Chapter 181
Despite her
worries of being alone, Claire thought she had handled her temporary separation
from Jamie over the last month or so fairly well, maybe because Jamie had made
it easy for her by acting the part of the asshole so well that she didn’t want
to be around him. In any case, being
several states away from her husband turned out to be far easier than being a
few miles away from her premature twin babies.
Claire
found this out the next morning, when she was discharged from the hospital and
sent home without them.
She cried
in the NICU when she went to say goodbye, then cried the whole way home too, as
her parents drove her back to the condo.
“Sweetie,
you’re not far from the hospital; we can be there in a matter of minutes if we
need to be. You’ll still be able to go
and visit them all the time, especially once you’re all healed up,” her father
tried to reassure her, smiling at her in the rearview mirror. But her mother didn’t say much of anything,
seeming to understand much better how hard this was for her. Claire supposed it was a “mom” thing.
Once back
at the condo, her mom helped her into bed and made sure she was comfortable,
tucking her in and fussing over her the way she always had when Claire was
sick, whether it was the flu as a child or leukemia as an adult. Now, Claire thought, she should be the
one putting her own daughters to bed… but instead, the twin cribs lay empty,
her babies slept in plastic boxes at the hospital, and she wouldn’t be up for
taking care of anyone until she finished recovering from the C-section. Dr. Valerio said it would take six to eight
weeks, but Claire was hoping to be back to normal in a month.
Even so,
four weeks seemed like a long time – and even longer when she realized that
Caitlin and Delaine might very well still be in the hospital a month from
then. After all, even then it would
still be a month before their original due date, which had not been until the
end of March.
Sighing, as
she lay uncomfortably in her bed, Claire wished it could be March now. After having lain around this condo for the
better part of two months already, the thought of another month or more of
taking it easy was torturous. Then
again, she certainly didn’t feel like moving around much either; it still felt
like her guts were going to come spilling out of her incision every time she
got up or rolled over or laughed or coughed, even though Dr. Valerio had
checked her over and removed the staples just that morning. It was frustrating because if not for her
need to heal, she would be able to spend time at the hospital with her babies
as often as she liked.
Determined
to keep herself occupied, Claire tried reading, then watching TV. Neither one could hold her attention, so
finally she adjusted her pillows and maneuvered herself so that she was sitting
up more in bed, then called her mother to bring back her knitting gear. At least, she thought, she would have plenty
of time to finish the booties and blankets she had wanted to make for the twins.
She knitted
obsessively all afternoon and found that the activity, repetitive though still
requiring her concentration, did help to keep her mind busy and off of the
babies and Jamie and her pain and any of the other things that had been
bothering her. She stopped only to take
her pain medication, use the bathroom, and, in the early evening, to take a
phone call.
When the
phone rang, she set down her skein of pale green yarn just long enough to reach
for the cordless phone next to her bed and glance at the caller ID. Not recognizing the name, she didn’t bother
to answer it. But it cut off after
another ring, and, from a distance, she heard her mother’s muffled voice
answer, “Hello?”
Pausing,
Claire listened to her mother’s side of the conversation.
“No, he’s
not. I believe he’s staying with his
brother right now, but I don’t have the number handy. I’m sure Claire does though; would you like
to talk to her? Yes, she’s home, just
got out this morning. Oh sure, I think
she’ll be up to it… let me see.”
Someone for Jamie, thought Claire, as she heard her
mother’s footsteps approaching.
“Claire?” Her mom’s head poked through the door; she
had her hand cupped over the phone.
“There’s a young man on the phone, wanting to get a hold of Jamie. Can you give him the number?”
“Sure,”
agreed Claire. She picked up the
cordless again and punched the Talk button to turn it on. “Hello?”
She heard a
click as her mom got off the other line, and her footsteps faded.
On the
other end, a vaguely familiar voice said, “Hi, Claire? This is Bill MacLeod… I used to work with
Jamie here in Tampa.”
The words
jarred her memory, and Claire pictured Jamie’s former coworker, a tall,
dorky-looking guy with dark red hair and freckles. She hadn’t known him well, but she’d met him
a few times; she had once gone to a Fourth of July cookout as his house with
Jamie, and he had been at their wedding as well. She remembered him as being very nice. “Oh, hi, Bill!” she said. “How are you?”
“I think I
should be the one asking you that,” chuckled Bill. “I’m fine, but how are you? Congratulations, by the way.”
“Thanks,”
smiled Claire; apparently Bill had been in touch with Jamie
recently. “I’m doing fine.”
“Good. Well, listen, I don’t mean to bother you, but
I’ve been trying to get a hold of Jamie.
He called the other day and gave me this number to reach him at.”
Claire
frowned; that was presumptuous of Jamie, assuming she would let him stay here
again after the way she’d kicked him out on Christmas. Then again, if it hadn’t been for the way
he’d acted at the hospital, she probably would have.
“Oh,” she
said, “well, he’s not staying here right now; his mom’s in town, and they’re
both staying with his older brother, Brad.
Let me get you his number… hang on.”
She picked up her cell phone as well and flipped through her contacts
until she found Brad’s home number. She
read that off to Bill and gave him the number to Jamie’s cell too.
“Thanks so
much,” replied Bill graciously. “I’m
sure I used to have his cell phone number saved, but I must have lost track of
it sometime since the two of you moved.
Hey, how are you liking Des Moines, anyway?”
“It’s… uh…
it’s okay,” answered Claire, feeling awkward because she actually hadn’t been
in Des Moines since before Thanksgiving.
“I can’t say I really miss it right now, though,” she added, as she
thought about how hard it would be to go back once this was all over. That was, if she went back.
Bill
chuckled. “Understandable. Your family’s all down here, right? I think I remember Jamie telling me that. He said you wouldn’t want to move that far
from your family. Not to mention, Iowa’s
no Florida when it comes to weather – not so much sand and sun up there,
right?”
Claire
laughed a little, then immediately regretted it as her incision twinged. Pressing her hand over it, she grimaced and
tried to steady her voice before replying.
“So true. I’m not a big fan of
winter.”
“Me
neither, me neither,” Bill agreed. “I
have to say, I was honestly a little surprised he convinced you.”
“Ha,” said
Claire dryly, not really laughing this time.
“It’s not like it was really a matter of convincing me. I wasn’t gonna let him lose his job; I’m not
that selfish.”
“What? Oh no, I didn’t mean you were selfish,”
said Bill, sounding slightly confused.
“I just meant, when he talked about putting in for the transfer, the
other guys at the office and I were joking around that a girl like you would
never go for it. Like I said, who but
him would choose to move from Florida to Iowa, you know?”
He laughed
again, light-heartedly, but Claire’s heart had suddenly plunged into the pit of
her stomach, which clenched around it.
“What did you say?” she asked, clutching the phone closer to her ear,
hoping that she had somehow misunderstood him.
“Are you saying that Jamie put in for the transfer to Des
Moines? That he requested it?”
“Uh…” Bill sounded very confused now. “Did he, uh, not… tell you that?” He sounded somewhat incredulous, as if he
couldn’t believe a man would do that to his wife.
Claire
began to breathe faster, her heart pounding in the bottom of her stomach. She was about to see red. She couldn’t believe it either, couldn’t
believe that all this time, Jamie had been hiding a lie, a lie he had told to
get her to move all the way to Iowa!
“No,” she
said, managing to sound much calmer than she felt, “he didn’t.”
There was a
brief silence on the other end of the line.
Then Bill said, “Wow… I am so sorry.
I… I guess I shouldn’t have said anything, but… I honestly didn’t know. I assumed you knew… that he told you what he
wanted to do…”
“No, thank
you,” she replied quickly, maintaining the same calmness, knowing she could not
blow up at him, this man who had finally revealed the truth to her. “I’m glad you said something. This is something I should’ve known a long
time ago…”
She trailed
off, and the conversation soon ended, very awkwardly so. Claire couldn’t blame Bill for being in a
hurry to get off the phone after that; so was she. But as soon as she had hung up, she waited barely
two seconds before punching the phone on again and dialing Jamie’s cell phone.
As the
phone rang, she seethed, too worked up to even begin to rehearse what she was
going to say when he answered. What did
it matter? Whatever came out would be a
tribute to how she truly felt, and that was what Jamie needed to hear.
After three
rings, his voice cut in. “Hey, Clairie…
what’s up?” He asked the question
awkwardly, yet with almost his usual casualness, and the fact that he could be
so calm, so unconcerned, as if nothing was wrong, as if he hadn’t been living a
lie for the last however many months, threw her over the edge.
“Here’s
what’s up,” she retorted without missing a beat, the composure she had
maintained with Bill gone. “I’ve got a
question for you, and you better damn well answer me honestly, James.” Without waiting for him to agree, she fired
off, “Did you or did you not request that job transfer to Des Moines?”
There was a
long pause, and for a moment, Claire was afraid he had hung up on her. She was just about to pull the phone away to
check, when his voice responded very quietly, “Who told you that?”
That was
good enough confirmation for Claire; if he hadn’t requested it, or if he’d
wanted to lie to her again, he would have said no. “It doesn’t matter!” she hissed back
fiercely. “You didn’t tell me,
and that’s what matters! You made me
believe that you’d lose your job if we didn’t move! You lied to me, just to get your
fucking way! You dragged me away from my
home, my family, all for nothing!
All because it was what you wanted! You didn’t even care about my
feelings, what I wanted!”
Jamie
didn’t respond at first, didn’t even try to deny it or make excuses for his
lie. And Claire was glad, because that
made her decision all that much easier.
By the time he got around to uttering a weak “I’m sorry, Clairie,” she
had her mind made up.
“No, you’re
not. You’re never sorry, Jamie! You always say that, but then you lie to me
and abandon me! You can’t possibly be
that sorry… but you will be. I’m
through, Jamie. And no fake apologies,
no tears, no lies are going to make me take you back this time. My mind’s made up.”
“What? Claire, no-” Jamie started, but she didn’t
give him a chance to protest. She didn’t
want to hear it, knew she couldn’t stand to hear it.
She hung
up.
But just
like before, acting quickly before she lost her nerve, she turned the phone
right back on and dialed yet another familiar number.
After two
rings, Nick’s voice answered.
Claire took
a steadying breath to get a grip on herself, exhaled through her nose, and
said, “Nick. I need your help.”
“Sure,”
came Nick’s voice, sweet and concerned for her as always. “Anything.
What’s up?”
Claire
spoke loudly and clearly, returning to the same sort of calmness she’d kept
while on the phone with Bill. “I need
you to put me in contact with a good lawyer, here in Tampa.” She paused for a breath, then plunged ahead,
voicing her decision out loud. “I’m
getting a divorce.”
There was a
pause, as Nick seemed to be comprehending what he’d just heard. Then his voice returned to the line, sounding
as if he, too, was trying hard to keep his emotion in check. With him, though, she suspected the emotion
was not rage, but total happiness.
“Claire, baby…”
he said, and she could even hear the grin in his voice, “I’ll get you the best
lawyer money can offer. But you don’t
have to worry ‘bout the money, ‘cause if you’re serious about divorcing that
prick, I’ll gladly pay your legal fees.”
***