Almost Mine (32 page)

‘Is everything ok, sweetheart?’ she said softly.

I used my forehead muscles to lift my eyes open. ‘This is the right decision, isn’t it?’

‘It must be the right decision for you. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here, would you? Don’t worry. It’ll all be over soon.’

I had been briefed by the discerning nurse about what the procedure entailed, along with some of the physical side-effects that I was to expect. The physical side of this situation was not what drove me to mutilate my otherwise immaculate nails; it was the fact that after this was all done, after the baby had been removed, I was terrified of what kind of mental state I would be in. Nobody could tell me that kind of information. Nobody could tell me whether I would feel the relief that I was hoping for because doing this meant that Roy would still love me, or whether the self-hatred that was slowly creeping up from the pit of my stomach would consume me. All that I knew, all that I had been told by the all-understanding counsellor earlier in the warm, lemon-yellow room with a suede couch and fluffy throw cushions, three doors down from this white, sterile operating theatre, was that I may feel regret, I may feel loss and that I may feel resentment. But all of those things were nothing compared to the disgust that I felt towards myself for getting into this situation and not having the character to do what most would tell me to do; which in a home town run by family-owned businesses would no doubt have been to keep the baby.

Inevitably, I was forced to give in, and allowed my eyes to close, opening them again when it was all too late for me to change my mind. And because I was weak and terrified of being alone, I gave Roy what he wanted.

Now, returning my attention to my patient father sitting opposite me, my words left my mouth as if on their own accord.

‘When I was seventeen I had an abortion.’

Time ticked on as the words echoed around my head, taking a few moments to realise that they were echoing around my entire world.

Tears fell down my father’s face. ‘Oh, love.’

It wasn’t the first time that I’d seen my dad cry, but to know that I had caused him anguish unbearably caused me the same.

I moved around the table to sit beside him, wrapping my arm around his shoulder.

‘I’m sorry, too, Dad,’ I cried with him.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I’m so ashamed. I’ve never told anyone.’

‘Nick?’

I thought back to when I’d learned of Nick’s run-in with Roy at Maisy’s on that Sunday morning. It had coincided with the fact that I’d had the procedure done only two days prior. ‘No. But I suspect that he knows.’

Time ticked on further in silence as we finally managed to dry our eyes.

‘You’re not the only one who has ever done this,’ Dad comforted me.

‘And how incredibly sad is that.’

‘But I know you. Don’t take every choice that a woman has made to terminate a pregnancy and make it your own. These things happen for many different reasons.’

‘I killed my baby, Dad. No matter which way you look at it. That is exactly what I did.’

‘I’m sure you did what you thought—’

I shook my head to stop him. I couldn’t bear to hear any more excuses made for me. Nick used to do it for me while I was with Roy. I’d done it in every aspect of my life. It had to stop.

‘I accept that sometimes women have no choice in the matter, but what I did, it was weak. I was a coward for not standing up to Roy. I thought that he would leave me if I didn’t. I did it for my own gain but then I lost him anyway. There’s nothing you can say that will make me feel any less culpable. I stole a life and for the past ten years I’ve been trying to make up for it, at any cost, ignoring the fact that I was ruining my only chance at real happiness with Nick. But even if I have a million babies I can never…’

‘Well if you won’t let me help you, how do you plan on helping yourself through this? There has to be forgiveness, love. Or the regret will eat you alive.’

‘I can’t forgive this.’

‘Of course you can.’

‘How can I forgive without being selfish about it? I’d only be doing it for my own redemption.’

‘Would you? What about Nick?’ I was utterly confused. Ashamedly I admitted that I was still getting used to thinking of anyone other than myself. ‘I’m sure he’s suffered through the consequences of your actions. Why not forgive for his sake? He’s worth that isn’t he?’

He was right. I could do that easily. I would do anything to give Nick his own redemption.

I rinsed my dishes, had a quick freshen up in the bathroom, and my feet objected when I replaced my suffocating shoes onto them. With a perfunctory kiss on my cheek from my dad, I left, taking a slow walk back to Mathieson’s Vineyard, along the way rescripting every word that I wanted to say to my husband tomorrow, on our anniversary.

Present day—June eighteenth

‘I’m sure the restaurant won’t fall apart if I’m not there for an evening,’ Nick said to Lucy as she stood unmoving in the doorway after her untimely entrance.

‘Will you be down later though? I’m sure Catey understands what a busy man you are.’

I wasn’t a violent person — even Roy had never incited such a reaction from me — but I wanted to slap her smirk from her face.

‘I’ll be there to close up.’ Nick tempered her ambition with a low tone of authority. He was her boss after all. ‘If that’s all, Lucy, maybe you should head back to work.’

She eyed me curiously.

‘Bye Lucy,’ I said as she continued to hover.

I had the feeling that perhaps all was not as I first thought. Maybe something had happened between the two of them, but I held out hope that whatever it was, it had to be completely unrequited.

We were finally alone again and I wanted to tell him about our baby growing beautifully in my belly. But our entrée was spoiling and I was starving.

‘Should we eat before it gets cold?’ I said as I slipped from the stool.

He followed me to the table and obliged me by taking a sip of soup.

‘Good?’

‘Very,’ he said quietly.

‘Nick, we’ve been through a lot together, too much to even fathom when I think about it. But I just want you to remember that nothing is insurmountable for us. When we are on the same team we are unbeatable. And to prove it —’

‘Stop, Cate.’

‘For once will you just allow me to finish?’

He replaced his spoon into its position beside his fork and sat back in his chair. I didn’t know whether he was giving me his full attention or just becoming too irritated with me and was about to get up and leave. I continued anyway.

‘To prove how good a team we are when we are together…’ I reached around to the back pocket of my jeans for the proof that I needed to fix everything.

‘I kissed Lucy.’

Nick’s confession, although almost inaudible, filled the room, his unwavering gaze holding mine across the table as the world suddenly stood still. My mouth fell agape, frozen with shock. The brick that he had hurled at me hit me with such force that it left my shell of a body sitting numb on the chair while my insides were splattered all over the buttermilk wall behind me.

Blinkingly, I managed to fractionally regroup and force my mouth closed, leaving the very first image of our baby untouched in my pocket. I watched Nick in dismay as I tried to understand whether or not what I had heard had actually been what he had said. I couldn’t find a word, not a single one that would do justice to the side-swiped jolt to my entire body. All I could do was to watch the guilt steal him further away from me.

‘I’m sorry, Cate,’ his voice broke as he murmured my name, ‘but now that I’ve dishonoured you there is no reason for you to stay with me.’

A typical wife would have cried, or thrown at him one of the wine glasses that stood proud in the middle of the perfectly romantic dining table. But not me; I forbade my tears to fall, instead steeling myself into battle mode. Aside from breaking my heart, his declaration angered me, added fuel to my fight. However hurtful Nick’s trump card, it was trivial compared to mine. Before revealing it though, I had to get to the bottom of why my intelligent, patient, loyal husband had resorted to behaving with such recklessness. Allow me to correct that; I wanted
him
to tell me why and not just assume for myself. If he’d let me in for just a second I’d have all I needed to chip away and fix the one thing that was wrong. I’d very recently learned how therapeutic disclosure can be.

‘I knew you were desperate to push me away, but of all of the things that I predicted that you were capable of, I never once thought that you would do something this miscalculated. I thought you were more creative than that. I thought I was the only one who made stupid decisions around here.’

His expression altered as if he’d remembered something that had left a distasteful residue in his mouth. ‘I completely understand if you leave. Who am I to stand in your way of happiness?’

Again, I wondered whether what was coming out of his mouth was actually what he was saying. ‘You can’t be serious,’ I said with incredulity. ‘You’re my husband;
you
are my happiness. I will tattoo it across my forehead for you to see every day if that’s what it takes. And if you think that frivolous fraternising with a waitress is going to end us, then you’re sorely mistaken.’

He spoke as if I hadn’t. ‘You looked happy with Blake.’

I was taken aback. ‘What does this have to do with Blake?’

‘I saw the look on your face when you were together.’

‘I looked happy, did I?’

‘I assumed so. You smiled a lot.’

‘Well if I was
smiling
,’ I said with acerbity, ‘then I guess I must have been. Is that why you betrayed me?’

I really didn’t want my all-over-the-place hormones to have me come across as cantankerous, but he was definitely pushing me past my tolerance threshold, and they were defiantly not helping my cause.

‘Mostly,’ he swallowed hard, ‘but Lucy seems to have worked her way under my skin. I couldn’t help it…there’s just something so alluringly sexual about her. Her tits are delicious.’ As I held a painful breath at “tits” he took one, as if he was taking his time to select his words for potency and effect as he went. I eyed him, cursing my body for producing tears even though I had specifically demanded that it didn’t. A glance at the ceiling and at the clock behind Nick cleared my eyes and in that time I replayed what he’d said, deciding that I didn’t believe him. Oh, I believed that he kissed Lucy; he wasn’t a liar, but the details were delivered unconvincingly, as if he’d rehearsed them. I understood why he’d needed such a long run this morning. His words could never be true; I knew him well enough to know that he’d never describe a woman that he respected in such a vulgar way. He’d describe the smell of her skin and talk about how ambitious or driven she was, or how she adored children or how she made him feel. But most importantly, he’d describe all of the things that he wanted to give her, and stop at nothing to make her happy. He would certainly never describe someone that he held in high esteem to have delicious tits. His aim
was clear, quite transparently, to hit me right where it hurt from the get-go; to knock me to my knees before I had a chance to hurt him with my ever-painful presence. But he’d obviously made another miscalculation; I didn’t have it in me to fail.

I squared my shoulders as if to carry the weight of everything within me. ‘When did this happen?’ I stoically asked.

He paused before answering. ‘This morning.’

Oh.
‘When I saw you leave for a run, you went to her? Did you sleep with her?’ I said despite the fact that the already painful knot in my stomach tightened in protest.

‘I kissed her, and I could have—’ he broke off as he seemed to replay the scene in his mind, and then established eye contact with me again. ‘I could never do that to you, Cate.’

‘Ah but you did, didn’t you? It seems to me that your game plan needs to be revised. You kissed her and in my books you may as well have slept with her. Unlike the rest of our lives there are no grey areas here. Unfaithful is unfaithful.’

He was quiet again, as was I, as we both attempted to absorb what was happening. ‘Speaking of unfaithful, am I right to assume that you’ve slept with Blake?’

My words were suddenly gridlocked in my tightened throat and I tried to funnel them through in the order that I had, in the past few minutes, swiftly scripted in my head. But my falter registered as an admission. I don’t know why, but instead of contradicting his belief, I allowed him to assume that he was correct. Maybe it was a scornful thing to do, maybe I was subconsciously creating an even playing field — tit for tat — or maybe I was just too stunned because of the unforeseen direction that this conversation had taken. In recent months Blake had been the furthest thing from my mind. Whatever the reason, Nick did read my silence as an admission, and he sat back in his chair without removing his resolute gaze.

‘I never actually knew what was happening between the two of you, but now I guess I do,’ he said. My brain tried to back-track, but whatever words I wanted to say didn’t compute with my mouth and it left me gaping like a searching fish. When he spoke again it was with inevitability. ‘It’s finally happening to us, isn’t it, Cate?’

It was time to shake things up, so I opted to gamble and calculated my words to prove him right.

‘To be honest, Nick, I didn’t always expect this to happen, but you have to admit that you really gave me no choice, did you? You’re always so absent. Sure you’re here in body but you’re not really
here
are you? You used to love being my husband. It’s not my fault that you forced me to doubt that you want me.’

He pulled his fingers into his palms as if to refrain from reaching toward me. I waited him out. I wanted the slightest clue that it really wasn’t over. I shifted impatiently in my chair as his discipline won out, his body unmoving as time slipped away from us. ‘I am trying my hardest to remain calm but you’re pushing me beyond it, Nick. Tell me, why is my doubt ridiculous?’

‘I really do love you,’ he said, as if telling me the grass is green.