The Good Enough Husband (17 page)

The taffeta gown she selected from the few clothes she’d brought was a little tight when she zipped the side. Fortunately, the ruching, and damned shininess of the dress, which was somewhere between silver and gold, depending on the lighting, hid the softe
ning around her middle. Being a tall woman had few advantages, but this was one of them. Whenever she gained weight, it was distributed all over her five foot ten frame. Hannah chastised herself for her laziness, vowing to cut back on the dinners she’d been sharing with Ben. Going from takeout salads to fully satisfying home-cooked meals was playing havoc with her waistline, if this dress were any indication.

Satisfied that she didn’t look like she was squeezed into sa
usage casing, she zipped herself into a full-length down coat, and set out for the Blue Monk. Tonight was going to be a surprise for Ben. She wanted him to get to know her in a way he never had. She had demurred anytime he’d asked about her singing. Tonight, she was going to sing her heart out for him.

Hannah had purposefully driven separately. She’d needed to spend some time warming up, and doing a sound check with the band, and there was no need for Ben to be there. But she also needed an out. If tonight went badly, she’d need that long drive back to Shelter Cove to lick her wounds. Leaving the band me
mbers on stage working out last minute kinks, she peeked into the parking lot and saw Ben’s white truck pull up. He looked good enough to eat. She’d always thought clothes made the man, but it never mattered what this man wore. The sight of him got her going. She shook off the arousal that pooled in her belly and waited for him to come toward the door.

Ben looked perplexed. “This was the surprise? We came here before, together that first week. The band was playing your dad’s music.”

“Ben, that’s not the surprise.” She took him by the hand and led him into the club. A small table in front of the stage was empty, a tiny ‘reserved’ placard in the middle. She sat and pulled her Jimmy Choo ‘fuck me’ pumps from her oversized handbag and slipped them on. Looking Ben in the eye, she unzipped the coat all the way and slid from its black microfiber confines. His eyes almost popped out of his head at the sight of her in the dress. Relief washed over her. This wasn’t going to be so bad. This man was still attracted to her, even with a few extra pounds. The band was ready and she joined them on stage. When she opened her mouth to sing, it was like all the years between her last performance and this one disappeared in a puff of smoke. For the next hour, she was in her element, belting out tunes she’d heard her mother practice time and again. The band stayed backstage during the break. But she wanted to see what he’d thought. While she was performing, she didn’t look at Ben. She was focused on making sure she hadn’t missed her cues and was entertaining the entire crowd, not merely the one person most important to her.

“I had no idea,” Ben said to her when she gulped some h
oneyed tea she’d asked the bartender to prepare. “You’re amazing.”

“Thanks. I’m planning on doing only one more song, after the break. Then we can go.” Her hands shook a little as she placed the cup on the saucer.
“You okay? You didn’t look the least bit nervous up there.”

“A little,” she admitted. “I wrote the next song.”

Before he could ask any more questions, she strode up on stage and conferred with the band. The house manager turned down the stereo system that had been playing CDs during the intermission.

Hannah wrapped her hands around the microphone, now sitting in its stand.

“Thank you so much for having me here tonight,” she started and the crowd clapped. She introduced and thanked the band. “This last song of the night, I wrote.” Hannah faltered. She was laying it all on the line. “This is for you, Ben Cooper.”

The piano player started first, then the alto sax joined him in the slow melody. Then it was Hannah’s turn. She blocked out the entire crowd, looked directly at Ben, and sang.

When you look at me

I wonder what you’re seeing

Because I know what I’m seeing

When you smile at me

I wonder what you’re thinking

Because I know what I’m thinking

When you touch me

I wonder what you’re feeling

Because I know what I’m feeling

When you speak

I look for the meaning

beyond the words

Because I wonder

Is it the same for you

As it is for me

She sang a second verse, repeated the first and ended with the refrain:

Because I wonder

Is it the same for you

As it is for me

Hannah’s voice trailed off as the sounds of the strings, woodwind, and brass instruments reverberated in the expectant club. There was a long moment before the audience erupted in applause. She swept her right arm in an arc encompassing the band, as each member stood and bowed. Then she exited the stage through a side door. The band members followed her off stage after taking their own bows. Turning down their offers to grab a drink now that they were done, she started the long walk down the hall back toward the well of the club. Able to peer around the door at Ben, she couldn’t get a read on whether he returned the feelings she’d expressed on stage. He merely looked stunned.

Now, she was more than happy that they had driven separately. She looked in a mirror along the tiny corridor—probably for pe
rformers to do one last check before going on stage—and arranged her face into a pleasant mask, hiding all emotion.

He rose, his manners winning out over his confusion.

“I’m going to do some post show stuff with the band, so I don’t know when I’ll be home.”

“Oh, okay. Hannah…” he broke off.

She leaned over, bussed his cheek and walked back to the stage door before he could say anything. She watched him gather his jacket and leave the club. The mask fell. She had told him that she loved him in so many words on stage, and he hadn’t said them back. She honestly had no idea what he felt for her. She loved him. It was as plain as the nose on her face. After her performance on stage, there was no going back. He felt something for her. Of that, she was sure. But whether that was love, or if she was someone to fill the time in between the heartbreak of his divorce and his next real relationship, she didn’t know. Whether he would ever have another relationship, she didn’t know.

She waited ten minutes, changed her shoes, slipped back into her long coat, and took her leave.

Hannah settled in for the long drive, planning to feel sorry for herself the whole way. It was too early in the morning to try commiserating with her mom. Her parents hadn’t had much in common, but neither of them was a morning person. She was going down a mental list of people she could call near midnight, rather than be alone with her thoughts, when her phone rang. For one long second, she hoped it was Ben, but then she remembered he didn’t have a phone.

She glanced at the Caller ID on the dashboard. Michael.

“It’s kind of late, Michael.” There was little civility in her tone.

“Are you alone?”

“Yes, Michael, I’m alone. What do you want? I know it’s not to talk about dissolution at this hour.”

He ignored the dig. “I’ve given you a month, Hannah. When are you coming back?” Clearly, talking rationally to him wasn’t going to get any easier anytime soon.

“I’m not coming back, Michael,” she said baldly. No matter how many times she had said it to him over the phone or e-mail, he wasn’t ready to let go. Her mother had hit this nail on the head.

“How could you do this to me? You picked up your stuff and left. We had five years together, Hannah. Are you willing to toss this aside on a whim? Following after some guy you’ve only known for a second?” Hannah didn’t answer. That’s exactly what she was willing to do. She’d proven it when she’d left Michael for Ben. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t call to harass you. I wanted you to know that I’ve been seeing a counselor, Hannah. I’ve been talking to someone to try and work out what I could have done wrong. Will you go to counseling with me? Can you give us one more chance?”

Despite her behavior over the last two months, at heart Hannah was a nice girl. Her mother and father had raised her to be kind and considerate. She had been unkind and inconsiderate to Michael. “Maybe.” She wanted to kick herself the minute that one small word left her mouth.

“When will you be home?”

“Maybe, I’ll think about counseling, Michael. I can’t up and come home, right now. Do you know where I was tonight?”

“With him?” Michael asked, unattractive petulance in his voice.

“Michael, I was singing on stage for the first time in years. I sang my dad’s music with a local band. And they were kind enough to let me perform a song I wrote.”

“Congratulations.” Michael’s sentiment sounded real. “That must have been really cool for you. I remember when you turned down that invitation to sing with that roots rock band that pe
rformed at Room 5 all the time. We were moving, and it really depressed you for a while.”

“I probably should have done it then even with the driving.”

“You’re probably right.” Michael paused. “See Hannah, during my sessions, I realized that the changes we made were probably too abrupt. Why did we think we had to go from Silver Lake to Newport to raise a child? It was stupidity on both our parts. We could live anywhere, you and I, Los Angeles, even Brooklyn. I liked New York. You loved it. We don’t need to be in California. My brother’s here if my parents need anything. There are airplanes that fly both ways.”

If Michael had said any of this before she’d driven away in September, she may never have come here. In so many ways, that would have been simpler. Making the choice to leave her husband had been hard enough. Now she had two choices, whether she wanted to work it out with her husband or whether she wanted to throw in her lot with Ben.

Even with Michael’s voice backgrounding her drive back to Shelter Cove. Even with the uncertainty coming from Ben, the choice was easy. She was going to choose love.

12

Ben wasn’t the first thought on Hannah’s mind when she awoke on the Thursday morning after the jazz fiasco. Michael wasn’t the first thought either. Her first thought was about babies. All night, she’d been dreaming about babies. And she didn’t think it was because of Logan’s party. While she and Michael were trying to get pregnant, she’d scoured a million websites, cataloguing the signs of pregnancy. She’d ordered ninety-nine cent pregnancy tests by the boxfuls. Like so many women she’d seen posting on ‘trying-to-conceive’ boards, she’d gotten addicted to peeing on tiny sticks.

Following the rules faithfully, she always dug out the sticks on day ten after her ovulation cycle. Before she could freak out too much, Hannah leapt out of bed and turned on her MacBook. Scro
lling through the calendar, she realized with a sinking feeling that she hadn’t had her period since September. She clicked on ‘today.’ It was November fourteenth.

Where were her pee sticks? She must have some, somewhere. She’d stashed them everywhere over the last year. Scaring the hell out of Cody as she ran downstairs, she rounded on her leather ca
rryall and turned it upside down, not caring that the contents spilled everywhere.

There, in a Ziploc bag were about ten of the tiny little strips she’d ordered from earlypregnancytests.com. Some were blue, some were green. The discount tests didn’t have much in the way of labeling. Hannah racked her brain trying to remember which were for pregnancy and which were for ovulation. Didn’t matter. She’d throw both in a cup of pee. None of the 100 pack of Dixie cups she’d bought months ago were in the bag, though. It wasn’t the kind of thing she’d have thought to pack.

Tearing through the upstairs bathrooms, she found a green plastic cup – probably for rinsing out her mouth – but she’d used it for her toothbrush. Grateful that she hadn’t peed in the middle of the night, she did her best to hold the cup under her urine stream. She looked at the fluted cup, and thanked God that the dishwasher downstairs had a sanitizing cycle. What the Coopers or future guests didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. Warm urine in hand, she realized she’d left the strips downstairs. Her progression down was slower this time, as she dodged Cody’s big head, which could have easily caused a spill in the dog’s eagerness to follow in front.

Hannah peeled back the tiny film covers on both the green and blue sticks and tossed them in. Then she set the timer on the m
icrowave. It was the longest five minutes of her life. She let the dog out, fed him some kibble, and started to unload the dishwasher—then, ding! She ran to the cup.

Memories she’d repressed returned. It was the blue stick she needed. She tossed the green in the trash, and pulled out the blue. There were two lines on the strip, a dark pink line and a lighter one. These damned things hadn’t come with instructions. Putting the stick on a paper towel to absorb the moisture, Hannah ran back upstairs in a flash. She searched her e-mail, banging the keys in frustration as the e-mail program slowly sifted through thousands of messages, none of which was as important as the one she needed. Finally. Hannah found the last order she’d placed for strips and lubricant, clicked on the website and surfed for the instru
ctions.

She looked from the picture clinically labeled “interpretation of results,” to the flimsy stick in her hand. No doubt about it, she was pregnant. Could Michael be the father? The thought flashed through her mind, and she dismissed it as quickly as it had come. Nope, wasn’t possible. The computer clock said it was nearly nine o’clock in the morning. Ben would be at work already, elbow deep in furry pets. The local drugstore didn’t open for an hour. Did she need a twenty-dollar test to confirm what she already knew? The truth was sinking deep into her bones. Did she need to go to a do
ctor? They used the same kind of tests women used at home. During their fertility consultations, she’d been surprised to learn that blood tests had gone the way of the dinosaur. She was no dinosaur.

She snapped the lid of the laptop closed. At least she wasn’t just getting fat.

Ben wouldn’t be back home for nine hours. It was time to call her mom, time difference be damned.

“Mor, are you working?”

“Not today, honey. Axel and I are planning a little weekend getaway to Malmo or thereabouts on the ferry. We’re packing now and will leave first thing in the morning. How are things going with Ben? You’ve been up there for a few weeks.”

“I sang last night.” There was a long pause on the other end of the static free-line. It was nothing like the short, bank busting phone chats of her youth, when they spoke to Mor’s parents. When her mother didn’t speak, she sensed her mounting ambivalence to Hannah performing again. “I wrote a new song—basically telling him that I loved him.”

“Oh, honey—it is so soon. What did he say?”

“Nothing,” she said. Then blurted out, “I’m pregnant.”

Her mother did nothing to hide her sharp intake of breath. “Who is the father?”

“Ben, of course, Mor.”

“Are you sure?”

“Michael and I haven’t been intimate like that for a while,” Hannah said. It was a partial lie. The truth was far too humiliating to share.

“You never said. I thought with you trying for a baby…” Mor let the sentence hang.

“Can I come see you?” The ache to see her mother, pounded in her chest. A need to be loved and cared for unconditionally seared through her heart. Thoughts of people speaking in her native to
ngue, the sounds so familiar. She missed the smoked fish, strong coffee, and even the cold weather with an acuteness she hadn’t felt in years. It would be perfect. She could live with her mother, have the baby in a country with great health care, her mom could help her watch the baby. She could truly get a new start this time.

“I think you need to stay where you are,” Mor said, sending Hannah’s burgeoning fantasy crashing back down to earth. Her mother was right, of course. Hannah had already tried running away from one problem, and she’d landed here. Flying away would do no good.

“Any advice?”

“Tell him tonight about the baby, about Michael—all of it.” That the best relationships were built on truth went unspoken. She took half the advice.

***

During their short relationship, Ben had done all the cooking, because he was good at it and liked it. Except for chicken or tuna salad, Hannah hadn’t really cooked for him. In southern California, building big kitchens was a sport—actually using them for coo
king—not so much. When times were lean, when jazz wasn’t very popular in the 1980s and when her Dad finally left, her mom did all the cooking. Hannah had grown up with lots of smoked fish, hard bread, and Danish meatballs—which were much better than the Swedish ones.

She had no idea how Ben really felt about her, and no idea how he’d take this second punch in the one-two combination she was about to deliver. But she had to assume it would all be better with food and alcohol.

After leaving a message at his office asking him to join her for dinner at her place, she turned off her phone, opened the freezer, and got to work. When the doorbell rang that evening, she was putting the finishing touches on the simple dinner she’d prepared.

Suddenly shy, Hannah dried her sweaty palms on her jeans, and opened the door. “Hi.” Ben fidgeted with his jacket. He looked almost as nervous as she felt. “Come on in. I made dinner—a real dinner.”

Ben patted Cody and wrestled a little with the rambunctious adolescent on the floor. No matter how many walks she took the dog on, his energy seemed boundless. If the goofy doggy smile was any indication, he liked Ben’s companionship as much as she did.

“Hope you’re hungry,” she said before returning to the kitchen.

“Hannah, I…”

“Ben, there’s plenty of time for talking. Let me get this food on the table.”

He opened the fridge and took out a bottle of red wine. “This okay?”

She stirred the sauce on the stove. “When I was a kid, no self respecting Dane would have had wine with dinner. It was beer all the way, but I think they’ve changed.”

He left the kitchen with the uncorked wine and glasses in hand. She brought the food to the table.

“Wow, what’s this?”

“It’s
stegt flæsk
—fried pork slices,” she translated. “It’s boiled potatoes with
persille sovs
—um, parsley sauce, I guess.”

Ben dug in as though he’d been down in the mines for twelve hours, instead of an office for eight. “This is really good.” Hannah
tried the food. It wasn’t as good as her mom’s cooking. Still, it reminded her of home.

“Thanks.” They finished the simple dinner in record time. She’d planned to talk to him after dinner, and that time had come upon her like a speeding freight train. She jumped up from the t
able like she’d been bitten in the ass. “I made dessert, too. It’s
æblekage
—apple crumble would be the best way to describe it.” Hannah practically ran into the kitchen and poured them each a glass of wine, a German dessert white this time, and brought the fruit and cream filled mugs to the couch. As soon as she set it all on the coffee table and put the tray she’d used on the floor, Ben grabbed her hand.

“Stop running, Hannah,” Ben said, his deep voice as serious and solemn as she’d ever heard. “I love you, too.” That bass v
ibrated down her spine like it always did, resonating deep inside.

All the nerves fell away, and she fell back into the couch c
ushions. “You don’t have to…I didn’t mean for you to feel…The song…” Obligation is what she couldn’t quite get out. She didn’t want him to feel obligated to say he loved her. She loved him, and that for now was enough.

“I love you, Hannah Keesling,” he said again. Michael’s last name at the end of the declaration put a small chink in her buoyant mood.

“Ben, I need to tell you something.” His face took on the same perplexed look she’d seen at the Blue Monk. She plowed on before he could say any more. Her courage screwed up, she plunged in. “The thing is…I’m pregnant.”

***

Ben had learned about the birds and the bees when he was six and a half years old and a precocious eight-year-old Abbe had taken him aside and spilled the beans. He’d literally studied the mating habits of birds, bees, and other animals while in college and veterinary school at Cornell. But the idea that his own actions could result in an actual baby, floored him. Knowing something
could
happen and to have it
actually
happen were two completely different things.

“When was…do you think…probably the fireplace, huh?” He said, sounding clueless to his own ears.

Hannah didn’t answer. She held her throat, like an entire frog had jumped in there. Her head went up and down in a nod.

Nothing that had happened in his life before today had prepared him for this moment. Somehow he suspected what happened right now would chart his future. He wanted to do the right thing. Ben didn’t know what that was so he did the only thing he knew how.

“Come here.” He pulled Hannah into his arms, holding her tight. He kissed the top of her curly hair, and her forehead, and her cheeks. Finally, he did the one thing he probably knew he shouldn’t, the one thing that had gotten them into this predicament. He kissed her full on the mouth, deepening the kiss when she opened for him. She tasted like apples, and bacon, and the woman he loved.

She pulled back when their breathing became labored.

“Are you mad?” Hannah asked. Her husky voice was unusually tentative.

“Mad with wanting you,” Ben said. Her announcement hadn’t dampened the feeling he had for her by one iota. He wanted to get
her upstairs and naked as fast as he could. Ben was done talking for now and leaned in to kiss this beautiful woman again and again. They were both breathing heavily and naked from the waist up before they made it upstairs. He worked as quickly as possible to get the rest of their clothes off. He wanted to possess her, brand her as his. He sucked her tongue. He sucked her very sensitive nipples. He sucked the ultra sensitive flesh between her legs. And she came for him. When he plunged into her, unsheathed for the second time, her heat and wetness nearly sent him spiraling out of control. But he grasped her hips and held on, grinding into her time and again. If this was the beginning of the rest of his life, it was starting out right.

Two hours later, sated and drowsy, he heard Hannah shifting next to him in the bed. “No really, Ben, I need to know. Are you mad?”

“What’s there to be angry about?” Ben asked.

Hannah hesitated. She was in deep, and each step could be the difference between drowning and saving herself.

“You never held Logan. You didn’t even look at him.”

“You know how I feel about Marty, Hannah.”

“Logan isn’t Marty. He’s a baby that can’t help who he’s related to.”

A deep sigh escaped Ben. “And?”

“You said that you were happy that you and Samara didn’t have kids.”

He placed a palm on each side of Hannah’s smooth face. “I
am
glad I didn’t have a baby with Samara. I never took a single chance when we were together. I was never so…overcome that I wanted to.” He smoothed away the wrinkles that puckered between her eyebrows. “I’m sitting next to the woman I love and she’s going to have our baby.”