Anna Adams - Marriage in Jeopardy

“Sure.”

Before either of them could ruin the moment, he fished out their coats and carried them to the car. When he realized she might try carrying her suitcase down the stairs, he hurtled back inside.

Lydia was putting on his favorite sweater. Soft, green, touchable, a shade that deepened her eyes so that he could barely make himself look away from them. Her head popped out of the V-neck. She looked embarrassed to be caught dressing—by her own husband—and confused about his abrupt return.

“What’s up?”

He shook his head, swallowing an accusation that she was treating him like a stranger. “You ready?”

“As soon as I add toiletries.” She tossed toothpaste and various other items into her bag, then she brushed her hair into place with her fingers and grabbed her purse off the dresser. “Ready.”

He scooped the quilt off the bed. Downstairs, he turned off the lights and then outside, he opened the back passenger door. Lydia hung back. “What?”

He held up the quilt. “I thought you could rest. It’s a long drive.”

“I’ll climb in the back if I get tired.”

“Come on, Lydia. Let me have my way. You’ve been a little more active each day, which I assume means the rest is helping you.” Physically, at least. He couldn’t say the silence in their house spelled recovery for either of them.

“I’m all right.” She touched his arm, willingly. His chest tightened. “I’m better.”

He opened the front door and helped her inside. As soon as he started the engine, she punched in her favorite radio station. Some guy sang about memories of love. Josh glanced at Lydia. Her smile startled him because it came from inside.

He smiled, too, but he had to look away from her. Making her happy felt too good.

THE NEEDLE on the gas gauge was dropping toward a quarter tank as he took the exit for Kline, Maine—named for Reverend Levi Kline, a sixteenth-century hellfire-and-brimstone minister whose influence still obscured most kindness in Josh’s hometown.

He drove down a long ramp between tall pines and far-off hardwoods, almost bare of fall leaves. He always felt more like a stranger than a prodigal son. No one in town had mentioned his parents’ way with a bottle, but disapproval had followed him down every street.

He’d escaped Kline’s small-town, fish-eye interest the morning after he’d graduated from high school. People described New Englanders as stand-offish. Not if you’d grown up among them in a family that provoked notice for all the wrong reasons.

He’d buried himself on the large city campus of Boston College and continued to remain unnoticed through law school. One thing a lobsterman’s son could count on in those days of dwindling catches had been plenty of financial aid.

During law school, a Commonwealth Supreme Court judge had selected him as his clerk. Afterward, he’d turned down six-figure starting salaries to keep his unspoken promises. Success often made him forget he was the town drunks’ son who wasn’t supposed to amount to anything.

Lydia beamed with appreciation at the quaint bandstand on the square and the Victorian houses that lined the west side. “Think of the history the people who’ve lived in those homes have seen. A woman from Colorado can’t even believe places like this are real.”

Her excitement annoyed him—like always. “I’ve got plenty of history—and it’s real enough.”

“Didn’t you know good times here, too?”

“You want the truth? I’m good at my job. People come to me for advice. I get offers—big offers that would mean a lot more to us than a town house.” He felt her gaze on him. Her hard gaze. “What?”

“I don’t care about offers. I’m beginning to hate your job. What about us? You can’t measure success by our marriage.”

“Maybe I don’t write you sonnets everyday, but I thought we were safe and settled.”

“That makes a girl’s heart beat faster.” She’d learned a thing or two about sarcasm. “We began growing apart the day you decided I could wait for your free time. Marriage takes effort, too.”

Starting to feel harried, he slapped the turn signal to indicate a right.

“Go ahead,” she said. “You were saying you’re successful.”

“Some people think so. I did.” Like her, he dropped the argument neither of them was going to win. “But every time I drive down these streets, I’m eighteen again, trying to escape. Look how my parents’ neighbors still stare.” He nodded at an elderly woman who was already too busy storing up gossip to recognize bitterness in his smile he shot her way. “I hid my family secrets. I let my mother and father make Clara’s life a living hell because I had this gut feeling no one else was ever supposed to know what went on behind our doors.”

“But didn’t you have good times?” Apparently, she had to insist. She pointed ahead of them. “Look at that Founder’s Day banner. That means a fair.”

“That happened over a month ago.”

“Don’t they celebrate with a fair? With games and cotton candy?”

“And food for the ducks,” he said, remembering the feel of his sister’s hand in his. A memory too poignant to face for long. “See that pond on the library side of the square?”

Lydia nodded.

“There’s a little cove where those tall reeds grow that has just enough room for two kids. Clara always said it was our spot for feeding the ducks—and they’d swim over the second we started down the hill toward them. I used to take bread for them when I came home.”

“Not since I’ve known you.”

“I couldn’t without explaining.” The truth fought to stay hidden still. “The bad stuff is hard enough to talk about. The good times…” A grown man didn’t talk about his breaking heart.

He almost missed the turn by the brick schoolhouse where he and Clara had attended kindergarten. He never passed the ancient church where they’d buried her without anguish that was like a band across his chest.

“We should bring flowers,” Lydia said.

Small, square and brown, climbing with ivy, but nowhere near as impressive as the brick edifice erected by new money in the “good” part of Kline, the church felt like ground where Clara would always be waiting. She hadn’t been old enough to understand death. Neither had he, but he’d learned in one swift, hard lesson.

Clearing his throat, he turned toward the coast road. “Maybe.”

The ocean’s salty scent greeted them. His father’s family had been lobstermen since—who knew when? Ironically, since Josh and Clara had lived in such poverty, Bart Quincy owned a plot of the richest land in Kline.

Back in the old days, overgrown sea grass had separated the white house from the narrow road. The oversized Cape Cod had looked a little drunk itself, a square, peaked box, in peeling paint gone gray with neglect.

Now a clean picket fence separated Quincy land from folks hiking toward the ocean. Fir trees, holly bushes and a neat lawn bordered the driveway.

“If only you and Clara had known a decent home, maybe you wouldn’t be so wedged in the past.”

He’d never worried much about himself. It kind of warmed him that Lydia did. “And yet, you don’t get that it was my parents’ fault?”

“They aren’t the same people now.”

Always the same answer—and true, but never good enough. They were headed to what amounted to a homecoming for Lydia and his parents. He’d already started holding his tongue.

He looked at his wife’s delicate profile, her large eyes, fringed by long lashes that could feel so soft against his skin, her nose a little large. He’d almost lost her. If coming here comforted her, he’d try to make the best of it and of his parents, too.