Almost Forever (39 page)

He pointed out, “She's a bright woman, you know. She's going to see that you must have been pregnant before we got married.”

“So? I got pregnant. And you did the right thing. Happens all the time. That's what the family thinks. Why shouldn't Madeline think the same thing?”

Clay rubbed his eyes so hard that Andie worried he would hurt them. “I don't like it.” His voice was bleak. He was still slumped against the wall. He looked so awful, so drained.

Andie's determination slipped a little. Maybe she
was
in the wrong here. Maybe just giving him what he said he wanted—letting him get through this alone—would be the best thing, after all. Perhaps she'd been too hasty in deciding to go with him. She'd do better to give up and agree to stay home.

But her heart rebelled at the thought. This was the first real crisis of their married life. And Clay was a solitary type of man. The coming baby and their newlywed happiness had brought him close to her for a time. But if she let him weather this storm
alone, she knew that a precedent would be set. He would never learn that he could turn to her in the difficult times.

No, she had to be there. If, while he was in Southern California, the moment came when Clay was willing to reach out for her, she couldn't afford to be five hundred miles away.

“I'm going, Clay.”

“It's a mistake.”

“No, it's not.”

“There's no reasoning with you, is there, once you've made up your mind?”

“Not about this there isn't.”

“You just do what you want to do, no matter who it hurts.”

More knives, she thought. Words like knives. “I'm sorry you feel that way.”

Clay let out a long, infinitely weary breath of air. “All right, Andie. We'll be late for our flight. Let's go.”

C
lay hardly spoke to her during their flight. Andie tried to console herself with the thought that she'd done the right thing. If he really did need her during this awful time, she would be there.

She found the airline seats very uncomfortable. Her back seemed to be aching pretty badly, a low, deep kind of ache that was almost like cramps. She almost told Clay about it, but decided not to. He was so distant and closed off that he was sure to see any physical complaints as more “grand-standing” on her part.

When the steward came by, Andie asked him for a pillow, which she braced behind her back. It seemed to help. By the time they touched down at L.A., she felt better.

Luckily for her poor overburdened body, they had carried their luggage to their seats with them so they didn't have to wait at the baggage carousels. And then the rental car she'd ordered was ready right outside the terminal.

Clay drove them to their hotel. Andie adjusted her seat so that it pushed against the small of her back and then stretched the seat belt over her middle. She looked out the window at the palm trees and the low, red-roofed stucco houses and the towers of glass and steel in the distance.

In spite of the smog that colored the summer air gray, Andie found Los Angeles a beautiful city. It seemed to be exotic, sophisticated and sad all at once.

There were too many people wrapped in rags, pushing shopping carts piled with dirty bags. And yet the variety of humanity was fascinating to see. Barefoot men with shaved heads wearing pink robes strolled down the street beside tattooed homeboys with their billed hats on backward. And everywhere there were expensive cars, showroom perfect, driven by men who wore black-lensed sunglasses and talked very intently on their car phones as they drove.

Their hotel, the Casa de la Reina, was a Spanish-style structure with little courtyards and fountains everywhere. Bougainvillea and fragrant jasmine tumbled down the walls. Their room was on the second floor overlooking the pool.

As soon as the bellman had been tipped and was gone, Clay asked her if she was hungry.

“No. What I'd really like to do right now is put my feet up.”

“That makes sense.” He actually sounded noncombative, for a change. “I promised Madeline I'd call her when I got in.”

Andie slipped off her shoes and sighed. “Go ahead.” She climbed up on one of the two king-size beds and began arranging herself against the headboard in a sort of half-reclining posture, with pillows at her back.

“Here. Let me help.” Clay grabbed more pillows off the other bed and propped up her knees, a thoughtful little gesture that she would have taken for granted just two days before.

Gratitude and love for him washed over her. She nearly drowned in it. And then the baby punched her in the stomach.

“Oh, you little scoundrel,” she groaned, and touched the place where she'd been kicked.

Clay put his hand over hers. “You stop kicking your mom,” he said to her stomach.

He was so close that his warmth and that subtle scent that was only him swam around her. She slipped her fingers from beneath his and reached out to cup the back of his neck, a fond gesture and an intimate one. She felt the slight toughness of the skin there, where the sun tanned him, and the blunt hairs at his nape, where his barber tapered them short. She touched the very place where his skull began.

It felt wonderful, just to have her hand on him, just to know, for that moment, that he was right there.

He looked at her. They shared a smile.

And then his glance slid away. “I should call Madeline.”

“Of course.”

Clay ducked out from under her touch and went to get his address book. Then he sat on the other bed and punched out the number.

Tuning out Clay's side of the conversation, Andie closed her eyes and let her mind float. But then Clay spoke to her.

“Andie?”

“Hmm?” She rolled her head and looked at him. He had his hand over the receiver.

“Madeline wants to get out. To talk. She's at her parents' house. I was thinking we could take her out to dinner.”

We.
He was including her, a fact that moved Andie deeply. He had made it so painfully clear that he hadn't wanted her here, yet now that she
was
here, he wasn't going to try to cut her out.

Andie considered for a moment and came to a decision. Were things different, were this baby she carried Clay's baby
in every single way, she
would
have come for the funeral—but she would
not
go to dinner with them tonight. To Madeline, she was a stranger. And right now, Madeline didn't need an evening with a stranger. Madeline needed a friend. Like Clay.

Andie shook her head. “I think I'll take it easy tonight and order room service. But you go.”

He frowned. “Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

He looked at her closely. And then he nodded. “All right, then. I'll go alone.” He tried to hide his relief, but she saw it nonetheless. He turned his attention to Madeline again.

Andie closed her eyes once more, feeling marginally better. It eased her troubled heart a little to think that, in this at least, she could do things the way Clay wanted them done.

 

“Hey, there.”

“Huh?” She opened her eyes.

Clay was bending over her. “You went to sleep.”

Andie struggled to sit up a bit higher. Her back was bothering her again and she wanted to find a position that would ease it.

“No.” Clay gently guided her down. “Stay there. I just wanted you to know I'm leaving.”

Her mind felt fuzzy. “I want to turn to my side.”

“Okay, then.” He helped her to sit. And then he moved the pillows around. “Try that.”

Andie slid down and lay in her favorite sleeping position, on her side.

“Better?”

“Much.” She smiled. “Now what are you doing? Leaving for dinner?”

“Right.”

“Okay. Give my apologies to Madeline. Say I hope to meet her in person tomorrow.”

“I will. Shall I order you something before I go? I can tell them to send it up later.”

“No. I can do it when I feel like eating. You go on.”

He smoothed back a few stray curls, which had clung to her cheek as she slept. “I won't be late.”

His touch felt good. And her back seemed to have eased. She yawned. “Take your time.” She drifted off again, hardly hearing the door close behind him.

 

The house where Madeline's parents lived was hidden in a small park behind a locked gate.

“Yes?” asked a disembodied voice when Clay pulled up to the gate.

He saw the speaker then, built into the stone fence at the side of the driveway. “Clay Barrett. I'm here to see Madeline.”

“Come right in.”

The gate made a clicking sound and swung open. He drove through.

When he saw the house, Clay thought it looked a lot like the Casa de la Reina, where he and Andie were staying. The place was huge and Mediterranean, more of a villa than anything else. Everywhere he looked he saw tropical foliage, wrought ironwork and Mexican tile.

A maid let him in. “Right this way.”

He followed obediently, down a hall into a vast, airy room decorated with woven rugs, several groupings of Mission-style furniture and lots of potted palms. Clay thought of the Casa de la Reina again. The room really was like the lobby of a big hotel. An older man and a woman, seated in one of the sets of furniture, turned to look when he entered.

The woman, who had the same blond, fine-boned good
looks that Madeline possessed, smiled graciously. “You must be Clay Barrett. I'm Madeline's mother, Cybil Shaeffer. And this is my husband, Madeline's father, Jim.”

Jim, who looked like an aging movie star right down to the blue blazer and the ascot tie, stood and extended his arm. “Hello, Clay.” He was holding a drink in his free hand. The ice cubes in it rattled. “We've heard a lot about you. It's good to meet you, even under these circumstances.”

Clay shook the proffered hand. “Yes. Good to meet you, too, Mr. Shaeffer.”

“Jim will do.”

“Jim, then.”

Jim gestured at a wrought-iron cart laden with crystal decanters. “How about a drink?”

Before Clay could answer, Madeline spoke. “Thanks, Dad. But we're leaving.”

Clay turned to see her, in the arch to a hallway that began on the other side of the massive room. She wore toreador-length white pants and some kind of gauzy shirt. The straps of her wedge-heeled sandals crisscrossed over her bare ankles. She was pale, and her eyes were tired. The joyful glow that had radiated from her the last time Clay had seen her was gone.

She came toward him. “Hey, bud.”

“Hey to you.”

Dutifully, she kissed her parents.

“What time will you be home?” her mother asked.

“I don't know for sure, Mom. But don't worry. I'll be fine.” She turned to Clay. “Shall we?”

“You bet.”

They walked out of the giant room and down the long hall to the front door. Madeline's parents followed them, their shoes echoing on the tiles. They stood waving as Madeline and Clay got in the car.

“Take it easy, now,” Cybil warned. “Be careful.”

“We will,” Madeline called to them. Then she rolled the window up and smiled a wan smile at Clay. “They hover a lot. Since it happened.”

“That's normal.”

“Yes. But I feel stifled already. And it's only been two days.” She snapped her seat belt in place. “Now.” Her voice was determinedly bright. “It's hot and it'll be light for hours yet. Can we go somewhere outside and maybe sit under a tree in the shade?”

“You bet.”

Clay drove to a wild park he knew of, which was only a few miles to the west along Sunset Boulevard. The park was covered with expanses of dry grass and crisscrossed with hiking trails. Clay stopped by the side of the road and discovered a blanket in the trunk, stowed there courtesy of the rental company. They walked up a hillside and found a shady oak.

Clay spread the blanket and they sat. For a while, neither of them spoke. A hot, languid wind blew across the grass and from somewhere, quail cooed timidly to each other.

“Is this really happening?” Madeline asked at last in a wispy little voice.

Clay looked at her. Then he held out his hand. She took it.

“Yes, I'm afraid so,” he said.

Madeline gave his hand a squeeze and then pulled free, as if she needed the contact, yet couldn't bear it for too long.

At the edge of the blanket, near where Madeline sat, a purple thistle grew. She touched it, touched the cruel little spikes around the blue flower.

“Will I keep living?” she asked.

He told her the truth. “Yes.”

“Did anyone ever die on you, Clay?”

“Just my mother, my biological mother. When I was a kid.”

“Were you there when it happened?”

“No. I was in a foster home at the time. There was some mix-up in communication. I didn't find out until she was in the ground.”

“What did you feel like?”

“Angry. And lonely. I felt deserted.”

Madeline's lips were pursed. “Yes. Exactly.” She took in a breath that seemed painful to draw, then let it out slowly. “I'm so mad at him, Clay. So many times he left me. But this time. This way. This is forever. He's gone from the world. I think, in a way, I hate him for this. For this…ultimate recklessness. I just can't forgive it.”

He understood that. Not being able to forgive Jeff.

He'd told Andie, “What he did, I'll never be able to forgive.”

And Andie had said, “Oh, Clay, if you can't forgive him, how will you ever forgive me?”

“Is that awful to say, Clay?”

Clay forced himself to think of the woman beside him and not his wife. “What? That you can't forgive him?”

“Yes.”

“No. It's not awful. It's just…how you feel right now.”

Madeline gave him a pitiful little smile. “Thanks, Clay.”

“For what?”

“For everything. For being here. For telling me that what I feel is okay.”

“Hey. What are friends for?” Strange, he thought, it wasn't that difficult to sit here like this with Madeline, to listen, to say the things she needed to hear. Maybe it was because Madeline wanted nothing from him beyond acceptance and a listening ear. And he wanted nothing from her.

“Clay?”

“Yeah?”

“Clay, did something happen? Did something go wrong?”

“What do you mean?”

“Between you and Jeff?”

It took her words a few seconds to register. When they did, everything changed.

The world became ominous. The drone of insects, harmless until now, suddenly buzzed heavy with threat. The heat of the afternoon, bearable just seconds ago, was now stifling.

“Why do you ask that?” His voice seemed to tread on eggshells, it was so careful.

“Because we never saw you again, after that strange day you and Jeff went out for lunch and Jeff came back alone looking like he'd had a run-in with a meat grinder. And then, you got married. And you never even told us.”

Clay looked away, across the grasses. He was stalling for time. He hadn't expected these questions from her, for the truth to rear its ugly head and demand a hearing. If he didn't tell her now, he would have to lie outright.

And yet what possible good could Madeline's knowing the truth do anyone at this point? Jeff was dead. Madeline was in a world of pain. The truth would only make the pain worse.

“Clay? What is it?”

Clay made himself look at her. “It's a long story. My wife…” He sought the right words.

She prompted, “Andie, right?”

“Yes. Andie. I mentioned on the phone today that she was pregnant, remember?”

“Yes. You said she was a little tired and wanted to rest. So she wouldn't be coming with us tonight.”