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“I guess I’ll have to go to the grocery store before dinner,” he said as Lisa entered the kitchen.
“I guess you will,” she said, placing the booster seat on a chair at the table. “Emma is up in her new room putting her books on the shelf. That room is ready for a baby. You’ll have to take the crib down and put up her bed. I assume you have a single bed somewhere…or I could put her in one of the other bedrooms for tonight if needed.”
He let the fridge door close. Memories rushed him. The hours his wife had spent painting the room, the bookshelves they’d scoured antiques shops looking for, the hours spent huddled over wallpaper samples. All of it for a baby they’d never had. He choked back his sorrow, seeking to answer as normally as possible. “I’ll put the twin beds back and take the crib out.”
Lisa gave him a sad smile. “You can tell me to mind my business, but in a way, this is my business because of Emma. You need to make amends with Grace. You can’t go on living like this. And neither can Grace.”
“But if she wanted to be here, she would be. I pleaded with her to stay. She chose to go.”
“So now we’re going to do the I-can’t-do-anything-because-she-walked-out-on-me dance?” Lisa asked, a disgusted look on her face.
He looked at her and realized that no one had ever talked to him the way she did. She could have stayed out of it, and in fact, he’d started out wishing she would. But she was helping him see what a mess he’d made of things, and she was right. “Thanks, Lisa. I’m going to call her right now and see if she will meet me somewhere, anywhere we can talk.”
He picked up the phone and dialed Grace’s cell phone. When it continued to ring, he started to worry. She knew he was coming back. Had she decided not to take calls from him? How could he make amends if she didn’t talk to him?
As his call went to voice mail, he felt so isolated, the feeling of the distance growing between them becoming more acute. What if she wasn’t willing to sort things out because she had gone to a divorce lawyer?
An empty sensation settled in his stomach at the thought. What a fool he’d been. Grace had been very upset about the office thing, and he’d done little or nothing to assuage her feelings. If he didn’t hear from her soon, he would call Lucas and invite himself over to the condo. He’d stay right there until Grace was willing to talk to him. In the meantime, he’d keep trying to reach her.
* * *
TO EASE HER BOREDOM, Grace decided to watch an old movie. She’d poured a glass of wine and was about to settle in front of the TV when her cell phone rang again. Aidan.
Undecided as to whether she wanted to talk to him, she let it ring. Then, feeling a need to hear how he was doing, she picked it up.
“Grace, I just arrived, and wanted to see you. I miss you. I need to talk to you. Going on Skype with you in Deidre’s office was wrong—I was an insensitive idiot.”
“Aidan, will you slow down?”
“Sorry. I was afraid you might hang up before I said what I needed to.”
“Aidan, I think that what you need to do right now is look after Emma.”
“But I thought you wanted to talk, to work on things. You told me that I was making decisions without you, but I’m not. I want to hear you say that you’re willing to work with me to fix our life,” he said desperately. “I can’t live without you—”
She heard screaming in the background and realized that Emma was upset. “Sounds like you have your hands full.”
He sighed. “Yeah, we got in about an hour ago. I need to get a few groceries so Lisa can make dinner. Emma is exhausted from the drive, and to be honest, so am I. She cried, sang or talked the entire way. My ears are hurting. Seriously.”
