Lies of the Heart (44 page)

“Okay, I won’t thank you,” Katie says.

“Good. And I’m not going to screw things up again, I promise.”

“You didn’t. It was
me
.”

“Then we’re both to blame,” she says.

“Okay.”

“You sure you don’t want to stay for dinner?”

“Thank you, no,” Katie says. “I think tonight is the perfect night to bury myself in work.” As soon as it comes out, she feels guilty, but Sandy just laughs.

“Lucky girl,” she says.

“I’ll tell Jack you all said hi.”

“Give him a big fat kiss for me, will you?”

“Sure.”

They move into each other’s arms at the same time, and Sandy’s voice, close to her ear, is full of mischief. “Screw the neighbors. The next time you come by, we’ll talk about the war or some other depressing, worldly subject.”

“Right,” Katie says, and smiles into her friend’s hair.

The big envelope from Oceanside Realty is full of tiny bite marks, wet at the edges. Katie sits down on the floor beside Jack’s food bowl, pushes the dog away, and tears it open. Inside, a brief note paper-clipped to the photo.
Hope this helps, and good luck in your search.
Paul Minsky did not bother to attach a card.

The cottage isn’t what Katie expected. It’s not a cottage at all, actually, but a two-story white brick house with an expansive lawn, right on the beach. The front of the house is filled with windows topped by red-bricked arches, and two huge dark wooden doors that open up to a circular driveway. On the other side of the house, there’s a screened-in porch and, on the lush green lawn, a short picket fence surrounding a white gazebo. Beyond the fence, a long dock and the swelling ocean.

The second Valium has kicked in, which makes the pain of looking at this beautiful home—this beautiful home that Nick wanted to escape to—a little fuzzy. Her mind drifts to the days after he moved out. Going to the Warwick Center. Nick not there. Veronica telling her he took some vacation time. Not brooding inside his new apartment, missing her, but traveling to North Carolina. All of Veronica’s attention on the phone, willing it to ring.

“This,” Katie tells Jack, pointing, “is
not
a cottage.”

Jack worms closer, sniffs the paper and then Katie’s face as she yawns again.

“I’ve got work to do,” she says, already falling asleep as she stares at the house, at the ocean and the dishwater-gray whitecaps that rise up behind it.

S
he tiptoed into Jerry’s room to prop the box of chocolates on his dresser, but he was already awake and sitting on the bed, holding the framed photo of them in Mystic.

—Happy Valentine’s, Jer. I have a surprise.

He wouldn’t look at her. She walked over, handed him the box of chocolates, but he pushed it away.

—You don’t want your candy?

Jerry pointed to the photo.—You, Nick, me, he said. His finger poised over his own face.

—What’s wrong, buddy?

In the empty bedroom next door, they could hear Nick whistling happily, the pull and zip of a measuring tape. Jerry let the picture fall onto the bed, cradled his body inside his arms.

—Us, he said.

—Yes, Katie said.—We had so much fun that day, remember?

—
Our
house, he said, his eyes skipping to the wall. On the other side, Nick’s happy tune whistled on as he measured spaces for a crib, a changing table, and a dresser.

—It will always be your house, she said.—Your home.

Jerry picked up the frame again, his finger pointing to the empty chair in the photo. He tapped it gently.—Him, too.

At first they thought they would wait until she was pregnant to tell Jerry, but Patricia had suggested telling him sooner to give him time to absorb the news. Time to deal with questions and fears that should be addressed before Katie’s stomach began to grow.

—It’ll get awful busy around here when a baby comes, huh? Katie asked now.

Jerry nodded again, eyes filling with tears.

—We meant what we said, Jerry. We’re really going to need your help more than ever.

He looked at her through wet eyelashes.—Sure?

—Very, very sure. This family is going to have to help each other out. We’re all going to have to pitch in, and you’re not getting out of it.

Jerry’s eyes moved back and forth across the photo.—Like a brudah, Kay-tee?

—Of course, Jerry. You’ll be like a big brother.

—You and Nick love us
both.

—We’ll love both of you, yes.

Katie’s hand came up to her stomach, hoping that this would be the month they’d find out she was finally pregnant. Seven months and counting, but she wasn’t worried. Not yet.

—Kay-tee? he said quietly, looking away.—You have some for me?

It had become a Saturday-morning routine, ever since they told him about the baby. Katie sneaking off to the bedroom, coming back with the pair of shoes. Bringing Jerry a pair of scissors now, too, or a screwdriver—something sharp to help with the destruction. The guilt rose again, the same as every Saturday morning. How to address this after so much time had passed? And what would she say? But each time she told herself she couldn’t lose his trust, and she was assured each time, too, that keeping it to herself was the right thing. Minutes later Jerry would be stretched out on their blue sofa, giggling over cartoons.

—Okay, Jerry. But let’s wait until Nick is done and goes downstairs, okay?

He nodded, mouth moving with unspoken words.

When they’d first started trying the summer before, and the months had passed and she still wasn’t pregnant, Katie and Nick thought it had something to do with the spontaneous abortion she’d had years ago. But Katie’s ob-gyn told them that many women miscarried their first child—it was more common than most people realized—and then went on to have normal, healthy families.
Go home
.
Enjoy your time together,
he said with a wink that made Katie blush.

Still, after nine months of trying to conceive and failing, they found themselves back at the doctor’s, running over a list of possible reasons. There were more tests than they could’ve imagined—needles and biopsies and mucus tests—but terms like “inhospitable womb” and “lazy sperm” and “acute endometriosis,” were ruled out, one by one.

—Everything seems to be in working order, Katie’s doctor said to them in April, flipping her chart shut.—Not time to panic yet. Keep trying, he said, winking.

This time, after he closed the examining-room door behind him, Katie wanted to grab the metal tray beside the bed and hurl it at the door.

Nick squeezed her knee over the crunchy paper gown.—Well, we’re good at that at least, he said.

She looked down at his hand on her knee, the tears close.

—Oh, Katie, no, he said, leaning in to her.—Please don’t. It’ll happen.

She couldn’t tell Nick that her tears had nothing to do with having a baby. Not exactly.

Back when they first started trying, it was nearly possible to forget those six months of tension between them, the feelings of her failing Nick with the abandoned documentary. Their marriage, on the verge of collapsing in on itself, had changed in one night, and just last month something happened that Katie still considered a miracle. They were in bed, dreaming of the child that would come, laughing about what he would do and say, when Nick turned his eyes to the ceiling.

—I won’t be like him, he said quietly.

After all their silly dreaming (
he will find a cure for hangovers
,
he will invent a delicious, fat-free chocolate cake
), Katie had misunderstood. —No, but he’ll be just like you. What else could we want?

Nick’s eyes met hers quickly, and then they were back on the ceiling. —No, like
him.
My father. It won’t be that way.

He didn’t say anything else, but after all this time the tip of everything that made the world too big for Nick at times had finally broken the surface. Spilling out, after all these years.

Katie
needed
to give him this child, but something wasn’t right. The doctors couldn’t confirm it, but she knew that the problem lay with her, with her own body. In the shower, while she shopped, even while she was reviewing the footage of her Animal Rescue project, her mind would travel back to that night in the hospital with Nick, soon after their wedding—the doubts that floated up through her Demerol-glazed mind, right after Nick tried to console her with the doctor’s words.
He said it wasn’t anyone’s fault.
Her reaction that night, creeping back to her in the past nine months. God was punishing her for loving Nick so completely.

Every month when she felt the pains in her lower back and the slow cramping that would eventually build up and keep her in bed for half a day, she knew it: My fault. I’m failing him again, and it’s my fault.

And maybe this was what really caused the tears. Because even though Katie knew what it meant for Nick, for their marriage, even though her body was betraying her, she finally accepted the truth. It wasn’t the baby she wanted at all, it was still Nick—always Nick. Only a few times, in all these months, had she pictured herself holding a tiny infant, or dressing him in little outfits, or watching him sleep in his crib. She wanted this child because she wanted
Nick.
All of him. Only him.

Her tears were for her husband, for what she was going to lose. It wouldn’t last forever, this kind solicitousness of Nick’s, this revelation that he would finally have a reason to give himself over to her completely. As the months dragged by and she still couldn’t conceive, it would end. And then he would turn away from her again, and she would fail him for the last time. Finally and completely.

K
atie peels herself off the kitchen floor, head still foggy from the

Valium, and peers through the window: still dark, but Jack is standing at the slider, sidestepping to go out.

There are only three messages on her machine from last night. The first, from her mother, is casual—she’s just calling to check in, to say she is thinking of Katie and misses her (her father yelling out his agreement in the background)—and then there is a pause, and her mother’s voice comes back, tremulous in the effort to be controlled. “You know I love you, Kate. You
know
that.”

The second one is from Richard, wanting to discuss Katie’s flight from the courtroom. “Not cool,” he says, then hangs up without saying good-bye.

Ben Cohen is the third message, left at his leisurely pace, as if he is actually speaking directly to Katie: he needs to see her for a moment, would it be possible for her to come by his house tomorrow or the next day, or could he drive to her house if it is more convenient, and when would be good for her?

“I know you’re busy, dear, but I do think it’s time,” Ben says in that slow way of his, which is like metal dragging along asphalt this morning.

There are too many hours ahead of her before she meets Richard in his office to watch the final footage that made it onto the videotape, too many things to think about, so after Jack comes back in, she tramps down to the basement.
Escape,
she thinks, realizing that maybe her mother had a point after all.