The Stroke of Winter(6)
It did not seem random to Tess. She couldn’t get over the symmetry of it all. A drunk driver getting behind the wheel. Her son getting off work. Eli walking down the sidewalk as the car came toward him. The two meeting at that precise split second.
Tess had felt a sort of frantic helplessness—the need to do something, anything to help Eli, but she could do nothing. The machines beeped. Nurses checked in.
This was her child. The boy who made her laugh every day, who taught her what real love was.
Oh, she loved her parents and her friends, but when Eli was born, she was completely knocked off her feet at the eternal vastness of the love she felt for this beautiful boy.
As she’d sat there next to her son, she’d drawn the phone out of her purse and called her ex-husband, Matt. She and Eli’s father had been divorced for more than a decade. He lived in Las Vegas with his new wife, but he had been a wonderful coparent who loved Eli just as fiercely as she did.
When Matt answered and Tess heard his voice, her own seized up.
“Matt,” was all she managed to say.
He was quiet for a moment. “What is it?” His voice was paper thin. Barely a whisper.
She struggled to get the words out. “Eli’s in the hospital. He got hit by a car.” She could not believe she had just said it. Spoken it aloud.
“How bad?” Matt whispered.
“He’s in the ICU,” Tess choked out.
“Okay,” Matt said, clearing his throat, his take-charge attitude kicking in. It always did when he was afraid. “I’ll be there as soon as I can get a flight.”
CHAPTER THREE
During Eli’s time in the hospital, Matt and Tess had quietly supported each other. Matt had set up his computer in the guest room and worked as much as he could, while Tess cooked to feed her soul as much as their bodies.
Matt coerced Tess out of the house for walks every day, as he had always done. She had forgotten how much he loved to walk and talk, getting his mind around an issue or problem as they rambled along. She had to admit, it helped. Had she been alone, she might have simply retreated into her terror and imagined the unimaginable. With Matt, she got out of the house every day, walking around her Minneapolis neighborhood, down to Minnehaha Creek, where they took a wooded path along the shoreline, watching the ducks float past. They’d even go for walks at night after dinner, spotting owls and woodpeckers and animals that came out during the cool of the evening.
Tess found that being together again with her ex-husband after such a long time was as natural as breathing. No old wounds surfaced; no lingering resentments came to light. So much time had passed. None of what had torn them apart held any shred of importance, not in the face of their beautiful boy lying in a hospital fighting for his life.
And then, after twenty-three days, Eli was ready to come home. Tess and Matt couldn’t get to the hospital fast enough. Their boy was so thin, so frail. It was like he had lost half of himself, and in such a short time. His leg was in a cast, his arm in a sling. Broken ribs, a broken collarbone. A fractured leg and a massive concussion. Right away, Matt, who was also visibly shaken at the sight of their boy, announced he was going to stay awhile to help Eli get back on his feet.
Tess had to admit to herself that those weeks were pretty wonderful, the three of them playing at the family they might have been. Dinners together. Watching movies. Sharing sunny afternoons in the backyard. Eli bounced back slowly but steadily, gaining strength every day, working with a rehab therapist. Tess found herself enveloped in extreme gratitude for it all.
Was this the start of something? She tried to read Matt, eyeing him when he wasn’t looking. Was he feeling it, too? Tess wanted to broach the subject many times, but something always stopped her words before she had a chance to say them.
It wasn’t so crazy to believe it could happen. Yes, he was remarried and had a new life halfway across the country. Maybe this whole terrible situation could make her family whole again, make Matt realize what they all had lost when he left them all those years ago. She held on to that slim reed of possibility.
But it was not to be.
When Eli was nearly back on his feet, Matt announced it was time for him to return to his own life. It hit Tess like an icy wave. Her fantasy of embracing their shared life together again was over. For the second time. Deep inside, she had known it was coming. But she had held on to the possibility just the same.
And so Matt made his plans to leave. When he finally walked out the door for his flight home, she felt a little piece of herself retreat under a shroud, just as it had the first time he had left her. This—she, Matt, and Eli together as a family—was the life she wanted now; it was what she had always wanted, even during the decade when they were apart. But it was not the life she was going to get. It knocked Tess over, the disappointment and grief of it all, even more than it had the first time.
But this time, it sank in as it hadn’t before.
As she hugged her ex-husband goodbye, she did it with finality. He could have had this life, the life Tess wanted with all her heart, the three of them, together. But he didn’t want it. It was as simple as that.
And when Eli felt strong enough to go back to his apartment and his life, Tess knew it was time to find her next chapter, too.
Eli’s accident and Tess’s final acceptance of her divorce had made her look at her own life with a critical eye. She had just been existing. Coasting along. But not really enjoying what she was doing. She had been working as a chef for a catering company but had been increasingly fed up with the demands of the job. She wanted something more. Something different. Something fulfilling.