“Yeah. He was more important than a girls’ night.” I swish my hand through the water. “You were a good dad, too.”
He coughs. “Thanks. I feel like I wasn’t around much, though.”
“Yeah, but you were there. We had a whole month before training camp started to just be parents. Lots of people don’t get that. And then things got busy, but when you were home, you changed diapers and gave him baths and played with him.”
He’s silent for so long, I think the conversation has ended, but then he says, “Sometimes, it felt like I was outside of the bond between you and him.”
I shift sideways in the tub so I can see Carson’s face without clouds of steam in front of it. “That’s normal, I think. A mom’s relationship with the baby has to be close. He grew in my body. I nursed him.”
“Yeah. And I knew that.” He meets my eyes. “I didn’t blame you for that.”
“Okay, good.”
“I liked having times with him that weren’t work… Does that make sense? Work, like changing diapers or trying to get him to stop crying. I liked having time that was just us being together. Having fun.”
Something twists in my chest. He never told me that before. “Yeah. That totally makes sense.”
I often think about what might have been—Kane growing up, learning to ride a bike, starting school, peeing on the toilet seat. Does Carson think about that, too? Does he mourn not teaching Kane to skate and play hockey? An ache develops in my chest.
Is it a good thing we’re managing to talk about Kane? Even a little? I don’t know. It feels like progress.
But progress toward what? Our marriage is over.
“Remember the time we were at a party and there were like twelve of us in the hot tub and I started feeling up your thigh? Only it wasn’t your thigh, it was Megan Shaw’s thigh?”
He chuckles. “Yeah. And she said it was the most action she’d had in a while and Shawzy got pissed off.”
I laugh, too. “We had some fun parties.” That’s something else I miss: the other WAGs and the socializing and the camaraderie of the team… almost like another family. I wasn’t the captain’s wife, who is often the one who coordinates things, but… I was the one who coordinated things. “Remember the baby shower they threw for us?”
“Are we going on a trip down memory lane tonight?” Carson asks.
“I guess so.” I smile crookedly. “There are bad things to remember, but there are also a lot of good things.”
He nods slowly. “That is true.”
“They wouldn’t let me do anything for the shower and I was dying to know what they were planning. But it turned out to be hilarious.”
He grins. “I liked the drinking out of baby bottles contest.”
“I don’t think it was supposed to be booze in the bottles.”
“That’s what made it fun.”
I laugh. “Then you guys changing the diaper on a doll blindfolded to see who could do it fastest. Oh my God, I was dying. I was afraid I was going to go into labor right then.”
Somehow, we’ve drifted closer together. More memories rush back. Those times in the hot tub at our, I mean Carson’s house in Salmon Arm. We didn’t sit on opposite sides of the tub; I spent a lot of time in his lap. Between his thighs. Bent over the side of the tub.
“I’m getting hot,” I say. “Maybe we should get out.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
I stand and turn to climb out. But the blood from my head rushes downward and everything spins. My vision darkens from the outside edges in and then everything is black.
14
CARSON
I stand at the same time as Ayla, ready to give her a hand to exit the hot tub, which is why I’m quick to catch her when she slips, saving her from crashing onto the concrete around the tub. “Jesus Christ. What are you…”
