Page 88 of Just Say Christmas
“Just because I don’t know all their names,” she said, “doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”
“But I don’t.” All his confidence seemed to have deserted him. “Not anymore. I haven’t been. I did before, I’ll admit. Twice. All right, three times, but once was just . . . at a conference. One night. Stupid. I’m not having them now. I’m . . . I’ve always been proud of you. We . . . we play golf every week. We go to dinner twice a week. I’ve . . . I’ve thought . . . it was good.”
She sighed and ran a hand over her hair, even though she never touched her hair, not once it was perfect. “Never mind,” she said, feeling, suddenly, exhausted. Thinking about sleeping alone in a bed in some apartment somewhere. About thirty-three years of shared history, gone in a moment. About how little she wanted to make that choice, and how little choice she had. “You know where I stand now. Go do your reading. Think about it. I’ll clean this up.”
“No.” He looked at the dustpan as if he couldn’t remember how it had got there, then set it on the table. She opened her mouth to say something about that, then closed it again. What would it matter, if it wasn’t going to be her table anymore? He said, “I’ll help you. I’m going to say this first, though. I was stupid to risk you. I knew, afterwards, that I was stupid. Couldn’t believe I’d done it. You never said anything, though, and I thought you hadn’t noticed. It was one year, or maybe two. It was like a fever. Kids getting older, me getting older, and then Hayden. Wishing for . . . I don’t even know what. And then it was over, and I thought—you hadn’t found out, and I’d dodged the bullet. Have you been thinking that I’m still doing it, though? All this time?”
She didn’t want to cry. She wanted to stay angry. Angry was such a better place. She tried to pull the shell of her composure around herself, but she couldn’t do it. Her hands were shaking, and she put them over her face, but then all of her was shaking. “Yes,” she said. “Yes. I knew. And I was . . .” She took her hands away, felt her mouth trembling, and couldn’t stop it. “I was what Hayden said. Humiliated. Like you’d knocked me down and kicked me, and I had to go on anyway, not knowing who knew. Who was . . .” It was getting hard to say the words. “Laughing at me. How could you do that? You knew I didn’t have anywhere else to go. You knew what I . . . was. How?”
He was around the table, his arms around her. “All I wanted,” she said, “was you. And it . . . hurt. It hurt somuch.”
He’d never seen her cry. She’d never let him. He hadn’t been in the room when their babies were born. He’d wanted to be, and she hadn’t let him. Once he saw her that ugly, she’d thought, he’d never stay.
Now, she knew she was ugly, because the sobs were coming in great, racking gasps, her chest heaving. She turned from him, staggered, and put a hand out for the table. She heard the sound of breaking glass, felt something sharp on her ankle. A crystal wineglass, another beautiful piece of her life shattered, and she couldn’t even care. She was crouching down, her elbows on her thighs, her hands over her face. Rocking. Weeping.
Out of control.
Ugly.
Craig’s arm around her, then, Craig pulling her into his body. “No,” he said. “Darling, no. Tania, no. Please. No. I love you.”
“Go . . . read,” she managed to say. “Goread.”
“No,” he said. “I’m not reading. I’m staying here. We’re working this out. We’re fixing it until it’s right. Starting now.”
“You can’t,” she said, and felt the desolation of it, the cold wasteland where her life had been.
“I’m a surgeon,” he said. “Unless the patient’s dead, I can always try. I’m trying now.”
42
A Maui Thing
Thursday,December 24
RHYS
On Christmas Eve, Rhys left the house with the kids before it was light, off to meet Finn, Sophie, Harry, and Lily for a pre-Christmas dad-and-kids fishing expedition off the rocks near Cornwallis Wharf. Finn would be checking his phone constantly, because that baby was due soon, but never mind.
There was something satisfying about having fishing gear in the shed. Not just for yourself, but for your kids as well. Going fishing with a mate, too. He’d never thought of himself as a family man, but now, it seemed like where he was meant to be. First Christmas. First everything.
You couldn’t change the beginning of your story, but you could write the rest of it. He was on the third or fourth chapter by now, and the plot was definitely changing.
There was also something satisfying about leaving Zora to sleep as long as she liked, to see her hair across her face and her arm flung up overhead beside the pillow, the same way it had been last night, when he’d come to bed and found her just like that. Fast asleep. She’d hardly stirred when he’d slid in beside her, and it had been barely nine o’clock. She’d been quiet after that dinner, and maybe a bit weepy, too, and trying to hide it. He’d seen it anyway. Too many emotions, and worn to the bone.
When your parachute is right here,she’d said,and his arms are so strong. And you can trust him enough to let go.
He was going to need to be that parachute soon, he had a feeling, because there’d been trouble brewing last night. However old you got, you wanted your parents to be there. If that changed—that would well and truly rattle Zora’s foundations.
Casey said, when they were driving down the road in the dark with cocoa in a thermos jug and special white-chocolate-and-apricot “fishing muffins” in a bag, “It’s sort of funny, because it’s not weird to get up very early. I’m kind of used to it, and Isaiah’sreallyused to it.”
“Yes,” Isaiah said, “because I’ve been going to the flower market with Mum since I was little.”
“How come you have to get up early for fishing, though?” Casey asked. “Do the fish wake up early, too, and start swimming? Maybe they’re still sleepy, and they don’t notice the hook. Maybe that’s why.”
Rhys could hear Isaiah’s sigh all the way from the back seat. It made him smile. “Not quite,” he told Casey. “The water’s nice and cool in the early morning in summer, so they’re comfortable swimming closer to the surface. Makes them easier to catch, eh. Later in the day, when it’s hot, they swim deeper to get cool.”
“Oh,” Casey said.
