“Weak?” Jesus, did she have any idea how hard this was for him? “I’m trying to do the right thing, Kari. Or at least figure out what the right thing to do is and then do it. That’s the opposite of weak. It’s damn hard.”
She took a deep breath, seeming to gather herself. “Okay, but why are you trying to do it by yourself?”
“What do you mean?”
“If we’re a couple…” God, how he hated that If. But, at the same time, she was right. “…Don’t I get a say? Especially since you seem to be trying to—God forbid—try to protect me. And I’ve been a grown woman for a long time now. I don’t need protecting.”
“But I’m just not good at this.” He stepped closer to her, as if physical proximity would get her to see, to understand.
“Fine. Were you always good at being a dad?”
That stopped him.
She gave a curt little nod. “I didn’t think so. You didn’t know what you were doing and you were lost and probably scared out of your mind half the time at first.”
Half the time. Hah. She didn’t know how terrified he’d been. All the time.
She went on. “But you cared enough to work at it. To get better at it. What hurts isn’t so much that you might misunderstand me, but that you don’t care enough to try to get better at—” Her jaws clamped together and she didn’t finish.
“Better at what?” Better at loving you? Because oh, hell. That’s what this was. He wasn’t afraid of hurting her. Well, he was. But that wasn’t the real fear, the big fear.
He was afraid of falling in love with her. Afraid of her hurting him. But it was too late. His foolish, hammering heart might as well not be in his own chest anymore. It was already halfway to being hers. Maybe more than halfway.
“Why don’t you go home and think about it?” she asked, her voice soft, not answering his question, her eyes not meeting his.
He wanted to press her, to force her to answer his question. Better at what, Kari? But she was in full Viking Shield Maiden stance, standing with her feet apart, arms folded across her chest, not meeting his eyes. Impermeable.
“Kari. I want—” He stopped. Her hand rested on his chest. She looked at it as if she was memorizing the details of that hand: the long, tapering fingers, the work-roughened cuticles, the thin gold band around her pinky finger.
“Don’t be impulsive. Don’t just say any old thing. Please. Go home and think. Do some soul-searching. Call a friend if you need to. But don’t speak now without thinking.” There was no quaver to her voice, no outward display of emotion. But she still wouldn’t meet his eyes.
He wasn’t sure what it meant that direct, straightforward Kari couldn’t meet his gaze. But he knew what he hoped it might mean.
“Okay.” Rob’s voice was low, almost intense. The dog took that moment to poke his long nose into the back of Rob’s knee and he staggered a bit, leaning into her palm. She remembered that first morning in her kitchen, his shirt riding up to show a strip of belly, her wondering what the rest of him might look like. Well, now she knew. And the knowledge made her die a little bit inside, knowing that memory might be all that was left to her.
He straightened, moving away from her a little. “Sorry. Hugo’s probably feeling a call of nature. We didn’t get to finish our walk.”
She nodded, dropping her hand and taking a step back. “Okay. Give me a call or something when you’ve had a chance to think.”
“You can always call me if you need anything.” Oh, God. That sounded like goodbye. Kari tried to re-freeze the cracking, melting, shattering feeling in her heart. To shore it up with a frosty line of defense.
“No, I can’t,” she said.
“Sure you can.”
She finally met his gaze. His dark eyes were fanned with laugh lines, though his mouth was unsmiling. She tilted her head, irritated. “I don’t have your number, so no. I literally can’t.”
He gave a soft, mirthless laugh. “That’s right. I’m sorry.” He dug in his pockets, then slapped his thighs in frustration. “I left mine in the house.”
You could write it down, she thought. But if this was about him deflecting, not wanting her to call, she was going to let him go. The idea that she might be clingy or needy as he peeled himself out of her grasping hands was too mortifying to think about.
“I’ll text you,” he said.
She nodded, her chin coming forward as if she believed him. “Sure.”
His hand came up, hovered as if to cup her face, then fell as the dog gave a whine and poked him again. “I have to take care of Hugo. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Sure,” she said again. And with a few strides, he and the dog were at her front door and gone.
Kari’s knees were suddenly weak. She dropped to an armchair and sat, the icy defense she had assembled melting away as she took in how empty her little house felt. She supposed she ought to…think about making dinner or something. But she didn’t feel like it. The hollow feeling inside her had nothing to do with hunger.
Rising to her feet, she went to the sofa and tucked the knitting project away. Creativity wasn’t in her now, not even the mindless creativity of doing something she’d done more than a hundred times. Television didn’t appeal. Neither did reading. The only thing that sounded even marginally appealing was going to sleep and waking up after a long enough period that she just forgot that she and Rob had ever had anything. Dragging herself to the bedroom, she flopped down on the bed and rolled over, grabbing a pillow to her. The smell of Rob—his shampoo, his soap, the elusive aroma of his skin—drifted from the pillowcase.
Crap.
Getting up again she started to strip the pillowcase off when her phone chimed from her pocket. She pulled it out and stared at it. On the screen was a text from an unknown number.
This isn’t me being impulsive. This is me saying I want to try. It scares me to death, but I want to try. —Rob
Rob breathed as if he had been running and he gripped his phone so hard his hand ached. There. He’d done it. He’d done the scary thing, ripped the band-aid off, put himself out there. Before he could wonder how she’d respond, his phone rang. He looked at the screen.
Liz. Oh, perfect.
He raised the phone to his ear. “This is Rob.”
“New York, Rob? She’s moving to New York?” Liz’s voice rang in his ear.
“And hello to you, Liz.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? Why am I the last to know? What the hell is going on?” Liz’s voice was low, intense. He could probably count on one hand the number of times Liz had yelled in front of him. Well, at him.
Rob closed his eyes and counted to ten. “Last I checked, Mia was an emancipated adult. I didn’t know she hadn’t told you about her move yet, and it isn’t my business to relay her news to you or anyone.”
“Adult? Rob, she’s a child.”
“She’s older than we were when she was born.”
“Exactly. A child.”
Rob rubbed his eyes. In the kitchen, Hugo started noisily lapping water from his bowl. “I’m not going to argue with you about Mia’s decisions. If you take issue with them, you’re going to have to talk to her.”
“I can’t. She hung up on me. And now she’s not taking my calls.”
And you want me to mediate? Rob was the last person to be able to navigate this tricky situation. “Give her some time. She’s awfully busy right now with packing and settling up her affairs here.”
Hugo chose that moment to bellow a powerful woof at a squirrel he could see through the sliding glass door that looked out on the patio.
“Is that her dog?” Liz asked.
The question surprised Rob. Her voice sounded flat, like all the previous fight had gone out of her. Rob felt a little sorry for Liz, out in St. Louis. He’d hate to be so far from Mia that he had to fly to see her. And now Mia was moving even further away from her mother. It didn’t make a practical or logistical difference, but it was sure to make a psychological one with Liz in the mental state she was in.
“Yeah. Hugo’s going to live with me. She can’t keep him in the place she’s going to be renting up there. With friends. Known friends. College friends. Not people she found at random off the internet.”
Liz sighed audibly. "Thank you. I hadn’t been able to get that much out of her when we talked.”
Translation: You flew off the handle before she told you anything more than, “I’m moving to New York, Mom.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. An awkward silence stretched between them. His heart gave a little pang. Silences were hardly ever awkward with Kari. They were purposeful and tactical sometimes, but not awkward.
Liz cleared her throat. “How’ve you been?”
Rob blinked and resisted the urge to inquire if she’d really just asked him that. He was pretty sure she hadn’t asked after him in the twenty years since they divorced. “Fine. Thank you. How are you? How’s Hank?”
“He’s well. We’re well. Did you…did you ever end up with someone?”
Rob sank into a chair. The world was upside down. “Sort of. Just recently. It’s a little up in the air right now.”
He waited for her to make a snide comment about him fucking it up. Again. Instead, she said, “I hope it works out.”
“Liz, are you okay?” This conversation was going places he never thought he’d ever go with her.
She laughed softly. “Yeah.”
“So what’s with the sudden…” He searched for the words. “Not hating me?”
“Therapy. Anyway, I never hated you. I was mad at you for a lot of years. Jealous of you.”
Rob paused and tried to let that sink in. “Jealous? Why?”
A soft sigh sounded in his ear. “Partly because you and Mia seemed to have an easier relationship than she and I did. You always got along more easily. And partly because we split everything fifty/fifty, but when you had Mia, people called it ‘babysitting.’ And while you were getting pats on the back for ‘babysitting,’ I was a terrible, unnatural mother for being glad to have a week to catch up with my own life.”
Christ. It was almost exactly what Kari had said.
“I’m sorry about that.”
“Not your fault. Anyway. I hope this works out however you want it to.”
“Thanks. I’m glad you finally found a good husband.”
“Did you think you were a bad husband?” Liz sounded genuinely surprised.
“Wasn’t I?”
“No. You weren’t the right husband for me, but that didn’t make you a bad husband. In fact, I’m pretty sure you’d make someone else a great husband.”
“A little late for that, even if I wanted to get married again.”
“Well. Like I said, I hope it works out for you. Whatever that looks like.”
“Thanks.” Another pause, but this time it was companionable, not awkward. “Take care of yourself, Liz.”
“You too.”
Rob sat and stared at the darkened screen of his phone for a long time after that.