Hope Street (22 page)

He was so beautiful. And he wanted her. After everything, he still wanted her.

He lifted her blouse and she dutifully raised her hands so he could pull it off. Her bra wasn’t anything special; she’d replaced frills and lace with discreet engineering as her breasts went soft with age. Curt appeared enthralled by the plain garment, smooth and beige. He rose onto his knees and kissed a path over the swells of flesh above the cups, at last settling his mouth in the hollow between. He made a sound—of pleasure, of frustration, maybe both. It took more courage than Ellie knew she had to grope behind her back for the clasp and undo it. The bra fell slack and Curt moaned.

She leaned back into the pillows as he kissed her breasts, languidly, delicately, taunting her with his leisurely progress. When his mouth closed over one nipple she felt her womb tighten and throb. When he rubbed his thumb over the other, she felt dampness between her thighs.

She wanted him. Wanted him madly. Wanted everything she knew he could give her, every exquisite pleasure he could bring her. She wanted her skirt removed, and his pants. She wanted him on top of her, inside her, giving them both what she’d denied them for so long.

“Curt—”

He raised his head and peered at her. “Should I stop?” he asked, so solemnly she knew that if she said yes, he would.

“No.”

“Tell me what you want.”

Happiness. Love. My life. My husband.
“You,” she said.

He leaned back on his haunches, undid his belt, yanked down his zipper. Before she could blink, his trousers and briefs were gone. His efficient search of her skirt located the waistband button, and within a minute the skirt was gone, too, along with her nylons and panties. But instead of taking her, he stretched out on his side, rolled her onto her side facing him and gazed into her face while his hand roamed up and down her body. “I don’t want to rush you,” he said.

Go ahead, rush me,
she longed to plead.
Rush me so I don’t have to think.

He seemed to be doing plenty of thinking. He didn’t smile, didn’t look away from her. His expression was pensive as he let his hand dip into the slope of her waist. He skimmed her shins with his toes, lured her knee between his legs, stretched to caress her bottom. And just kept kissing her.

Please don’t make me take the lead,
she silently begged.
I’m not up to that. I can’t.

Kisses. More kisses. His hands on the backs of her thighs, his fingers brushing over the creases behind her knees. Kisses on the bridge of her nose, on the bottom edge of her earlobe while his thumb dug through her hair to her nape. Kisses as he inched closer to her, as she felt his heat vibrating in the narrow space between them, as his erection pressed into her belly.

At last he guided her onto her back and eased her legs apart. Even feeling how wet she was, he didn’t smile. He played his fingers over her, slid one into her, watched the twitch of her hips, the curl of her toes, until she was sure she’d burst. So long since she’d felt that pulsing heat inside her. So long since she’d felt anything other than numb.

“Are you ready?” he asked, even though the answer was pretty obvious.

“Yes.” She barely had the strength to speak. All her energy had gathered down below, where Curt was touching her.

“Because I could—”

“Yes,”
she groaned.

He allowed himself a hint of a smile at her impatience, then stretched out above her. She felt him against her, testing, and then slowly—oh, God, so slowly—he locked his body to hers.

In spite of her arousal, his invasion hurt. Years had passed since the last time she’d done this. But she welcomed the discomfort and willed herself to relax as he rocked above her, his thrusts controlled but deep, so deep. He propped himself on his elbows and continued to watch her, searching for signs of—what? Climax? Anger? Regret?

Did he fear that their entire marriage hinged on what was happening right now? Did
she
fear that?

She closed her eyes and lifted her hips. She loved this, loved the lush rhythm of it, the friction, the way her body gradually remembered, recognized Curt and accommodated his movements. She loved his weight, his fingers tangling into her hair, the pumping of his abdomen against hers.

This was enough, she told herself. Accepting him, his body, his love—it was enough. She didn’t need or expect more than what she felt right now.

“Come for me, Ellie,” he whispered.

She opened her eyes and looked up at him. She saw the strain in his face, his need for release rising inside him. He didn’t rush, though, didn’t force. Just asked.

“Let go, honey. Come for me.”

She couldn’t. She’d gone this far. It was enough.

He shifted, changing his angle, increasing the contact between them, and suddenly
enough
was no longer relevant. Heat built inside her, burned through her resistance. Instinct took over and she arched to meet him. She couldn’t stop her response, not anymore. It thundered through her, leaving her shattered, exhausted, in tears. She’d let go—of herself, her fear and her fury. It was wonderful. It was awful.

She was demolished.

Curt groaned and shuddered. A tremor racked his body. His arms shook as he held himself steady above her, and his breath emerged brokenly. “Oh, Ellie…Don’t cry, baby. Don’t cry.”

Just as she couldn’t keep herself from responding to his lovemaking, she couldn’t keep her tears from spilling over. He eased onto his back and gathered her in his arms, letting her sob against his chest. She wept for what she’d found in this bed, and for what she’d lost. She wept for the years her marriage had been all but dead. She wept for Curt’s betrayal, and for her own.

He stroked his hand through her hair, soothing. “Talk to me, Ellie. This wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“It was good,” she said, her lips tasting the salt of her tears on his skin.

“It was good,” he agreed, only when he said it the words sounded like a ridiculous understatement. “We’ve got this. We can work out the rest.”

“I don’t know.”

“I
do
know. If you’re not ready to forgive me, I’ll wait. You know I love you. As long as it takes, I’ll wait. There’s no deadline here. We’ll get through it.”

“No.” She wished she had the willpower to pull out of his embrace. His arm was so strong and protective around her, his chest so firm beneath her cheek. If she could close her eyes and lie with him on this grand brass bed in this charming room forever, maybe she’d never have to confront the truth.

Curt’s voice was soft and lulling. “Tell me,” he urged her. “Why can’t we get through it?”

“It’s me,” she said, at long last allowing the truth out. “I forgive you, Curt. It’s
me
I can’t forgive.”

“You did nothing you have to forgive yourself for,” he argued. “You were so depressed, remember? You were a wreck. It’s not your fault you didn’t bounce back. That’s what you told me, and you were right. Whatever happened between us wasn’t your fault.”

“You don’t know, Curt.” She swallowed down her final sob and inhaled deeply to calm herself. “I don’t deserve your love. I don’t deserve—this.” She gestured vaguely at the bed. “It is my fault. All of it.”

“Give me a little credit, Ellie. I had something to do with the mess we made of our marriage.”

“I’m not talking about what you did, Curt. I’m talking about
what I did.”
Say it,
she ordered herself.
He wants your honesty.
“I’m talking about Peter.”

“What about him?”

“I killed him.”

F
OR A MOMENT
, Curt couldn’t move. As if someone had injected him with one of those poisons that paralyzed a person, he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t lift his hand, couldn’t blink his eyes. His heart stopped beating.

Just moments ago, it had been beating so hard, he wouldn’t have been surprised to see it burst through his ribs. The sex—damn, it wasn’t sex. It was love. What he and Ellie had just experienced transcended sex. It transcended their bodies. It was the most intimate, the most personal, the most emotional connection he’d ever felt with a woman.

Sex was what he’d experienced with Moira. They’d enjoyed each other, satisfied each other, but his soul had been light-years removed from the act. The evening at her hotel room in Boston, he’d been half-crazed with hunger and self-loathing. The few days they’d spent together in California, he’d been a little less crazed and a lot more riddled with guilt. When he’d volunteered to travel to California to finish up the Benzer deal, he’d known the real reason he wanted to fly to the West Coast. Whatever happened between him and Moira during that trip
had been intentional. Curt had known what would happen. He’d hoped it would happen.

But once it
had
happened, he’d been riven with guilt, not just about Ellie but about Moira. Had he been using her? Taking advantage?

Late that Saturday night in her elegant Pacific Heights condo, he’d tried to push back the guilt. That had been about as effective as pushing back the ocean with his hands. He’d done a deplorable thing to his wife and his marriage. He’d broken vows. No matter how desperate he’d been, how angry, how alienated from Ellie…he’d inflicted damage that was probably irreparable.

“What happens tomorrow?” he’d asked Moira.

“You go to the airport and fly home,” she’d replied bluntly. “I meet a boyfriend for brunch.” He must have seemed startled, because she’d added, “Come on, Curt—we both know what this was. Fun, friendship, something to tide you over until you figure out what you want to do about your marriage. Don’t turn mopey on me.”

He hadn’t turned mopey. He’d been relieved to learn that Moira was as detached as he was, that her emotions hadn’t been involved and no commitment, acknowledged or unspoken, had been made.

As she’d predicted, he’d gone to the airport and flown home the next day. He’d spent the entire flight thinking about what he’d done and what he wanted.

Not Moira. Not loveless sex. His body had appreciated the workout, just as it appreciated a five-mile jog on the treadmill at the fitness club. But he’d realized, as the jet carried him back to Massachusetts, that what he and Ellie had was so much richer than a brief fling with an old friend. It was profound, precious, essential.

What they’d had. Could they ever have it again?

Tonight, on Ellie’s fiftieth birthday, he had his answer. They
could
have it again. They’d had it just moments ago.

Except for Ellie’s confession afterward.
I killed him.
She might as well have plunged a knife into Curt’s chest.

“What are you talking about?” he asked when he was finally able to make his mouth function.

“Peter’s death.”

He hadn’t misheard. His heart started beating again—too fast. A chill spread through him; even Ellie’s body, nestled against his, couldn’t warm him. He inched away from her, sat up and stared at her. She looked normal. She looked beautiful, in fact, her skin flushed, her hair tumbling in glorious disarray around her face, her cheeks marked by glistening tracks left by her tears.

She’d killed their son?
No.

“Ellie. If you unplugged his respirator or something, slipped him an extra dose of medicine—”

She cut him off with a shake of her head. Then she sat up, too. She kept her gaze focused on her hands in her lap, as if unable to meet his eyes. As well she should be, if what she was saying was true.

“I sat by his side that whole time, Curt,” she said. “When he was in the hospital. I prayed for him. I held his hand and talked to him. I sang him lullabies. Even if the doctors had told me he was brain-dead, I couldn’t have unplugged him.”

“Then you didn’t kill him,” Curt said, feeling his panic begin to drain away.

She shook her head again. “It’s my fault he died. He came home from school that day with a terrible headache and a fever, and I sent him to bed. I told him it was nothing. I gave him some ibuprofen and left him a bottle of Gatorade.”

“Ellie—”

“If I had recognized the symptoms, if I had erred on the side of caution…” She lifted her face to him, and he saw nothing but despair. “If I’d gotten him to the hospital right away, he would have lived.”

“You don’t know that.”

“They would have started pumping antibiotics into him sixteen hours sooner. It would have saved him.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t have.”

She ignored Curt’s remark. “I didn’t rush him to the hospital, or even call his doctor. Instead, I told him to go to bed. I shrugged off his illness. I’m a nurse, Curt. I should have known. By the time we got him to the hospital, it was too late to save him. A day earlier, it wouldn’t have been too late.”

He was about to repeat that she couldn’t say with certainty what might have happened if they’d gotten Peter to the hospital sooner. The fact was, she knew better than he did. She was a medical professional.

What if she was right? What if her delay had cost Peter his life?

He turned away. His gaze settled on the black TV screen across the room from the bed, and its blankness provided a frame for his thoughts, a backdrop for his memories. He recalled the evening Peter had fallen ill. Curt had poked his head into Peter’s room and Peter had said he felt lousy—although, as Curt remembered, Peter had used a stronger word. And then apologized for using it. He’d been himself that evening—a tired, headachy version of himself, but Curt had certainly seen nothing in Peter’s behavior or symptoms to cause alarm.

Ellie hadn’t viewed Peter as a patient, either. She’d viewed him as a mother and done just what any other mother would have done: she’d ordered fluids and bed rest.

But what if? What if quicker action on Ellie’s part could have
saved Peter’s life? What if he’d died because they’d gotten him to the hospital too late?

On the other hand, what if they’d rushed him to the hospital that evening and he’d still died? What if in their haste they’d gotten into a car accident and all three of them had died? A person could strangle on what-ifs.

All the twenty-twenty hindsight in the world couldn’t bring Peter back. That was the bottom line. Peter was dead. Ellie had done the best she could. So had Curt. And they’d lost their son.

“If I’d gone to medical school,” Ellie said, “I would have recognized the symptoms. But I didn’t want to be a doctor. I let everyone down. My family, my professors…and my son.”

“Ellie.” Curt twisted back to her. “If you’d gone to medical school, Peter would never have existed. You would have been in school for years. We would have put off having children until you were established. Different sperm would have met different eggs. Katie and Jessie wouldn’t have been born. Neither would Peter. If you’d been a doctor, you might not have wanted three children—or any children at all. You might have decided to devote yourself completely to your career.”

“How would you have felt about that?”

If he hadn’t had children, he wouldn’t have known what he was missing. But…“I wanted children,” he confessed. “We talked about that, back at Brown. I always wanted to be a father. If you’d decided you didn’t want to be a mother…”

“You wouldn’t have married me,” she said, completing the thought.

He contemplated that possibility before answering. His own words echoed in his head:
We’ve always had honesty.
Now wasn’t the time to stop being honest. “I probably wouldn’t have married you,” he conceded. “Part of what made me love you was that
you wanted children. You wanted to create a home with me, and a family, and our own special world. If you weren’t that way, I wouldn’t have loved you.”

“Would you have married me if you knew my stupidity would lead to the death of one of our children?”

Again he thought long and hard before replying. “You’re sounding a little like a doctor now—like you’ve got control of who lives and who dies. Like you’re that important.”

Her eyes flashed. She looked indignant but also intrigued.

“You’re not that important, honey. Sometimes fate decides these things for us. Fate or God or whoever you want to blame. Sometimes we can do everything in the world, and we still can’t keep a terrible thing from occurring. We’re just not that powerful, Ellie.”

She seemed doubtful.

“We’re only human. We make mistakes. I made a bigger mistake than you.”

“You didn’t—”

He held up his hand to silence her. “It doesn’t matter. We made mistakes. But we loved Peter, we loved him as much as any two parents can possibly love a son, and we’ll always love him. You don’t get one without the other. If you’re human, you make mistakes and you love your children. And we’re human.”

She sighed, evidently unable to argue. Instead, she sank back into the pillows. Her eyes grew shiny with fresh tears. “Do you know why I stopped seeing the therapist?”

He shrugged. “I assumed it was because she wasn’t helping you.”

“I stopped seeing her because she was wrong.” Ellie sighed shakily. “She told me I refused to let go of my pain because I feared that if I let go of the pain, I’d be letting go of Peter. If I stopped hurting, it would be as if I’d finally lost him for good. But as long as I still hurt, he still existed for me.”

“And that was wrong?”

“I held on to the pain because I felt responsible for his death.” She sighed again. A tear streaked down her cheek to her chin and dripped onto the curve of her breast. “I couldn’t feel happy ever again. I couldn’t feel joy. I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t deserve to have a husband who loved me, and daughters who admired me. I didn’t deserve lovemaking. I didn’t deserve pleasure. I’d killed Peter, and I had to suffer for my mistake.” She aimed her shimmering gaze at him, as if seeking absolution.

Her confession tore at him. Even tonight, when he’d been making love to her, she’d held back. He’d thought she was just rusty after such a longtime, or may be unable to open herself completely to her faithless husband. Now he realized the truth: she didn’t believe she was entitled to that kind of fulfillment. She’d fought the ecstasy as long as she could before finally giving in to it.

“You should have told me what you were going through,” he said. “All those months, that long, dark stretch when I just couldn’t reach you, you should have told me. Instead, I assumed you were satisfied just to shut me out. And I acted like an SOB. I did a terrible thing. If only I’d known—”

“
I
didn’t know. How could I tell you what I didn’t know myself? I knew I’d done something tragically wrong, I knew I didn’t deserve your love anymore—but I don’t think I actually figured it all out until this evening, watching the movie.”

He glanced toward the black screen again. What in the movie had led her to her epiphany?

“There was a period when I actually thought I was ready to face life again. It occurred to me that you didn’t deserve to do penance for my sins. So I tried to pull myself together. I tried to be happy. I even thought I’d make love to you. I’d let human warmth back into my heart.”

“What happened?”

“You came home from California,” she reminded him.

He cursed.

“Bad timing,” she said with a poignant smile.

“Oh, God, I remember. You’d made a fancy, candlelit, welcome-home dinner for me.”

“And I’d cleaned Peter’s room.”

“Yeah.” He recalled his shock when he’d carried his suitcase up the stairs that Sunday evening, preoccupied with how he was going to break the news to Ellie about his affair, how she would take it, whether his compulsion to tell her the truth would destroy her for good. As he’d passed Peter’s bedroom, he’d paused, his attention snagging on something. Nudging the door wider, he’d realized that the computer was off. The bed was made with fresh linens. All the teenage-boy clutter had been removed from the floor and that damn bottle of Gatorade had vanished from the night table.

The altered condition of Peter’s bedroom had disoriented Curt. For a few strange minutes, he’d wondered whether he had entered the wrong house that night, whether the cheerful woman arranging a gourmet feast downstairs in the kitchen was really Ellie, whether his flight had delivered him to some alternate universe. Whether sleeping with a woman who wasn’t his wife—sleeping with a woman he didn’t love—had transformed him or transformed the world around him.

He’d recovered from his shock. But he remembered how tense and unnerved and desperately afraid he’d been.

“So I decided to go to Africa,” Ellie said. “I figured that if I could save enough lives over there, it might make up for what I’d done to Peter here. Pretty ridiculous, I guess—my traveling to a foreign country to cleanse the stains from my soul.”

“You did save lives there,” he pointed out.

She shrugged. “I saved a boy’s hearing.”

“I said it downstairs, and I’ll say it again. You are not a failure, Ellie.” He faced her fully, took her hands in his and held them tight. “You are
not
a failure. You’ve saved the lives of sick children. You didn’t save Peter’s life because you couldn’t. And you shouldn’t have become a doctor because that wasn’t your calling. It wasn’t your destiny.”

She studied him as if he had all the answers, all the wisdom. He didn’t. Hell, he knew how to negotiate a damn good deal with other lawyers, how to litigate when negotiation didn’t work, how to threaten and cajole and get all the conflicting parties to a mutual understanding and a workable agreement. He knew how to wash dishes and clean gutters and how to maneuver a hot sports coupe down a winding country road. He knew how to howl like Warren Zevon singing “Werewolves of London” and how to bench-press a hundred pounds. He could hold his own on a golf course and at any social event. He knew how to argue politics without offending too many people, and how to charm his in-laws when they were driving Ellie crazy.