Текст книги "The Absence of Olivia"
Автор книги: Anie Michaels
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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 18 страниц)
Chapter Eight
Present Day
“Evie, I’m really sorry, but there’s another late meeting I’ve got to attend. If you can’t stay late with the kids, could you maybe see if Mrs. Welner from next door could sit with them? I don’t have her phone number handy. Thanks, Evie. Let me know what’s up.”
I swiped the screen of my phone to the left, deleting Devon’s voicemail. “Sure,” I said to no one since I was in my car all alone. “I’ll just leave your children with the woman next door who is so old she can’t even walk from room to room without assistance. That sounds safe.” I flung my car in reverse, taking all my frustration out on my poor gearshift. “How in the hell did your wife live with you all these years?” My own breath caught at my words. Liv hadn’t lived with it. In fact, she’d died. But I knew she’d give anything to be here with him, being the one he called when he was going to be running late home from work.
I took in a deep breath trying to push away the sadness I felt at the thought of Liv, and the disgust I felt with myself as I took everything I’d been given for granted. Liv, in essence, had given me a family. I loved Ruby and Jax, and I needed to recognize that Devon could very well have hired a nanny, and I’d be stuck with weekend visits to the children I loved dearly.
I sighed as I merged into traffic, pulling my sunglasses down to cover my eyes. Knowing full well I’d be going to his house to be there when his daughter got out of school, then going to get his son, I silently cursed Devon for having such wonderful children who would always have a hold on my heart.
After I’d wrangled both kids, we walked up the driveway as I tried to text Devon to tell him the kids and I would wait at his house for him – no need to bother his elderly neighbor.
Ruby unlocked the door and Jaxy ran in ahead of us. As usual, the kids headed for the kitchen because they hadn’t eaten in over forty-five minutes so, obviously, they were starving.
“I’m hungry,” I heard Jax yell from the kitchen at the same time I heard the sound of the refrigerator opening. I heard the hum of the freezer, but something else was catching my ear. I put my purse down on the table and stood still, trying to figure out what was making me uneasy. I looked around and nothing looked out of place, and then I zeroed in on the noise coming from the laundry room.
I walked down the hallway and immediately knew something was wrong. Halfway down the hall, my feet were met with water. Standing water. Water that was slowly making its way toward the kitchen.
“Oh, my God,” I whispered, trying to make my way through the lake that used to be the hallway. When I opened the door to the laundry room, I couldn’t stay calm anymore. “Holy shit!” My yells were heard by the children and somewhere in the back if my mind I registered they were coming toward me, but couldn’t think past the sight of water spraying out of the wall behind the washing machine. The water was freezing cold and ankle deep by the time I’d made it into the laundry room. The water was spraying out from behind the machine, sending water everywhere. It was coming straight at me. It was falling from the ceiling, and it was running down the walls. And I could tell it was coming out fast and I knew soon it would be flooding the whole bottom floor of Devon’s house.
“Yay! We’re going swimming!” I heard Jaxy’s excited yells from behind me and could see him jumping up and down near the door. I brought my hand up to shield my eyes from the water coming at me from all angles and shouted to Ruby.
“Get your brother and go upstairs! I’ve got to find the valve to shut this off.” Ruby followed my instructions and I noticed Jaxy’s face fall in disappointment, realizing it wasn’t a fun event. I waded through the water toward the washer, trying to find where the water was coming from. I pulled on the back corner, trying to move it away from the wall, but it only gave an inch. I squatted and pulled harder, trying to leverage my weight against the machine.
Water was still spraying everywhere, and all of my clothes were drenched and sticking to my skin. My shoes were completely filled with freezing water, and my fingers and toes were starting to go numb.
I adjusted my hold on the backside of the washer, now able to squeeze my arms between the two machines, and pulled hard. It took at least ten tries. Me tugging on the machine as hard as I could, feeling it barely budge, but move enough to motivate me to try again. Eventually, the machine was pulled far enough away from the wall that the plume of water spraying out was smaller and there was enough room between the machine and the wall to fit my body. I hopped on top of the machine and then squeezed my body down, feet first, still trying to assess where the water was coming from.
I was not familiar with anything I was looking at, made only more foreign to me by the water spraying everywhere, but I did spy a turn dial that looked just like the ones I’d usually seen outside of houses to turn hoses on and off. I reached for it and started turning furiously. After what seemed like a million rotations, the volume of water flowing from the hole in the wall finally tapered off and eventually turned into a trickle.
I was standing up to my calves in freezing water, drenched from head to toe, with absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do next. I climbed back on top of the washer and then hopped off again, heading back to the kitchen. The water had made its way into the dining room. I saw my purse sitting on the kitchen island and I grabbed it, searching for my phone. I called Devon, but I went straight to voicemail.
“Devon, some sort of pipe burst in your laundry room. There’s water everywhere. I have no idea what to do. Call me ASAP.”
I walked out of the kitchen and went up the stairs, heading toward the master bedroom. When I passed the kids’ room and saw them sitting silently on Ruby’s bed, so I halted in their doorway.
“Hey guys. Everything’s okay. Just a little leak.” Ruby’s eyebrows went up as if to say, “Little? Really?”
“Can we go downstairs?” Jax asked.
“Tell you what, gather up all the towels in the house and meet me in the kitchen, but don’t go into the water, okay?”
“Got it!” Jaxy yelled as he hopped off the bed and ran past me into the hallway, opening up the linen closet, on a mission.
“Help your brother, please? I’m gonna go try to find some dry clothes?”
“You’re going to wear Mommy’s clothes?” Ruby’s voice was both surprised and sad. I knew they hadn’t gotten rid of anything of Olivia’s, I knew it was all just sitting in her closet and dresser. None of them were ready to remove her from the house, and I wasn’t ready either. But it hadn’t occurred to me that wearing her clothes would upset Ruby or Jax. In fact, I hadn’t really thought about how I would feel wearing her clothes. The emptiness is my gut told me it was a bad idea.
“No, baby. I’ll find something else.” I saw the relief float over her features, tension obviously leaving her shoulders as she exhaled. “Don’t worry, sweetie,” I added, knowing that if there weren’t a lake currently residing on the bottom floor of her house, I would sit down next to her, hug her to me, and tell her all the ways her mother loved her. But in that moment, I couldn’t take the time to give that to her. Later, I thought. “Can you go make sure your brother doesn’t try to swim in your laundry room?”
“Yeah,” she said, her normal sassiness gone. She walked past me and I kissed the top of her head, wanting so much just to make all her pain go away. When she disappeared down the stairs, I continued on my way to the master bedroom.
When Olivia had been alive, I’d spent a good amount of time in her bedroom. Not a lot, but enough that I was familiar with it. We’d dye her hair in her attached bathroom, try new facial masques in there. When she’d gone to fancy dinners for Devon’s work, I’d sit on her bed and watch her try on dresses, always jealous of her amazing body and natural beauty. Even when she’d been hugely pregnant, she’d been slim and seemed to grow only in the belly.
When she’d brought Jaxy home, I’d spent hours in this room, watching her nurse her newborn, helping her in any way I could. When she’d been sick, I’d also spent hours in this room trying to help take care of her. It hadn’t ever occurred to me before, but in that moment, I was glad she hadn’t died at home. It was painful enough to stand in the doorway of the room I’d avoided since she passed. I don’t know if I could have gone in knowing I’d see the last place she’d been alive, or the place she spoke such soft and sullen words to me.
Her side of the room, the side farthest from the door, seemed untouched. Her satin robe still laid across the back of her big reading chair by her favorite bay window. There was still a glass on her bedside table with a stack of paperbacks next to it, as if she were going to lay down that night, pick one up, and start reading it. Everything seemed to be waiting for her return.
My heart started beating faster and I knew if I didn’t leave the room, soon the tears would come. Being in that room was too much for me to handle. The room still had so much Liv in it, I could only think of how much Liv I didn’t have.
I moved quickly to Devon’s dresser and pulled open drawers frantically, sighing in relief when I found a drawer with jogging shorts and t-shirts. I pulled one of each out quickly, nearly ran to the bedroom door, and then slammed it behind me as I left. I leaned against the closed door, sucking in deep breaths, trying to calm myself down. After a few moments, I felt the control of my emotions come back to me, and moved to the kids’ bathroom to get out of my soaked and frigid clothing.
I went back downstairs wearing Devon’s clothes. It was impossible not to smell him on them, but I tried my hardest not to hold the collar of his shirt purposefully to my nose and inhale. I’d smelled him plenty of times in my life and, as sad as I knew it was, I could pick out his particular scent over any other. It was clean and spicy. All male.
I found Ruby and Jax standing in front of a pile of towels that were all soaked and doing nothing to help the standing water problem.
“Thanks for getting the towels guys.” They smiled at me, but then just continued to look at me as if I knew what was supposed to happen next. “I’ve got no idea how to deal with this.”
I pulled up a browser on my phone and Googled, “How to deal with standing water.” None of the pages that popped up looked as though they’d be of any immediate help, and the only thing I could think of was to get the water out any way I could. So I grabbed a big mixing bowl from a cupboard, and started bailing water out the French doors. The kids grabbed cups and helped, but I told them to stay out of the water, as it was still intensely cold.
We’d been working for a while, not making much progress, when I heard Devon’s voice.
“Oh, my God,” he said, and I looked up to see him placing his briefcase on the island, eyes wide, taking in all the chaos.
“What are you doing here? Did you miss your work thing?” I immediately felt terrible, as if I was causing so many problems. My feet were freezing, I was wearing clothes that smelled fabulous and were too big for me. My hair was a disaster from the earlier incident with the storm inside the laundry room, and all I really wanted to do was take a warm bath. “I’m sorry,” I cried, dropping my hands to my side, making the giant mixing bowl I held onto slap against the side of my leg. “I didn’t know what to do. Google wasn’t any help. The thing in the laundry room was spewing water when we got home and I was just trying to get the water out.” I was rambling and on the verge of tears, no longer able to keep my composure together when Devon walked straight to me, through the freezing cold water, dress shoes and slacks still on, and wrapped his arms around me.
I was startled at first because, well, we never really touched except when it was accidental and detrimental. So, to have him wrap his arms around me, knowing it was me, in an effort to comfort me, well, I lost it. I cried into his suit jacket, dropped the bowl, and moved my arms around his waist, pressing my face further into his chest.
I was crying out the stress of the last few months, crying for every time I’d held it in since Olivia passed, crying for all the times I wasn’t enough for her children or her husband. But I was holding on to him for entirely different reasons. I was pulling his body closer to mine because I could, when I never could have in the past. I was feeling all the muscles in his back as my hands ran up to his shoulder blades because I just couldn’t stop myself. I was reveling in the knowledge that his hands were on me and paying excruciatingly close attention to the fact that I liked his hands on my body. I loved everything about being in his arms, but hated myself for loving it so damn much.
“Ruby, Jax, why don’t you guys go upstairs and put on some pajamas,” he whispered softly to his children, and I couldn’t imagine the scene I was making in their kitchen.
After a moment, he pulled away slightly, his hands coming to frame my face, feeling very warm against my exceedingly cold skin.
“Are you okay?” he asked, the sincerity in his voice breaking me open just a little bit more.
“I’m c-cold.”
“Yeah, your lips are a little blue.” His eyes kept darting between my lips and my eyes. He hadn’t moved his hands and I wasn’t about to pull away from his touch. “Let’s get you to the living room and warm you up a bit, all right?”
“Ok-kay.”
He turned from me, but reached for my hand at the same time, and pulled me into the living room. My feet started to tingle as soon as they were out of the water, and I made my way to the couch. When I sat, he knelt in front of me, just between my parted knees, one of his hands on each of my thighs. His finger hit the mesh of his basketball shorts and realization came over his face.
“Are you wearing my clothes?”
“Yes-s,” I stammered, teeth still chattering. He leaned forward until his face was exactly a hair’s breadth from mine and my lungs seized up with his proximity. A blush crept over my face when I realized he was only reaching for the throw blanket draped over the back of the couch. He pulled it around my shoulders, wrapping it around the top half of my body. “I got s-soaked while I t-turned off the valve. I w-went upstairs but c-couldn’t bring myself to p-put on Liv’s clothes.”
“Shhhh,” he said as he rubbed his hands up and down my arms, trying to build some heat between his hands and my skin. It seemed like I’d been waiting years for him to use his heat on me, but thinking about it in that moment made me feel shameful.
“What are we going to do about the water?” I whispered, unable or unwilling to use my full voice to ruin the moment.
“Um, well, I’m not sure.”
“Google isn’t much help.”
His mouth quirked up in an adorable grin and I couldn’t help it when mine did the exact same thing. “Really? Well, I guess we’ll have to use some good old fashioned ingenuity then.” He thought for a moment, his hands still torturously kneading into my arms. I had to admit though, I wasn’t feeling the cold anymore. I was only feeling the slow burn building deep inside me. “You stay here, warm up. I’ll be right back.”
I didn’t have time to answer before he disappeared down the flooded hallway. But I did hear the splashing and figured he must have gone right into the lake that used to be the laundry room. I cringed, thinking about his shoes again. There was a lot of noise coming from down the hall and I couldn’t help but stare at the entrance, waiting for him to come back.
When he finally reappeared, he was carrying a large round machine that had a hose like a vacuum. “What is that?”
“It’s a shop-vac. It can suck up almost anything. We’ll have this place cleaned up in no time.”
“Auntie Evie, we’re hungry.” Ruby appeared at the bottom of the stairs with new, dry pajamas, looking exhausted. I immediately felt terrible. Amidst the flooding crisis and my emotional breakdown, I’d forgotten to feed the children.
“Okay, Ruby, go upstairs and put on a movie for you and your brother. I’ll bring up a picnic for you to eat in the TV room on a blanket.”
“Really?” Some of her exhaustion left and was replaced with excitement. They were never allowed to eat anywhere except the table.
“Really. But you have to promise to keep an eye on your brother for me while I help your daddy clean this up.”
“Okay,” she yelled happily, as she skipped back up the stairs.
Three hours passed, in which I’d made sandwiches for the kids and brought them up with grapes, crackers, and juice boxes, calling it a ‘picnic’. They’d eaten and watched their movie while Devon and I worked together to suck up the standing water. Once most of the water was gone, all we could do was use towels to try to dry the floor and the walls. After inspection, Devon concluded that the hose that hooked up to the back of the washer had broken, causing all the water to flow out onto his beautiful hardwood floors.
“We’ve got a few fans in the attic, I’ll go get them.”
I heard his footsteps go up the stairs and I focused all my mental energy on his use of the word ‘we.’ He’d meant him and Liv. The we he thought he’d be using for fifty or sixty more years. He wasn’t a we anymore, but, to me, he always would be. Liv and Devon. My best friend’s husband, regardless of whether or not she was alive. For a reason I only assumed was for my personal torture, I’d been totally fine with Devon and Liv as a we when she’d been alive, but now that she was gone, the fact that he still attached himself to her in that way made me feel sad and heavy.
When I heard him clear his throat a minute later, I turned to see him looking at me with soft eyes. “There were so many times when we were younger, before life really happened, when I’d imagined you in my clothes. I’d have these fantasies of coming home from my big important job to find you in one of my button up shirts, or just in one of my ties.” I could feel my cheeks burning at his words, but couldn’t move my gaze from him, didn’t want to shatter whatever was happening between us, because I knew it was fragile, like spun sugar.
“Then things got serious with Liv and me and the fantasies sort of turned into forbidden thoughts. Thoughts I knew I shouldn’t have, and managed to turn off all together for the most part, aside from the few moments when you were absolutely too beautiful to push to the back of my mind. Just little snapshots of heaven I tucked away and only thought about when I was really happy, because thinking of you when things weren’t going well with Liv was too close to infidelity. I couldn’t think about you when, perhaps, I wanted to most because I was afraid of what that would do to my marriage. So, I tried not to. And it worked, for the most part. I still got to see you often. Still had you in my life, our lives. Still got to tell you that you looked nice, or that I liked your new hair style, still got to know you were safe and close by.”
I could remember practically every compliment he’d given me in the last nine years. I’d tucked them away too. Tried not to read too much into them, because it felt too much like I was betraying my best friend.
“And then I come home one night and there you are, in my kitchen, wearing my basketball shorts, and Liv is nowhere to be found.”
The air in the room crackled with his words, filled with the regret of the enormity of the thought. Olivia was nowhere to be found, but she was still everywhere.
“And the mind boggling part is you’re even more unavailable to me now than you were before. Olivia’s absence took you so much farther away from me. Even though you’re here, in my house, every day. You’re here, but you’ve never been more out of reach.”
“Devon,” I managed to whisper, not really even knowing what I wanted to say, just needing to stop his words.
“Unless-ˮ
“Devon, no.”
“Unless it’s you who’s keeping yourself away for her sake.”
“I’m here, Devon, but we can’t-″
“There’s no reason we can’t-″
“Yes, there is. Olivia-″
“Is dead.”
His words hurt for so many reasons I couldn’t even begin to count them. Olivia was dead; there was no reason to deny him that fact. I stood up, finally finding some feeling in my body besides the pounding of my heart. I walked to him, stopping just far enough away so that he didn’t get any ideas about reaching out and touching me. Surely, that would break me.
“Olivia being dead isn’t the reason we can’t be together. But, it can never be the reason we are.”
