Wreckage (27 page)

She looks over to me as though she’s heard my thoughts and smiles that smile that melts my heart. “You’re awake!”

She bounds across the sand and dives into the shelter next to me. Sand clings to her hands and rubs against my skin as she puts her arms around my neck, kissing me slowly, deliberately. Though passion has its moments, it’s these kisses that mean the most.

“Mmmmm, I love you,” I mumble against her lips as they slow.

“Always?” she asks, in the little script we’ve started saying to each other every day.

“Always,” I respond before she pulls away, wiping her hands on her knees.

“We have a busy day ahead.” She’s up to something.

“Oh, we do?” I raise my eyebrows. It slays me the way she’s always thinking of activities to do together, like we’re a real couple on vacation.

“Yes. We’re hiking to the other side of the island today. Our trees are getting overpicked and I think the fish have sent out a warning call in our lagoon, so we might have better luck elsewhere.” She passes a coconut shell filled with slices of underripe mango and the meat of a few small fish. I wrinkle my nose. The small ones always taste funny.

“Sounds like a wonderful day,” I say, shoveling in the food. The emptiness in my stomach wins out over the anticipated nastiness of the tiny coral fish.

“I know, not exactly gourmet.” Lily rubs my bicep and instantly the food tastes better. As I take my last bite, her hand slows and I see that pensive “looking at the ocean” face gloss over her normal cheerfulness. When she looks like that, something has reminded her of home.

“Lily, you okay?” I ask, putting my hand on her tan thigh.

A smile flits over her face as she laces her fingers through mine. “Yeah, I just remembered something, that’s all.”

I turn her hand up and trace the lines on her palm, wishing I was a fortune-teller and could divine how this would all turn out. “Wanna talk about it? Someone once told me I’m a good listener or something like that.”

“Ha, I said you’re a good
person
, let’s not get greedy.” She has a bad habit of falling back on humor when she doesn’t want to discuss something. It’s more of a giveaway than the blankness on her face. “I guess you
are
a good listener too, but I don’t think you’d want to hear about this.”

“I want to hear about anything you’re thinking. Seriously.” I tap her palm with my index finger and wait for her to work it out in her head. I’ve found it’s the only way she’s comfortable enough to tell her secrets out loud.

“If the calendar tree is right, I think today’s Jerry’s birthday,” she whispers, closing her hand, trapping my fingertips inside.

It’s strange to hear Jerry’s name. We haven’t spoken about our spouses since the day we admitted we love each other. But I haven’t forgotten about him or what I’m doing to him by loving his wife.

“Do you want to celebrate?” I ask, trying not to hesitate. “Like we do with the boys?”

In October we made a cake out of sand and shells and spelled out Daniel’s name. We didn’t eat it of course, but we did sing, and Lily blew out six little sticks with tears running down her face. We’re already planning Josh’s birthday next month. But I don’t know how I’ll feel if she wants to do this for Jerry. I’d have to help her and pretend to be okay with it. I can’t act jealous without being an incredible hypocrite.

“No, of course not.” She shakes her head, leaning against my shoulder. “It’s so strange to think about what they might be doing. We’ve been gone almost seven months. I wonder if they still think about us.”

“I think so,” I say, holding her hand a little tighter. “Then again, I can’t imagine someone
not
thinking about you.” She bumps my shoulder in a playful way. “I’m not so sure I’ll be missed, though. I take that back, Janice might think about me every so often, but that’s probably because she was next in line for my job and we left her a PR nightmare. Plus, my desk was a mess.”

Lily laughs. She’d told me how annoyed Janice was that she didn’t get to go to Adiata Beach, envious I was coming for the last week of the trip. How would things have turned out if she’d been on that plane instead of me?

“David, I’m sure Beth thinks about you,” she says a little too shortly. I think I sense a hint of her own jealousy and it makes me smile.

“She didn’t think about me a lot
before
this so I don’t think she’ll miss me that much. Now she can work all day and night, sleep with the air at sixty, and use my insurance payout to go out every night with friends. She’s probably pretty happy right now.” I don’t try to hide my bitterness.

A swift punch lands squarely in my bicep. “Stop it. That’s unfair.” Lily’s mouth turns down into a pout when I give her a side-glance.

“You can’t judge, Lily, you don’t know her.” It’s painful to feel anything but love toward Lily, but something hard and black inside me is riled by her criticism.

“So, tell me about her. Tell me about Beth.”

I toss my coconut shell bowl toward the fire and miss. This conversation has me off my game. I don’t want to talk about Beth. I’ve avoided thinking about her for seven months and I’ve told myself I’d be happy never thinking about her again. I shove my feet deep into the cool sand outside our shelter, distracting myself.

“Listen,” she says, cutting to the chase, “It’s clear you two didn’t end well, I know that. I heard the phone call and I saw the pain on your face. That’s what made me come talk to you and changed everything. I’ve never asked what happened, never. But things are different now.” Her hand runs up my bare back; tiny grains of sand rub between her palm and my shoulder blades. I lean into her touch, which still sends heat to every corner of my body. “Our relationship has changed. I need to know about this woman whose husband I’m in love with.”

Turning on a dime, I put my hand on her face, my fingers settling into the warm cluster of curls at the nape of her neck. I needed to hear that she loves me.

“I love you too,” I whisper, pulling her toward me. I kiss her leisurely, her mouth welcoming. It fits perfectly against mine and she pulls me in gratefully, like she needs me more than air. I’ll never tire of kissing her.

Just as my pulse reaches its peak, I wrench away reluctantly. I owe her some answers. Pressing my forehead against hers, I wait for my breath to slow.

“I never felt like this with Beth,” I tell her. “She doesn’t have your humor. She definitely doesn’t have your heart.” I place a light kiss on her head and wipe away some wild strands of hair clinging to the side of her face, tracing her cheek and the sharp outline of her jaw as I talk. “She was beautiful, the first beautiful woman to show any interest in me. We met at Carlton, actually. She was in marketing and I was just starting out in PR. When our team would go out for drinks the two of us were always the last to leave. We dated off and on for two years before I got up the nerve to ask her to marry me. It took another year to plan the wedding.” I sat back, wishing I hadn’t started talking about Beth. There’s a reason I’ve avoided her all these months but Lily is enthralled, so I keep going. “Our marriage was rough. It felt like I was the only one willing to make compromises. Beth switched jobs a few years ago to be marketing manager for a software company. She works even more, but often I think that she’s staying late just to avoid another one of our fights.”

Lily’s lips press together pensively and I can’t stop thinking about kissing them again. “What about the phone call, David? I think it’s time.”

“Okay,” I nod, and she rewards me with a quick peck before the whole story spills out. “Do you remember how I freaked out after . . . our first time . . . together?” Blood rushes to my cheeks at the reference.

“Yes.” She smiles knowingly. “You were worried that you got me pregnant.”

“But then you told me about your IUD and how it keeps you safe and all that. To tell the truth, I felt so dumb, like a teenager who missed that day in sex ed, but there’s a reason I didn’t know about that stuff. Well, Beth and I found out soon enough we didn’t have to think about contraception. We couldn’t have kids.”

She rocks back, away from me, settling onto the floor, the bamboo squeaking irritably. “So, you tried and it didn’t work?”

“Yes, we tried. And tried and tried and tried some more.”

Lily scrunches up her face, pretending to shudder. “Okay, I think that’s enough about the ‘trying.’ ”

“Jealous much?” I ask, wiggling my eyebrows.

“Whatever. Come on, finish the story.”

“I finally persuaded her to see a specialist and we went through lots of tests and stuff. We found out that Beth couldn’t have babies. She went through menopause like twenty years too early.”

“Oh, that’s hard. It must’ve killed her,” she says, and then makes this sympathetic sigh, which makes me angry at Beth all over again.

“I don’t know, at first she was pretty ambivalent about having a baby, until we couldn’t get pregnant. Then, it seemed all she wanted was to be pregnant. To show that she could. To be normal, like everyone else.” I shook my head. “After her diagnosis I wanted to look into adoption but she refused, meeting in secret with her doctor to procure an egg donor, and then told me if I didn’t want to be the biological father, that was fine, but she wanted to experience pregnancy with or without my DNA.

“I guess she just assumed because I was willing to adopt I wouldn’t care that she wanted me to have a baby with an anonymous donor who was most likely some college kid needing to pay her bills. I mean, I’m clearly not a prude.” I give her a sidelong glance and she smiles knowingly. “But I’ve never even had a one-night stand. Having a baby with a stranger was rough for me to wrap my brain around.”

“So, you did it, then? The IVF with donor eggs?” She pulls her knees tighter, resting her cheek on top. Not one thing about her seems judgmental. Another thing I love about her.

“Yup. That’s why I wasn’t on the trip that first week. I was with Beth.” I have to stop for a moment and press my fingertips against my eyelids. I don’t like talking about this, at all. “She had to take this hormone, to make it all work, to stay pregnant. She’d go to her friend’s house to get the shots because her friend’s a nurse. They made Beth tired and irritable. She was so angry I was leaving her for the week.” Lowering my hands, I wait till the black shrinks away and I can check Lily again. She’s listening so intently.

“How about the phone call? What did she say?”

I have to tell her everything. “They put in three embryos. Beth was supposed to keep getting the shots, then go in for a blood test two weeks later. I took the red-eye to Fiji on day five of the two-week wait. That call on the plane was on day six.” I have to swallow three or four times before I can continue. She rubs my shoulder supportively but doesn’t stop me. She wants to know. “She’d stopped taking the shots. She lied to me, went to Starbucks or something instead of her friend Stacey’s house for the one thing our babies needed that she couldn’t provide.” My throat stiffens up and gets all scratchy, and before I’m aware of what’s happening, tears roll down my face.

“But, why? Why didn’t she take the shots?”

“I don’t know,” I cry out, frustrated that she doesn’t seem to be following. “She said she forgot but . . .” I can’t breathe. “Why would someone do that, Lily? Why?”

“I have no idea.” She kisses my cheeks, and I fall gratefully onto her shoulder. “Oh, David, I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t know why this still hurts so badly,” I fumble out between breaths.

“I think it’s because you’re mourning, David. You can’t rob yourself of this, it’s the only way you can get to the point where you can forgive her.”

“Forgive her?” I sit up straight. “How can I ever forgive her? She didn’t just take away those embryos; she took away my dream of being a father.” Anger heats my face and sweat drips down the back of my neck. “Those little seeds could have been children and she let them wither and die like unwatered plants. In the process she chucked my dreams like they were garbage. No”—I shake my head—“not garbage. Beth doesn’t litter.” Lily tries to pull me close again but I push her away.

“I’m not saying you need to forgive her right now.” She crosses muscled brown arms, surveying me. “I’m saying you might want to one day. I have to believe if Kent’s family knew what really happened in the jungle or if Jerry knew how hard we worked to save Margaret or how alone I was and how much I need you,” she pauses, nibbling at her cuticle, “they could forgive me.”

“That’s different, Lily. You never did anything intentional.”

She presses her lips together. “Fine. If you don’t want to think about forgiveness then think about it this way. What if that phone call hadn’t happened? How hard would this be for you?” She rolls her head around, referencing the beach, the shelter, and us.

I never thought of that. What if I believed Beth was sitting at home, pregnant? Would it still be so easy to not think about home? Would it be so easy to love Lily? To bury Margaret? To dispose of Kent? To live every day never knowing if I’d ever meet my children? I shudder, a breeze cooling the sweat trails crisscrossing my back.

“I’d be crawling out of my skin, wanting to get home to them. I’d try to find any way off here . . .” I pause, catching sight of Lily’s face. “Is that how this is for you?”

“At first,” she admits, picking at a split in our bamboo floor. “But when I realized how I felt about you, it made it a lot easier.”

I roll things over in my mind like a magician flipping a coin over his knuckles. “You’re right. I need to let this thing with Beth go. I need to move on because now I have something worth moving on to.”

Her hand stops its nervous picking and crawls across the space between us. I can’t wait, so I reach across and grab it. When our hands touch, somehow I’m thankful for that awful phone call that feels like years ago, because now I only have one person I want to think about.