A Husband's Watch. Karen Templeton
caught Faith’s gaze, saw how much the whole thing was tearing her up inside, too. And unlike him, Faith didn’t tend to indulge the kids. Saying no came a lot easier to her than it did him. Which meant this must be really serious. And real important. But that didn’t change the facts of the situation.
“I’m sorry, baby, I really am. But I honestly don’t see any way of pulling it off right now.”
Her lower lip caught between her teeth, Heather traced the quilted spread with one finger for a second. Then her head popped back up, hope making her face shine. “Maybe…maybe she’d teach me for free?”
“Oh, sweetie…” Faith wrapped herself around Heather’s shoulders, pressing her cheek to her temple. “That wouldn’t be fair to Carly, would it? She has to make a living, too. It was already generous, her offering that partial scholarship. I know this is horrible, horrible timing, but—”
“It’s okay, I understand.” Heather scrambled off the bed, not looking at either of them as she scurried through the door. Faith shot Darryl an indecipherable look, then followed, leaving him feeling several notches below snail slime.
“She okay?” he asked when Faith returned a few minutes later.
Instead of replying, she wordlessly motioned for him to get up so she could remove the peach-colored, tailored bedspread she’d bought maybe a month ago. Not that he’d thought there was anything wrong with the old one, but Faith insisted the room needed “freshening up,” or something. Darryl pushed himself to his feet, helping her fold the spread back as best he could with one hand. Anything to keep from feeling helpless. Useless.
“What else could I have said, Faith?” he said in a hushed voice, standing to one side so she could set the folded spread on the chair in the corner, like she did every night. “You know what the bank balance looks like as well as I do.”
“Yes, I do. But do you have any idea what a big deal this is for her?”
“Oh, come on…lots of little girls want to dance. Not that I don’t feel bad that I can’t let her have her fun, but it would probably run its course anyway, right?”
“We don’t know that. Maybe this is an incredible opportunity for her to work with a real professional dancer, maybe become one herself and not end up stuck in this town for the rest of her life!”
Her eyes widened slightly, as if she hadn’t expected that to come out of her mouth. Darryl got a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, but he replied, “Or she could get a bum leg like Carly and end up back here, anyway.”
“It’s not about how she’ll end up, it’s about what she has the chance to do in between. It’s about giving her opportunities that—”
Faith stopped, then grabbed her pillows off the bed.
“That what?” Darryl said quietly, catching out of the corner of his mental eye the stirrings of an elephant he’d thought had moved on a long time ago. “That you never had?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t have to.” He grasped her arm, probing her gaze with his own. “Is that what’s going on here? That you feel stuck? In this marriage? With me?”
For several moments, he saw his own frustration mirrored in her eyes. “It’s not that simple,” she said at last, and the bad feeling got a whole lot worse.
“Care to explain that?”
“Believe me,” she said with a harsh sigh, “if I could, I would. But anyway, this isn’t about me. It’s about Heather. And how we’re going to solve this. At some point. Not tonight. I’m way too tired to figure any of it out right now.” Clutching the pillows to her chest, she headed toward the door.
“You’re spending the night on the sofa again?”
“You have to sleep on your back. And nowhere in our marriage vows does it say I have to sleep in the same room with a snoring man—”
“Do you love me?”
Already in the doorway, she spun around. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“Darryl, we’re both exhausted, and stressed—”
“Simple question, yes or no. Do you love me?”
Their gazes warred for several seconds before she reached behind her to quietly shut the door. When she faced him again, she looked…worn-out. “We’re part of each other by now, aren’t we? All braided together like a pair of saplings planted side by side. After all this time, I wouldn’t know how not to love you. But let me ask you something….” Her mouth quirked, and she leaned against the door, strangling the pillows. “Would you have married me if I hadn’t been pregnant?”
Her words slammed into him like fists. “For God’s sake, Faith—after everything we’ve been through together, after everything I’ve done for you and the kids…how can you even ask that?”
“Because,” she said, her eyes hooked in his, “there’s a difference between love and…and obligation. There’s doing what’s right, and doing what’s right.”
Darryl’s brows pulled together. “You think I married you because I had to?”
“Didn’t you?”
He looked at her as if she were speaking another language. “Have you forgotten how we couldn’t keep our hands off each other? Hell, there’s still times I want you so bad I can hardly think straight!”
“That’s hormones, Darryl. And proximity. But what I’m wondering now is…was it ever more than that? Really?”
He dropped onto the edge of the bed, swallowing hard before saying, “Dammit, I’m doing my best here.”
“I know you are,” Faith whispered. “And you always have. God knows there’s plenty of men in your situation who would’ve headed straight for the hills, rather than faced their responsibilities the way you did. And I love you for that.”
He smirked. “For doing the right thing?”
“Is that so terrible?” She sat beside him, laying her hand on his uncasted arm. “But in any case, this isn’t about you. It’s true,” she said when he snorted. “Which is exactly what makes this so…so weird. I wanted to marry you, too. To be with you. So I don’t understand this craziness any more than you do.”
While he sat there, hoping to hell it was the meds causing her words to make so little sense, she got up, hugging the pillows to her chest. “You need anything before I leave?”
“No.” Then his gaze slashed to hers. “How is it we can say all the right things, and yet the answers still feel all wrong?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, then left the room, the elephant lumbering along after her…leaving behind a not-so-little reminder of its visit.
Wasn’t a painkiller in the world strong enough to dull this pain.
The sky was just beginning to pink up the next morning when Faith heard Darryl shuffle down the hall, yawning loudly. He paused at the door to the kitchen, frowning at her and Nicky, prompting Faith’s heart to start beating loudly enough to echo inside her head.
“You had pumpkin pie for breakfast?” he said in his morning-roughened voice, nodding toward the empty foil pie plate on the table in front of her.
“It was the last piece. I figured it wouldn’t be any good by lunchtime.”
He shook his head, one side of his mouth tilted up. “I didn’t know you were still nursing the baby.”
The plastic clock over the sink sounded like an old woman clucking her tongue at her as she sat at the kitchen table, Nicky at her breast. “Just once a day, in the morning,” she said, smoothing down the baby’s curls