Chapter 29
Twenty-Nine
Clare was transferred to the rehabilitation center at Newport Hospital, and the doctors marveled at her speedy progress.
She was eating solid food and beginning to regain some of the strength she’d lost, although it would be months before they’d know for sure about any limitations.
Until then she was confined to a wheelchair and worked for hours each day with physical and occupational therapists.
The girls spent as much time as they could with her and even participated in her therapy.
Clare allowed Jack to visit with the girls, since they were so delighted to have their family back together, but she’d yet to speak to him again about Andi.
In the meantime, she tried to cope with the fact that he’d brought another woman into his life and had two children on the way with her.
She’d had several sessions with her psychiatrist and discussed some of her feelings about her husband with him. While the doctor was sympathetic to her plight, he urged her to remember how much can happen in three years’ time.
The psychiatrist wanted to try hypnosis to jog her memory of the accident and the months leading up it, hoping to find something that might explain why she’d failed to act on the most human of impulses—to get out of the way of imminent danger.
Clare promised to think about it, but for some reason, the idea frightened her.
After a few weeks in rehab, she asked to see Jill and Kate alone, and they came in together on a Sunday afternoon—the one day off she had from the grueling physical therapy sessions.
“Why did you want to see us, Mom?” Jill asked.
“I want to know more about what happened when I was…sick. I don’t know who else to ask, so I’m asking you.”
Kate and Jill exchanged glances.
“I want to know about Andi.”
Kate shifted in her seat. “What about her?”
Clare felt guilty for putting them through this, but she had to know more. “What does she look like?”
“Um, she’s tall and has long, dark, curly hair, and brown eyes.” Jill described a woman who was her mother’s physical opposite in every possible way.
“She sounds very pretty.”
“She is,” Kate said. “And she’s nice, too. She was nice to us.”
“I’m sure she was. She wanted your father, and the three of you came with the package,” Clare said in a bitter tone that stunned her daughters.
“It wasn’t like that,” Kate said in a whisper.
“What was it like, then?”
“I’m not sure what you want us to say,” Jill said, glancing at her sister. “We liked her, she was nice to us, she was good to Dad, and her son’s adorable. He’s deaf, and we learned sign language so we could talk to him.”
Clare’s heart broke all over again as she listened to Jill describe the family they’d created—with someone else playing the starring role. “Where’re they now?”
“We haven’t seen them,” Kate said. “Andi moved to the hotel. She’s the manager there, and she told Frannie she doesn’t want to see us.”
“She said that?” Clare asked, amazed by the other woman’s gall. First she moved in with her children and then she rejected them?
“She wants us to focus on you,” Jill said. “She never took your place, Mom. We wouldn’t have let her, and besides, she never tried.”
“She took my place with Dad,” Clare said sadly. “Does he love her? Really love her?”
The girls exchanged nervous glances again, and Clare realized she’d put them in an awful position. She could also see the answer to her question on their faces. “Never mind. Don’t answer that.”
Jack walked into the room and was surprised to see the girls. He’d hoped to find Clare alone. He hadn’t had the chance to talk to her alone since the day she asked him to leave her room. She’d only been civil to him since then because of their daughters.
“Hi there,” he said as the girls got up to leave. He noticed how uncomfortable they seemed when they kissed their mother and told him they would see him later at home.
“I feel like I interrupted something,” he said to Clare when they were alone.
“We were just talking. What’re you doing here?”
“I came to see my wife. Is that all right?”
She shrugged. “Free country.”
He sighed. “How long are we going to do this?”
“Well, let’s see, your lover hasn’t even had your twins yet, and you’ll have eighteen years to raise them, so maybe by then I’ll be used to the idea.”
“I haven’t seen or talked to her in weeks.”
“Where’s your heart, Jack? Is it here with your sick and broken wife? Or is it with your beautiful mistress who’s pregnant with your twins?”
She’d caught him off guard with the question, and he had no easy answer. How could he explain his heart was in both places?
“I can tell just by looking at you where your heart is, and it isn’t here. Why don’t you go to her and leave me alone? I’m sorry I ruined all your plans by waking up.”
Jack fought to control the burst of anger that blazed through him.
“I’d do anything to change what happened to you, but I can’t.
I couldn’t then, and I can’t now. I waited years for you to come back to me.
I’m here with you because it’s where I want to be, and it’s where I belong.
But I won’t be here for long if you keep this up. ”
“That’d be a nice easy way out for you, wouldn’t it? You could tell people your wife was different after her long coma. She didn’t want you anymore.”
“It doesn’t seem like you do want me anymore, Clare.
Andi’s gone. She’s moved out of our home.
” He paused to absorb the burst of pain that came with that statement.
“I’ll play an active role in the lives of her son and our babies when they’re born.
If you can accept that, we have a chance to move forward together.
I don’t want to throw away more than twenty years of marriage like it meant nothing to me, because it did. You know it did.”
“Does it still?”
“Of course it does. But you have to decide if you can live with everything that happened while you were sick and the fact that those three children are in my life to stay, no matter what.”
“I don’t know if I can do that. I just don’t know if I can.”
“Be sure to let me know when you decide.”
“Would you go back to her if things don’t work out between us?”
“I don’t know that she’d have me.”
“But you’d try?”
“I’m not thinking about that right now. I’m focused on helping you get well and trying to save our marriage.”
“I need some time to process it all.”
Hands on his hips, he studied her. “I’m so sorry I hurt you, Clare. I wish there was some way to convey to you how very lost I was without you.”
“Until you met her.”
“Even then… I never stopped missing you or thinking about you or wishing for your wisdom with our girls.”
“I have a lot to think about.”
“No matter what happens between us, we have three amazing kids to consider. I understand you’re angry with me and hurt by the choices I made, but they’ve been through so much. Can we please try to be civil to each other for their sake?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “Of course.”
“Whenever you’re ready to talk about what’s next for us, I’m here.”
“Okay.”
Andi threw herself into her work and taking care of Eric. She kept her days long and busy so she’d drop into bed exhausted every night. More often than not, though, the pain she’d run from all day would catch up to her at night when her yearning for Jack would leave her breathless.
As she moved into her sixth month of pregnancy, the babies were more active than ever, and she knew she needed to take it easy.
But she couldn’t imagine having all that free time to think about how badly her life had gone off course.
So she kept up the frenetic pace. She also needed to find a permanent place for them to live, but she and Eric had settled into a routine at the hotel, and she was too tired at the end of every day to even think about house hunting.
Eric lived for his weekly visits with Jack.
Andi set up the visits by email and arranged it so she didn’t have to see him when he picked up Eric or dropped him off.
Until one day, about a month after she moved out, she wandered upstairs to the window in her suite to watch the parking lot when she knew Jack would be leaving with Eric.
She was hungry for just a glimpse of him, and her heart raced when she saw him holding hands with her son on the way to the car.
Jack opened the passenger-side door for Eric and helped him into the backseat. He shut the door and then looked up, as if drawn to the window.
She gasped when he caught her watching him.
Frozen, she couldn’t bring herself to move and was startled to feel the overwhelming connection to him even from a distance.
The pain of losing him sucked the air from her lungs, as fresh as it’d been the day she left him.
Unable to bear the sadness she saw on his face, she moved away from the window and let the drapes fall back into place.
Still rattled by the encounter, she returned to her office off the lobby. She was walking fast and not paying attention to anything around her until she heard her name. She spun around and suppressed a groan when she saw her mother and Aunt Lou.
“Mom! Auntie Lou! What are you doing here?” Oh, dear God. She hadn’t told her mother about leaving Jack or anything that’d happened.
“We decided to surprise you,” Betty said.
“Well, you did.” Andi forced herself to be cheerful as she hugged and kissed them.
Betty stood back to pat Andi’s pregnant belly. “Let me get a look at you. You’re so big!”
“Gee, thanks,” Andi said with a dry chuckle. “There are two of them you know.”
“Should you still be working?” Lou asked as she took in the hustle of the busy hotel lobby.
“I’m fine for another month or so. Why don’t you come on back to my office so we can catch up?” Andi’s stomach churned with anxiety. How will I ever tell her that she was right all along?