Читать книгу A Husband's Watch - Karen Templeton - Страница 8

In his pajama bottoms, Darryl stood in his and Faith’s tiny master bathroom, glowering at his banged-up reflection in the medicine chest mirror. At his side, Dot, a young brindle boxer some fool had abandoned at the station a year or so ago, stood with her front paws on the sink, regarding him with bug-eyed apology—her standard expression—as if his injuries were somehow her fault. Faith was of the opinion that the dog suffered from low self-esteem, although whether brought on or exacerbated by her abandonment, she couldn’t say.

He glowered some more—how the hell was he supposed to change this bandage? Discovery Number Twenty-Two about having one hand out of commission: he could get the old bandage off, but no way could he get the clean one on. While he was contemplating this new aggravation, Jake shoved his way into the little room—already crowded with Darryl and the dog—and banged up the toilet seat to pee like he’d been at a keg party.

“Heather’s in the other bathroom,” the gap-toothed boy said by way of explanation, knocking the seat back down and flushing, but only after Darryl glared at him. “A body could ’splode waitin’ on her to get out.”

“Yeah, I know how that goes. Put the lid down, too, buddy.”

That earned Darryl a pained look. “What for? Whoever uses it next only has to lift it again.”

“I know, but your mother has a hissy whenever she finds the seat up. You really want to deal with that?”

Jake slammed down the lid, the effect muffled by the fluffy, dark-green toilet seat cover. One thing about Faith—she’d always kept the house looking nice without resorting to lots of flowers and ruffles and crap like a lot of other women. The kid plopped his skinny behind on the seat and leaned his elbows on the edge of the sink, frowning up at Darryl’s stitches. Dot got down, wriggling her head onto the boy’s lap to get her floppy ears scratched, groaning in what Darryl assumed was ecstasy. “You look like Frankenstein or somethin’. Does it hurt?”

Only when he moved. Or breathed.

“Let’s just say—” Darryl raised the one arm that was working and gingerly lifted his hair away from the wound “—it’s an experience I’d’ve been more than happy to have lived without.”

The boy seemed to think on this for a second, then said, “You know what would be really cool? If you could come to school for show-and-tell—”

“Jake Michael Andrews!” Faith said from the bathroom doorway. “Didn’t I put you to bed ten minutes ago?”

“I had to pee an’ Heather was in the other bathroom. ’Sides, it’s only ten o’clock.”

“Which is only an hour past your bedtime. And yes, I know you’re on vacation, but I’m not. So you need to get back in bed. Go on, scoot. And take the dog with you.” She swatted the boy lightly on the backside as he zipped past.

“Night!” he hollered, thumping from one side of the narrow hallway to the other on the way back to his room, prompting Faith to say with a sigh, “Well, the others were asleep.”

“You know,” Darryl said, “one of these days we seriously need to think about letting the dog sleep outside.”

His wife gave him one of her don’t-talk-crazy looks, then crossed her arms over her wrinkled satin pajamas and open fuzzy robe, both in some light color that might have been either blue or green, at one time. She frowned at him in the mirror. “You plannin’ on standing there all night staring at your boo-boo, or do you need help?”

“I can’t use my other arm to change the dressing.”

“I can see that. Sit down.”

“It’s pretty gross.”

“I can see that, too. Sit. And get that cast elevated.”

Darryl lowered himself onto the toilet seat, his arm on the sink, which put him eye level with his wife’s breasts. Something resembling interest stirred. At least in his head. Other places seemed to be having a little trouble getting with the program, probably on account of these damn pills. Although there was something to be said for the who-gives-a-rat’s-behind? buzz they produced.

Faith ripped open a clean gauze pad and soaked it in hydrogen peroxide. Darryl carefully shook his head. “Already did that.”

“Could’ve fooled me. Quit squirming,” she said when he flinched before she even made contact. “Honestly,” she said, grabbing his chin, her breath wicking away the dampness on his forehead as she gently dabbed at the stitches. “You’re worse than the kids.” She’d already put on the lotion she wore to bed every night; she smelled so good his mouth watered. Hers pulled tight as she wet the other end of the gauze. “That ER doc did a good job. Looks to me like you might not even have a scar.”

“Too bad. A scar might add a certain bubba appeal, don’tcha think?”

She almost smiled.

He lowered his eyes and watched her nipples shifting restlessly against the satin, like kittens playing underneath a sheet. “Sorry about earlier. At your folks, I mean.”

She glanced down at him for a second, then went back to her dabbing. “’Sokay. We’re both pretty stressed out, I guess. You take your pain pills?”

So much for talking things over. Not that Darryl really wanted to talk, especially not tonight. Half the time, talking only made him confused. Or mad. If not both. But he wasn’t so clueless as to not know that Faith’s not wanting to talk was a bad sign. “Just one, a couple minutes ago. Gonna try to go without tomorrow, though. Last thing I need is to get addicted to the things.”

“Yeah, like that’s gonna happen. What are you staring at so hard?”

“Give you one guess.”

She shook her head; Darryl went back to staring. “Heard your father say Olive Pritchard’s askin’ after you again, wondering when you’re coming back.”

“And if I told her once, I told her a million times… Sorry,” she said softly when the wince popped out. “Long as the kids are still little, there’s no sense me bein’ in the choir. Shoot, I’m doing well to get us to church on time as it is, let alone early for practice… Darryl, for heaven’s sake!” she yelped when he reached underneath her pajama top to cup one breast. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?” she said in a frenzied whisper.

“I think it’s called living in the moment.” An odd sense of well-being came over him, as all his troubles seemed to fade…away… He rubbed her nipple with his thumb, grinning when it snapped to attention. Grinning even harder when other things did. “When was the last time we lived in the moment, Faithie?”

“At least four kids ago,” she said with kind of a sad look on her face. “But this is not the night to rekindle those memories.”

“Why not? Seems to me we could both use the tension release, don’t you think?”

“That’s the meds talking, Darryl, not you. Besides, Heather’s still awake. Honestly!” Faith said in a gasp when he pinched her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. “Cut it out! I’m tryin’ to get you dressed!”

“And I’m tryin’ to get you undressed. And yeah, you can grit your teeth all you want, but those little dots of color in your cheeks give you away every time.” He leaned close enough to tongue her nipple through the satin, and she made that gurgly noise in her throat that still got him, even after more than a dozen years.

“Mama? Daddy?”

Darryl yanked his hand down so fast he smacked his own knee, a move his banged-up ribs had definite issues with, even with the pain meds. Fortunately, since Faith’s back had been to the bathroom door, Heather hadn’t gotten an eyeful. But that didn’t stop a blush from racing up Faith’s neck and across her cheeks like a brush fire. It was kind of cute, actually. Like they were teenagers again, fooling around in the storeroom in old man Prickett’s pharmacy that summer Faith had worked the soda fountain.

Except she’d never looked mad when they’d fooled around in Prickett’s.

She yanked her robe closed, nearly strangling her waist with the belt as Darryl said to his daughter, “We’ll be out in a minute, sugar. Soon as Mama finishes patching me up, okay?”

“’Kay. C’n I wait on your bed?”

“Sure, honey,” Faith said, finishing up the bandage with a stone-faced expression that gave no clue to how turned on she’d been not thirty seconds before. “There,” she said, tucking everything neatly back into the first aid kit, which she set on the shelf over the toilet. “Let me go check on the little ones and I’ll be back in a minute—”

He grabbed her hand. “Later?”

“Oh, right.” Her expression was wry. “With a doped up man held together with tape, plaster and…whatever the heck they use for stitches these days. Darryl, for goodness’ sake—be real.”

After she left, Darryl stood, checking out his reflection. The new bandage was half the size of the one they’d put on in the hospital, he noted. Neat and efficient, just like everything Faith did.

She hadn’t always been so efficient. So predictable. When they’d first gotten married, she never went to the grocery store that she didn’t have to turn right back around and go get the five things she’d forgotten. She’d put in a load of laundry and not get around to drying it for two days, or start a pan of eggs to boil and not give them another thought. But if their first years of married life had been filled with the occasional blackened pan or slightly mildewed clothes or not being able to make a sandwich because they’d run out of bread, Darryl also fondly remembered unplanned camping trips and parties for no particular reason and—his personal favorite—surprise intimate encounters in the shower or the kitchen or the laundry room.

He missed that. Even more to the point, he missed the Faith who used to do those things. And if he could only shake the feeling that her changing was somehow his fault…

“Daddy? You okay?”

Leaning heavily on the sink, Darryl carefully turned to look at his oldest girl. The reason they’d gotten married in the first place, he obliquely thought. An excuse to get married he’d welcomed with everything he had in him.

“I’m fine,” he said with a rush of air, then ushered her out of the bathroom.

“You don’t look fine.”

“Appearances can be deceiving.”

Swallowed up in one of those baggy, too-long sleep tees, she flopped onto her tummy on their bed. Pushing twelve, the girl straddled that fine line between innocence and wisdom that sometimes scared Darryl half to death, especially since most days he wasn’t all that sure which side of it he was on himself. “We’re in serious trouble, aren’t we?” she said, her narrow chin propped in her hands, those wide blue eyes fixed on his. “Because of the tornado destroyin’ the shop?” When he hesitated, her pale brows crashed over her nose. “You can tell me the truth, Daddy. I’m not gonna freak on you or anything.”

Faith returned just in time to hear this last line; now they exchanged a glance that ended in Faith’s giving him a go-ahead nod. So he lowered himself to the bed and said, “Let’s just say things are gonna be kind of tight for a while.”

“Will we have to move?”

“No,” he said, even though he hadn’t thought that part of things through. They’d refinanced last year and lowered their payments, but without his income… “I promise we won’t end up camping out in somebody’s pasture.”

She looked mildly relieved. For a moment or two. “But we don’t have money for extras, right?”

Faith sat beside Heather, wearing her “Oh, dear” face as she rubbed the girl’s bony back. “Honey, this probably isn’t a real good time to bring this up…”

The girl twisted around to look up at her mother. “But it’s gonna eat me alive until I know—”

“What’s going on?” Darryl asked.

Gently sifting Heather’s slippery blond hair through her fingers, Faith said, “You know how Heather and I were taking dance classes over at Carly Stewart’s?”

Yeah, he knew. Carly’d recently moved to Haven, had started up a dance school in an old barn next to Sam Frasier’s farm. Faith had been real excited about the exercise class she’d started, hoping to work off some of the weight she’d put on from the pregnancies. And Heather had started taking ballet classes, too.

“What about it?”

Faith stroked Heather’s hair some more. “Turns out Carly thinks Heather has real potential. To be a ballet dancer, I mean. But because she’s starting so late—most little girls begin lessons when they’re five or six—she’d need private lessons to catch up. We’d only found out yesterday, so I was planning on talking it over with you last night….” Her sentence ended in a one-sided shrug.

“I see,” he said, although he didn’t really. Not that he didn’t want his kids to do whatever made them happy, but…Heather becoming a ballet dancer? Anybody becoming a ballet dancer? Besides, kids changed their minds all the time. Look at his older brother, Dave, who’d begged their father for oboe lessons, only to lose interest after six months.

“Carly already offered me a partial scholarship,” Heather said, the hopefulness in her eyes searing straight through him. “So maybe it wouldn’t cost all that much.”

Darryl pushed out a sigh, then faced the mirror over the dresser. Both females watched him, waiting for an answer he couldn’t give.

“You know how I hate sayin’ no to any of you kids,” he finally said to his daughter’s reflection, “but I honestly don’t see how we can swing it right now. Maybe next year.”

“It’ll be too late by next year!” Heather’s eyes filled. “You don’t have to get me anything for Christmas. And I’ll contribute my whole allowance. Please, Daddy? I want to do this more than anything in the world!”

Out of deference to his ribs, Darryl carefully turned, his heart squeezing in his chest at the earnestness in her expression. “How can you be so sure of something you only just started doing?”

“I don’t know. Except…maybe I think it must be like how you feel about fixing cars. It just feels really, really right.”

He caught Faith’s gaze, saw how much the whole thing was tearing her up inside, too. And unlike him, Faith didn’t tend to indulge the kids. Saying no came a lot easier to her than it did him. Which meant this must be really serious. And real important. But that didn’t change the facts of the situation.

“I’m sorry, baby, I really am. But I honestly don’t see any way of pulling it off right now.”

Her lower lip caught between her teeth, Heather traced the quilted spread with one finger for a second. Then her head popped back up, hope making her face shine. “Maybe…maybe she’d teach me for free?”

“Oh, sweetie…” Faith wrapped herself around Heather’s shoulders, pressing her cheek to her temple. “That wouldn’t be fair to Carly, would it? She has to make a living, too. It was already generous, her offering that partial scholarship. I know this is horrible, horrible timing, but—”

“It’s okay, I understand.” Heather scrambled off the bed, not looking at either of them as she scurried through the door. Faith shot Darryl an indecipherable look, then followed, leaving him feeling several notches below snail slime.

“She okay?” he asked when Faith returned a few minutes later.

Instead of replying, she wordlessly motioned for him to get up so she could remove the peach-colored, tailored bedspread she’d bought maybe a month ago. Not that he’d thought there was anything wrong with the old one, but Faith insisted the room needed “freshening up,” or something. Darryl pushed himself to his feet, helping her fold the spread back as best he could with one hand. Anything to keep from feeling helpless. Useless.

“What else could I have said, Faith?” he said in a hushed voice, standing to one side so she could set the folded spread on the chair in the corner, like she did every night. “You know what the bank balance looks like as well as I do.”

“Yes, I do. But do you have any idea what a big deal this is for her?”

“Oh, come on…lots of little girls want to dance. Not that I don’t feel bad that I can’t let her have her fun, but it would probably run its course anyway, right?”

“We don’t know that. Maybe this is an incredible opportunity for her to work with a real professional dancer, maybe become one herself and not end up stuck in this town for the rest of her life!”

Her eyes widened slightly, as if she hadn’t expected that to come out of her mouth. Darryl got a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, but he replied, “Or she could get a bum leg like Carly and end up back here, anyway.”

“It’s not about how she’ll end up, it’s about what she has the chance to do in between. It’s about giving her opportunities that—”

Faith stopped, then grabbed her pillows off the bed.

“That what?” Darryl said quietly, catching out of the corner of his mental eye the stirrings of an elephant he’d thought had moved on a long time ago. “That you never had?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You don’t have to.” He grasped her arm, probing her gaze with his own. “Is that what’s going on here? That you feel stuck? In this marriage? With me?”

For several moments, he saw his own frustration mirrored in her eyes. “It’s not that simple,” she said at last, and the bad feeling got a whole lot worse.

“Care to explain that?”

“Believe me,” she said with a harsh sigh, “if I could, I would. But anyway, this isn’t about me. It’s about Heather. And how we’re going to solve this. At some point. Not tonight. I’m way too tired to figure any of it out right now.” Clutching the pillows to her chest, she headed toward the door.

“You’re spending the night on the sofa again?”

“You have to sleep on your back. And nowhere in our marriage vows does it say I have to sleep in the same room with a snoring man—”

“Do you love me?”

Already in the doorway, she spun around. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“Darryl, we’re both exhausted, and stressed—”

“Simple question, yes or no. Do you love me?”

Their gazes warred for several seconds before she reached behind her to quietly shut the door. When she faced him again, she looked…worn-out. “We’re part of each other by now, aren’t we? All braided together like a pair of saplings planted side by side. After all this time, I wouldn’t know how not to love you. But let me ask you something….” Her mouth quirked, and she leaned against the door, strangling the pillows. “Would you have married me if I hadn’t been pregnant?”

Her words slammed into him like fists. “For God’s sake, Faith—after everything we’ve been through together, after everything I’ve done for you and the kids…how can you even ask that?”

“Because,” she said, her eyes hooked in his, “there’s a difference between love and…and obligation. There’s doing what’s right, and doing what’s right.”

Darryl’s brows pulled together. “You think I married you because I had to?”

“Didn’t you?”

He looked at her as if she were speaking another language. “Have you forgotten how we couldn’t keep our hands off each other? Hell, there’s still times I want you so bad I can hardly think straight!”

“That’s hormones, Darryl. And proximity. But what I’m wondering now is…was it ever more than that? Really?”

He dropped onto the edge of the bed, swallowing hard before saying, “Dammit, I’m doing my best here.”

“I know you are,” Faith whispered. “And you always have. God knows there’s plenty of men in your situation who would’ve headed straight for the hills, rather than faced their responsibilities the way you did. And I love you for that.”

He smirked. “For doing the right thing?”

“Is that so terrible?” She sat beside him, laying her hand on his uncasted arm. “But in any case, this isn’t about you. It’s true,” she said when he snorted. “Which is exactly what makes this so…so weird. I wanted to marry you, too. To be with you. So I don’t understand this craziness any more than you do.”

While he sat there, hoping to hell it was the meds causing her words to make so little sense, she got up, hugging the pillows to her chest. “You need anything before I leave?”

“No.” Then his gaze slashed to hers. “How is it we can say all the right things, and yet the answers still feel all wrong?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered, then left the room, the elephant lumbering along after her…leaving behind a not-so-little reminder of its visit.

Wasn’t a painkiller in the world strong enough to dull this pain.

The sky was just beginning to pink up the next morning when Faith heard Darryl shuffle down the hall, yawning loudly. He paused at the door to the kitchen, frowning at her and Nicky, prompting Faith’s heart to start beating loudly enough to echo inside her head.

“You had pumpkin pie for breakfast?” he said in his morning-roughened voice, nodding toward the empty foil pie plate on the table in front of her.

“It was the last piece. I figured it wouldn’t be any good by lunchtime.”

He shook his head, one side of his mouth tilted up. “I didn’t know you were still nursing the baby.”

The plastic clock over the sink sounded like an old woman clucking her tongue at her as she sat at the kitchen table, Nicky at her breast. “Just once a day, in the morning,” she said, smoothing down the baby’s curls so she wouldn’t have to look at her husband. “After you’re gone, usually.”

“Don’t recall you keeping the others on the breast so long.”

“I know. Seems harder to wean him, I guess because he’s the last one….”

Her words faded into a silence that positively screamed between them.

“Didn’t expect you awake this early,” she said, as much to shatter that silence as anything else. “Sun’s not even up yet. Neither are the rest of the kids, thank goodness.”

She sensed him inching toward the refrigerator, barefoot as usual even though it was none too warm this early in the morning. Usually Darryl propelled himself through space like he could never get where he was going fast enough; today, however, he moved cautiously, as if he was trying to sneak past the pain. Sympathy twanged inside her—this was a man who rarely got sick, even when everybody else in the house was like to die from some crud or other. And everybody knows pain’s all the worse when you’re not used to it.

One hip propping open the door, he pulled out a carton of orange juice—he never had been a coffee-first-thing-in-the-morning kind of person. In the glow from the open fridge, she could see he hadn’t bothered combing his thick hair, that he looked to be wearing the same T-shirt he’d had on yesterday. That the waistband snap to his jeans was still undone.

“You need help doing up your pants?”

He stilled for a second, then twisted off the cap to the carton one-handed, poured the juice into a glass. “No.”

She swallowed. “Soon as I finish with Nicky, I can fix you some breakfast—”

“I’m not hungry.”

Faith took in a deep breath, trying to break the bands constricting her chest. “You get any sleep?”

“Not a whole lot, no. But thanks for asking.”

“Darryl, I—”

“There’s nothing to say, Faith,” he said, not looking at her. “Like you said, I was the one who brought up the subject.” He set the juice back in the fridge and let the door slam shut, making Nicky jump. The baby stopped nursing for a second, then latched back on, his blue eyes wide and trusting. Now standing at the window, Darryl sipped the juice, then made a face. “This our regular stuff?”

“No, they got a new brand in, I thought I’d try it—”

“Is there somebody else?” he said quietly.

“What?”

He turned, his expression flat. “I said, is there somebody else?”

She caught the laugh a split second before it escaped. “Of course not! What on earth put that idea into your head?”

“I’d be a fool not to ask, wouldn’t I?”

The baby done with his feed, Faith shifted him to sit up, fingering his fluffy curls as he let out a trucker-size belch, then gleefully slapped the table in front of them. “No, Darryl, there’s nobody else.” A rueful smile pulled at her mouth. “When on earth would I have had time?”

He smirked. “Still. I don’t know as I much like being thought of as a habit you can’t break.”

“It’s not like that—”

“Isn’t it? Oh, you said it prettier, all that stuff about us being like a pair of trees that have grown together, but the upshot’s the same. So.” He downed the rest of the juice. “You want out?”

“No!”

“Why?” He banged the glass onto the counter, the sound reverberating through the semidarkness. “Why would you want to stay if you’re not sure what you feel for me anymore?”

“Stop twisting my words!” she said in a low voice. “I said I loved you, what more do you want?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe a little honesty?”

“I am being honest! As honest as I know how, at least. For heaven’s sake, if I didn’t feel anything for you, do you think I’d still be sharing your bed?”

She was throwing him scraps, and she knew it. Just like the hard set to his mouth told her he knew it, too. “Thought that was just the hormones talking.”

“Maybe it is,” she retorted, exhausted and scared and frustrated, with him, with herself, with everything that was going on. “And maybe habit and hormones is the best most people can hope for after twelve years, I don’t know.”

“And that’s enough for you?” he said, the bitterness in his voice lancing through her. “’Cause I’m here to tell you, it sure as hell isn’t enough for me.”

Faith got up to set the baby in his play yard, hanging on to the side and watching him pick up what she knew was the first of many toys to be jettisoned onto the kitchen floor. “I know this is going to sound lame,” she said, blinking back tears, “but this isn’t any picnic for me, either. Especially knowing how much distress this is causing you.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“I may be messed up, Darryl,” she said quietly, “but I’m not stupid.”

The sun peeked over the horizon, flooding the kitchen with softly pearled light. “So…what now?” he said. “We just pretend everything’s okay, is that it?”

Faith looked over at him, her heart cracking at the confusion swimming in his eyes. “What choice do we have? For one thing, we’ve got five kids who for sure don’t need another crisis to deal with on top of everything else. And for another, you really want our parents to know about this?”

After a moment, Darryl snagged that old jacket she’d ripped up to accommodate his cast off the pegboard by the back door, awkwardly shrugging into it. She couldn’t tell if the pain contorting his features was due more to his bruised body or their conversation. “I’m going down to the garage,” he said, turning toward the back door.

“What? Why? There’s hardly anything left!”

His eyes touched hers, his voice like steel. “Oh, I’m pretty sure underneath the wreckage, there’s more left than you might think. Sooner I can get it cleared away, sooner I can start rebuilding.”