Second Chance Friends (10 page)

Karen felt a lump form in her throat. This was all so
wrong. Where was the grizzled drug addict who'd baited her son into a bar brawl? Where was the man who deserved this?

“Have there been any changes?” she squeaked out through what felt like a packed throat.

Katy's smile turned sad and she tilted her head to one side, studying Curt's face. She reached up and stroked his cheek with the back of one finger. “Not really,” she said. “He's made a few movements here and there, and we thought maybe he was waking up, but the doctors say those are involuntary movements and there haven't been any real changes. We're hopeful, though. Curt's a fighter. He won't give up and neither will we.”

“No, of course, you can't,” Karen said.

“I just wish I could understand why, you know?” Katy said. She'd slipped her hand out of Curt's and laid his gently across his chest. She crossed her arms, bunching up as if she was cold. “His friends all swear he wasn't doing anything wrong. Said he bumped into the other guy's barstool or something. Amos says he had his hands up and kept telling the guy he didn't want any trouble. I just wish I could figure out why the guy couldn't have just left him alone. Sandra said Curt has never been in a fistfight his whole life. He didn't know how to fight. It just seems so . . .” She shrugged.

“Senseless,” Karen supplied for her, and Katy nodded.

“Yeah. That's how I know he's going to come back to me. There's no way this is how he's going to go out. It's just not possible.”

But anything was possible, and Karen knew that. If it was possible that her son had done this—this!—to the young man lying in front of her, a man who hadn't been drinking, a man who didn't want any trouble, then it was possible that Curt MacDonald would never wake up from his bachelor party. Unjust and unfair, definitely. But impossible? No.

There was a bustling sound in the hallway, and the door was pushed open. Karen and Katy both turned as a woman came into the room, carrying a plastic sack.

“Oh, she's back,” Katy said, her smile returning.

Karen didn't know who “she” was, but she guessed her to be Sandra, the one who'd stepped out. And from the haggard look on Sandra's face, the matte pallor of her skin, the dark circles under her eyes, Karen guessed that Sandra was Curt's mother. She was certain of it. Only a mother could look so ill at her son's hospital bed.

“I brought you a sandwich,” the woman said, holding the plastic bag out. Katy took it. “Cafeteria was busy today. I should have gone out. No changes?”

Katy shook her head. “Not yet.”

The woman gave Curt a quick once-over and dropped her purse onto the chair Katy had been occupying when Karen had arrived. Only then did she seem to really notice that Karen was standing there. “Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” Karen responded, taking an involuntary step back from the bed, as if the woman would be able to sniff out that she was an intruder—someone who didn't belong by Curt's bedside.

“I'm sorry,” the woman said. “I guess I've forgotten who you are. You'll have to forgive me. It's been a trying few weeks.”

“Of course,” Karen said, her entire body going electric. Now that she was face-to-face with the other mother, she was hit with the enormity of what her being there at all would mean. How could she have shown up there? How could she have thought it would be the right thing to do? How could Antoinette have set her up for this? She wanted to escape, to run out of the room with no explanation. Surely they would be better off to forever wonder who the strange woman had been who'd visited Curt than to know that she had been the person who'd raised the man who'd beaten Curt nearly to death.

The woman tipped her head forward, as if she was straining to hear Karen speak, her eyebrows jotting up into her hairline.

“I'm Karen,” Karen said, offering her hand, but then thinking better of it and letting it drop to her side.

The woman shook her head uncomprehendingly. “I'm sorry. You worked with Curt?”

Karen realized how easy it would be to just nod, pretend that this was exactly how she knew Curt. But that was not why she was here, and while she was, at the moment, a swirl of confusion and guilt and grief, she still felt that to come here and lie would somehow only make her feel worse about this horrible situation.

“Uh, no,” she said, her voice shaky. “I actually . . . um . . .” She shifted her weight, felt tears spring to her eyes,
as if they'd been waiting for the right moment to appear. “My son is Travis Freeman,” she finally blurted, feeling as if the words had been ripped out of her on the sinew of an enormous painful scab.

It took a moment for the name to register with the woman. Her eyes darted to the floor as she searched for how she knew Travis Freeman. But then Karen could see it dawn on her. Her head snapped up, a red blotch instantaneously appearing on her neck, as if Karen had slapped her. “Travis Freeman,” she said dully.

Karen nodded. “I came to”
—say “apologize,” say “apologize,” say “apologize”
—“to pray for your son's recovery,” she said instead. “I prayed. In the chapel. And I brought him flowers.” She gestured toward the windowsill.

The woman gazed at the flowers and then turned slowly back toward Karen. “You came to pray for my son's recovery,” she said, and Karen wished she would say something else, something new, stop just repeating Karen's words.

Karen nodded.

The woman's face split into a grin, but unlike the brilliant grin that had been on Katy's face, this one looked bruised and fragile. She nodded, as if listening to an amusing tale that nobody else could hear. “You should be praying for your own son,” she finally said. “My son doesn't need your prayers. He is a good person who never hurt anyone in his life. Save your prayers for the monster that you raised. I know about him. Repeat offender.” She said these last two words with such venom, Karen actually backed up
a step. “This is a game to him. People's lives are meaningless. He needs your prayers so much more than my Curt.”

“It's not,” Karen had been saying. “It's not a game.” But her voice was soft and uncertain. “He is sorry.” She didn't know why she was saying this. Travis had been anything but sorry when she last saw him. She was protecting him again. It was so easy to say your son needed tough love, but much harder to believe it when his enemies were standing right in front of you.

“Yes, he is,” the woman said. “A very sorry human being. You should leave. You have no business being here.”

“I came to apologize,” Karen said, but it was clearly too late. Her voice came out whiny, plaintive, like she was bartering with this woman for an extra cookie or a later bedtime.

“And you did,” the woman said. “Thank you for that.”

Karen backed toward the door. “I'm sorry,” she practically whispered, wishing the woman had been yelling, had been giving her reason to be angry. Instead, the woman had been so confident, so resolute. It served only to make Karen feel defeated. “I'm sorry,” she said again, then turned and left the room.

“You okay?” she heard Katy ask as she walked away from Curt MacDonald's doorway.

“That took a lot of nerve,” the woman said.

And then Katy's voice, faint and fading as Karen moved toward the elevator: “Don't worry, they'll put him away for a long time this time. You heard them say . . .”

The elevator doors slid open and Karen stepped inside on numb legs. She couldn't blame them. Who could? She would want Curt MacDonald to be put away forever if it were Travis in that bed. She would think Curt MacDonald was a monster. She would want justice.

She felt so sorry, so guilty. Travis had taken a boy from his mother, a young man from his future wife. Travis had done this, and she had raised Travis alone. She had never foreseen the man the sweet little boy with the dimpled chin would become. She had never suspected he would be this man she now called her son. She was ignorant. She was negligent.

But she was still his mother. And she wanted to shield him from Curt MacDonald's mother.

And old habits died hard. Or maybe old protectors never stopped protecting. Or maybe she was stupid or crazy, but Karen still had some nugget of hope inside her that Travis could be saved somehow. That time behind bars would only make him worse, would only take him further down the path he was on. If Curt MacDonald was going to be lost, what sense would it make to lose Travis, too? Why not salvage one young life if it was at all possible? Besides, she had created this monster—it was up to her to fix him. And if she was going to undo the mistakes she'd obviously made in raising him, how could she possibly do it if he was locked up?

She pulled her phone out of her purse and thumbed through the contacts list until she found the one she was
looking for. Alone in the elevator, she pressed
TALK
and waited through the few rings that would take her to the voice mail she wanted.

“Hello, Mr. Sidwell? This is Karen Freeman, down in Human Resources. I'm wondering if you might have a moment to chat sometime this week? My son is having some legal troubles, and I need advice. . . .”

I
t had been an extremely rough day. First a call on a child choking. The mother had managed to dislodge the chunk of hot dog that had wedged itself in her toddler's throat just moments before Melinda and Jason had arrived, but both mother and child were nearly hysterical, shaking with tears and adrenaline even as they took his vitals and reassured her he was fine. Melinda had finally suggested the mother take the child to urgent care to have him checked out by a doctor, which had calmed the mother, but had only set off another wave of wailing from the child.

Jason was in a bad mood after that. Melinda didn't love it when she had to work with him. He was moody and unpredictable, given to melancholy calls with his whiny wife, which he always took on speaker.

I hate this job, Jason. You need a new job. I can't raise the kids by myself all the time without you, Jason. You agreed when Sara was born, Jason.

On and on the woman went, her tune never changing from day to day. The calls only reinforced Melinda's own child problems. She always wondered if it would be Paul someday making those calls, demanding she give up the career she'd worked so hard to establish herself in. They couldn't have a child—why didn't Paul see that? Her career wasn't amenable to it. Jason was proof of that every single day.

They weren't even back to the station yet after the choking call before they got another call. A child had a seizure during a school assembly, terrifying her teachers and other students. Melinda felt on display as she walked through the school, all the kids staring from their classroom doors and desks and the cafeteria. She felt sorry for the little girl as they escorted her out of the school. How humiliated the little girl must have felt, being the center of such attention. Kids had horribly long memories. They would forever recall her as the girl who'd shaken on the floor of the gymnasium during the magazine-sale assembly. How would her mother stand knowing that her daughter not only had this medical problem but would likely be a pariah because of it? The thought made Melinda so sad she felt she might burst into tears.

“What's your problem, Crocker?” Jason had grumbled when they got back in the truck, addressing her by her last name only—something else she disliked about him.

“What?”

“You've been bitchy all day. What's the deal?”

Melinda had rolled her eyes as she swiveled to pull her seat belt around herself. “That's rich,” she mumbled.

“Huh?”

“I said there's nothing wrong. What's wrong with you?”

“Nothing. I'm not the one with the problem.”

“Whatever.”

That was pretty much the extent of any conversation Melinda had ever had with Jason. She checked her watch, hoping her shift was almost over.

There had been one more call before she finally got to go home. A car accident that was probably more suicide than accident. A man—a doctor, one of the officers had told them—had driven his truck directly into the concrete abutment of a bridge. His death had most likely been instantaneous, but it gutted Melinda just the same. As she peered in through the wrecked window at the man's lifeless body, all she could see was the memory of blood draining from Michael Routh's pale face. All she could hear were the frantic cries of Maddie Routh, intermingled with the sobs of the children who were still straggling out of the tipped bus. All she could feel was the anxiety of lives being forever changed.
Please, kids, don't come over here. Stay with your teacher. Stay with your bus. You don't want to see this.

By the time she nosed her car into the driveway, she was bone tired, emotionally wrung out, unsure how she'd be able to ever make herself get up and put on her uniform again in the morning.

Paul's car was in the garage. Immediately, guilt and anxiety washed over her, while at the same time she couldn't wait to get inside and fall into his arms. Let him take the day away from her. They'd have dinner. He'd encourage her to talk about her workday. His voice would soothe her. He would give her a little shoulder rub and remind her that what she did made her a hero to some people. He'd curl up around her in bed under the blue glow of late-night talk shows. Most likely, he would make love to her, and she'd go through the motions, wishing she could have a glass of wine to help alleviate what she was feeling. She wanted to enjoy his body against hers again, but she was always too tense to even feel him these days.

“I'm home,” she called, tossing her car keys on the kitchen counter. She shucked her shoes right there by the kitchen table, a habit that annoyed him but that she couldn't seem to shake no matter how hard she tried. “What's for dinner? I'm starving.” She continued to shed items—her lunch bag, her purse—as she walked through the living room. The bedroom light was on, and she could hear Paul's dresser drawer squeak open. She unbuckled her belt and let it hang, untucked her shirt, let out a breath. “Very long day today—had to work with Jason. Did you know he looks angry even when he chews? He has this vein that pops out in the middle of his forehead and his nostrils flare out. The dude is eating a sandwich, and . . .”

Melinda had rounded the corner into the bedroom, her hand still twisted up into the back of her hair, trying to
loose an elastic from her ponytail. She stopped when she saw her husband, sitting on the edge of the bed, rifling through his dresser drawer, a duffel bag open on the bed.

“What's going on?” she asked, and, when he didn't respond, prompted, “Paul? Is something wrong?”

Paul had found the shirt he was searching for, and held it crumpled in his fist. He shut the drawer with a thud and tossed the shirt into the duffel.

“Paul?” Melinda prompted again, stepping toward him. “What are you doing?”

He stood to face her, and Melinda's stomach dropped. Something was very, very wrong. Her husband didn't often look like this. The last time she'd seen this expression on his face, his brother had gone off on a drunken rampage and had shoved their aging father into a wall. This look meant only one thing. He was pissed.

“Do you have anything you want to talk about, Melinda?” he asked. His voice was like a stranger's.

She shook her head. “What . . . ?”

“You sure you don't want to tell me anything?”

She felt a jolt of adrenaline rush through her, causing her limbs to instantly go icy. Her ears rang with her heartbeat. He knew. Somehow, he knew. She could feel his knowledge hovering in the air between them.

“No,” she said. “I don't know what you're talking about, Paul.”

“Well, let me give you a hint,” he said. He reached up onto his dresser and pulled down a blue plastic envelope
that she knew all too well. She could see the foil tags peek out of the bottom from where she'd popped the pills through their blisters. “Look familiar?” He tossed the packet onto the bed. It lay there, half-used, between the two of them, damning evidence.

“How did you find them?” Melinda asked, at once sick and angry. Knowing she had no right to feel angry, but feeling it just the same. “Were you going through my things?”

“No, I wasn't going through your things. Stupid me, I would never think you had anything to hide from me. Why would I look through your things?” He placed his hands on his hips. “I was looking for the Tylenol because my colossally shitty day gave me a killer headache. Congratulations, by the way. You sure know how to drive a headache away.”

“You thought you'd find Tylenol in my tampons?” she asked, knowing it was a mistake to let annoyance seep into her voice. She felt a great need to defend herself, to deflect his anger. Maybe if he'd done something wrong, too, she would look less wrong. It was stupid and childish, and she knew it, but she couldn't help herself.

“I accidentally knocked the box out of the cabinet and the lid opened up,” he said. He picked up the pill packet and shook it. “Does it matter how I found them? The date on the prescription is this month. And I guess your reaction is all I need to hear to know that the date is accurate.”

Melinda didn't respond. She didn't know how. A million responses were milling through her brain, muddled and chaotic, and no one thought could break through.

“Why?” he asked. “I mean, we've been to the fertility
clinic, for God's sake. You cried, Melinda. You sat in that office and cried. I consoled you.”

Just hearing about how she'd cried made helpless tears spring to Melinda's eyes. They'd been real tears in that fertility clinic office. But he would never believe that. He would think the tears were part of her cover-up.

“I cried because I didn't know how to tell you,” she said. “I felt so guilty.”

“Tell me what? That you were making family planning decisions for both of us without letting me in on it? That you were lying to me? Is that what you didn't know how to tell me? Seriously, Melinda, it should be really easy. You had about a billion chances to just say, ‘Hey, Paul, maybe we should talk about the fact that I never got off of my birth control pills before you go and make a fool of yourself and waste a shitload of money with a bunch of fertility testing.' You'd think you could at least manage that much.” He sank onto the bed and propped his elbows on his knees, resting his forehead in his hands.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “It didn't seem that easy. You were so . . . excited.”

“Oh, well, forgive me for being excited to start a family with you,” he said. “Yeah. I was. I thought we both were. I was excited for us, Melinda. Not for me. I never saw this as being about one of us. Unlike you, I guess.”

She walked to the side of the bed, where he was, and reached out to touch the back of his head. He jerked away from her touch, and she shrank back a few steps. She had known he would be upset, but she had never expected him to shut her out so completely.

“I'm sorry,” she repeated. “You have no idea how much it was eating me up. Every day I felt so guilty.”

“But you took it every day anyway. You should have been feeling guilty. Lying to your husband should make you feel guilty.”

She nodded. “I'm just not ready to have kids.”

He dropped his hands. “So were you planning on ever clueing me in on when you'd be ready? Since this is all about you.”

“That's the thing,” she said. “I don't know if I'll ever be ready.”

He gazed at her, bewilderment in his eyes and in the helpless way his hands hung between his knees. “You said you wanted kids. We talked about this before we ever got engaged.”

“I did want them. And I do, in theory. It's just . . . every time I think about having my own kids now, I just . . . I can't. All I can think about is the drowning call we went on that one summer, and the time that kid lost half his leg under his dad's lawn mower, and all the car accidents. I can't do it, Paul. Every time I look at our baby, I'll just be waiting for catastrophe to strike.”

“So you're just going to have no children rather than take a chance that something bad might happen to one?” he asked. “Bad things happen, Melinda. You can't stop them. Does what you're saying actually seem rational to you?”

She shrugged. She honestly hadn't thought it all the way through to that end before. Was that what she was doing? Was she willing to never hold her own child in her
arms because she'd seen so many moms' arms be emptied? Was the pain of the
maybe
worse than the pain of never having her own baby? “I don't know,” she said simply.

“You don't know.”

She shook her head. “And that's why I had to take the pills, Paul. Because I don't know, which tells me I'm not ready. And I don't know if I'll ever be ready. I want to be, but I can't make any promises. Not right now.”

“The problem wasn't you taking the pills. It was you taking them without telling me. This isn't a game, Melinda. It's our life. These are decisions we're supposed to make together, even if it means you have to have a conversation with me that you don't want to have. Don't I at least deserve that much?”

He did, and she knew he did. From the very beginning, she knew he deserved that much. That was what the guilt was about—not about keeping herself from getting pregnant, but about hiding her fears from him.

He pulled himself up from the bed and leaned over to grab his duffel. “Can I ask you something?” She watched as he zipped his duffel. “Are you having an affair?”

“What?”

He shouldered the duffel. “Do you need the pills because you're screwing around and you don't want to take the chance that you'll get pregnant and not know who the father is?”

She touched her collarbone with her fingertips. “I can't believe you would even ask me that.”

“Well, we'll just add it to the list of unbelievable things today,” he said. “Are you?”

“Of course I'm not,” she spat.

He stared at her for what seemed an uncomfortably long time, and then edged his way around the bed and around her.

“Where are you going?” she asked, following him, her heart pounding anew.

“The gym,” he said. “And then to Anthony's. I'm going to stay with him for a few days.”

“Your brother lives in Des Moines,” she said, pointing out the obvious about Anthony.

“The drive will give me time to think,” he said over his shoulder.

“When will you be back?”

“I don't know, a few days, a few weeks. I'll call.” He plucked his car keys out of the key bowl on the table next to the front door, then veered through the living room, where he picked up a book he'd left by the couch.

She followed him through the living room and into the kitchen. “Paul, wait,” she said, suddenly feeling desperate and panicky. “Don't go. We can talk.”

He whirled on her just as he reached the door to the garage. His eyes were wide, mocking. “So now we can talk? I think it's a little late for that, don't you?”