Almost Forever (40 page)

“Right.”

“I assumed she was being thoughtful,” Madeline said. “You know, letting me have you alone, so I could cry on your shoulder.”

Clay thought about that, about Andie's motives. Who could tell about Andie's motives sometimes? She'd insisted on fol
lowing him here when he'd practically begged her to stay home. And yet then she'd surprised him, by backing right out of the picture when it came to this visit with Madeline. He still didn't understand what she was up to in this situation and he continued to resent the fact that she'd come.

Deep inside, maybe he was a little afraid she'd come here to say her own private goodbyes to Jeff. It made a hollow, sick place inside him, to think that she might still carry on some senseless fantasy about Jeff.

Though who could tell what went through Andie's mind? Clay certainly couldn't. Just two nights ago, she'd said she was in love with
him.
And though he didn't believe in such foolishness, it had still been satisfying to hear. He'd thought how good they had it, and even told her as much. And then Madeline called the next day.

And the world had fallen apart.

“Clay?”

He blinked. “I'm sorry.”

Madeline's gray eyes were full of understanding. “Don't apologize. It's a tough time for you, too.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“You were saying about your wife, Andie, and about her pregnancy?”

“Right. Well, see, she was pregnant when we got married.”

Madeline gave a tremulous little smile. “Oh. I get it.” She actually chuckled. “Clay Barrett, you devil. You led your cousin astray.”

“Er, right.”

“So you're saying it all happened sort of quickly, the wedding, I mean?”

“Right. She didn't want to marry me at first.”

“Ah. A woman with a mind of her own.”

“Is she ever. And then, when we finally worked things out,
we just wanted to have it taken care of. We went to Tahoe and did it the quick way, over a weekend.”

“I see.” Madeline looked knowing, but then she frowned. “But there were all those months. You never called.”

“I know. It was inexcusable.”

“It's not like you.”

“My life, it just changed completely.” In his mind, he saw Andie, laughing, holding her big stomach, rolling on the bed the other night, after she told him she loved him. Yearning welled in him, a slow, deep ache. How had it happened that she'd become so important, that she'd filled up his life? “I hope you can understand. Lately, it's just seemed like there's me and Andie and the baby. And nothing else matters. That's selfish, I know.”

“Yes.” Madeline's voice was soft. “Selfish. And completely understandable.” She patted his hand. “It's okay. And I'm looking forward to meeting this special woman of yours tomorrow.”

“I'm glad.” And he was.

He was also massively relieved. Looking into Madeline's eyes, he saw that his half-truths had been believed. She wouldn't have to know about Jeff's worst betrayal, after all.

Madeline wore a dreamy, faraway look now. “You know, what I really want to do is reminisce.”

“About Jeff?”

“Yes. Is that shameless and self-indulgent?”

“Absolutely. Do it.”

She closed her eyes. “I will. Do you remember the time when…?”

Madeline launched into a long story from the past, during their college days, when Clay and Jeff had first been friends. Clay let her tell the whole story, only stopping her when she left something out. And then he told a few old stories of his own.

Eventually, they got up and shook out the blanket and went back to the car. Madeline gave him directions to a little restaurant she knew of out at the beach. They ate dinner and watched the surf. Madeline cried and had to ask the waiter for tissues. It was near nine o'clock when they got in the rental car again.

After Clay drove through the gates and pulled up in front of her parents' house, Madeline asked him to come in.

“No, I think I'll go on back to the hotel.”

Madeline leaned across the console and kissed him on the cheek. “Say hello to Andie.”

“I will.”

“There'll be food and, you know, people getting together, here tomorrow. After the interment.”

“We'll come. Our return flight isn't until Sunday, anyway.”

“Good.” She leaned back against the seat. “Thanks, Clay. This helped.”

“Any time.”

She straightened and opened the door. He watched her run up the tile steps. Before she went inside, she turned and waved. He waved back. And then she was gone.

 

Twenty minutes later, Clay sat in a chair in the room at the Casa de la Reina, watching Andie sleep. The empty bed stretched between them. But his eyes had adjusted to the night. He could see her just fine. Her hair was a tousled cloud all around the side of her face and her skin looked like cream, except for the dark smudges beneath her eyes.

She'd probably tired herself out, he realized, with all the tension over the past couple of days. She was eight months' pregnant and looked like nine to him, her belly big and round, so heavy under the sheet. He sometimes thought, lately, that it must hurt her skin, to stretch that much. She rubbed creams there, he knew, to try to keep the marks to a minimum. Still,
she would have a few when this was over, after the baby was out in the world.

Her arm, still slim and shapely, lay above the sheet. She wore the gold bracelet of linked hearts that she wore all the time since he'd returned from living in L.A. That bracelet seemed a part of her, a part of all that was Andie. And now that he thought of it, he didn't even know where she'd gotten it.

An old boyfriend, maybe.

It was petty of him, but he didn't like that. Didn't like to think of Andie and anyone else. Not even some long-ago high school crush.

And not Jeff. Jeff, least of all.

Jeff, who hadn't mattered, who'd been a ghost to both of them two days ago. Jeff who now, with his death, seemed to hover nearby every moment of the day and night.

Clay couldn't get his mind clear—that was the problem. He thought of Madeline, and there was hurt and sympathy. Jeff, and there was pure pain. And Andie, and there was agony.

It was all roiling around inside him. He didn't know how to get it to straighten itself out.

“Clay?” Andie's voice was sleepy, full of dreams.

He wanted to cherish her, keep her close, keep her safe. And to be inside her. He always wanted that, even now, when she was so big, when they probably shouldn't, when it might hurt the baby.

Although the doctor said it was okay and so did the books, as long as everything was all right with her.

“What are you doing, sitting there in the dark?”

“Watching you.” When he made love with her, he knew he was the only one. There were no ghosts between them then. No doubts. Nothing but the two of them and a universe of pleasure.

“Is everything all right?”

“It's fine.” He was hard. Aching. Wanting. And yet angry,
too. He feared her, feared her power to empty out his life to nothing, if she should ever choose to leave him. And he still didn't understand why she was here, in L.A., for the funeral of the man who had used and discarded her and the baby. Not that he wanted to understand. He didn't. He was too afraid that understanding would end up hurting worse than not knowing at all.

With a little groan at the effort, she levered up on an elbow and turned on the lamp between the beds. “How did it go?”

“Fine. Where did you get that bracelet?”

“This?” She held up her right arm.

“Yeah.”

A musing smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “Ruth Ann.”

“What?”

She chuckled. “Well, half Ruth Ann. I saw it in the window at that jeweler's at Main and Mill streets. Ruth Ann was with me. I had half the money for it. She paid the other half. For my eighteenth-birthday present.”

He grunted. “Ruth Ann.” No long-lost boyfriend, after all. He wondered what was wrong with him, since Jeff had died. Always suspecting the worst. It wasn't good. “Did you eat?”

“Yep. Hours ago.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes. I'm fine. Why?”

He stood, the wanting intensifying, his hardness straining the placket of his trousers. He watched her eyes change, watched the softness and the knowing come over her.

“Oh, Clay.”

“Is it a bad idea?”

He could see by her expression that she knew exactly what he meant: to make love. “No. It's just…”

“What?”

“Clay, we need to talk.”

He was halfway around the end of the empty bed. He stopped there. “About what?”

She lifted her hands, a helpless gesture. “About everything. About how badly you're hurting. And how you're pushing me away.”

Talking about all that was the last thing he wanted to do. He felt his desire fade to nothing, just at the thought. “It will be fine, Andie. Just let it be.”

“But Clay…”

“I just need time, that's all. It will pass. In time.”

“I don't know, Clay. I don't think it will. I think we have to get it out, all of it. We have to talk about Jeff,
really
talk about him. You have to let yourself admit that you didn't actually manage to cut him out of your heart and your life the way you thought you had. You have to forgive him. And then you have to forgive me.”

He said nothing for a moment. His anger was a cold thing now. Then he muttered, “That's a hell of a lot that
I
have to do.”

A tear spilled over her lower lid and slid down her cheek. “Clay. Please, Clay…”

“Don't.” He pointed a rigid finger at her. “Just don't. I can't take it now, Andie.” He started walking again, but this time he kept on going, right past her bed, into the bathroom.

“Where are you going?”

“I'm tired, Andie.”

“You're running away.”

He closed the bathroom door on her voice and twisted the privacy lock. He half expected her to follow him, to pound on the door, make an Andie McCreary type of scene. But all was quiet in the other room.

He took a quick shower and brushed his teeth. When he
went out to the main room again, she'd turned off the light and lay on her side, facing the wall.

He didn't disturb her. Instead, he climbed into the empty bed, turned on his side away from her and closed his eyes.

As it had been the night before, his sleep was troubled. He heard Andie every time she shifted her weight in the other bed. He wanted to be there with her, beside her, to feel her leg brush his now and then and her body's warmth radiating toward him beneath the sheet whenever either of them moved.

But it was a thousand miles to that other bed. He certainly couldn't make it there in the space of a single night.

Three times, she got up and went to the bathroom. He wanted to ask if everything was okay. But he didn't. He stayed quiet. He wondered if morning would ever come. Eventually, he drifted into a shallow sleep.

 

Andie was already in the shower when Clay awoke. He opened his eyes and dreaded the moment when she would emerge from the bathroom.

The moment came. She appeared in a cloud of warm steamy air, wrapped in her robe that now barely covered her stomach, drying her hair with a towel.

She looked so terribly vulnerable, her body ungainly, her hair hanging in wet ropes, her skin soft from her shower. He thought again about how he wanted to protect her, to keep her and the baby safe from any harm.

And how he hadn't been doing a very good job of that the past few days.

He made himself speak. “Andie, I…”

“Please.” She held up her towel for silence and she granted him a rueful smile. “Don't worry. I promise I absolutely will not bug you until we've made it through the church and the
cemetery and all that stuff. I know that you've got enough to deal with right now.”

His throat closed off for a moment, in gratitude and tenderness. Gruffly, he answered, “Thanks.”

She lifted her shoulders in a resigned little shrug. “'S all right. What's for breakfast?”

“Room service?”

“Sounds fine.”

“What do you want?”

She thought for a moment, tipping her head sideways and rubbing the ends of her hair with the towel. “Two poached and an English muffin. Tea and tomato juice. In about an hour. I want to do my hair and put on my tent.” She indicated the maternity dress that was hanging in the closet area. It was navy blue, with a wide sailor collar.

Clay called the number on the room menu and ordered the food. Then he went to the bathroom to clean up himself.

Andie dried her hair and put on her makeup while Clay shaved. Then they dressed in their funeral finery. The breakfast came right on time.

After they ate, they drove together to the church. Clay wanted to be there early, to find out where he was supposed to sit or stand, what he was to do as pallbearer.

The church was a huge gothic-looking structure made of gray stone. When they'd parked the car, they went in through the massive front door. The church was quiet, hollow sounding inside. Andie sat in one of the pews while Clay went to find someone to tell him what to do.

After a while, when the baby started shifting around, Andie grew uncomfortable. So she stood and walked around a little, exploring the small sanctuaries in nooks along the side walls and studying the stained-glass windows. Up in front, the
closed coffin, pristine white, was already in place. There were flowers everywhere.

Clay came and found her eventually, to explain that he would be expected to ride in one of the limousines of the cortege to the cemetery. They could make a place for her, too. But Andie told him she would prefer to take the car and follow along.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Don't worry. I'll be fine.”