Page 47 of Between Our Hearts

“You can try,” he said to the rough cement beneath his face. “She won’t take anything from me.”

In the background of his gritted exhales as he continued to pump himself away from the earth, he heard Victor’s success in getting his daughter to eat something—a pack of gummies and a few graham crackers.

When he righted himself to move the kids to another section of the park, Clark said his thanks. Often, they stayed under the ramada, but when the kids were extra fussy, they did bodywork exercises and moved around the park to distract them. The last stop was by the dog park. They lined the strollers facing the various canines frolicking and chasing each other.

Once class was done, Clark tried to dust the grass off his T-shirt and gym shorts. Given that it was eighty-three degrees with almost one-hundred-percent humidity as it was forecasted to rain later, not much of the debris budged from his sweat-drenched clothes. He followed the rest of the dads back to the ramada, begging off extra time at the playground, and it wasn’t until he’d crossed onto the pavement that Sadie stepped out from behind his slate grey truck.

Clark was pissed at himself for his reaction. His eyes automatically dragged over her faded denim cutoffs and snug white tank. So much of her lovely skin was showing.

“Hey,” she stepped forward slowly, her right wrist flipping once.

“What are you doing here? Aren’t you on call?”

Her eyes stayed on his—focused, insistent. “I found someone to finish it for me.”

“Mama!” Lottie grunted and fought against her restraints again. “Down.”

Sadie’s gaze darted to their daughter before reaching forward and unbuckling Lottie. “Hi,” she said, hugging their daughter and burying her nose in Lottie’s neck.

The vision in front of him was all he truly wanted, but even as it was happening, he couldn’t bring his tense shoulders down. “Why would you do that?”

A loud and controlled exhale left his wife’s body. “Because I figured something out last night.”

Unwittingly, he crossed his arms over his heart. “What did you figure out?”

“My way of communicating doesn’t match yours.” She shifted Lottie onto her hip. “You’re good at saying things, expressing yourself. Which makes sense, your parents are the same way, always saying exactly what they’re thinking. I can’t do that. But . . . I want to show you something. Do you mind going on a walk with me?”

He hesitated, even though he felt the lift of his calves ready to step in whatever direction Sadie would lead them.

“Please.” Some of that unmasked vulnerability flickered into the hollows of her cheeks.

A part of him wanted to be stubborn and insist she talk to him, but it was obvious she was trying in her own way, so a resigned “Lead the way” left his lips.

The ambient sounds of the busy public place in early summer were their only companions as she led him to the farthest corner of the park. The buzzing of the bugs mirrored his own vibrating anticipation of what to expect.

At last, they stood near the mulch bed of the lone sweetgum maple with three flower plants he’d seen the groundskeeper maintaining before. Sadie stared at the green of the plants—their tall, formerly petaled stalks bare.

“I’m not good with words. I work better with action. I think that’s why I’m good at what I do. I have this need to physically fix things. I can’t reason a bone back together—I need to do it manually.” Her eyes lifted to his. “But I don’t know how to do that with us.”

His lips fell apart as a halting exhale left them.

Her gaze dropped to the plants again. “I have been avoiding you. Though I didn’t intentionally do it last night, I’ve been doing it for months. Before or after work, I’ve been coming here and just”—she rolled her shoulders in discomfort—“sitting. It’s been odd because I usually like movement, but I just sit. Sometimes in the grass. Sometimes on the top of a picnic table. I just sit, balled up for hours.”

Fifteen different questions flew through his mind, but he was receiving his wish and sure as hell wasn’t going to interrupt his wife when she was finally talking to him.

“And I think about them.” Her voice cracked. “What would they have looked like? Would they like blackberry jam the best? What would be their favorite crayon to color with? Would they be calm and sleep through the night like this one”—she gently jostled a quiet Lottie—“or would they cry for hours, demanding they share our bed?” Her voice trailed off in a broken whisper.

“Love.”

Her eyes darted to his, and the anguish in them made everything in him seize. The roaring click of cicadas paused as vacant silence replaced all sound. Pain slowly rippled down his throat like he’d swallowed food without chewing it. It felt as if an immeasurable distance was expanding between them, though they stood a mere twenty inches apart. He half expected that when he reached his hand out to frame her face, his fingers would only grip the humid air.

When soft, supple skin pressed against the calloused pads on his fingertips, he heard his own startled breath break from his chest. She tilted her face to press her cheek into his hand, and a lone tear wet his palm. He couldn’t recall the next sequence of events, only that he’d somehow managed to convince his daughter to favor the ground to his wife’s hip so he could hold Sadie against him.

Clark expected her to break. To cry like she had in the shower after her third miscarriage, but instead she held him back with the same firmness he felt his muscles exerting. Their hearts thrummed within centimeters of each other, speaking silently to each other. Lottie kept her peace for about ten seconds before she began pulling on his shorts to a repetitive cadence of “up.”

He knew he shouldn’t ignore the life that had survived when Sadie had so heartbreakingly detailed her thoughts about the three that hadn’t, but his wife was his only concern in that moment. His hand palmed the back of her head as he leaned back to bring her lips to his. As Sadie’s soft kisses pressed against his mouth, an awareness broke over him—his wife showed her love physically.

A collage of images flashed through his mind—Sadie lovingly running her hand across various pieces of his craftsmanship; Sadie holding their daughter in her lap, on her hip, almost never setting her down; Sadie gripping him when they made love, never clutching the sheets or bed frame, but him—always him.

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