Coming Undone (38 page)

When her eyes adjusted, she scrolled through the options. No messages. No voicemail. No nothing. Not that there should have been. Misty was already on the plane or maybe they had already arrived. Kathryn said a short prayer for them. She surely wouldn’t hear from her mother or Casey until tomorrow, if then. Still, holding the phone, she took another sip. Even the warmth of the drink didn’t help her chilled spirit.

Picking the phone up once more, she scrolled through her meager friends folder. Of course, it was well after midnight, so she couldn’t call any of them. Then suddenly, there in her fingers, she held his name. Ben Warren. She had shifted him into the friends folder sometime after he had called her on the way home from work. Settling back into the cushions, she relived that moment. What it was like for someone to care that she made it home, what it was like just to talk, what it was like to hear his voice.

For one implausible second she thought about just hitting the call button. What would that hurt? Just to see how he was doing… But thankfully, at the last second, logic overrode the absurd idea. Closing her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see herself, she closed the phone and flipped it to the coffee table. She must seriously be going insane to even think about calling him. How desperate was that? Disgusted with herself, she stood and headed back to the bedroom. It was time to get some sleep.

Sometime after two, Ben gave up trying to force himself to go back to bed. He just couldn’t. Instead, he curled up on the couch, still holding the phone. It was the only way he could sleep.

“
I don’t know.” Ben put his hand to his head the next afternoon as he surveyed the stacks of things around his father’s living room. There were candle sticks and picture frames and statuary that he didn’t even remember ever seeing before. So much stuff. So many things, but bereft of the man who had loved them, they meant nothing. “I don’t even know what to do any more. I mean I’ve boxed and stacked and tried to get things semi-somewhat-organized, but you just wouldn’t believe the amount of stuff.”

“
I wish I could come help,” Jason said, sounding really very concerned. “It’s just with work and the baby coming…”

“
No. No. I’m not saying you should come. I’m just… Ugh. I’m freaking out here. And I thought the finance stuff was a mess. I met with the lawyers again yesterday. Everything seems to be in order there, I guess. I’m supposed to meet with the trust bank on Tuesday to go over everything. Apparently he didn’t want to cut Mom out completely, so there’s some going to be set aside for her and of course for you and me…”

“
I don’t really care about the money.”

“
Well, that makes two of us.” Ben sighed as he looked around. “I have half a mind to just box this stuff all up and call Goodwill. If I didn’t have some idea that it’s worth something, I’d probably do just that. But I don’t even know where to start at this point. I mean we’ve got Grandma Rose’s china. What am I supposed to do with all of that?”

“
I could talk to Holly. Maybe she would want it.”

“
That’s fine by me. The more stuff you guys take, the less I have to get rid of. I sure don’t need any of it.”

Ben sat down in a heap on the couch because he simply couldn’t stand any longer and sighed.

“
So how are things?” Jason asked. “I mean besides all the stuff and the lawyers and everything.”

Strangely Ben couldn’t really see anything other than that right now—mostly because he didn’t want to. “Fine. I mean, except for this whole estate mess, everything’s good.”

“
You went back to work?”

“
Yeah. Yeah. Back to work. Back in the game. You know. I can’t duck out forever.”

There was a long pause.

“
How about Kathryn? Have you talked to her lately?”

“
Kathryn?” The name was like a bomb explosion, but Ben managed to sound like he didn’t even know anyone by that name. “Ah, no. I haven’t… We haven’t talked. Why?”

“
Oh.” Jason sounded surprised. “Well, that’s too bad. I just thought… you know, with how you guys were at the funeral and all…”

Ben didn’t want to think about how they were at the funeral or any other time. “Nah. It was just… you know… whatever. She was just doing her job.”

“
Her job is showing up to hold hands with the deceased’s son at the funeral?” Jason stopped. “I’m sorry. Ben, really I am. I just… you guys were so good together.”

Together? Had they ever been together? Ben sighed and ran his hand down his face. “Yeah, well, I can’t drag her through the muck of my life. That isn’t fair. Didn’t you hear the preacher about that noble and excellent stuff? That’s what she deserves. Not some jerk off the streets who can’t keep his life together no matter how hard he tries.”

“
Ben…”

“
I know. I know. It’s just all this stuff I’m supposed to know what to do with and everybody waiting for me to get on with it, and I just feel like I’m stuck in quicksand that won’t let me go.”

“
Well, for what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re there dealing with things. I would be clueless where to even start.”

For some reason that made him feel just a bit better. “Well, for the record, I wish you were the one here trying to figure out what to do with 100-year-old candlesticks and furniture that probably came over on the Mayflower.”

Jason laughed. At least the doom and gloom part of the conversation was over, and Ben hoped that was for good and for forever.

Kathryn spent all of Saturday scrubbing her apartment. If her life couldn’t be in order, at least her apartment could. She scrubbed the stove with a toothbrush and the shower door with a Brillo pad. How long had it been since she had cleaned anyway? She dusted the shelves and all of the knickknacks, swept the floors and shined them up right. Even the television got a good cleaning.

By seven o’clock, her entire apartment was shining, and she was not even a step closer to out-running his memory.

“
Dude, seriously,” Kelly said as Ben sat on his couch later that evening. “Why don’t you just call her? You know you want to.”

Did he have to keep having this conversation over and over again? It was like being stuck on the spin cycle with no way to shut it off.

“
Dude,” Ben said back mockingly. “She’s gone on with her life. She wants nothing to do with me. End of story.”

“
And you know that… how?”

“
Well,” Ben hedged. “It’s been two weeks, and she has my number too.”

“
Oh, for the love of Mike. You are unbelievable. You really expect
her
to call?”

Charissa had. That thought went over and through him like an airplane buzzing the tower, rattling everything in him. Did he really want Kathryn to be like Charissa? The thought sickened him to the core.

“
Ben, listen to me,” Kelly said slowly. “Kathryn is classy. She’s not like the other bimbos and whores you’ve gone out with. She’s not a woman you rent. She’s a woman you buy.”

Ben jerked forward. “Buy? I’m not…”

“
Look. Hear me out. Okay? Tamitha got this CD thing she’s been listening to about marriage for that class she’s taking at church. She was telling me about it the other night. She said the guy says that there are three kinds of people you’re going to meet in the dating world. There are the freeloaders who come in and take everything you give with no expectation of ever having to give anything back to you. There are renters—people who give you something in exchange for something else. They aren’t freeloaders, but they aren’t permanent either. The second the deal isn’t working for them, they’re gone. And then there are buyers.

“
Buyers are serious. They aren’t flipping houses. They buy into the relationship to stay. They invest in the relationship. They have a stake in it. They see things as permanent or at least that they could turn into permanent. Buyers aren’t in it for some temporary fix. They are about forever. Kathryn is a buyer.”

“
Yeah, but I’m a freeloader.” The statement broke him to the core, but it was true, maybe the truest thing he’d ever said, and he hated himself for it.

That stopped the conversation.

“
What? I am.” Ben felt it to the bottom of his soul. “You said it, ‘They take and take, and they don’t think they have to give anything back.’ That’s me, Kell. It is.”

Kelly’s voice shifted and dropped. “You may think that’s you, but I think you’re lying to yourself on that one, my friend. I think you’ve told yourself that and you’ve tried to make yourself believe it, but I think that’s because you’re too scared to admit the truth—that you want to buy more than anything else in the world.”

“
Right, Dr. Phil. Thank you so much for that psychoanalysis.”

But Kelly’s voice didn’t lose the seriousness. “Here’s what I think. I think you saw what your mom did to your dad, and you decided you never wanted anything to do with that, that you would never let any woman close enough to you to do that.”

Ben beat back the fear and tears that surged into his heart.

“
So you decided you would use women and then cut them loose before they got too close. You thought you weren’t going to get hurt that way. But look around you, Ben. Are you happy? Have you been happy? Is living like this making you happy?”

Kelly took a breath. “Is going for it with Kathryn going to be easy? No. It probably won’t be. Heck, Tamitha and I have times we’d like to kill each other. But the bottom line is, we’ve bought in. We’re committed to each other and to making the relationship work because we can’t imagine living without each other.”

That part Ben heard loud and clear. He still couldn’t imagine living without her. In fact, he’d felt like he’d come completely undone ever since she had walked away, and nothing upon nothing had helped to change that.

“
Call her.”

“
But…”

“
Call. Her.” Kelly waited two seconds. “Seriously. Dude. Call her.”

Kathryn went to bed at ten o’clock. At quarter to eleven she was back up again. She didn’t know what was up with the whole not being able to sleep thing, but it was going to kill her sooner rather than later. She was in the kitchen, over the sink, making another cup of hot chocolate when her cell phone on the counter beeped.

Curious and worried, she went over to it. Her mother had called earlier. Who else would it be? She squinted into the darkness, trying to read the caller ID. Giving up and hoping it wasn’t a telemarketer, she flipped it on. “Hello?”

The line was dead silent, and the thought that it was indeed a telemarketer went through her. “Hello?”

Ben’s whole system—mouth, heart, and brain stopped with that one simple word. “Uh, hi. Kathryn?” Suddenly he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. “Um, this is Ben. Ben Warren. Did I… did I wake you up?”

Actually hearing his name in his voice gave new meaning to the term “wake you up.” She almost dropped the phone. “Ben? What? No. I mean… what?”

“
I’m sorry for calling so late. Maybe I should let you go.”

“
NO!” The word surged through her heart and right out of her mouth. Barely getting control of her rushing feelings, she cleared her throat. “No. I mean. I was awake. I was up.”

“
Oh… good.”

“
Hm.” She cleared her throat again, trying to get her heart to stop pounding the fact that Ben Warren was actually on the other side of the line. “Did you… need something?”

At 11:15? She was seriously asking him that question at 11:15? Ben almost laughed out loud. How about directions to downtown or to the metro or to LaGuardia? “Um, no. Not… not exactly.” He shifted on the couch, berating himself for thinking this was a good idea. “I was just wondering how… hm… how you’re doing.”

How I’m doing? He calls me out of the blue at 11:20 to ask how I’m doing?
“I’m fine. How about you?”

She sounded so cold, so detached.

“
I’m cool. I was just, you know, going through some things, and I thought about you. How’s work?” Man, he was a bad liar.

“
Oh, it’s work. We got a new patient in Friday.”

“
Oh?”

“
Yeah. A young kid. It’s kind of sad. He’s had a real tough battle.”

What was she doing? He didn’t want to hear this. “I’m sorry. Did you need something?”

“
What? Oh, no. I was just… you know… wondering how you are. Hm. How you’re doing. I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have called you at home… unless you’re not at home. I never thought… I’m sorry.”

Kathryn let out a small laugh. “No. I’m home. Of course I’m home. Where else would I be—out on a hot date?” She reached down and stirred her hot chocolate.

“
Oh? No hot date, huh? What happened to what’s his name?”

“
What’s his name? Which one? The one that showed up with flowers that made me sick or the one that didn’t even know I was alive?”

“
Well, that can’t be good.”

“
Good and my love life in the same sentence? Yeah, there’s a laugh. I’ve been stuck here in my apartment all day, trying not to become completely pathetic.”