Chapter FIVE
LIZ had gone. Taking her demands with her. Leaving blessed silence in her wake. Jack picked up a screwdriver and waited to feel the relief.
But it didn’t come. Instead, he felt…shame.
He’d hurt Liz. Pain had been raw in her voice. She’d begged. Begged. And, coward that he was, he still hadn’t found the courage to speak.
He threw the tool back on the bench in disgust. Frustration sent him pacing across the concrete towards the house. What the hell was he going to do? He halted, spun around and took the half a dozen steps back to the fire pump. Then stopped again.
He had to find the gumption to talk to Liz. Because of his silence their marriage was combusting, a conflagration that threatened to destroy everything that was good in his life. The only tools he had to save it were words, facts about the past. He took a deep breath.
He had to lay them out for Liz. Ugly as they were. Just give them to her. Trust that she would know what to do with them, with him, after they’d been spoken.
He didn’t know what he’d do if she found him less worthy once she knew the whole sordid story. The other important women in his life, his mother and his fiancée, hadn’t found anything about him worth staying around for.
But he had to take the chance. If he didn’t, he was going to lose her anyway.
Before he could change his mind, he strode out of the garage and crossed to the house. His romantic table setting mocked him as he walked through to the hallway.
The door to the main bedroom was closed. He lifted his hand to knock and saw the smears of grease and dirt on his skin. His fingers curling into his palm, he stepped back and huffed out a breath. Now that he’d made the decision, he was almost impatient to get on with the talking—half-afraid his courage would desert him. Still, he couldn’t go to Liz like this.
A few minutes later he’d stripped and stepped into the shower. The water jet played directly on the tense muscles of his neck, sluicing down over his shoulders to rinse away the suds as he soaped. If only he could wash away the grime in his past as efficiently as he rinsed the dirt off his body.
He’d always thought of himself as a straightforward sort of a person, someone who had put the past behind, moved on, not dwelled on old pain.
But now he had to face the fact that coping with his mother’s vagaries had left its mark, a deeply buried anger about the way she’d treated him and her negligence with her own daughter, his little sister.
Emma.
He squeezed his eyes shut as he remembered the way the two-year old used to toddle towards him, her chubby arms out wide, asking to be picked up. She’d always turned to him rather than Janet if he was around. It hadn’t taken her long to learn he was the one most likely to soothe her hurts, clean her up, feed her. That little life had depended on him and he hadn’t been there when it had really counted.
She’d been sick when he’d gone to school, but Janet had promised to take her to the doctor. She’d promised. By the time he’d got home his little sister had been gravely ill and their mother had been as high as a kite. He’d called an ambulance. The paramedics had given Janet an injection to reverse the effects of the drugs, much to her disgust. Jack had sat in the casualty department of the hospital. Breathing the sickly smell of antiseptic. Listening to his mother’s muttered curses behind the cubicle curtain. He’d prayed that the doctors could help his sister. But nothing had pulled little Emma back from the brink of death.
And then there was Kylie. Another memory he hadn’t dredged up for years. Teenage lover, mother-to-be, fiancée. She’d been right, or rather her mother had. They’d been way too young to marry and start a family.
Kylie’s angry words echoed down the years. She’d thrown her infidelity at him, taunted him with the fact that the baby she’d just miscarried hadn’t been his.
But he’d wanted that baby so much, been utterly stricken by its loss. And then he’d had to struggle with grief that didn’t go away just because he’d found out that his best friend was the father. One minute he’d nearly been a husband and father and the next…nothing.
For the first time he wondered if he’d been so determined to look after his pregnant fiancée as a way of atoning for not saving Emma.
Once Kylie had dumped him, he’d put it out of his mind, determined to move on.
No looking back.
Ever.
But now that was exactly what Liz wanted him to do. What he had to do to save his marriage.
God knew why people thought it helped to talk about the past. He was only contemplating talking to Liz and he felt sick to his stomach. If thinking about it made him feel this bad, how would actually speaking make him feel?
Facing a large going fire with nothing but his bare hands seemed an easier option. He turned off the water and reached for the towel.
Dressed and back at Liz’s door, Jack rapped lightly on the wood.
No answer. He hesitated a moment, then reached for the handle, pushed the door open. She was curled up on the bed, her back to him. The gentle curves of her body’s profile reminded him how he used to love running his hand over her smooth skin, across her ribs, down into the vall ey at her waist and up onto the bone of her hip.
He walked quietly around the bed, savouring the sight of his sleeping wife for a few precious moments.
The bump of her pregnant belly was only slightly less astounding than it had been that morning. Almost as though she’d been taken over and shaped by something alien. He smiled slightly, thinking that Liz might not appreciate the analogy. In a way, her body had been taken over…by his baby. His baby. He moved his tongue in a suddenly dry mouth.
Maybe if he’d been here from the beginning, it wouldn’t seem so strange. The changes, the growing, would have been gradual. Pregnancy obviously made her more tired. Napping like this, so easily and particularly when she was upset, was completely out of character.
He frowned. Was it just the pregnancy or should she be taking vitamins or something? Had she had all the proper prenatal checks? Did she have backache? Headaches? Swelling feet? Had she suffered with morning sickness? He didn’t like to think of her here alone struggling with the symptoms while he was away.
Not that he’d have been able to do anything useful. Janet had taught him that he wasn’t much good in a sickroom. His mother had turned into a semi-invalid during her pregnancy with Emma and his bumbling efforts to help her hadn’t been appreciated. Though he wasn’t completely useless because he’d often looked after his baby sister. But the toddler had been easy to please, a joy to care for.
His heart squeezed uncomfortably. The urge to cherish Liz, wrap her in cotton wool, protect her, was incredibly strong. But maybe the protection she needed most was from him, from his past and his latent anger about those distant events.
Moving closer, he could see she’d been crying. Lashes clumped in spikes by moisture. A couple of wadded tissues sat on the bedside table.
The coward in him was tempted to tiptoe out, leave her to sleep longer. Quashing the impulse, he crouched beside her, his gaze following the delicate line of her jaw. With the back of his knuckle, he stroked the soft skin of her cheek gently until her eyes opened.
She rolled her head to look at him.
‘Hey.’ His voice was husky.
‘Hey.’ She regarded him solemnly.
‘I’m sorry, Liz.’ He took her hand, ran his thumb over the back of her long, slender fingers. ‘I don’t mean to hurt you.’
She sighed softly. ‘I know.’
Her uncomplicated acceptance of his apology was a boon. She seemed sad, but she wasn’t judging him. It was more than he deserved and her generosity freed him in an odd way. He traced the gold band of her wedding ring. ‘No one’s ever wanted to know about me, really know about me or my feelings, the way you do.’
‘What about your grandmother?’
‘Yeah, well, she did. In her way.’ He squeezed her hand then released it as he stood up. Preparing to talk like this made him want to move, to pace, but there was nowhere to go. Holding himself still was an effort. He ran his hand around the back of his neck. ‘Nanna was from a different generation. She was in her late seventies by the time I went to live with her permanently. By then I was thirteen with chips on both shoulders.’
‘Thirteen? But…I thought your grandmother brought you up.’ Her eyes were full of questions.
‘I let you.’ He rolled one shoulder, tilted his head, felt the tightness in his muscles. ‘Nanna did her best for me when she could. When Janet and I lived with her on and off.’
‘Janet?’
No wonder she sounded confused. He was making such a hash of this.
‘My mother.’ He turned, took a couple of steps to the window seat, subsided onto the cushion and pressed his fingers into the padded edge as he eyed Liz warily.
‘You called your mother Janet?’
‘She preferred it. I don’t think she thought of herself as a mother.’ He leaned forward, put his elbows on his thighs and clasped his hands.
‘Maybe being called by her name made her feel less responsible.’ He clenched his jaw then continued, ‘I went to live with my grandmother after Janet died.’
There was a small silence. ‘And she died when you were thirteen?’
He nodded once then looked down at his hands. A faint oill stain was still trapped in the crease of one thumb knuckle. He rubbed hard at it with the other thumb. ‘From a drug overdose.’
‘Jack—’
‘I found her after school. But it was too late. That time.’
‘That time?’ Liz’s voice wobbled but he couldn’t look at her. ‘It—it happened more than once?’
‘Yes. Janet was an addict. She lived in the moment. If it felt good, she tried it.’
‘Oh, Jack.’ In his peripheral vision he saw Liz sit up and swing her feet off the bed. For a moment he was afraid she was going to come to him.
If she touched him now, he’d disintegrate.
‘Where was your father while all this was happening to you?’ She sounded like she would cheerfully go into battle for him. His heart swelled, leaving his chest agonisingly full.
‘I don’t remember him. He was killed. Car accident. I was three.’ His voice rasped out the short, stark sentences. But for the life of him he couldn’t seem to form a nice flowing prose to soften the bald facts.
‘Oh, Jack,’ she said again. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah. Well.’ He shrugged. This time he glanced at her in time to see a tear slip down her cheek. He tried for a reassuring smile, but his face was stiff and uncooperative. ‘I didn’t lack male roll models if that’s what you’re worried about. I had uncles.’
‘U-uncles?’ She swiped the moisture off her cheek.
‘Whichever man Janet was involved with at the time. She thought having me call them uncle made us more like a family.’ Now that he’d told her the worst, the words were coming more easily. But he’d still be glad when this was over. ‘She never found anyone who was prepared to take on someone else’s kid long-term.’
‘That’s what you meant this morning with that comment about uncles?’
‘Yeah,’ he said flatly. He glanced at her belly then met her eyes. ‘I don’t want that for any child of mine.’
‘No. No, I can see that you wouldn’t.’ Her voice was little more than a whisper. She licked pale lips. ‘Is this the reason why you don’t want to have children? Because of the way your mother treated you? Because of the way the uncles treated you both?’
He nodded. ‘Part of it.’
‘But not all of it?’ She looked at him shrewdly. ‘You must see you would never be the sort of parent that your mother was, Jack. You have choices. You hate drugs. You never lose control. You are honourable and trustworthy and you never take the easy way out. That’s not going to change.’
Her staunch support made him uncomfortable, almost claustrophobic.
‘Perhaps I can come to you for a reference,’ he quipped, hoping to lighten the atmosphere.
‘Any time, any time at all.’ She sounded as though she meant it. Her eyes were warm and expressive as they clung to his. ‘Thank you for telling me this, Jack. I know how hard it was for you.’
‘Yeah…well …’ He fought the urge to squirm. She was thanking him and he’d only told her part of the story. Just like she’d said—he filtered the facts about his life, fed her titbits. He didn’t want to keep her at a distance, but it was too much to expect him to be able to bare every single thing tonight.
He’d tell her…but for now it had to be enough that he’d made a start.