Chapter Twenty-Three Kiersten
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kiersten
On Sunday night, Kiersten glanced over at her husband and gave him a nervous smile. She’d wanted to have this conversation alone in a quiet restaurant where they’d be undisturbed.
But the boys had reached that awkward stage where Matt could theoretically babysit his younger siblings, but not in actual practice, because they would stage a bloody coup if he told them to brush their teeth, change into their pajamas, or go to bed.
However, hiring a fifteen-year-old girl to babysit a thirteen-year-old boy and his younger brothers also seemed weird. As a result, they hadn’t been out to dinner alone since moving away from the grandparents.
Instead, they’d have to talk while breaking down packing boxes in the garage.
The boys sat sprawled around the kitchen table inside the house, ostensibly doing homework.
She’d just helped Luke turn in seven missing assignments, and she now knew far more than she cared to about igneous rocks, The Outsiders, dividing fractions, and the many tribulations of America’s thirteen original colonies.
Garrett stuffed packing paper into a black trash bag. “Remind me again why we’re doing this when we have four boys inside who are perfectly capable of doing it themselves?”
Garrett always felt the boys should be assigned substantial “chores” like he’d had growing up on a dairy farm. But their children couldn’t do chores around the house because their homework and duties as underage minor-league baseball and hockey players consumed all their time.
“This isn’t the farm, circa 1902.” Kiersten stacked the boxes they’d already broken down into a neat pile. “They have homework to do before school tomorrow. Which is one of the things we need to discuss.”
Garrett looked stoic, resigned to a conversation he didn’t want to have.
He’d gotten back from Kansas last night, and the boys had excitedly told him all about Johnny’s left-behind adventure on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
After they climbed into bed, he’d turned to her and asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”
She hadn’t. “Tomorrow,” she’d said. “We need to talk tomorrow. Without the boys.”
He’d nodded, rolled onto his side, and fallen immediately asleep while she stayed up half the night imagining horrible things that could have happened at the truck stop, but didn’t.
They’d left the boys inside and retreated to the garage, armed with box cutters and plastic trash bags, ready for their first serious conversation since they’d moved.
She realized with a jolt how long it had been since she’d actually talked to her husband about anything deeper than transportation logistics.
She ran the slender blade along the seam of a cardboard box, took a deep breath, and plunged ahead. “So. Yesterday during the crisis, the neighbors came over, and they were really helpful. They’re great people.”
He picked up a wardrobe box, placed it on the concrete floor, and stomped it flat with a whomping sound.
She paused.
He looked over at her. “I’m listening.”
He wore cargo pants and work gloves. Muscles bulged under the sleeves of his gray T-shirt, and his short hair and square jaw made her heart go soft. Still handsome after all these years.
He’d been her high school crush, but they’d run in different circles. He was preoccupied with hockey and cheerleaders, while Kiersten was quieter, preferring to blend in, except on the basketball court, where she stood out.
They didn’t start dating until they ran into each other in the library at Mankato State. He wore a massive white cast over the broken femur that ended his scholarship as well as his hockey career at the University of Minnesota, and he’d transferred to a school closer to home.
Kiersten could not resist when she emerged from a row of illustrated anatomy volumes to find her handsome high school crush struggling to reach a book on an upper shelf from the seat of his wheelchair.
Once they started dating, they fell hard and fast. They got married in the Lutheran church where they’d both been baptized, a giant hometown wedding one month after they’d graduated from college.
Garrett took over the family dairy operation with his dad, and she became a nurse at the small hospital in town, working with the doctor who’d delivered her and Garrett just a couple of decades earlier.
Now as they stood in this garage, a thousand miles from their true home, she felt the distance that had grown up between them over the last few months.
It slid around the room like an insidious fog, making her feel like she was embarking on an awkward conversation with a stranger, unsure where or how to begin.
“So you met the neighbors,” he prompted as he slashed the box cutter across a cardboard spine.
“Right. The neighbors. And as it turns out, they’re all having some . . . issues at school. Rosamund’s daughter is being bullied. Piper’s daughter is being harassed. They’re all run ragged and never home, like us, which is why this thing on the Turnpike happened in the first place.”
“Okay.” He made no further response as he stacked the carcass of a box on a growing pile of cardboard.
“And Luke is flunking three classes and getting into fights, and Matt hates baseball, and his shoulder is acting up again, and so I was thinking that maybe we should just . . .”
She paused.
He stopped what he was doing, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and looked at her. “We should just . . . ?” He lifted an eyebrow expectantly, waiting for her to finish.
She plunged ahead. “We should just drop out. Of everything. For the rest of the school year.”
Silence filled the garage, broken only by the sound of an acorn dropping on the roof. A deep frown creased his face. “Drop out?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Like, go on sabbatical. Take a break. Try an experiment to see if we’re happier and the boys are happier when we aren’t stressed out and running around to seventy-five different activities all the time.”
He rested his hands on his hips. “I see.”
Anger rose inside her like a wisp of smoke from a newly started fire. She needed to smother it, keep it from spreading to her voice, to her limbs. She needed to stay calm. Histrionics never worked with her rational, stoic husband.
“Actually, you don’t see.” She crumpled a fistful of packing paper. “You don’t see because you’re never here.”
“Oh c’mon, Kiersten.” He ripped another trash bag from the Hefty box. “That’s not fair, and you know it. It’s not like I’m off hunting or fishing. Or playing golf. Or jetting off to Vegas for bachelor parties. I’m working.”
She took a steadying breath. “I know you’re working. But this whole arrangement”—she made a frustrated gesture toward the packing boxes, the trash cans, and the riding lawnmower, as though the contents of the garage were somehow to blame—“it isn’t working.”
“Fine. I agree. It’s not working,” he said, aggressively shrugging his shoulders. “But dropping out of everything isn’t the solution either. In fact, it’s completely insane.”
“Why?” She could hear her voice rising an octave, getting defensive again. “Why is it insane?”
“Because our boys are talented athletes. If they quit baseball and hockey for a year, they’ll be completely behind. And what about school? Who would teach them?”
“I would teach them. And the neighbors would teach them. One of them is a writer.” She omitted the word romance from Rosamund’s résumé. “And the other one is . . .” She faltered, suddenly aware of how amateur it all sounded. “The other one is really good at math and science.”
He ran his hand over his close-cropped hair. “I don’t think that’s going to work, Kiersten.”
She hurled her box cutter to the floor and stalked across the garage to where he stood. “Listen to me, Garrett. The boys are miserable, and I’m doing all of this by myself. And I am telling you, I can’t do it anymore. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I know it’s hard when I travel, but—”
“But what?” She stepped closer, inches from his face. “But it’s okay as long as I don’t leave any more kids on the Pennsylvania Turnpike?”
He held her gaze for a long moment, then looked away.
She could see his jaw tighten as he took a slow, deliberate step back.
He pulled a wad of packing paper from a box and stuffed it into the trash bag.
“Look, I understand that you’re upset about what happened.
But what you’re proposing here is radical.
It could affect their ability to get into college.
To get a baseball or hockey scholarship. All because you’re tired of driving.”
Her mouth dropped open as the injustice of this statement hit her like a punch.
“I don’t like driving? You don’t like raising your own kids. You’re never here! They have no father, and I have no husband.”
He smashed the overstuffed garbage bag against the floor with a loud thwap. “What do you want me to do, Kiersten? Quit the job that pays our mortgage? Or maybe you want to support the six of us with your part-time paycheck from 1-800 Call an Advice Nurse?”
His contempt for the words advice nurse cut her to the core. Suddenly she felt a flash of hatred for the person she’d always loved most in the world.
“I would be happy to work full-time again if you can find me a boss who likes employees who leave in the middle of a shift to take people to the orthodontist and the pediatrician and the dyslexia tutor and batting practice. Or maybe you’d like me to work nights again and leave the boys home alone while you travel? ”
He hung his head. His shoulders rose and fell as he inhaled and exhaled slowly. Then he reached out and gently touched her arm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
She flinched and pulled away. “Yes, you did.”