The Miles Between Us (8 page)

It took a while, but h
e finally made his escape, slipped on his Oakleys and melted into the sidewalk crowd. He felt all weird and jangly inside. Agitated, yet at the same time, more like himself than he had in so long he couldn’t remember. Where the hell had the real Rob MacKenzie gone? What had happened to that absolute certainty that made him who he was? When had he stopped being the guitar wizard and become—

Dull
. Boring. Stagnant.

He’d never thought of himself as an adrenalin junkie
. That had been Danny’s gig. Rob had been so much more—and so much less—than that. Never one to hold back, he’d gone after what he wanted in life. First, it had been the music. And then it had been Casey. But it seemed that somewhere along the way, he’d given up the one for the other. It was dangerous territory he trod these days.

Fame hadn’t matter
ed to him, not one bit. Nor had the money, not if you really wanted to be honest. It was a perk, one he enjoyed, but one he could have lived without, as long as he still had the music. He’d given up performing because of the bullshit that went along with the money and the fame. And he hadn’t missed the bullshit. Giving it up had been a relief.

But the connection with the audience
—that was a whole different thing, and until today, he’d forgotten what it felt like. The rush. The outpouring of love. The absolute understanding that flowed both ways, from the stage to the audience and back. The people, the ones who knew every word of every song he and Casey had written, every note of every song he and Danny had turned into household words. The fans who refused to stay in their seats, standing instead in a crowded, hot, overpriced venue, singing along with them as they played.

Until this moment, he hadn’t realize
d how much he’d missed it.

Casey

The sheet draped over
Casey’s bare knees professed to offer some kind of modesty, but it was false modesty at best. Hunched over on the rolling stool between her thighs, Doctor Deb said, “I’m going to palpate your abdomen. You let me know if anything hurts.”

“Fine.
” She pretended that the photo taped to the ceiling above the examining table, a shot of two divers exploring a coral reef, was so fascinating it trumped the indignity of a pelvic exam.

“Any tenderness here?” Deb said, prodding with two hands.

“No.”

“Good
. Here?”

“No.”

“Excellent. Everything looks good. Pink and healthy and healed. No spotting?”

“No.”

“Everything okay at home?”

“Everything’s fine.”

“Emma doing well?”

“Emma’s fine.”

Deb poked a little more. “Everything okay between you and Rob?”

“Of course
. Why?”

“Idle chitchat
. Does this hurt?”

“No.”

“Good. How are you holding up?”

“Why are you asking me all these questions?”

Deb rolled away, peeled off her gloves, and rummaged on a nearby table, returning with a packet of tissues. “You lost a baby two weeks ago,” she said, handing the tissues to Casey. “It’s okay if you’re not okay.” She patted Casey’s knee. “Go ahead and get dressed and meet me in my office.”

She hadn’t come here prepared for the Spanish Inquisition.
Casey sat quietly in Deb’s office, her purse on the floor by her feet. Deb breezed in, her lab coat unbuttoned and a wavy strand of red hair escaping from the bun she’d wound it into. “I’m surprised Rob didn’t come with you today,” she said.

“He and the girls are in New York.”

Deb’s eyebrows arched. “And they left you here all by yourself?”

“
I’m just here for the day. I’m flying back tonight. He’s producing an album for Phoenix Hightower. He didn’t want to leave me here alone. He worries.”

“Understandably.” Deb steepled her fingers and swiveled in her chair
. “You’re cleared to resume normal sexual activity. If anything hurts, stop doing it. If it continues to hurt, make an appointment to see me.”

“Fine.”

“So.” Deb stared at her, unblinking, for so long that Casey began to squirm. “What’s the game plan for birth control?”

She sat up a little straighter
. “There is no game plan.”

“
Then we have to come up with one. Because I don’t want you even thinking about getting pregnant again. Not for a long, long time, if ever. Two miscarriages in such a short time have undoubtedly wrought havoc on your body. Especially at your age.”

Casey opened her mouth to protest, but Deb held up a hand to stop her
. “I’m not implying that you’re old, so you can get off your high horse. But you’re also not twenty any longer. You have to give your body time to rest and recuperate. Six months, minimum. Never again would be optimum.”

“Now you sound like Rob.”

“Listen to him. He’s a smart man.”

Casey raised her chin
. “I’m not going to stop trying.”

“
I do understand.” Deb’s eyes softened. “I spent my twenties in medical school, residency, internship. Now, here I am in my mid-thirties, working night and day to establish a steady medical practice. My biological clock is ticking like crazy. And I have no husband, no significant other, nobody waiting for me at home except my cat. I deliver babies for a living. I understand your baby hunger better than most women.”

For a moment, she felt a kinship she’d never before felt with
Dr. Deb Levasseur. For the first time, they were connecting woman-to-woman, instead of doctor-to-patient, and she could clearly see the pain in Deb’s eyes. “Then you surely understand why I won’t quit.”

“There are other options
. Adoption. Surrogacy. Foster parenting. You have a beautiful little girl, a lovely teenage stepdaughter. Why put yourself through this when you already have children?”

“In other words, why am I being so greedy?”

“That’s not what I’m saying, Casey. I’m saying that you’re a warm, loving woman with a huge heart. You and Rob have a beautiful family. I’m only suggesting that if you feel a need to expand that family, you might consider other options that won’t destroy your body.”

“I wish I could explain why I need another
baby so much. But I can’t. And as much as I’d love any child, I need that baby to be mine. Mine and Rob’s. There’s this hole inside me that won’t be satisfied, won’t be filled, until I hold another baby in my arms.”

“And where does it st
op, Casey? How do you know that one more baby will satisfy it?”

She met Deb’s eyes with a level gaze
. “I don’t.”

De
b picked up a pen from her desk and clicked it once. Twice.

“Listen,” Casey said
. “I gave up everything that mattered to me when I married Danny. It was an idiotic thing to do, but I was young and madly in love and I didn’t know any better. When I finally thought I’d caught that brass ring, it was taken away from me.

“
And now, I have Rob. My husband’s a good man. They don’t make them any better. But sometimes I think that if I let him, he’d sit down beside me at the table, cut my steak for me, and feed it to me, bite by bite. He loves me, I understand that. And I love him. But he’s not responsible for my happiness, any more than I’m responsible for his. This is what I want. I can’t explain why. I shouldn’t have to explain why. All I know is that I refuse to be treated like a child who doesn’t know what she wants. This is my life, and people need to let me follow my own path.”

“I
won’t argue with that. However, I will urge you to be careful. Because I’d like to keep seeing your smiling face for a good, long time.”

“Fine
. I’ll be careful. But I won’t let you or Rob or anybody else dictate how I should live my life.”

“All right, then
. I think we understand each other. Now let’s move along and talk about birth control.”

“I won’t use anything that I can’t stop at a moment’s notice
. Nothing invasive, nothing that could make it more difficult to conceive when I’m ready to try again. That means no shots, no implants, no pills, no IUD.”

Dryly, Deb said, “Doesn’t leave us much to work with.”

“I was thinking of a diaphragm.”

“A diaphragm has side effects.”

She wrinkled her brow. “Such as?”

“Such as pregnancy
. In other words, you won’t bother to use it.”

“Why wouldn’t I bother to use it?”

“If you’d ever had to peel one off the bathroom wall, you wouldn’t ask that question. Why not an IUD? Once it’s in there, you just forget about it. When you’re ready, you make an appointment, come into my office, and we pull it out.”

“I’ve heard it can take longer to conceive after using one of those things.”

“No more so than the pill. And it’s just as effective, if not more. Plus, you don’t have to remember to take it every day. It’s pretty much foolproof.”

“I’ll have to think it over
. I’m not ready yet to make a decision.”

“Fine,” Deb said
. “You don’t have to decide today. But don’t take too long. And for the love of God, use something in the meantime. Because your body is nowhere near ready for another pregnancy.” Deb studied her for a moment. “Can I ask a question?”

“
You seem to have done quite well at it so far.”

“It just seems to me that
up until you went all
I Am Woman
on me, you were a little…subdued. Not your usual pleasant, chatty self.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Let’s see if I can explain this better. ‘How are you?’ ‘Fine.’ ‘How’s Emma?’ ‘Fine.’ ‘Are you and Rob okay?’ ‘We’re fine.’  It’s not like you. So naturally, as your doctor and your friend, I’m concerned. Are you eating? Sleeping? Having crying jags? Are you and Rob fighting? You wouldn’t be the first couple to experience marital discord after miscarrying a baby.”

She raised her head, drew back her shoulders, and said, “I. Am. Absolutely. Fine.”

“Well, now, you see, that’s what worries me. You just lost a baby. Your second one in less than six months. Most people in your place would not be fine.”

“I’m a rock
. I’ve always been a rock.”

“I know that
. I also know that even a rock has its breaking point.”

“I
’m not planning to break.” She punctuated her statement by bending down and picking up her purse from the floor. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

“All right, then
. I’ll stop worrying. Just remember, my door is always open. Promise me one thing.”

Casey stood, shouldered the purse, and said, “What’s that?”

“If you find yourself needing help of any kind, please get it.”

* * *

The apartment was empty. No Rob, no Paige, no Emma. It seemed odd, but then, lately it felt as though odd was the new normal. She could have called a taxi, but since she’d spent most of her day closed up in an airplane, it would probably be healthier if she walked over to the recording studio. It was only five blocks. She was tired, but not that tired.

Rush hour in Manhattan was not the time to take a leisurely stroll
. Then again, there was never a time when Manhattan wasn’t crowded, and nobody took a leisurely stroll here unless they wanted to be mowed down. Bankers and office drones and secretaries wearing flat-soled athletic shoes, their pumps tucked away in brightly-colored tote bags, streamed from office buildings and into the subway. Intent on their destinations, they rudely elbowed her out of the way, clearly irritated by this woman who had the audacity to take up a minimal amount of space on a sidewalk the locals considered their own.

Five blocks in Manhattan, even at a brisk pace, took a few minutes
. A half-block shy of the cross street where the studio was located, she glanced randomly at a shop window and came to an abrupt halt. “Jesus, lady,” said the man behind her, sidestepping her with a furious scowl. “You wanna go window shopping, do it when people aren’t trying to get somewhere.”

She flipped him the bird
. It was a significant moment in her life, the first time she’d ever done such a thing. She’d thought about it a time or two, but had never had the
chutzpah
to pull it off. Rob would be shocked. Or, more likely, pleased by this minor foray outside her comfort zone.

Her act of defiance, unnoticed by its target, died a quick death when she
crossed the sidewalk, threaded her way through people, and stood there, her heart melting at the display of tiny ruffled dresses, sailor suits, and snazzy pink sneakers.
Oh, Baby!
was the name of the place, and without conscious thought, she moved to the door and stepped inside.

A bell tinkled overhead, and the
handsome young sales clerk, busy ringing up a customer, gave her a brief nod of acknowledgment. He had to be from somewhere else. Northern New England, or maybe the Midwest. In Manhattan, where people lived next door to each other for decades without ever meeting, a nod was almost as intimate as a marriage proposal. Casey wandered the aisles, fingering terrycloth bibs and soft, stretchy little onesies and fuzzy, multi-colored socks. The store carried designer diaper bags and fancy bottle sterilizers, and a room in the back held high-end strollers and walkers and crib mobiles that played
Baa Baa Black Sheep
when you wound them up.

Without warning, a black, yawning hole opened up inside her, the sense of loss so great it threatened to suffocate her
. Was this the end of her dreams? Was it truly possible that she, who had so much love to give, would have only one child to give that love to?

Her
eyes, those traitorous eyes, filled with tears. Mortified, she turned and stumbled out of the store, leaned against the brick wall of the building next to it and sobbed into her open palms.

Because this was Manhattan, nobody paid any attention to the weeping woman who could no more explain why she was crying than
she could discuss, with even a modicum of understanding, Einstein’s theory of relativity. Both were cloudy, amorphous, and inexplicable.

She cried until there were no more tears, and then she pulled a tissue from her purse—for she always carried tissues in her purse—and wiped her face and blew her nose, right there on the street
. When she was done, she tucked the snot-and-tear-encrusted tissue back into her purse and continued on her way.

Rob was in studio D, his swivel chair leaned back, feet propped on the
desk in front of him, while behind the glass, in the isolation booth, Phoenix Hightower warbled something that vaguely resembled music. She let herself in, held the door while it closed, whisper soft, behind her. Took a look around the room, wondering who all these spare people were: a huge black man wearing a suit and a stony expression, a slender Asian woman whose painted-on eyebrows gave her a look of perpetual surprise, a young man whose red eyes and messy hair made him appear either hung over or sleep deprived, and a doe-eyed teenage girl who could have been a poster child for bulimia. Moving smoothly and soundlessly to her husband, Casey rested her hands on his shoulders and whispered, “Hey.”