Drew replied, “What do you mean, Hannah? I’ve been here all weekend.”
As I walked to the powder room in the hallway, I stopped to listen.
“No,” Hannah insisted. “There were two suitcases by the door yesterday. Remember? When we came back for our roller skates? Did you go to New York?”
Drew’s reply was muffled, low and inaudible, but his tone sounded impatient.
When I came out of the bathroom, Hannah and Leah were watching TV in the living room, and Drew was putting dinner on the table.
“Did I hear Hannah say you went to the city?” I asked.
“Oh, I went to John’s gallery for some paperwork.” He handed me a bottle of wine and walked back into the kitchen.
That doesn’t make sense. I let it go, for the moment. I had spent too much of my life blindly trusting another person, and my radar was hypersensitive, going off at the slightest signal. I have no reason not to trust Drew.
Yet still, all during dinner, something niggled the edges of my subconscious. I put the girls to bed and joined Drew in the living room. Sunday nights were ours. We sat on the couch in the living room, sharing a bottle of wine, sometimes talking about Greg, sometimes—more so lately—in our own private thoughts, but still together. Things felt different, though. Drew seemed quieter.
Finally, I asked, “Why would you need two suitcases to go to the gallery?”
He stumbled with his words, and then realization dawned, a horrible clenching in my stomach.
“You were leaving.” I said it simply and without embellishment. He had no reply, and I knew I was right. “But you didn’t. You’re here. Why?”
He swirled the wine in his glass and cleared his throat. “I thought maybe you would be better off. If Greg came home, you could be a family…”
“Bullshit.”
He shook his head, a small smile playing on his lips. “I was being a coward. I was scared.”
We sat for a few minutes, not looking at each other. My hands shook as I sipped my wine, and I felt sick. “Are we going to make it through this?” I asked eventually, needing the answer to be yes, but ultimately unsure that it would be.
“I don’t know.” He pulled me to him and kissed the top of my head. “I know you’re going through a lot, Claire. I try to do what I can to be here for you. But you internalize everything, and I can’t sit here day after day, waiting for you to come back. Even when you’re here, you’re not.”
“I can’t help that. I have nothing left to give. Can’t you understand that?”
“To some extent, yes, but all I do is give. And yet, I’m last. After Greg, after Hannah and Leah, even after your mom. Can’t you understand that?”
We were at an impasse. I did see that, but there was nothing I could do. Ultimately, it was up to Drew to stay or go, but I couldn’t make it better.
“Could you have faith?” I asked. He tilted his head, a silent question. “Could you trust me when I say that I will be able to give myself to you? In time, I mean. I just can’t do it now. I’m pulled in too many directions; too many people need me. I need you to not need me.”
“I think I’ll always need you,” he answered after a long pause. “But I’m staying, if that’s what you’re asking. At some point, I need to come before Greg. You do realize that. We need to come first, eventually.”
I nodded because I understood what he was saying, but I knew that everything was different. Drew and I, as a couple, could never come first. My heart hurt as I thought about how close I had come to losing Drew, while I wondered if I still would. The road ahead was so long, I couldn’t be sure he would stay. And what about later, when Greg came home? Could I put Drew ahead of Greg’s treatments? Everything I did for Greg, I did because of the girls, so wouldn’t that be akin to putting Drew before my children?
I longed for Brigantine. The idyllic summer days, too short and too few, and felt sorry for the courtship we’d been cheated out of.
We never talked about it again, daily life providing a patch, a false sense of security over the hole in our relationship. I didn’t know for sure if it would get better, or if we would get stronger, but I had to believe I would eventually be able to give myself to him fully. I had to believe he would stay long enough for that to happen.
All I knew was that I had to, at least, have faith.
Chapter 39