An Unfinished Story(88)
Then Kari said they had to leave.
Whitaker looked across the table. “Do you think we could meet again, Oliver? Claire has asked me to finish David’s book, so we can get it out there. A testament to David, a way to remember him. I have a feeling you could help.” Whitaker looked at Claire. “And I know Claire would like to visit with you more.”
Claire nodded. “Absolutely.”
“Can we take you out for a bite to eat sometime?” Whitaker asked. “The boy in the book loves hamburgers. Do you?”
“Yeah, for sure.”
“Then I’ve got the spot. But first I’d love to—” He corrected himself. “We’d love to meet your foster parents and see your place. See what your life is like. Would that be okay?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“How about this? I’ll reach out to Kari later today and go from there.”
Oliver agreed, and Claire wasn’t sure whether she’d ever see him again.
It wasn’t until they were back in the Rover and pulling back onto Fourth that Claire snapped, completely breaking down. With her elbows pressing down on her thighs, she cried into her hands. So many lies. For months. Had she been connected at all to David in their marriage? And to think she might have been a mother. To think that boy could have been her son. If he’d just told her from the beginning, everything might have been different.
Chapter 35
SALT WATER IN THE WOUND
Claire was supposed to go straight to the restaurant after their meeting with Oliver. That didn’t happen. Barely able to make it inside her front door, she dropped her glasses on the coffee table and trudged through the living room and into the bedroom. Her whole world throbbed, the pain of David’s secret life drowning her, drowning her sudden rediscovery of motherhood. Maybe this was the only lie he’d ever told her, but it was an epic deception, something she certainly couldn’t forgive easily.
What made him think he should keep Orlando a secret for a year and then suddenly spring him on her as a surprise guest? Had he thought she wouldn’t understand unless she actually met the boy? Give me a little credit, David!
She didn’t know what was worse. His decision to lie about Oliver—essentially treating her like an immature child—or her part in his death. Fury and guilt wrestled for her attention. If she hadn’t been so caught up in her own self-pity, he wouldn’t have felt a need to keep Oliver’s existence a secret, and he wouldn’t have been in his car at that exact moment on his way to pick up Oliver. Her selfishness had murdered him!
Dropping onto the bed, she hammered a pillow with her fists until she had nothing left. Then, exhausted, she curled into the fetal position and wept. Willy jumped up, and she pulled him in close. She cried about her own selfishness at first. How could she have been so self-involved, closed off, and unreceptive that she’d taken away David’s dream? What kind of partner was she?
The first lesson you learned in marriage was that you couldn’t put yourself first. You were supposed to both give equally and put aside yourself for the collective. She hadn’t done that. She’d been in so much pain over David’s infertility that she’d been unable to see past it, unable to breathe through it, like the serpent of infertility strangling her. Her selfishness had strangled the mother she could have been. Claire was right back to where she’d been when they had first learned of his weak sperm and low count, back when she was holding her own head underwater, drowning herself.
The first few months of “trying” were not exactly tough, but bearable. “Be patient,” David had said, after their first negative pregnancy test, the one after she was sure she was experiencing morning sickness and had begun daydreaming of cute baby outfits. They tried again and again, one negative test after another. They were timing their sex as perfectly as possible, and after any rather forced session, she would spend thirty minutes with her legs high up in the air.
Then the doctors’ visits and the tests, the mother inside of her losing faith.
Claire remembered stumbling out of their fertility doctor’s office in silence. Unless she left David, which wasn’t an option, she was not going be a mom. What a bitter pill to swallow.
Only when David had broken down in the car, telling her between bouts of crying that he was sorry he couldn’t give her the life she’d always dreamed of, did she feel his pain. She was able to pull her head out of her own sadness for long enough to understand. He’d felt like a failure. She’d been able to see it in the way his shoulders had shaken while he’d cried into his hands. She’d been able to see his manliness crumbling.
She’d pulled him in and hugged him and told him it was okay, that she wasn’t angry; maybe it was meant to be. She’d meant it. She couldn’t stand seeing David in so much pain, and he didn’t deserve it, and she was determined not to let herself blame him.
She’d whispered into his wet neck and shaking shoulders that they would work with the doctors and do whatever it took. Turned out, doing whatever it took didn’t guarantee a baby.
Claire cried harder, feeling that emptiness, that missing part of her.
Perhaps subconsciously, she had blamed him. But she’d never told him anything other than “It will be okay. What’s meant to be will happen.” Even as she had said the words, though, she had wondered if they were true.