“Well, we can’t always get what we want, can we? If I could have what I wanted, I’d already have a kid. If I could have what I wanted, this kid”—he shoved the ultrasound picture back toward her—“would be obsolete. So yeah, this is pretty much the last thing I want.”
It wasn’t until the smoke alarm went off—Jake had continued standing at the kitchen island long after Nora fled crying—that he realized he didn’t know anything. When was she due? Did she know if it was a boy or a girl? If not, was she planning to find out?
Was this why she’d been sick?
Well, of course this was why she’d been sick. He felt like an idiot for not seeing it.
The questions kept coming. Had she been eating enough through the morning sickness? Had she felt it kick yet? Did she have names picked out? Was she going to take a leave from work?
Why hadn’t she told him right away? And, oh God, was she going to take the kid and move back to Toronto?
And one more question: What kind of man was he that he’d watched her face crumple and tears start flowing and just stood there? Let her stumble off the stool and, as her silent tears became sobs, flee?
Had she even taken her boots?
He had no answers to any of these questions.
He felt strange. Weak and shaky, like he was barely inhabiting his body. Like he was floating above it. It was a kind of panic, he supposed, but it was different from the waves. It was an emptiness. Just like he had no answers to all the questions that had been swirling through his mind, he had…no sensations in his body. He had been angry before. Shocked, then angry. Now he was just…blank.
Smoke was filling the kitchen. He should deal with that. That was a thing a person should do in this situation. He turned to the stove, grabbed the pan, and—
“Fuck!”
He burned his hand. Because that was what happened when you grabbed a hot pan with your bare hand.
Pain seared through him, yanking him back into his body, and as he jammed his hand under the cold water tap, it didn’t stop. It started spreading, up through his arm and down into his chest. It radiated down his legs until they couldn’t hold him up anymore. He slid to the floor of the kitchen with the sink still running and the smoke alarm still blaring. He was drowning. This was like the waves, except instead of being inside him, they were all around him. They were subsuming him. They were going to kill him. He couldn’t breathe.
What should he do? What should he do?
Think. What did drowning people do?
Drowning people needed life preservers. Rescuers.
He stumbled out to the living room where he’d left his phone. It took him a stupid amount of time to get his fingers steady enough to type. I know this is a random question, and you don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to, but do you ever think about having kids again?
Kerrie replied with a photo. This is Sienna. She’s eighteen months old. I should have told you. I’m sorry I didn’t.
He sucked in a breath. The little girl looked a lot like Kerrie and a little like Jude. He hadn’t cried, before, when he was drowning, but suddenly he had to bite back tears.
Jake: You don’t owe me anything. She’s beautiful. Congrats.
Kerrie: I got remarried. He’s a good guy. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that, either.
He felt a little better. It was working. He wasn’t going to drown after all. He took a deep breath. And another one. Don’t be sorry. How would you have told me? Driven here and hiked into the cove?
He’d been kidding—or trying to, because although she was his life preserver, he didn’t want her to know that—but she replied Maybe.
Jake: You don’t owe me an accounting of your life.
Kerrie: I know. It’s just weird to go through so much with someone and then just have them be gone.
Jake: Yeah.
He knew she meant the two of them, after they split, but he also kind of felt that way about Nora. She’d been his best friend. His lover. One minute she’d been having a five-minute orgasm, and the next she was practically a stranger. The next she’d been pregnant with his baby.
Kerrie: Don’t feel pressured to say yes, but would you ever want to meet for coffee? We could meet halfway. In Stratford, maybe. You could meet Sienna. She’s Jude’s little sister. Or at least that’s how I think of her.
He let the tears come. I’d love that. Can we do it soon? I think I really fucked something up, and I could use some advice.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kerrie looked the same. She was a little fuller in the face, and her hair, which she used to highlight with blond streaks, was one solid color. But when she turned as Jake approached her table at the coffee shop in Stratford, her eyes were the same. Her smile was the same.
He hadn’t been sure how to greet her. A handshake? A friendly nod? How did a person greet the ex-wife he hadn’t seen in years? A person he had once shared everything with but who was now a stranger?
She settled the question for him by standing up and throwing her arms around him. She smelled the same, too, like the perfume she used to wear, kind of flowery and minty at the same time. He could still see the little pink bottle sitting on the bathroom vanity in their old house.
The sameness of her was a shock.
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. It was just that he had storms inside him and he wondered if she did, too. Or if she had, past tense. She’d gone to a grief counselor, she’d told him, so she must have. He sort of felt like when you had such violent storms inside you, it should change you visibly. But she was the same.
She pulled back and studied his face. He remembered how much he used to love the dimple she had on her left cheek. It was still cute, objectively, but there was no longer any heat behind his appreciation of it. Whatever spark had brought them together had gone out a long time ago. He could smile at her, smell her perfume, and think of her only as…what? A fellow soldier, maybe. Like they were the sole survivors of the same bloody battle.
“Jake, this is my husband, Cody.”
He hadn’t even noticed there was a guy seated with her at the table. And he was holding a little girl with Kerrie’s dark hair and Jude’s big green eyes. He sucked in a breath and took the guy’s outstretched hand.
“I know it’s probably a little weird to bring my current husband to meet my ex-husband,” Kerrie said. “But I wanted you to meet Sienna but then also for us to be able to talk. So Cody’s gonna take Sienna to the park in a little bit.”
Jake nodded, his throat tightening. He couldn’t take his eyes off Sienna. She had a way of tilting her head that was just like Jude.
“I’m sorry for your loss, man,” Cody said. “We talk about Jude all the time. Sienna has a picture of him in her room.”
Kerrie opened a locket she was wearing around her neck and held it out to him. There were two tiny pictures inside—one of Sienna and one of Jude.
If Jake had imagined being undone by this meeting, he had imagined it being the result of a magnified dose of grief, his constant, persistent companion. He hadn’t imagined it being the result of kindness.
He swiped at the tears that were starting to fall.
“Actually, should we all go to the park?” Kerrie asked gently, and he could only nod.