Steel, Danielle: The House On Hope Street

“You know what happened. I came to my senses. I don’t fit into your family, Liz, and I don’t even want to try. You’re a great woman and I love you, but this will never work. Not for me at least. You need to find someone else when you and the kids get over losing Jack, and that could take a while.” But it wasn’t Jack she’d been thinking of for the past week, it was Bill. For the first time in eleven months, Jack seemed to be fading into the distance, and the pain Bill had inflicted on her as he left was far more acute, and more distressing.

“If we really love each other, we can work it out. Why don’t we try?”

“For one very good reason,” he said bluntly, “I don’t want to. I don’t want to be married, or have kids, particularly someone else’s kids who don’t want me. They made it pretty clear, and I got the message.”

“They’d adjust in time.” She was pleading with him, and wishing that she wouldn’t. It was humiliating but she didn’t care. She knew now how much she loved him. And it seemed to be too late now. He wouldn’t even give her a chance to try and work it out, and fix it.

“Maybe they’d adjust, Liz, but I wouldn’t. And what’s more, I don’t want to. Find yourself another guy.” It was a callous thing to say to her, but it delivered the message.

“I love you. That’s not a generic prescription, Doctor.”

“I can’t help you out,” he said coldly. “And I’ve got to get back to the ER I’ve got a five-year-old with a tracheotomy sitting there waiting for me. Merry Christmas, Liz.” He was brutal, and she wanted to hate him for it, but didn’t. She didn’t have the energy to hate him. She felt as though someone had pulled the plug on her on Thanksgiving night, and someone had. He had.

She went home that afternoon, feeling sad and beaten, and it didn’t help when Jamie looked up from the Christmas cookies he was making with Carole and asked her where Bill was. It was an interesting question. She didn’t know what to say to him. Gone? Finished? Over? He doesn’t like us anymore? It was hard to find the right answer for him.

“He’s … busy, Jamie. He doesn’t have time to see us right now.”

“Did he die?” Jamie asked with a worried expression. In his mind, people who disappeared like his father were probably dead now.

“No, he didn’t. But he doesn’t want to see us for a while.”

“Is he mad at me?”

“No, sweetheart. He isn’t.”

“He said he’d fly his kite with me, and he never did. The one he made himself.”

“Maybe you should ask Santa for one this year,” she said, feeling drained. There wasn’t much more she could say to him. Bill Webster had walked out of their life and there was nothing she could do about it. Even begging wouldn’t have brought him back, and she knew it. Not pleading or cajoling or reasoning or loving. She had tried everything she could think of that afternoon on the phone, and the one thing that was clear to her now was that he didn’t want her. There was no arguing with that. He had a right to make that decision.

“It won’t be the same if Santa brings me a kite,” Jamie said sadly. “Bill’s kite is special because he made it.”

“Maybe we can make one,” she said, fighting back tears. If she could train him for the running long jump, maybe she could learn how to make a kite. But what else was she supposed to do for them? How much did she have to learn? How many people did she have to be for everyone, because a lunatic had shot Jack, and Bill Webster had decided to walk out on her in a fit of panic? And why did she always have to pick up the pieces? She was haunted by the question.

Carole went to pick the girls up from school shortly afterwards, and as soon as they walked in, Jamie gave them the news his mother had shared with him. “Bill doesn’t want to see us anymore.”

“Good,” Megan said loudly, and then looked faintly guilty as she glanced at her mother. She could see that her mother looked very unhappy.

“That’s not a nice thing to say, Meg,” Liz said quietly, and she looked so sad that Megan said she was sorry.

“I just don’t like him,” she added.

“You hardly know him,” Liz said and Megan nodded, and the girls went upstairs to do their homework. They only had three more weeks of school before Christmas vacation. But there was no holiday spirit in the house, and it broke Liz’s heart when she brought out the decorations.

She decided not to put lights on the outside of the house this year, or in the trees the way Jack always did. They just put up decorations inside the house, and two weeks before Christmas she took them to buy a Christmas tree, but no one’s heart was in it.

She hadn’t heard from Bill in two weeks by then, and she suspected she never would again. He had made his decision, and intended to stick by it. And she had finally admitted it to Victoria, who was devastated for her, and offered to take her to lunch, but Liz didn’t even want to see her.

And as Christmas approached, the entire house seemed to be weighed down, they were all sinking slowly into the mire of depression. It was nearly a year since Jack had died, and it suddenly felt as though it were yesterday. The children talked about him constantly. And Liz felt as though she were ricocheting between her agony over losing Bill and her memories of her late husband. She stayed in her room most of the time, and they didn’t entertain friends. She turned down all the invitations to Christmas parties. She even decided not to have her mother come out, and told her she wanted to be alone with her children, and although her mother had sounded hurt, she said she understood it. And she invited another widowed friend to come and stay with her.

The only things Liz and the children did to acknowledge the holiday were hang ornaments on the tree, and bake Christmas cookies, and all she did was pray that the holiday would soon be over.

She thought about taking them to ski between Christmas and New Year’s, but they weren’t in the mood for that, and they decided to stay home, as they all sank slowly into the quicksand of painful memories that engulfed them.

She was sitting at her desk in the office the week before Christmas when a client called, sounding breathless, and asked if she could come in to see her. Liz had some free time that afternoon, and made an appointment for her. And what she heard when the woman came in didn’t please her. The woman’s husband was endangering her six-year-old son, he had taken him on the back of his motorcycle on the freeway without a helmet, flew in a helicopter with him, although he’d only just gotten his license, and let him ride his bike to school, in heavy traffic, and again without a helmet. The client wanted Liz to take visitation away from him, and to further make the point, she wanted to go after his business. But as soon as she said it, it had a familiar ring to Liz, and she shook her head firmly.

“We’re not going to do that to him,” Liz said without a moment’s hesitation. “I’ll ask for mediation, and we’ll get them to work out a list of things that he can’t do with your son. But we’re not going to take him to court, and we’re not going after his business.” She said it so vehemently that the client looked at her with suspicion.

“Why not?” For a minute, she thought her husband had gotten to her.

“Because the price is too high,” Liz said simply. She had lost ten pounds in the last three weeks, and she looked tired and pale, but she looked so definite and so grim that the woman listened. “I had a case like that once before, not involving a child. But the only way to get the man’s attention was by freezing his assets and his business.”

“Did it work?” the woman asked hopefully, it sounded good to her, but not to Liz.