Page 35 of Between Our Hearts

At her silence, her husband’s face completely crumpled. “We wouldn’t be together if it wasn’t for Lottie, would we?”

Sadie watched in horror. It was as if all Clark’s bones were being snapped in front of her, but she was powerless to stop it.

“Clark—”

He held up a hand, silencing her. “I just—” His voice pinched off as his tone climbed unnaturally high. His eyes darted around, seeming to remember that they were in a public place.

Clark stood abruptly, and she moved to do the same, but his face transformed. Hurt was replaced by this intensely fierce expression that stared her back down. The warmth of the metal seat seeping through her scrubs had previously been comfortable, but now it felt as if her skin was burning.

Then, for the second time in her life, she watched her husband’s shoulders storm away from her. As hard as it was to see, the vision of him leaving solidified the fleeting thought that had reached out to her last night.

She needed to let him walk away.

She needed to finally put his needs over hers and let Clark go. He’d put her and Lottie first for so long. It would be the hardest thing she’d ever done, but hadn’t her whole life been spent overcoming one hardship after another?

As soon as his parents left, she’d tell him it was over. Her chest squeezed, and she balled up her sandwich and threw it in the bag to give her hands something to do.

Once she’d cleaned the whole table, she strode toward the hospital.

Her fingers started to shake, and she consciously extended them before pulling her surgery schedule out of her white coat pocket. The thing she needed right now was cold OR air pressed against her skin and the whir of a bone drill. Not to focus on how after Clark’s parents left, her life was over.

?Chapter 18?

Clark pulled a shirt over his slightly damp skin. Once he’d gotten Lottie down for a nap, he’d started helping his mom with her smart phone. But after over an hour, it had become obvious that it would take much longer than he anticipated to fix it, so he had excused himself to take a shower.

The sound of Sadie’s laughter harmonizing with his mom’s halted him at the top of the stairs—his hand gripping the banister for support. Though she’d said that she’d be home on time from her day at the office, she hadn’t come home until everyone had been asleep last night and had left before they’d all awakened. If he hadn’t gotten up with Lottie in the middle of the night, Clark wasn’t sure he’d have even known she’d come home.

In the wake of Sadie’s behavior over the past few days, it had become hard not to listen to that nagging whisper that’d been taunting him for months. After the first miscarriage, he’d assumed it was Sadie’s grief that was forcing the divide between them. But maybe it wasn’t.

Maybe she never wanted to be with you forever.

Though he’d fallen hard for his wife from the start, maybe if they’d never gotten pregnant, she’d have ended things a long time ago. Without Lottie, maybe this wouldn’t have lasted.

As he descended the stairs, the back of his dad’s half-bald head peeked through the large front glass windows. His father had his journal in hand, scribbling away. Even though a heaviness sat in his shoulders, a small smile reflexively curled on Clark’s lips watching his dad work.

His parents had always believed you should do the thing you love. His father was a midlist thriller author but never seemed to mind that he never reached the ranks of Clancy or Baldacci. For him, the joy of creating each story was enough. The same was true of his mother who worked as a social worker for Adult Protective Services. She’d often said she couldn’t have survived witnessing the things she did if she didn’t love her job.

The philosophy in his house growing up had been that if you could support yourself with your chosen profession, you could do whatever you wanted. They’d never batted an eye when he didn’t return to college and were always proud of him. They were actually embarrassingly complimentary of all the woodwork pieces he showed them and couldn’t wait to sit at the market with him on Sunday.

The women’s combined laughter increased in volume as he walked toward the kitchen. That hollowing feeling he’d been trying to chase away all morning punched him in the gut. This might be the last time his parents would visit like this. Sadie had said she loved him, but now he was second-guessing those words. She could have simply been placating him because he’d brought up the topic at the hospital, in public.

A deep sigh left him before he forced his feet through the threshold.

“But really, you need to tell me. How are women keeping their pubic hair these days? I always went full bush, but with age, the hair is thinning out down there. I think it’s time for a new look.”

A strangled, choking noise left his throat as he doubled back as quickly as he could, trying to retreat from his mother’s words. In his haste to get away from the conversation hedefinitelydid not want to hear, he ended up smacking his forehead hard on the sharp edge of the door jam.

“Clark.” His wife shot from her seat.

“Honey, Sadie’s home!” His mom beamed from her calmly reclined position at the kitchen table.

“Yeah, I see that,” he said, his voice strained with pain.

Sadie’s eyes narrowed as they focused on the part of his skull that was throbbing. “You’re bleeding.” She strode toward him, ripping off a section of paper towel on her way.

As starchy paper was pressed firmly to his forehead, he couldn’t help the whimper that left his lips. The pressure of his wife’s fingers decreased a fraction.

“Sorry,” she whispered, her eyes momentarily darting and getting stuck on his. Time held for one . . . two . . . three breaths before her focus moved to his wound, lifting away the towel for inspection.

---