waited for him, I found myself chanting, don’t hang up don’t hang up don’t hang up.
But I didn’t know if it was for him or for me.
I sat frozen in place, too afraid to move, too afraid to make a sound in case I frightened him off. When the first plucks of guitar strings reached me, I realized what he had been doing.
“This is going to be rough,” he warned. Then, under his breath, he mumbled, “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
I pressed my lips together in anticipation. I felt near tears again, but I didn’t know why.
When he started singing, my knees went weak and I would have collapsed if I hadn’t already been sitting. His voice, so familiar and achingly sweet, wrapped around my skin and sunk into my bones. I closed my eyes and listened to him sing about two people so in love they breathed each other. He sang about the world coming between them and tearing them apart. He sang about their love being wide enough to reach around the entire world and find each other again. He sang about love and loss, hope and sorrow, he sang about a girl that wanted more but a boy that had enough. And then he sang the chorus.
Love that is enough.
Love that is big enough for two.
Love that is endless enough for more.
Love that is just between me and you.
He didn’t finish it. He trailed off somewhere in the second verse and claimed he couldn’t remember the rest.
“That was beautiful,” I whispered. Emotion clogged my throat and silent tears tracked down my tears. “Nick, that was…”
He cleared his throat uncomfortably. I could picture him tugging on his earlobe. “I should have sung it for you last year.”
I couldn’t respond to that. I had no words. No ability to speak. We sat there silently for another minute. Then suddenly I had to get off the phone with him right then. I couldn’t spend another second talking to him.
Besides, what was I doing? We were getting a divorce! Why was I reminiscing with him about a past neither of us could change?
I wanted to throw my phone against the wall in frustration.
I forced polite words out, “Merry Christmas, Nick.”
After another beat of silence, he repeated. “Merry Christmas, Kate.”
I hung up the phone before I could say another word. I dropped my cell into the chair like it could burn me or turn into acid and eat away my skin. I jumped out of the chair so quickly Annie yelped in surprise.
I stumbled back from the wall and then toward it. I had to do something. I couldn’t feel like this anymore. I couldn’t even describe what I was feeling. It was just… everywhere. My skin crawled, my blood felt itchy and wrong. My head started pounding with a fresh headache.
God, I was a mess.
I looked at the picture he hung for me and had the strongest urge to tear it off the wall and throw it outside. I had to get rid of it. I had to get it away from me.
Instead of shredding it to pieces, I carefully lifted it from its place and carried it to the hall closet. It was heavier than I’d anticipated it to be. It wasn’t very big, but the frame was nice and sturdy.
It wasn’t just poster board slapped haphazardly together. Nick had put it together with care… made to last.
Unlike our marriage.
I set it in the hall closet next to the vacuum and closed the door behind it. I let out an agonized breath and let myself feel a little bit better.
There.
I couldn’t see it.
It wouldn’t haunt me if I couldn’t see it.
I looked around at my house and felt loneliness stir inside me. The dark corners seemed to press in on me, eating up the dim light and the happy memories that once belonged here.
Unable to take it or myself for a second longer, I called Annie to my side and dragged my tired body to bed. My mind whirled and whirled while I got ready for bed and hours later while I stared up at the ceiling fan rotating in lazing circles.
Unable to find sleep or peace, I crawled out of bed and braved the chil
l of night. I crept downstairs like I was a burglar in my own house. I knew no one else was there, but I couldn’t help feeling like I was doing something wrong.
Or maybe I was doing something right for the first time in a long time.
I pulled the picture from the closet and with shaking hands and trembling limbs, I rehung it on the wall.
I stepped back and stared at it.
It wasn’t a solution, but I felt a little better.
At least when I lay back down in bed, I could finally fall asleep.
Chapter Twenty
27. Second chances are a myth.
By the middle of January, school had started back up again and Nick and I had been through our second round of mediation.
We’d gotten nowhere.
Neither of us was willing to give up the house or the dog.
Mr. Cavanaugh had been exhausted by the end of it and Ryan Templeton had been contemplating murder of the first degree in his head. I wasn’t sure for whom, but if I had to guess, I would have picked me.
He probably wanted to run me over in his expensive sports car. I bet it was something beyond pretentious.
Poor Marty, the mediator, was beyond exhausted. He had wanted to speak with us both separately. Neither Nick nor I would comply.
It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Nick. I mostly didn’t trust his slimy lawyer.
I had begun to hate Nick’s lawyer with the fire of a thousand suns. He wasn’t the only one contemplating homicide during mediation.
Every time Nick looked close to breaking, Ryan would whisper something in his ear that would make Nick clench his jaw tight and turn him completely unreasonable.
Ryan Templeton was like the devil on Nick’s shoulder, whispering all kinds of evil things.
Nick needed an angel telling him to do good, nice things. Things that ended mediation with giving the dog and the house to me.
Okay, so maybe Ryan wasn’t the devil on his shoulder. Maybe I was.
I had tried to look at this rationally or from his point of view. But I couldn’t. My pain was too blinding. My need to keep the things I loved and that still loved me was consuming. I couldn’t let Nick have any of it.
I didn’t mind if he took the TV or the furniture or even my car. But I needed the house.