When You Least Expect It (34 page)

“Maybe that’s setting the goal too high. Maybe we should just aim for getting through it first,” Jeremy suggested.

There was a catch in his voice. I looked up quickly and saw that his eyes were wet. It occurred to me that I’d been so caught up in my own grief, it had never occurred to me that Jeremy was going through this, too.

“You fell in love with him,” I said. It wasn’t a question. I suddenly just knew it, the way I knew he had a pale silver birthmark on his lower back and a near-phobic aversion to snakes.

Jeremy didn’t say anything, but he tightened his hold on my shoulders.

“I’ve checked out on you,” I said. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair.”

“It isn’t a matter of fair or not. We’re not like that. When one of us goes through a hard time, the other one is there to pick up the slack.”

“But you’re going through a hard time, too. And I haven’t been there for you.”

“We’re both doing what we can to get through this.”

“Is that enough?”

“It has to be enough,” Jeremy said simply. He pulled me close
again, one hand softly stroking my hair. After a moment, he said, “You know what really pisses me off?”

“What?”

“There’s no word to describe what this is. It’s too big to be called disappointing. But it feels wrong to call it grieving. He was healthy and perfect. We just don’t get to have him,” Jeremy said.

“I know what you mean,” I said. And suddenly, there were tears in my eyes, too, and my throat felt tight and knotted. “But it is a kind of grief. We’re grieving the future that we won’t be able to have.”

Jeremy nodded. I looked up at him. His pale skin was already starting to flush pink from being out in the sun, and his hair stood on end, as though he’d been running his fingers through it. A surge of love cracked through then, breaking past the fog of sadness.

“Come on,” I said, taking his hand and tugging it gently. “Let’s go home.”

A few evenings later, Mimi appeared at my front door, brandishing a bagful of chocolate chip cookies, a bottle of vodka, and a net sack full of grapefruits.

“What’s all that for?” I asked.

“The cookies are from the kids. They wanted to cheer you up. But don’t eat them—they’re so hard you’ll break a tooth. The vodka is from me. You and I are going to get drunk,” Mimi said, sailing past me into the house. I trailed after her back to the kitchen, where she’d put down her wares and begun to rummage through the cupboards. “Where’s your juicer?”

“Lower cabinet next to the fridge,” I said. “But I’m not really in the mood to drink right now.”

“Yeah, well, too bad. We’re drinking,” Mimi said bossily.

She busied herself slicing the grapefruit, juicing them, and
then dumping the vodka, juice, club soda, and ice into a glass pitcher, which she mixed thoroughly with a spatula. She placed the pitcher on a tray, along with two tall glasses and a can of cashews she found in the pantry.

“Now. Where shall we go? Let’s sit out by the pool.” Mimi decided.

“It’s boiling out.”

“If we get too hot, we’ll just jump in the water.”

“Okay,” I said, shrugging. In my current state, I was no match for the sheer force of Mimi’s will.

It was actually nicer out than I’d thought. The sky was still light, but the sun was low on the horizon and starting to fade to sherbet shades of pink and orange. Mimi poured out two drinks, handed me one, and then clinked her glass against mine.

“Cheers,” she said, and tasted her cocktail. “Mmm, that’s delicious. I wasn’t sure about the grapefruit—they’re out of season—but the grocer told me to give them a try. I’ll have to report back to him that he was right. Men always love to hear that.”

“What’s the occasion?” I asked.

“Does there have to be an occasion for vodka?”

I rolled my eyes. “You’ve obviously come over to give me some sort of a pep talk about getting on with my life.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Liar.”

“No, really. You don’t need a pep talk. I think you’re holding up extraordinarily well under the circumstances.”

“You don’t have to humor me. I know I’m a mess.”

“You’re getting up, showering, eating, even getting back to work. I think that’s pretty amazing considering what you’ve been through. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“You’re really not here to give me one of your up-and-at-’em talks?”

“Scout’s honor,” Mimi said, holding up one hand.

“Like you were ever a Girl Scout,” I scoffed.

“You’re right, I wasn’t,” Mimi confessed. “I always thought the uniforms were hideous, and there was no way I’d ever sell cookies door-to-door. How’s Jeremy?”

“He’s hurting. And he’s angry.” I sighed and ran a hand through my unruly hair. “I feel badly that I haven’t been there for him. He’s been holding everything together, while I just unraveled. It isn’t fair.”

Mimi lifted one shoulder. “Did you ever think that maybe he needs to be the one to hold it all together? That maybe that’s how he’s coping?”

I shrugged. I wasn’t ready to let myself off the hook so easily.

“I should have listened to you,” I finally said. “You warned me about Lainey from the beginning.”

“Actually, I think I was wrong about her. Don’t look so surprised. I think she might not have had the best intentions when you first met her, but I also think something changed along the way. I saw her that last night, when we all drove you to the hospital. I’m convinced she genuinely planned to give the baby to you,” Mimi said. She spread her hands, palms facing the sky. “But then she saw him.”

“And fell in love,” I said. Even now, the waves of longing took me by surprise. It wasn’t just that I missed him; that was to be expected. It was that I
pined
for him. It was like a piece of me was missing—a crucial limb, a necessary organ—and I had no way of getting it back. “Maybe it would be easier if I could get angry at her. It’s like, she made this incredibly tough decision. Raising a child by herself is going to be so hard. Of course it’s not what I wanted, but even so, I don’t want her to fail. Just the opposite. I want her to succeed.”

“That’s because you’re his mother, too,” Mimi said.

I stared at her, hardly believing that she could say such a thing
to me. “I’m not his mother,” I said. The words felt raw and sharp in my throat.

“Of course you are,” Mimi said gently.

“Spending a few hours with a baby in a hospital doesn’t turn you into a mother,” I said bitterly. “And even if it did, I don’t have him anymore. I didn’t get to keep him.”

“Once you become a mother, you can’t go back and undo it. It doesn’t matter if you had him for five minutes, or five hours, or five years before you lost him. That shift that occurs inside of you—the way everything in your life that you thought was a priority just falls away to make room for this new, greater love—that happens instantly. And it doesn’t just change back,” Mimi said.

Tears started to stream down my face. “Please stop.”

Mimi reached out and grabbed my hand, squeezing it gently. “I don’t want to make you sad. But I don’t think you’re ever going to feel better if you just close that part of yourself off forever.”

I wiped angrily at my wet cheeks. “I don’t know, Mimi. I’m not ready to think about another adoption yet.”

Mimi nodded. “I know. But it will hurt less in time,” she said. “You won’t forget it—you won’t ever forget him—but it will become bearable over time.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know about that.”

“Life has a funny way of proving us wrong,” Mimi said. She poured us each another drink and handed mine to me. I shook my head, miserable, but she pressed it on me. “Come on, take it. It’s medicinal.”

I smiled. It sounded like something my mother would say. She’d always sworn by the healing power of two things: swimming in the ocean and the perfect hot toddy. My dad had suffered from chronic bronchitis, and he claimed my mom’s hot toddies were the only thing that made him feel better.

My dad. I hadn’t thought of him in a while. I remembered the early days after his death, when Mom and I had both walked around in a fog. Mom would get weepy every time she came across an extra pair of his reading glasses stowed in a drawer, or found a book he’d been reading, a corner bent down to mark his page. I tried to remain stoic for her sake, but there were moments when I was alone, where I’d curl up into a ball and weep into my pillow, feeling like everything was forever bleak and hopeless. But then, gradually, over time, the intensity of the pain had faded.

“My dad once told me that the greatest tragedy in life is not when a man is beaten—that happens to everyone sometimes—but when he just gives up on his dreams,” I said, turning my sweating glass around in my hands.

“He sounds like a very wise man.”

“Well. It’s very likely he told me that while he was stoned,” I said. I’d finally stopped crying, and gave my cheeks a final wipe with the back of one hand. “But still, he had a point.”

Mimi beamed at me. “Good girl,” she said.

“I’m not promising anything. I’ll just put off making any final decisions about it for now,” I said.

“That’s enough,” Mimi said. She shook her glass, so that the ice cubes tinkled together. “For now, anyway. But don’t think I’m even close to giving up. You know me better than that.”

“Yes, I do know. You’re relentless,” I said. “How does Leo put up with you?”

Mimi waved this away. “I bend him to my will,” she said. “And I put out.”

“Sounds like a winning strategy to me,” I said, and we clinked our glasses together.

I heard the bell jingle on the front door, alerting me that someone had come into the studio. I’d thought about hiring a part-timer to
replace Lainey, but hadn’t gotten around to it yet, so there wasn’t anyone manning the reception area.

I stood, but hadn’t even walked around my worktable when I heard Jeremy’s voice.

“India?”

Oh, crap
, I thought, looking at the photos spread out over my table and wondering if there was any way I could clear them before Jeremy walked back. No, there wasn’t time. I’d just have to intercept him.

“Hey! What are you doing here?” I said, quickly stepping forward to block Jeremy at the doorway to the back room.

“I was out running errands, and thought I’d stop by to take my best girl to lunch,” he said.

“How nice,” I said, leaning up to kiss him. “Where are we going?”

“Actually, I brought lunch with me,” he said, holding up a canvas sack I hadn’t noticed he was holding. “Apple chicken salad sandwiches from the Rip Tide Deli. You said you had a busy day, so I thought you’d probably just want to eat here at the studio.”

He started to step around me—when we ate at my studio, we always dined at my worktable—but I held up a hand to stop him. “No, let’s go out. It’s a beautiful day.”

“It’s one hundred degrees with ninety-five percent humidity outside,” Jeremy said.

“So? We’ll go to the beach. It’ll be cooler there.”

“And get sand blown into our sandwiches? No, thanks.”

“A little sand never hurt anyone,” I argued.

Jeremy frowned. “What’s going on? Why don’t you want to eat here?”

“Nothing’s going on,” I lied. “I’ve just been inside all day, and I want to get out for a while. Plus I just spread out a bunch of proofs all over the table.”

To my relief, Jeremy acquiesced. “Okay. But let’s go to that park down the street. They have covered picnic tables there, so at least we’ll be in the shade.” He turned and started to walk back to the reception area. I grabbed my purse off the hook by the filing cabinet and followed him out. Jeremy had stopped by the reception desk, and was frowning down at his hand.

“Look at this,” he said. He held up his left index finger. “I’m bleeding.”

I examined it. “It looks like a paper cut. You should put a Band-Aid on it.”

“Do you still have a box in your filing cabinet?” Jeremy asked.

“I think so,” I said, without thinking.

“Let me go grab one before we go,” Jeremy said, moving past me and back into the workroom.

“Wait! I’ll get it!”

But it was too late. Jeremy had already disappeared. As he’d have to walk right by my worktable in order to get to the filing cabinet where I kept Band-Aids and other sundry items, I knew there was no way he wouldn’t see what I’d been working on. I blew out a deep breath and slowly followed after him.

As I’d expected, Jeremy was standing very still and staring down at the photos spread out on my table. There were copies of the photos I’d taken of Lainey for my show, as well as a few snapshots—one of Lainey sitting on our sofa with a bowl of ice cream resting on her belly bump, another where she was looking up and laughing at me as I snapped the photo. Then there were the black-and-white pictures I’d taken of the baby in the hospital. I’d cropped several of them, showing off all the details of his exquisite face—the nearly translucent eyelids, the tiny snub nose, the full pursed lips.

“What’s going on?” Jeremy asked, his voice stiff with pain.

“I’m making an album for Lainey,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because I thought she’d like to have these pictures,” I said quietly.

“Jesus, India. Even now, even after she screwed us over, you’re still bending over backward to please her?”

“No! It’s not for her, not really. It’s for me. And for him.”

Jeremy shook his head. “I don’t understand. How does this—” he gestured toward the pile of photographs with a dismissive flick of his hand, “help
you?”

“Please stop shouting at me,” I said quietly.

Jeremy closed his eyes and swallowed. “I apologize for raising my voice,” he said. “I’m just trying to understand what you’re doing. Because it seems more than a little masochistic.”

I rubbed a hand over my brow and tried to think of a way to explain it that would make sense to him.

“I can see why you would think that,” I began. “But I’m really not trying to torture myself. And I’m also not doing it to prove anything to Lainey. I just think she should have these photos.”

“Why?”

“For him,” I said simply. “He should know that from the first moment of his life, he was loved and wanted. Even if he never knows about us, he’ll look at these photos and see that the person who took them loved him.”