Chapter Sixteen
Sixteen
Casey spent the afternoon of her fourth wedding anniversary in her doctor’s office. It was early release day at school, so there’d been no need to request time off for her appointment, which was a good thing. She preferred to keep it quiet. No one needed to know that, as a seemingly healthy twenty-six-year-old woman, she was having trouble getting pregnant.
They’d started trying six months ago, after she got a few years of teaching under her belt, but no luck so far. Angie kept telling her not to worry about it, which was easy for her to say while she sat there holding beautiful three-month-old Morgan. She’d gotten pregnant two months after she stopped taking the pill. Casey had read up on it, she knew six months wasn’t terribly long. But it was long enough for her to start wondering if something was wrong.
After the exam Dr. Frazier sat with her, patiently answered all Casey’s questions until she couldn’t think of any more. “Are you sure?” the doctor asked, looking across at Casey with eyes full of compassion, her hands folded on the desk between them. “I know how important this is to you, and I want to make sure I’ve explained it all.”
But Casey assured her she understood everything. And when Kyle came home that evening, she’d share the news with him.
She stopped at Danny’s house on her way home. He rarely left town, but every few years he made a trip to Westchester to see Mickey Brennan, a distant cousin on his father’s side. During these visits Danny and Mickey would spend long hours at the Brennans’ family pub swapping life stories. Casey had to clean out his fridge while he was gone, since he never let her throw anything away. Expiration dates are a scam , he liked to say.
When she got home she stuck in her earphones, turned on her iPod, and went to work on the house—vacuumed, decluttered, did some rare dusting. It was the only anniversary gift Kyle would be getting this year. They’d agreed to just go out to dinner tonight and forgo gifts, not only to save money, but also to take the pressure off. Casey had been relieved. The truth was, when it came to presents or surprises, or just doing stuff for each other, Kyle was so far ahead she would never catch up. Whether it was coming home with flowers on a random night, or keeping track of her keys and cell phone because she never remembered where she put them, or making sure her Bronco was filled with gas, since she tended to let it run low, he was always doing something for her. It’s just who he was. After all, eight years ago, as a twenty-year-old, he’d given up his disposable income, his free time, his independence, to take care of her and Wyatt. She only hoped he meant it when he said he didn’t have a single regret. She knew she didn’t.
Contrary to what many people assumed, giving up Dartmouth to be an off-campus student at SUNY Potsdam hadn’t been a difficult decision. After her mom died she didn’t even consider leaving. She believed Wyatt needed her back then, but she’d needed him just as much, needed to cling tightly to the remnants of their family. Sometimes she’d think about all those plans she used to have—Dartmouth, travel, being a psychologist at a big hospital or university—and wonder what that would have looked like. There was even a moment before accepting her teaching position when she’d thought about applying to grad school. But when she floated the idea past Kyle she saw concern ripple across his face. She knew he was already worrying about the cost of grad school, the fact that coming across a future job in Potsdam was unlikely—would she want to move? He’d be thinking about what it would require of her. He already grumbled about how much above-and-beyond she put into work, the after-school program, his dad…
She could read Kyle like a book though, and when she sensed what his biggest concern was, she felt guilty for even mentioning it. By bringing up grad school Casey had made him question if she was happy with their life together. He wasn’t bitter about the fact that his mom had left, but it was always there, the idea that he hadn’t been enough for her. Just like he’d worried about losing Casey to the bigger world of Dartmouth, he’d worry about the same thing with grad school, so she didn’t bring it up again. Not once had she second-guessed her decision to stay home eight years ago. How could she? She was married to a man who made her laugh hard and feel wanted and safe every day. And she had followed her dad’s footsteps into teaching, a job she loved most of the time.
Wyatt was doing well too. He’d floundered a bit after high school, half-assed his way through two years of community college. Then, in the middle of dinner one night last year, he told them he had an announcement to make. “I want to focus full-time on my woodworking, try to make a living at it.”
Casey remembered holding her breath while waiting for Kyle’s reaction to that. Making money as a woodworker was difficult enough, never mind in a small, lower-income town. It went unsaid that Wyatt would continue living off them to some degree while he tried to start up a business that statistically had little chance of succeeding. Kyle was a worrier and would have been well within his right to balk at the whole idea.
But he had smiled wide and spread his arms. “Wyatt, that’s exactly what you should do.”
If it had been possible for Casey to fall any more in love with Kyle at that point, she would have.
So even as she knelt on the ancient carpet to vacuum up dust bunnies from under the bed they’d inherited from her mom, even when she had to turn up the volume on her iPod to drown out the sound of the damn train passing through the crossing, even while she cleaned around the wish list taped to their dresser mirror and wondered if they’d ever see those places, Casey could say she had no regrets about passing up Dartmouth. The way she saw it, she had opted for a different adventure. But in her mind part of that adventure was having a family. She wanted kids, at least three. She first told Kyle that six years ago, the night he proposed. She’d come home from a long day of classes and her part-time waitress job at the Dam Diner to find the kitchen exploding in peonies, her favorite flowers. Kyle and fifteen-year-old Wyatt were sitting at the table, both of them dressed up and looking nervous. Without preamble Kyle stood and said he had a question to ask her. He told her he wanted Wyatt there when he asked it, and he was doing it in the kitchen because he figured if her mom was hanging around, that’s where she’d be. By the time he actually got down on his knee and asked her to marry him she was crying so hard she barely got the “Yes” out.
It was later that night in bed, after they’d celebrated with Wyatt and Danny, when she told him she wanted a big family, that a house filled with voices and activity and laughter would be good for them, and for Wyatt and Danny. Kyle didn’t question it, even though he had to know there was another reason, one that was so sad and self-serving she couldn’t voice it. They both knew she lived in fear of losing more people, and a big family might be a little insurance against it. He didn’t mention the financial strain it would bring, even though she knew that’s where his mind went. He just told her he liked the idea of little Kyles and Caseys running around.
But six months of trying to no avail—and they tried a lot—did not bode well for a big family, which is why she’d scheduled the appointment with her gynecologist. She hadn’t told Kyle about the appointment. For one thing, he thought they had enough going on now. They’d bought the garage earlier that year, he was working all the time. Wyatt was selling some pieces locally and was mostly self-sufficient, but money was tight. She also hadn’t mentioned it to him because, if the news wasn’t good, she knew he’d feel pressured to fix it for her. Even when it was something completely out of his control, he’d want to solve her problem, and then she’d have to put on a brave face, tell him it’s okay, she’d be fine without kids. Casey had decided to go to the appointment alone so if the news was bad, she could react—get angry or emotional or whatever she needed to do—without him scrambling to make everything okay.
She glanced out the bedroom window to see an old Volkswagen Beetle pull up to the back of the house. It was Dana, Wyatt’s current girlfriend, coming to visit him in his shop. Casey didn’t particularly like Dana, but that relationship wasn’t going to last anyway. Wyatt was a sucker for troubled, moody girls who fancied themselves artists of some kind, and once the frail shine wore off and high maintenance kicked in, he ended it. It wasn’t Dana’s Goth style and blue hair that turned Casey off, it was the snarky, superior attitude. And Casey didn’t have anything against the large tattoo on her neck per se, just that it was a fad-based tribal design that certainly had some historical or cultural significance, but Dana couldn’t tell anyone what it was.
That might sound judgmental coming from a woman whose husband continued to add tattoos to his arms every few years, but Kyle’s were meaningful. There was an important life moment behind every one of them—each date, figure, symbol—and she could trace his history by reading his arms. He’d added a few in the last several years. On his left arm their wedding date had been inked into the second loop of the infinity symbol. On his right arm he’d added the date Casey graduated from college, and—his most recent—the Railroad Avenue Car Care logo: a black locomotive on train tracks with a thin coil rising from its smokestack. He had asked her once if she was ever embarrassed by his tattoos, or thought he should stop getting them. She’d told him in all honesty she was proud of his self-expression, his willingness to literally wear his heart on his sleeves, and he’d beamed from ear to ear.
Such symbols meant a great deal to Kyle. One of his biggest disappointments was when he had to stop wearing his wedding ring last year. It got caught on some part of an engine they were dropping into a car, and he’d nearly lost his finger. Even then he wouldn’t stop wearing it until she insisted.
She’d just managed to shower and change into a sleeveless summery dress when he got home, clothes covered in grease and grime from the garage.
“Hey, babe,” he said, coming through the back door. “I got outta there as soon as I could… Wow, you look great.” Then he noticed the kitchen. “You cleaned? Were you home all afternoon?”
“Not all of it. I had a doctor’s appointment.”
“What doctor’s appointment?”
“I scheduled one with Dr. Frazier. I just wanted her to check things out.” She gave him a sheepish shrug.
“Why didn’t you tell me? I would have gone with you.”
“I know. But I didn’t want to worry you, or pull you away from the garage.”
“Case…” He shook his head.
“I’m sorry. But I can tell you about it now.”
He pulled two chairs from the table, and they sat facing each other. “Tell me everything.”
“Well, she started with a bunch of questions, getting a more detailed medical record. You know, she asked about my family history, whether I smoke, how much I drink… She asked how many sexual partners I’ve had.”
The corners of his mouth twitched up. “Did you tell her a dozen?” he asked, knowing full well she’d only ever had one.
“No. She asked how many partners I’ve had, not how many you’ve had.”
“There haven’t been close to a dozen, and only one counts.”
“Missy Heeler?”
“You know it.”
Casey smiled. “Anyway, after that she reviewed my hormone levels and did an ultrasound to look for any kind of blockage in my tubes.”
“And?”
“Everything checked out. She said it just takes a while sometimes. She also said”—Casey sighed since Kyle had told her this already—“it probably doesn’t help when I stress out about it.”
“See?” He held his hands up. “That’s great. We just keep trying.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m up for that.” He grinned and winked. “In fact, I’d be willing to double our efforts. And just to increase our odds, I say we mix it up. Different locations, different positions…”
She laughed.
Kyle leaned close to her, elbows on his knees, and took her hands. “Listen to me, Casey Higgins McCray. This is gonna happen.”
“Yeah, I know.” As she let her eyes roam over his shaggy hair, his scruffy face, his warm wide smile, she believed it would happen. If this world made any sense, it would never rob Kyle of the chance to be the amazing father she knew he would be. “You still taking me to dinner tonight?” she asked.
“Hell yeah.” He sat up. “But first, I got you something.”
“Kyle, you promised. I didn’t get anything—”
“I know, I know.” He waved her off. “But I wanted to do this. And it’s really for both of us. You want to open it now?”
“I guess.”
He pulled her up to stand with him. “Close your eyes.”
She did. But she didn’t hear anything, no movement of any kind.
“Open your eyes.”
When she did she saw no sign of a gift. “Where is it?” she asked.
He swung his cap around. “Take my shirt off.”
She gave him a wry smile. “You’re my present?”
“Kind of. You have to unwrap it.” He added a little uncharacteristic command to his voice. “Now, take my shirt off.”
She didn’t know what he was up to, but he seemed serious about it. So she played along, moved close, and unbuttoned his shirt, flicking her eyes up to his while she did it. When all the buttons were undone she started to slip the shirt open and off his shoulders. Then she stopped and gasped. On the left side of his chest he had a new tattoo. It was a K and a C , overlapping each other in a thick but elegant black script. “What did you do?” she asked.
Kyle lifted her left hand, touched her wedding band. “I can’t wear one of these. But I wanted to wear something, all the time. Close to my heart.”
Casey looked down at the tattoo again, which was encircled in blotchy red skin. He’d gotten it that day. It hadn’t been on his chest that morning.
“What do you think?” he asked.
She pursed her lips and made him wait a bit, standing there with his backward cap, shirt down around his arms. “I think it’s hot,” she finally said, tracing the entwined KC with a fingertip. The muscle underneath flinched. “Does it hurt?”
“A little.”
When Casey slid her hands down along his waist and leaned in to lightly kiss the tender skin, she heard him suck in his breath. “It’s perfect,” she said, trailing her eyes down to his jeans and back up to his face. “Can I open the rest of my present now?”
He laid a slow Kyle smile on her and lowered his arms, letting his shirt fall to the floor.
Casey put her hands against his shoulders and pushed him back down onto the chair. She could feel his gaze on her while she made her way around the kitchen, lowering shades and locking the door. When she climbed on his lap, facing him, he slipped his hands under her dress to take hold of her hips and pull her tight against him.
They didn’t make it to dinner for another couple of hours that evening. And even though they had no way of being sure, when they found out Casey was pregnant six weeks later, they believed in their hearts that was the night they conceived Charlie.