Treading Water (39 page)

“
Yes, Clare, you are,” Anna
said from the doorway.

“
Even my own mother doesn’t
see how wrong this is? My husband has another family! Another
family with another woman!”

“
I love you, Clare, and I’m
so glad you’ve come back to us,” Frannie said. “But he’s my
brother, and I love him, too. I can’t stay here and listen to you
talk about him like this after witnessing the way he suffered over
you. I hope you’ll think long and hard before you judge him too
harshly on choices he made in an unbearable situation. You know
he’d never have hurt you on purpose. Not in a million
years.”

Frannie squeezed Anna’s arm on her way out
the door.

Anna moved to her daughter’s bedside. “She’s
right, you know. You can’t imagine what this was like for him.
Where is he anyway?”

Clare turned away from her mother. “I asked
him to leave.”

“
You’re making a terrible
mistake, Clare. He wants to be here with you. He hardly left your
side for two weeks when you had that terrible fever.”

“
Have you met her?” Clare
asked, turning back to look at her mother.

“
A couple of
times.”

“
And you just sat idly by
while he moved another woman into
my
house—the house he built
for
me
—and said
nothing about it?”

“
It wasn’t up to me to tell
him how to live his life, Clare. He’d done everything he could to
find help for you and to make sure you were well cared for. By the
time he told me about her, I was almost relieved to see him getting
on with his life. He’d suffered so terribly. It was painful to
watch, for all of us.” She reached for Clare’s hand. “He never
forgot he had a wife. He was there all the time to see you, and if
you don’t believe me, ask Sally. She’s been your nurse for years.
She’ll tell you.”

Clare continued to stare out the window.

“
I know this is a terrible
shock, but it’s just not possible for you to know what it was like
for him, for me, for everyone.”

“
He has another family,
Mom.” Clare’s voice caught on a sob. “My Jack has someone
else.”

“
I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”
Anna hugged her daughter. “I wish there was something I could
say.”

Shaken by the scene in Clare’s room, Frannie
left the hospital. She tried to put herself in Clare’s place to
understand what a shock it would be to wake up after three years to
find out the whole world had gone on without you. But that didn’t
give her the right to speak so harshly about Jack.

On the way to the hotel, Frannie decided
she’d check in with Jack after she’d seen Andi. She parked at the
hotel, hoping this visit would go better than the last one.

Frannie spotted Jen Brooks across the lobby
and went over to her.

“
Hi, Jen, I’m not sure if
you remember me. I’m Jack Harrington’s sister, Frannie Booth. We
met at the gala.”

Jen shook Frannie’s extended hand. “Nice to
see you again. Do you know what’s going on with Andi? She and Eric
are staying here, and she asked me to drive him to school today for
her. She sent him out to meet me, but I haven’t seen her.”

“
She left Jack last
night.”

“
Why?” Jen asked, her face
slack with shock.

“
His wife has
recovered.”

Jen gasped. “That’s amazing. But God,
Andi…”

“
Could I see
her?”

“
She’s in the manager’s
apartment. I tried to get her to talk to me about an hour ago, but
she didn’t answer. Maybe you’ll have more luck.” Jen pointed the
way.

“
Thanks, Jen.”

Frannie made her way across the lobby and up
the stairs to the manager’s apartment at the far end of the east
wing. She knocked on the door. “Andi, it’s Frannie. Open the door,
honey.” She knocked some more, and when the door finally opened,
Frannie was shocked by Andi’s shattered expression.

“
What are you doing here?”
Andi tied her silk robe tighter across her rounded
middle.

“
I wanted to check on you.
May I come in?”

Andi stepped aside to let her in.

“
Are you all
right?”

“
I will be.”

“
Jack’s worried about
you.”

“
He needs to focus on his
family right now.”

“
You’re his family, too,
Andi. You and Eric and the babies.”

“
His wife needs him.” Her
voice, like her eyes, was dull and lifeless. “That’s where he
should be.”

“
What’ll you
do?”

“
I’ll stay here and work
and take care of Eric while I wait for the babies.”

“
Can I do anything for you?
Anything at all?”

“
You’ve been such a good
friend to me, Frannie. There’s one thing I need.”

“
Anything.”

“
I can’t see you. I can’t
see any of you. I have to make a clean break if I’m going to get
through this. Please tell the girls, too. I love them, but I can’t
see them. Try to make them understand. They need to be thinking of
their mother, and they don’t need to be worried about
me.”

“
What about the babies? And
Eric?”

“
I’d never keep the babies
from their father, and Eric is counting on seeing Jack. But I
won’t. Please tell him that. I won’t see him, and I won’t take his
calls. Not now. I’ll contact him after the babies are
born.”

“
You can’t just cut him off
this way.”

“
I have no right to him. I
probably never did. His wife won’t understand that he has another
family waiting in the wings, so I’ll make it easy for him—and for
her.”

Frannie couldn’t believe how Andi had summed
up Clare’s exact sentiments.

“
Please ask him, ask
everyone, to respect my feelings.”

“
If you’re sure that’s what
you want.”

“
I am.”

Nothing in Andi’s firm tone betrayed the
terrible pain she must’ve felt as she said the words, but Frannie
saw it in her eyes. “I’m sorry. I know this must be awful for
you.”

“
I’m not sorry those
beautiful girls have their mother back or that Clare has her life
back. And I’ll never be sorry for the time I spent loving your
brother and living with him. It was the highlight of my life.” Her
voice finally broke.

Frannie took a step toward her, wanting to
offer comfort, but Andi held up a hand to stop her.

“
Don’t. Please. I
appreciate you coming, Frannie, but you have to go now.”

Frannie opened the door. “We love you and
Eric very much. I’m just a phone call away if you ever need
me.”

With tears in her eyes, Andi nodded but said
nothing more as Frannie let the door close softly behind her.

Chapter 29

Clare was transferred to the rehabilitation
center at Newport Hospital, and the doctors marveled at her speedy
progress. She was eating solid food and beginning to regain some of
the strength she’d lost, although it would be months before they’d
know for sure about any limitations. Until then she was confined to
a wheelchair and worked for hours each day with physical and
occupational therapists.

The girls spent as much time as they could
with her and even participated in her therapy. Clare allowed Jack
to visit with the girls, since they were so delighted to have their
family back together, but she’d yet to speak to him again about
Andi. In the meantime, she tried to cope with the fact that he’d
brought another woman into his life and had two children on the way
with her.

She’d had several sessions with her
psychiatrist and discussed some of her feelings about her husband
with him. While the doctor was sympathetic to her plight, he urged
her to remember how much can happen in three years’ time.

The psychiatrist wanted to try hypnosis to
jog her memory of the accident and the months leading up it, hoping
to find something that might explain why she’d failed to act on the
most human of impulses—to get out of the way of imminent danger.
Clare promised to think about it, but for some reason, the idea
frightened her.

After a few weeks in rehab, she asked to see
Jill and Kate alone, and they came in together on a Sunday
afternoon—the one day off she had from the grueling physical
therapy sessions.

“
Why did you want to see
us, Mom?” Jill asked.

“
I want to know more about
what happened when I was…sick. I don’t know who else to ask, so I’m
asking you.”

Kate and Jill exchanged glances.

“
I want to know about
Andi.”

Kate shifted in her seat. “What about
her?”

Clare felt guilty for putting them through
this, but she had to know more. “What does she look like?”

“
Um, she’s tall and has
long, dark, curly hair, and brown eyes.” Jill described a woman who
was her mother’s physical opposite in every possible
way.

“
She sounds very
pretty.”

“
She is,” Kate said. “And
she’s nice, too. She was nice to us.”

“
I’m sure she was. She
wanted your father, and the three of you came with the package,”
Clare said in a bitter tone that stunned her daughters.

“
It wasn’t like that,” Kate
said in a whisper.

“
What was it like,
then?”

“
I’m not sure what you want
us to say,” Jill said, glancing at her sister. “We liked her, she
was nice to us, she was good to Dad, and her son’s adorable. He’s
deaf, and we learned sign language so we could talk to
him.”

Clare’s heart broke all over again as she
listened to Jill describe the family they’d created—with someone
else playing the starring role. “Where’re they now?”

“
We haven’t seen them,”
Kate said. “Andi moved to the hotel. She’s the manager there, and
she told Frannie she doesn’t want to see us.”

“
She said that?” Clare
asked, amazed by the other woman’s gall. First she moved in with
her children and then she rejected them?

“
She wants us to focus on
you,” Jill said. “She never took your place, Mom. We wouldn’t have
let her, and besides, she never tried.”

“
She took my place with
Dad,” Clare said sadly. “Does he love her? Really love
her?”

The girls exchanged nervous glances again,
and Clare realized she’d put them in an awful position. She could
also see the answer to her question on their faces. “Never mind.
Don’t answer that.”

Jack walked into the room and was surprised
to see the girls. He’d hoped to find Clare alone. He hadn’t had the
chance to talk to her alone since the day she asked him to leave
her room. She’d only been civil to him since then because of their
daughters.

“
Hi there,” he said as the
girls got up to leave. He noticed how uncomfortable they seemed
when they kissed their mother and told him they would see him later
at home.

“
I feel like I interrupted
something,” he said to Clare when they were alone.

“
We were just talking.
What’re you doing here?”

“
I came to see my wife. Is
that all right?”

She shrugged. “Free country.”

He sighed. “How long are we going to do
this?”

“
Well, let’s see, your
lover hasn’t even had your twins yet, and you’ll have eighteen
years to raise them, so maybe by then I’ll be used to the
idea.”

“
I haven’t seen or talked
to her in weeks.”

“
Where’s your heart, Jack?
Is it here with your sick and broken wife? Or is it with your
beautiful mistress who’s pregnant with your twins?”

She’d caught him off guard with the
question, and he had no easy answer. How could he explain his heart
was in both places?

“
I can tell just by looking
at you where your heart is, and it isn’t here. Why don’t you go to
her and leave me alone? I’m sorry I ruined all your plans by waking
up.”

Jack fought to control the
burst of anger that blazed through him. “I’d do anything to change
what happened to you, but I can’t. I couldn’t then, and I can’t
now. I waited
years
for you to come back to me. I’m here with you because it’s
where I want to be, and it’s where I belong. But I won’t be here
for long if you keep this up.”

“
That’d be a nice easy way
out for you, wouldn’t it? You could tell people your wife was
different after her long coma. She didn’t want you
anymore.”

“
It doesn’t seem like
you
do
want me
anymore, Clare. Andi’s gone. She’s moved out of our home.” He
paused to absorb the burst of pain that came with that statement.
“I’ll play an active role in the lives of her son and our babies
when they’re born. If you can accept that, we have a chance to move
forward together. I don’t want to throw away more than twenty years
of marriage like it meant nothing to me, because it did. You know
it did.”

“
Does it still?”

“
Of course it does. But you
have to decide if you can live with everything that happened while
you were sick and the fact that those three children are in my life
to stay, no matter what.”