Nameless Series Boxed Set (59 page)

She swallowed.
Stared down at the suitcase. Couldn’t believe she was doing this. “You aren’t
really stupid enough to think it’s just because of what happened tonight.”

Seth was
directly beside her, his tense presence very distracting. “I know I was gone on
the trip for too long, but that’s only happened once. And I’m not sure it
deserves this severe a response.”

Erin took a
shuddering breath and folded up a pair of pants to place in the suitcase. “This
isn’t just about your being gone for a month. It’s about all of it. Your work
has become more important than your family.”

Seth grabbed
her shoulder again and turned her to face him. “Work is not more important than
my family. How can you say that? I’ve been dealing with a lot of very unusual
pressures at work lately, and they’ve ended up taking too much of my time. But
it has nothing to do with what is important to me.”

Erin shrugged
slightly. Pulled away from him again. “I’m sure that’s how you feel. But all I
know is how you act. When you have a choice between your family and work, you
always choose work.”

Seth released a
frustrated groan and lowered himself to sit on the bed next to her suitcase. “I
don’t always have a choice. I know it seems to you like I do. But—at the risk
of sounding patronizing—I’m not sure you understand the stakes of what I do.
There are some things I simply can’t not do. The result would affect people’s
futures, even their lives. I have certain responsibilities that I can’t just
put aside.” He was speaking earnestly now, having moved past his protective
coldness in a real attempt to make her understand. “Often, when you think I
have a choice, I really don’t. At least not one I can responsibly make.”

Erin shook her
head. His words made sense, but Seth was the one who didn’t understand. She’d
known all of this already. “Why do you think I complain about your work as
infrequently as I do? It always seemed petty for me to whine about not having
you home for dinner when someone else's future was at stake.” She met his eyes.
“But, no matter how much a person understands and tries to tolerate, there will
always come a point when you can’t take it anymore.” She paused for a moment.
“This is that point for me.”

Seth must have
recognized she was serious because his brief attempt to explain his perspective
suddenly flared up into a new rush of stifled panic. “Erin,” he said roughly.
“This isn’t fair. I’ve been home one day, then I leave to go into work at a bad
time, and now you suddenly declare you can’t take anymore. I’ve had no
preparation for this. How the hell could I have tried to make it better?”

Erin’s throat
was aching so much she could barely breathe, and she couldn’t stand to look at
his expression anymore. She stared back down at the clothes in her suitcase.
Pretended she was straightening them. “I’m not sure it would have made any
difference.”

“Damn it.” He
jerked back to his feet with the momentum of his indignation. “That’s
ludicrous. You’re saying that I’m not home enough, but then you say it wouldn’t
make any difference if I was.”

“That’s not
what I meant.”

Seth stood in
frozen silence for a moment, staring fixedly at a spot on the far wall. Erin
knew he was thinking, his mind working with rapid precision as he sorted
through reasons and possibilities.

Finally, he
rubbed a frustrated hand through his hair and began, “I can see I’ve made a lot
of mistakes.” His tone was low and hoarse, and he seemed to be thinking quickly
as he spoke. “I knew it wasn’t good that I was gone for so long on this trip,
although I couldn’t see any way around it. And obviously I know how upsetting
it was that I left you and the girls this evening, just when they were starting
to relax with me again. I shouldn’t have left tonight. I see that now. I should
have…figured out something else to take care of the crisis. And I should have
worked harder to get home from the trip sooner than I did. But I just thought…”
His voice broke off, as if he’d hit a block in his throat.

Erin was
listening carefully, although part of her knew that nothing he said tonight
would really make a difference in what she knew she needed to do. “You thought
what?” she whispered.

Seth’s face
twisted strangely, which was a sure sign he was about to admit something that
was too deep and private for him to get spoken easily. “I thought the point of
family was that you could make mistakes. The last few weeks have been really
difficult, but I just kept thinking about you and the girls, waiting for me.
You know what things used to be like for me. And it took me a long time to
finally trust that there were people in the world who loved me, regardless.
Because of that, I just thought that I could count on you…to understand.”

Erin knew how
hard the words had been for Seth to say. His voice had grown more and more
gravelly, and he could no longer look her in the eyes.

He wasn’t a man
who opened up easily. Six years ago, it had taken him months to open up enough
to tell her that he loved her at all. So the fact that he had come this
far—that he was willing to say something so raw and naked—meant something to
Erin, despite everything.

Her chest was
flooded with love, with tenderness, with grief. And with a kind of bitterness,
that even his blunt sincerity couldn’t fix things.

“You were
right,” she responded at last, putting her hand on her breastbone because her
chest was hurting so much. “In a lot of ways, you were right. You can trust us
and count on us.” She made herself continue. “But the problem is that you’re
thinking only about yourself.”

Seth glanced
up, as if he were surprised.

It told her
something.

“You haven’t
even thought about how difficult these last weeks have been on us. I know how
hard you were working and how stressed and overwhelmed you were. But you
weren’t the only one who had a hard time. Your daughters had to spend a month
without you, at an age where that kind of thing really has consequences. A
couple of nights ago Anna was afraid that she didn’t even remember what you
looked like.”

Seth’s mouth
dropped open slightly. “She what?”

“And
Mackenzie…” Erin had to swallow before she finished her sentence.
“Mackenzie—who adores you more than anything in the world—actually told me that
she hated you.”

She couldn’t
look at Seth after she said that. Knew what she’d see in his face, and couldn’t
stand to witness it.

There was a
long unbearable silence before he rasped, “Why?”

“Because you
kept promising you’d come back but never did.” Erin pushed her hair back
impatiently from her face. “Did you even think about what that would do to
them? To have their father keep breaking his promises to them?”

“But—”

“I know you
didn’t do it on purpose. I explained it as much as I could. But I also had to
comfort them when they kept crying about it.”

Seth turned on
his heel and started striding out of the room.

“Seth,” Erin
demanded loudly. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to
apologize. To make sure they know—”

This time, Erin
hurried over and grabbed him by the arm. “No. They’re asleep. If you wake them
up now, you’ll just confuse them.” He seemed to resist, to still try to pull
away, but Erin hung on resiliently. “You can talk to them in the morning.
Mackenzie doesn’t really hate you. You know that as well as I do. But do you
realize how much she had to be hurting for her to say that…about you?”

Of course, Seth
realized it. The knowledge had almost leveled him. His face and posture were
still composed, but the coiled tension was so tight in his body that she was
afraid he might shatter.

“I see your
point,” he said at last, roughly and still not fully meeting her eyes. “I
wasn’t looking at the whole picture. I figured they’d miss me some, but I
didn’t think it would…” He shook his head jerkily. “I was just expecting you
all to be waiting for me, without thinking about what the waiting might do to
the girls. I was foolish. I made a mistake. I won't do it again. But that
doesn’t explain why you’re still packing.”

And this was
perhaps the hardest thing of all. She dropped her arms to her sides. Turned
back toward her open suitcase on the bed. “Because the girls aren’t the only
ones who've been hurt.”

Seth was
perfectly still for a long, pregnant moment. Then, “Erin.” The word was a thick
caress, and he took the two steps over until he could pull her into his arms.
“Erin, baby, I’m so sorry. You know how much I love you. That’s never going to
change.”

She was
shaking, and she felt so safe and secure in his’s arms that it took all the
strength she possessed to pull out of his embrace. “I know,” she choked, the
emotional pressure in her chest pushing her into tears at last.

Eventually,
strong emotion always did.

Wiping her eyes
in exasperation, she continued, “I know you love me. That’s not the point. This
isn’t just one incident. It’s not just the last month. You’ve been prioritizing
work over family more and more for the last year. It’s getting worse, not
better. And I’m…I’m getting lost. I need to get away in order to find my way
again.”

“Erin.” Seth
seemed to be actively holding himself back from touching her, now that she'd
pulled away from him. “I messed up. I can see that. But how is leaving going to
help? How can I change if you’re not here?”

Her eyes burned
as painfully as her throat now. In another minute she was going to be sobbing
for real. “You still don’t get it, Seth. I’m not trying to punish you. This
isn’t to make you suffer or to make some sort of dramatic point. You’re not the
only one who’s made this situation into what it is. I’ve made it too. I’ve let
this happen to us, to me. And I need to get away—for a little while.  I’m not
even sure who I am anymore.”

Seth’s jaw was
clenched so tightly that a little muscle worked in his cheek. He was staring at
her, with that hint of panic growing deeper in his eyes. “Is this about having
to give up your career?”

Erin made a
face. “Not exactly. Maybe a little. It’s connected some, I guess. But it’s not
the main thing.”

“I thought
you’d reconciled yourself to that,” he said, looking suddenly wary. “I know it
was hard for you, but you haven’t been looking for a job so… so I thought you
were happy being a wife and mother.”

“I am,” she
burst out, the tears streaming out of the corners of her eyes now. “I am. I
want to be a wife and mother, but I want to be Erin too.”

It wasn’t a
very good explanation, but Seth seemed to understand. He closed down, shutting
off his expressions and responses the way he always did when something hurt too
much. Finally he muttered, “Aren’t you still Erin?”

“I don’t know,”
she admitted, turning around so he wouldn’t see how hard she was crying. “I’m
not sure.”

There wasn’t
anything else she could do, so she moved back to the bed and folded another
pair of jeans into the suitcase, her eyes still streaming with tears.

Seth recovered
more quickly than she’d expected, and he stepped over to gently put his hand on
her shoulder. “Erin,” he murmured, mildly, huskily, “Erin, I had no idea you
were worried about losing your identity.”

“I know. I
didn’t tell you. That’s part of the problem. As I said, you aren’t the only one
who’s contributed to this situation.”

“But why can’t
we work this out together. We both need to deal with some things, but surely we
can do it better together. We can’t work on being a family if we’re apart.”

She nodded and
sniffed urgently. Tried to compose herself the way Seth had. “I know. And we
will work on it. But I need some time without you first.” Before he could
object, she hurried on. “I know what will happen if I stay. This will have
scared you, so you’ll be attentive and loving and sweet for weeks or maybe even
months. And it will feel so good to have you back again that I’ll just fall
back into our old patterns. And then weeks from now, or months, or however long
it takes, you’ll get absorbed in work again, you’ll pull more and more away,
and I’ll just let it happen—because I still won’t really know who I am or what
I want out of life. I need to get away, Seth. I need to think through this
objectively.”

“But you’re not
supposed to think about your family objectively. You’re supposed to think about
us with your heart.”

Erin was crying
again. Louder than before. But she forced out between sobs. “I love you, Seth.
That hasn’t changed. But I want to love myself too.”

Seth’s head
jerked to the side, and she was relieved she couldn’t see his eyes. His dress
shirt was wrinkled and slightly damp in the middle of his back, and there were
more lines than she remembered beside his eyes and mouth. She knew how drained
he was after working so hard for the last month. She knew she was slamming him
with this on the day after he’d returned, and she ached for him, as much as for
herself.

“Please let me
go. Just for a couple of weeks. Then we’ll go from there.” She needed for him
to accept this—at least in part—if she was ever going to make it out the door.

Seth swallowed
hard. Gave a slight nod. Still wasn’t looking in her direction.

Erin released a
shuddering sigh. “I’m going to take the girls to my dad’s.”

His head jerked
back toward her. “You’re taking the girls?”

“I was planning
to.” She sucked in a long breath. Managed to force out, “I guess I don’t have
to.” She wondered if she could possibly go two weeks without having her babies
with her. “If you think you can take off work so you could be with them…”

“I could cut
back a little, but I can’t take the time off completely right now.”

She nodded
resignedly. “Then I’ll take them with me.”

“So, after
being away from them for a month, I won’t be able to see them for two more
weeks?” His voice was cold again—but she knew it was prompted by pain.