Lady in Waiting: A Novel (26 page)

“It was fine.”

He swiveled his head to look at me. “You look nice.”

I blushed slightly. “Thanks.” I lifted a corner of the scarf that hung over my shoulders like a priest’s stole and a sudden burst of blabbermouth came over me. “Molly.”

“Molly?”

The blush deepened. “She didn’t like the clothes I had brought to wear today. She actually dressed me. I think she forgot Connor’s on the track team, not the polo team.”

Shut up, shut up, shut up
.

“Well, you look great.”

So do you
.

We stepped outside and headed toward short-term parking.

“Molly’s shoes?”

I was practically tripping over a suitable answer for, “Yes, doggone it, I am also wearing Molly’s shoes,” when I noticed he was looking at the shoe box I carried, not my feet. “Oh! No. These are cookies I made for Connor.”

“He’ll be thrilled.” He nodded to my hand. “That’s a new ring.”

I glanced down at Jane’s ring on my pinkie, surprised that Brad noticed. “Old one, actually. Found it in a box of old books I bought from Emma. It was hidden inside the binding of an old prayer book.”

“Strange place for a ring,” he said.

We were a few feet from the Jeep, and I was about to agree that it was, indeed, a very odd place to keep a ring, when he cleared his throat.

“Something has come up at the hospital. I’m afraid I can’t go to the meet with you. I’m really sorry.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“I feel really bad about it,” he went on. “The guy on call this weekend is sick. I am going to have to go in.”

An odd mixture of relief and frustration instantly poured over me. I had been dreading the hourlong drive to Hanover. And yet I wanted to be with Brad. I wanted him to be with me.

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked.

“You can take the Jeep to Hanover. I’ve already punched in the
address on the GPS. You can just drop me off at the hospital on your way out of Manchester and then pick me up tonight when you come back through.”

I was envisioning myself driving alone, sitting alone, eating alone in Molly’s carefully chosen clothes when Brad continued.

“I’ve already texted Connor, so you don’t have to worry about explaining why I’m not there.”

He caught the irony in the last half of his sentence and looked away.

An audible sigh escaped me. I didn’t know how to feel about the turn of events. We reached the Jeep.

“I’m really sorry about this, Jane.”

And I could see that he was.

He truly was.

I would have to add
Sincere
to the list.

Fifteen minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot of Brad’s new hospital, a building completely foreign to me. I stared up at its red-brick height. It looked like a hotel except for the people in white lab coats and green scrubs leaving and entering through the swooshing automatic doors.

“Do you want to come in?” Brad asked, but his voice was hesitant.

“I would like to sometime. But it doesn’t have to be today.”

He smiled at this, like he was glad he didn’t have to give me a tour today and introduce me to any of his colleagues as his wife from New York, as if this was some permanent arrangement we have. Married but living in two different states.

“I am really sorry about this,” he said again.

“It’s okay.”

Brad pointed to the GPS. “When you’re ready to come back tonight, just press Reverse Trip and you’ll be able to find me.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to laugh and say, is that all I need to do? But I didn’t. Instead, I asked the question I needed to ask or I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy Connor’s meet or seeing him participate in it.

“Where am I staying tonight?” I stared at the GPS.

Brad hesitated a second or two before answering.

“Well, I thought you’d stay at my place. I was going to offer to sleep in the guest room. But I can … I can get you a hotel room if … if that’s what you want.”

He sounded like I felt, unsure and tentative.

“That’s not what I want,” I answered quickly, my eyes still glued to the GPS.

Brad nodded, filing away my response, I suppose, into whatever system he used to make his choices these days. He seemed satisfied with my answer. Not pleased, exactly. But satisfied.

“Then I’ll see you tonight,” he said, his hand on the door.

“Right.”

I got out of the Jeep to walk to the driver’s side as he pulled a gym bag from the back. At the driver’s door, we turned to face each other.

He shook his head, another apology for the way things had turned out, this one unspoken. I told him not to worry about it. I almost added Connor and I were no strangers to last-minute changes in plans. But I caught myself in time. I knew what I was getting into when I married a doctor. That was something I did know.

“Call me tonight when you’re a few miles out?” he asked.

“Sure.”

He swung the gym bag over his shoulder and then stood there for a second, looking at me. I wondered if he was thinking of kissing me good-bye.

“I … Can we talk tonight?” he asked.

I knew Brad and I needed to talk. Everyone said we needed to talk.
Even Connor said we needed to talk. It surprised me that now that Brad wanted to, I was reluctant to agree. Dr. Kirtland had encouraged me to keep this weekend about Connor and his track meet.

When I finally murmured, “Yes,” he tipped his chin as if marking a slot on his day planner.

“See you when you get back. Tell Connor I’ll catch the next one.”

“Sure.”

He turned and walked briskly away. I stepped inside the Jeep and reached for the door handle. Molly’s scarf billowed toward my hand and obscured my view of Jane’s ring as I slammed the door shut.

I didn’t get to see Connor before the meet. I arrived in plenty of time before his first event—the four-hundred-meter sprint, but the team was sequestered in a premeet pep talk, so I headed to a shady portion of the bleachers to wile away the afternoon.

I could’ve befriended the parents sitting around me, but I didn’t feel like it, so the hours slipped away in relative seclusion. I cheered when Connor ran, blending my voice with the shouts of other Dartmouth fans. He turned in a second-place finish in the four hundred, took fourth in the two hundred—not his favorite race—and his relay team placed second in the four by four hundred.

When he wasn’t running, I read a book I’d brought and occasionally watched the pole-vaulters sail into the sky, arching their bodies like dancers and falling like rag dolls onto the massive cushion below.

It was after six thirty when the last event concluded and closer to seven before Connor came walking across the field to me.

He looked so much like Brad. I wrapped my arms around him when he finally reached me.

“Mom! I’m all sweaty.” He tried to pull away.

“I don’t care,” I muttered, not wanting to let go. “You did great.”

“I did okay.” He pulled away anyway. “Did you see that guy who won the two hundred?”

“I saw him, but—”

“I’ve never run against a guy that fast.”

“I thought you did great.”

Twilight had started to steal across the field, and the promise of an evening chill made me wish, just for a second, that I was wearing the chunky blue sweater instead of Molly’s loose-weave clothes. The field was emptying quickly.

“I’m glad you came,” Connor said.

“I am too.”

My son wiped his brow with the back of his arm, and I marveled at how strong he’d become. The tendons and muscles in his upper arms were distinct and thick.

“I’m really bummed Dad couldn’t be here,” he said.

“So am I. And so is he. He really wanted to see you compete.”

Connor crinkled his forehead. “I’m not bummed for me.”

He looked past me to where Brad might have been, had he come. I could see in his eyes the unease he felt about Brad’s and my separation. He looked untethered.

“Dad and I are going to talk when I get back to Manchester,” I assured him.

Connor’s eyes found mine. “What are you going to talk about?”

I couldn’t tell Connor that I didn’t know what Brad wanted to tell me. I could see that Connor was already worried we might start talking about who would get what in the divorce settlement. I didn’t want to consider that prospect either. Connor needed reassurance. And so did I.

“Well, I guess about how to make things right.”

My son silently gauged my words and decided, I supposed, he could live with them for now.

He slung his gym bag over his shoulder. “I’m starving.”

“Pizza?”

“Sure.”

He said good-bye to some friends, politely declined an offer to eat with them, and we headed toward the Jeep.

I avoided the topic of my marriage as we ate a large mushroom-and-black-olive pizza at a local Italian place. Instead, I told him about the ring. He seemed genuinely intrigued when I showed him that my name was engraved inside.

When I took him back to the campus a little after nine, I hugged him until he laughed and pulled away. I handed him the shoe box of cookies and told him I would call him in a couple of days.

Connor watched me pull away in Brad’s Jeep, the shoe box in his hands. As he stood there with a tender crease of concern on his face, he looked like me.

On the drive back to Manchester, I alternately listened to the radio, twisted Jane’s ring on my finger, and recited the things I appreciated about Brad. I wished I had the onyx rosary too. I found myself whispering prayers to God to make Brad love me again. And to silence the questioning in my own heart. An easy fix.

I could almost hear Stacy, who prayed without a rosary, telling me it doesn’t work like that.

I called Brad when I was five minutes away from the hospital, like he’d asked. He was waiting outside for me when I pulled into the parking lot.

I moved over to the passenger side, and we spent the ten-minute drive to his rented town house talking about the meet, Connor, his busy day at the hospital. Just like old times.

I fell silent when we turned onto a quiet, tree-lined street. A black wrought-iron fence was sprawled across the entrance to a housing complex of Georgian design. White accents glistened in the moonlight. Mature oaks rustled in a breeze. Brad pressed a button on an opener on the visor, and the gates opened in a welcoming, sweeping fashion.

I said nothing as we made our way to a unit near the back on a hushed cul-de-sac. Brad pressed another button and a garage door ahead of us began to open. Brad drove into as pristine a garage as I’d ever seen. There was nothing in it except for a garbage can, a broom, and Brad’s canoe.

We got out of the Jeep in silence; the only sound was the garage door shimmying down on its rails behind us.

Brad unlocked a door with a red welcome mat in front of it, pushed it open and then turned to me.

“Come on in. I’ll get your bag.”

I said nothing as I stepped inside the furnished home where Brad had been living for the last nine weeks. The kitchen was tiled in terrazzo. Black granite counters and stainless appliances sparkled under recessed lights, and the walls were painted a warm brick red. An empty juice glass, coffee mug, and plate lay on a wooden dish drainer near the sink. Black and cream striped curtains hung above them. A ceramic bowl of wooden apples graced the center of an island in the middle where two tall stools seemed to wait for us.