Tethered (67 page)

“Nonan, come eat ceewreal,” Lucas called from the kitchen.

“Wowo!” Rosa called.

“Go on in the kitchen,” I told Owen and he gladly took off to go be with his friends.

I fully expected Casey to turn and leave as she always did. Emmy and I always offered her a cup of coffee or to come in and sit for a few minutes, but she always declined. I think it was hard for her to be with Emmet’s family now that she wasn’t with Emmet anymore. She seemed uncomfortable with the idea every time it was presented to her, and the Grayne’s went out of their way to try to make her feel like she was still part of the family.

When she didn’t immediately hightail it out the door, I again offered her a cup of coffee.

“No, thanks,” she said, shaking her head. “But I wanted to know if you could give something to Emmet for me.”

She reached into her purse and produced a large manila envelope. I had a feeling what was inside and I didn’t think I should be the one to hand it to him.

“Maybe you should give it to him,” I suggested kindly when she tried to hand it to me.

“I…” she paused and licked her lips nervously. Her smile was just as nervous. “I don’t want to see his face when this lands in his hands. I don’t want to see the relief that he’s sure to feel.”

I shook my head and still refused to take the envelope. “Casey, I’m sure this is hard for him, too.”

“Yeah, but not for the same reasons,” she whispered. “He feels guilty, but trust me,” she sighed heavily. “The contents of this envelope are a gift to him.”

Whatever resentment I had for Casey had passed the night of Emmy’s wedding, but I suddenly felt guilty for resenting her in the first place. I had no doubt that when Emmet proposed to her she really believed that he was marrying her because he loved her above anyone else and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. Any signs or symptoms of the contrary she must have chosen the same frosted glasses I did for my marriage. I wonder what it took for her to take off her frosted glasses.

“Please, you give it to him.”

I accepted the heavy envelope in my hands even though I still felt unsure about being the one to give it to him.

“You know, Emmet and I aren’t exactly…” I shrugged. “We don’t talk really. We live under the same roof and we share in taking care of all of the kids, but…we don’t chit chat or hang out or anything else.”

“Well, maybe you should,” Casey said solemnly. “Have to start somewhere, right?”

I looked at her. Was she suggesting that Emmet and I get together?

“I didn’t know that he was in love with you when I married him,” she said suddenly in a rush of words. “I know people think that I trapped him, but I didn’t. Emmet was my friend, maybe even my best friend. I had a hard life when I was younger and he helped me become a better person. I got pregnant after only one night of unexpected sex. I would have been okay with raising Owen as a single mom, and I should have said no when he proposed, but I loved him, and I thought eventually he would love me, too, but he never did – I mean not like he obviously loves you.

“For a long time I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was wrong with our marriage. Emmet was kind to me, he provided for me, and he’s an excellent dad, but there was something empty about our marriage and I didn’t know what it was. Even after I figured out that you two had once been engaged, I still didn’t think that you had anything to do with my marital problems, because you guys hadn’t been together in a long time. But…” She paused and looked at the floor for a moment.

“Lucas’s party was the first indication of his feelings for you. Then that morning before we went to the spa, the banter between the two of you came easily, and there was
never
banter between me and Emmet. Not like that. And then later the bracelet…”

I felt like shit for what she had gone through, and I was a little mad with Emmet for putting her through it. I felt guilty for the many times we crossed over that line while Casey was waiting for him to show some interest in her.

“I tried to change for him,” she said, looking out of the storm door absently. “I lost weight, I changed my hair and started wearing makeup. I started wearing designer clothes and getting my nails done and getting waxed.” She looked at me. “I was trying to be enough like you to matter, but it didn’t really work. And it was on a day when I was seriously thinking of surgically altering my body that I woke up. The problem wasn’t me. I was fine. I was more than fine. The problem was that we should have never married in the first place. When he came home from work that day, I had a bag packed for him and a couple of boxes of items I knew meant a lot to him, and I told him I was done. I told him that I deserved a husband who could give me no less than one-hundred percent, that I deserved a husband who loved me like a wife and not a buddy. I promised him that I wouldn’t keep him from Owen. I told him I loved him and then I told him to leave. And you know what? He didn’t argue. He teared up and apologized for taking away years of my life that I could have been with someone who loved me the way I deserved to be loved. He hugged me for a long time…” She stared sadly into that point of time for a moment before her eyes found mine again. “And then he left.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered to her sincerely. “I don’t even know what to say.”

“Look, Donya,” she said in a strong voice. She straightened her shoulders and looked at me intently. “You and Emmet obviously have something that most people in the world only read about in books or see in the movies. I’m hurt, but I’ll be okay and I’ll move on. I still love him and I want him to be happy, and you’re the only one who can make that happen. I’m sorry your husband turned out to be an asshole, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that both of our marriages fell apart around the same time. I think you and Emmet were meant to be, and those papers are the first step in making that happen. Don’t waste it.”

She pushed open the storm door, gave me a weak smile, and then hurried out the door and across the lawn to her car.

*~*~*

I didn’t want to give Emmet the papers in front of the entire family. I waited until Emmy and Luke were cuddled up on the couch watching a movie and all of the kids were asleep. I was glad that Owen was sleeping in Lucas’s room as I knocked lightly on his door. I knew he was awake because I could not only hear him moving around in there, but of course I could sense it.

“Come in,” he said after a moment of hesitation. He probably wondered why I was coming to him, since I only came to him if it involved Owen or Rosa, and Rosa was drooling in sleepy land on my bed.

I opened the door and stepped inside. Emmet sat on one side of his bed with a law book in his hands, a highlighter and small sticky notes. I tried not to notice the curved muscle of his upper arm that stretched the tee shirt he had on, or how his hair looked sexy and mussed like he had been repeatedly running his hands through it.

“You know, you graduated law school years ago,” I teased, hoping that he totally missed the vibe I had been putting out.

“Unfortunately I lack the brain capacity to retain every law known to man,” he said with a smile. “What brings you to my door late at night?”

“Am I disturbing you?”

“You never disturb me, Donya,” he said softly. I resisted the urge to smile like an idiot and stepped further into the room.

“This is for you,” I said, holding up the envelope. “It’s from Casey. She wanted me to give it to you.”

His eyes zeroed in on the envelope and then he nodded solemnly. “How was she?” He asked after some hesitation.

I gave a small shrug. I didn’t want to tell him what we discussed, so I said “Okay,” I said.

He gave me a suspicious look. Of course he knew I wasn’t telling him the whole story, but he didn’t push. He reached out his hand for the envelope, but a gust of wind swept in through a window that was open a few inches and one of his papers blew to the floor at my feet.

“I got it,” I said and tossed the envelope on the bed, making another few papers float to the floor.

“You know you’re not helping, right?” Emmet teased as I crouched to pick up the papers.

“I know, I’m sorry,” I said. “But why do you have the window…” I trailed off as my fingers touched the corner of a canvas sticking out from under the bed. Absently, I slapped the papers on the bed, but didn’t take my eyes off of that familiar object. My fingers closed around the edges of the canvas and I slowly pulled it out. I held it up and examined it.

“Shit,” I said and felt the need to sit. I sat on the edge of the bed, holding the painting I had done nearly twenty years ago for Valentine’s Day. That night I had fought with Emmet in the parking lot and the following morning his lips and his hands had pleased me and made up for upsetting me the night before.

“Have you always had this?” I asked Emmet without taking my eyes off of the macabre art.

“Yes,” he answered quietly. “It was in Louisiana in storage for a long time, but I brought it back home with me the last time I went down.”

I looked over my shoulder at him. “Why did you keep it?”

“It is an incredible piece of work,” he said with a shrug. “And you made it. That’s reason enough.”

I looked away from him and focused again on the painting. “I was so angry and hurt when I painted this, ramped up on my teenage hormones, totally pissed off with myself for loving you,” I reminisced. Then I turned back to him and said “If it is so incredible and meaningful for you, why is it on the floor under your bed?”

“I don’t have anywhere to put it right now,” he said, looking guilty.

I looked around the room and saw the perfect spot. I got up and put the canvas on top of a chest of drawers and leaned it back against the wall.

“There,” I said with my hands on my hips.

“I approve,” Emmet said.

I looked at him smugly as I walked back over to the bed. “I wasn’t waiting for your approval. What else do you have under this bed?”

I dropped to my knees and lifted the bed skirt. It was hard to see, so I flattened my body on the floor to get a better look.

“Are you seriously looking under my bed?” Emmet asked disbelievingly. Seconds later, his face appeared at the other side, upside down. “What if I don’t want you looking under my bed?”

“I wasn’t looking for your permission either,” I said and reached for a small box.

Emmet groaned as I pulled the box out. I sat up and leaned back against the bed and crossed my legs.

“I don’t want you to open the box,” Emmet warned as he stretched out across the bed on his papers to try to take it from me.

“What do you have to hide, Grayne?” I teased.

“Donya,” his tone was serious, but I felt compelled to open the box. I couldn’t help it. Something in that box was calling to me.

I took the lid off and just stared for a long time. Emmet was very still behind me.

Inside the box were the scraps from my wedding dress that Emmet had torn off while he was on his knees begging me not to marry Jerry. The two jars I had given him when he went away to college were wrapped carefully in cloth, but I didn’t need to pull the cloth away to know what they were. I carefully took the jars out of the box and set them on the floor beside me and put the pieces of my dress on top of them. There were dozens and dozens of magazine clippings of me in one pose or another, and there were photographs of me when I was a little kid, as a teenager, and more of that day in Emmet’s hotel room just before I gave him my virginity. More prominently, there was a picture of me in my maid of honor dress from Emmy’s wedding.

We were both silent as I looked through some of the clippings and photographs. I didn’t look through all of them, but I did look through a great deal. I was about to put back what I had taken out when something else at the bottom of the box peeking out from under a picture caught my eye. I reached for it, a small red velvet sack. I probed at it with my fingers before opening it and knew before I even opened it what was in it, but I still pulled it open and carefully spilled the platinum engagement ring and its matching wedding band into the palm of my hand. They were so beautiful. I remembered how perfect the engagement ring had looked on my hand and how it felt when he had first slipped it on my slender finger.

“Wow,” I said, swallowing hard as I put the rings back into the sack. I proceeded to carefully put everything else back into the box. “You keep everything.”

Emmet said nothing, though I sensed his sadness. He sat back up as I pushed the box back under the bed. I was about to speed walk myself back to my room so I could think about all of this when two more objects under the bed in the shadows caught my eye. I gasped and eagerly reached for both and rolled them out.

“You kept my old board!” I said excitedly as I got to my feet, holding two skateboards. “And you kept yours!”

Before he could respond, I tossed his board onto the bed and ran out of the room excitedly. I was glad I didn’t pull my sneakers off yet as I hurried down the front stairs and pulled open the front door. I ran outside to the driveway. I put the board down, put one foot on it and wondered if I could still do it or if I would bust my ass. But then I didn’t care. I pushed off and easily coasted down the driveway and into the street. I laughed happily when I saw Emmet come out of the house carrying his board.

“Race you to the end of the street,” I said to him before he could even mount his board, and then took off.

“You little cheater,” he growled behind me.

Soon my hair was blowing slightly in the cool spring air and the feelings of surrender, peace and clarity that I used to get while boarding came back to me. Emmet caught up to me, but he didn’t try to pass me as we neared the end of the block. We rode in a comfortable, but exhilarating silence and continued on to the next block and the next after that. We finally stopped when we reached the main road in the neighborhood. We stood on our boards, facing each other, slightly out of breath because we were
old
. I grinned at him and he grinned back.

“We should get back,” Emmet said after a minute of us just grinning at each other like fools. “We
are
parents now.”