Chapter 37
Thirty-Seven
Ted’s alarm woke Caroline at five o’clock the next morning.
She raised herself up on one elbow as he got out of bed.
They had exchanged few words since he had come back for her two hours after he left her crying in his father’s study the day before.
She had no idea where he had been for all that time.
“What are you doing?” she asked, pushing the hair back from her face.
“Going to work.”
“Why?”
“Um, because I have to. I’ve taken way too much time off lately.”
“Ted, you just buried your grandmother yesterday and got married four days before that. I don’t think anyone expects you to go to work today.”
“Kids with cancer don’t really care too much about those things,” he said, opening his closet door.
“Does being crappy to me make you feel better? What happened to ‘we’re in this together’ and ‘we’re going to get through this’? What happened to ‘fight, Caroline’ and ‘step toward me, not away from me’?”
He came out of his closet, went into the bathroom, and shut the door.
Caroline fell back against the pillow and hurt when she remembered sitting on the counter to watch him shave just a week ago. Was that all they were ever going to have? One beautiful, magical week?
He emerged from the bathroom showered, shaved, and dressed twenty minutes later.
“How long is this going to go on, Ted?”
He looped his hospital ID around his neck. “Well, let’s see, I’ve lost my grandmother and my three best friends in the last few days. You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t have a timetable for how long it’s going to take me to get over that.”
Caroline winced. “I sure do wish I’d seen this side of you before I said ‘I do.’”
“Too bad it’s legal, huh?” he asked, tossing clothes into a duffel bag.
“Are you trying to hurt me? Is that your goal? Because if it is, it’s working.”
“No.” He stopped moving all of a sudden, as if she had finally managed to penetrate the wall he had erected between them. “No, it’s not.”
She flew out of bed and went to him. “Ted, honey, please. Let’s not self-destruct in the midst of all of this. Please. I want my husband back.”
A look of utter despondency crossed his handsome face. “I have no idea where he is right now.”
With her hands on his face she forced him to look at her. “He can have all the time he needs to get through this as long as he isn’t shitty to me in the meantime. I put up with that once before, Ted, and I won’t do it again. Not even for you.”
His arms encircled her as he finally broke down.
She eased him onto the bed and held him close.
“I thought I’d be able to handle it. I really did,” he said between gut-wrenching sobs. “I think I could’ve handled their anger and their disapproval, but I never imagined it would mess things up between the three of them, too. I never saw that coming.”
“I didn’t either.”
“I don’t know what to do, and I’m never in a situation where I don’t know what to do.”
“Do you want to know what I think?”
He nodded.
“It’s going to take some time. It might be a month. It might be six months. It might be a year. But you guys will find your way back to each other.”
Ted shook his head. “We’ve never had so much as an argument in all these years. I can’t see us getting past this.”
“Do you want me here, Ted? If it’s too much for you to deal with a new marriage on top of everything else, I can go back to New York until you feel better. I’d rather do that than stay here and watch something so beautiful turn to shit.”
“No, I don’t want you to go.” He combed his fingers through her hair. “I’m sorry for being such an asshole.”
“I’ve been having the most awful feeling that I might’ve made a huge mistake here.”
“You haven’t, baby,” he whispered as he kissed her. “You haven’t.”
Tears filled her eyes. “I love you so much. I can’t stand all this distance between us.”
“I love you, too.” He kissed her again, more seriously this time, and the heat between them resurfaced with a new intensity. “I’m on duty tonight, so I’m going to stay at the hospital. When I get home tomorrow afternoon, we can go to New York to see your parents, okay?”
She wiped her face and nodded. “Call me tonight?”
“I will. Are you going to be okay here by yourself?”
“Of course. Besides, I need to give Cameron some attention,” she said with a teasing smile.
He returned her smile with a weak one of his own.
“Are we going to be all right, Ted?”
“I’m going to try,” he said. “I’m going to try as hard as I can to give you what you need.”
“That’s all I can ask.”
And he tried. God bless him, he tried. He poured on the charm for her parents, who professed instant approval of Ted and Caroline’s marriage and got busy planning a small Labor Day weekend wedding at their country club in Saratoga Springs.
When Ted and Caroline returned home to Boston, Ted worked at being the best possible husband he could be to Caroline.
They laughed and talked and made love. Every night he read what she had written that day and made astute, insightful comments that made the book better than it would have been otherwise.
They went shopping for a car for her and decided on an SUV.
“One of us should have a backseat for when we get to number seven on the list,” he had said with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes the way it used to.
She got her cast off the second week in August, attended physical therapy, and slowly began to run again—at first by herself and then with him as she was able to increase her pace.
They didn’t hear a word from Smitty, Parker, or Chip, and neither of them ever mentioned it.
As August faded into the first of September and they headed back to New York for their wedding, Caroline had to acknowledge that no matter how hard he tried, no matter how hard they both tried, the magic was gone and everyone was trying far too hard.
The night before the wedding, her parents had his family over to their home for dinner.
Ted met Caroline’s best friend Tiffany and her family as well as Caroline’s brother and sister and their families.
In town from California for the wedding, her towheaded nephews kept everyone laughing and helped to ease any remaining tension that might have existed between the two families.
After Ted’s family had returned to their hotel for the night, Caroline found him sitting by himself on her parents’ back deck. She slid onto his lap and put her arms around him. “Hi,” she said with a light kiss.
He curved a hand around her hip. “Hi, there.”
“What are you doing out here all by yourself?”
“Nothing special.”
After they had watched the stars in silence for several minutes, she turned to him. “May I say something?”
He nodded and seemed surprised when she welled up with tears. “Hey, what’s this? What’s wrong, hon?”
“I want you to listen and not say anything until I’m done, okay?”
“Okay.”
“We don’t have to do this tomorrow.” When he started to protest, she stopped him with a kiss.
“You’re listening, remember?” Once she had his attention again, she forced herself to continue.
“I love you, Ted. I love everything about you. I love your smile.” She traced his lips with her finger.
“I love talking to you about everything and nothing. I love that you’re the smartest person I’ve ever known.
I love the way you feel and the way you look.
I love making love with you, and I even love the way you’ve tried so hard to hide your pain from me.
” She brushed another kiss across his lips.
“In fact, I love you enough to let you go if you just don’t have it in you to do this tomorrow.
I love you that much. So I’m giving you an out.
” She rested her hand over his heart. “If you’re not feeling it anymore then let me go.
I’d much prefer that to standing up there with you tomorrow and wondering if you’re doing it just because you’d never put me through another cancelled wedding. ”
He rested his forehead against hers. “Am I allowed to talk now?”
She laughed through her tears and nodded.
“I never imagined I’d get so lucky to have someone who loves all those things about me.
I love all the same things about you and so many others it would take me all night to list them for you.
I appreciate what you’re trying to do here, honey, but I don’t want out.
I want in. I want to be able to go home the day after tomorrow and check number two off our list. I know things have been off between us over the last month.
I know that. And I’m working on it. I promise you I’m working on trying to get used to my life the way it is now. ”
“That you traded them for me, you mean.”
“I don’t see it that way.”
“But that’s what happened.”
“I don’t want to think about it that way.”
“You must be thinking about it some. You’re about to get married without them here with you. I can’t imagine how that must feel. I know how I’d feel if Tiffany wasn’t here.”
“You asked me if I wanted out, and I’m telling you I don’t. What I do want is for us to have this day tomorrow without any clouds hanging over it. I don’t want anything to spoil it for you.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be fine, baby. As long as I look up and see you coming toward me on the arm of your father, I promise you I’ll be just fine.”
While she believed him, she wished he had used a different word.
Their wedding was beautiful and elegant and sweet because of all the people who were there—and bittersweet because of all the people who weren’t.
Ted’s brother-in-law served as his best man.
Her sister Courtney and best friend Tiffany were Caroline’s attendants.
The bride and groom danced to the Lifehouse song, “You and Me,” that they had listened to after their first wedding, cut their cake, and Caroline threw her bouquet.