Marriage in Jeopardy. Anna Adams

stretched out her legs and smoothed the sheet across her breasts. “I was serious about the third time being the charm. Three threats in five years shouldn’t seem so frightening, but that woman killed our family. I won’t ever forget.”

      “You want me to quit?”

      “Would you?”

      “I don’t think I can.” He’d had one goal since college—to make people who’d grown up the way he had see that they could choose something cleaner, safer. He worked like hell to keep them out of jail and show them they didn’t have to repeat their parents’ mistakes. They didn’t have to give their children dangerous lives. They could keep their families out of the system that had let him down. He cared about those people who were as faceless and nameless as he’d been when his parents had gone to prison for neglecting his sister.

      “Lydia, I can’t stop. What would I do?”

      Tears filled her eyes. She fingered them away. “I’m afraid that if you can’t change, I will. I’ve thought about this all night. We’re about to go home, and I’m not sure there’s a reason to go together.”

      “Nothing like this will happen again. It was an aberration.”

      “It won’t ever happen to me again.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      “MR. QUINCY, if you’ll bring your car to the front entrance, we’ll take Lydia down.” Patty, Lydia’s nurse, took her bag of belongings and passed it, along with the cup of flowers, to Josh. “We’ll meet you at the doors.”

      Josh looked at Lydia, longing in his eyes. They’d finished a wary morning. He’d gathered her things, talked about dinner tonight, assumed they were going home together.

      “Are you all right?” he asked, but she knew he was asking if she’d rather call a cab.

      She hesitated. She couldn’t turn back again. This time, it was give up or give in. “I’m fine.”

      After he turned the corner, Patty put on her reading glasses and peered through several sheets of paper. “Let me see.” She ran her index finger down the print. “Watch for a rise in temperature and extra sensitivity in your abdominal region that might indicate internal bleeding. No sexual relations for six weeks.”

      “No—” She’d almost said “no problem,” but stopped just in time to avoid flinging her dirty laundry at Patty’s feet.

      “These are the numbers for the nurse’s desk and for Dr. Sprague. Call if you have any questions.” Patty took off her specs. “I’m working Monday, Wednesday and Friday from eight until eight.”

      Unexpectedly warmed by an almost-stranger’s concern, Lydia smiled.

      “I’d like to hear how you’re getting along.”

      “I’ll call.”

      “Okay.” Patty looked up as an orderly pushed a squeaking wheelchair into the room. “Shall we?”

      Lydia sat and folded her hands to hide their shaking. The town house hadn’t felt like home since she’d first begun to think about leaving Josh, but if she was starting over she had to go home.

      The trip in the small blue-gray elevator went too quickly. As the doors opened, a cool gust of air blew in. Lydia breathed deep. The orderly pushed her past a long row of wide windows and delivered her to the sidewalk as Josh pulled up in their car.

      “Thanks,” Lydia said to the man behind her, though she avoided his helping hands as she stood.

      “You’re welcome,” he said. “Best of luck.” He nodded to Josh and went back inside.

      “Are you in pain?” Josh opened the passenger’s door.

      She shook her head and let her hair blow across her face. She assumed his tenderness, as he eased her into the seat, was for the baby they weren’t taking home. He pulled her seat belt out, but she fastened it herself. “Thanks,” she said.

      “I’ll take it easy.”

      The bumps in the road didn’t matter. Neither did the stab of pain in her belly when Josh had to slam on the brakes for a VW bug whose driver sped through a red light.

      “Damn it!” His ferocity had nothing to do with the bug’s driver.

      “Can we stop?” She risked her first look at him since they’d left. “I don’t want to go home. I thought I could do it, but…”

      He was clenching his jaw so hard she wouldn’t have been surprised to hear his teeth shatter. He glanced into the rearview mirror and then checked over his shoulder and pulled to the curb. “Where do you want me to take you?”

      She glanced into the backseat. She didn’t even have a sweater. “Nowhere’s practical.”

      “Then come home and think about what you’re doing.”

      “I was trying to, but it doesn’t feel like home.”

      He nodded, a brief jab of his chin in the air. She didn’t blame him.

      “I’m not trying to hurt you on purpose. I just don’t know how to pretend anymore.”

      “And you can’t make up your mind?”

      She looked out at the passing traffic, at the sun that seemed too bright for a day like this, and at a couple strolling by with their young daughter holding their hands.

      “I’m panicking.” She wiped sweat from beneath her bangs. “But I want to be with you. I mean that.”

      “Trust me.”

      “If it were that easy, we wouldn’t be talking about this at all.” She folded her hands in her lap and glanced over her shoulder. “Let’s go. I’m all right. I won’t do this again.”

      “Maybe you shouldn’t promise that.”

      She searched his face for sarcasm but found only compassion. It made a huge difference because fear was driving her, and he had a right to be angry. A chip fell out of her massive store of resentment.

      Still, she clung to the sides of her seat when he parked in front of the town house. “I’m glad none of the neighbors are out.”

      He nodded and pulled the keys from the ignition. “They mean well, but I don’t know what to say when they tell me they’re sorry.”

      They both got out of the car. Lydia planted her fists in the small of her back and stared at the wreath on their door, the open drapes she hadn’t been home to close. The baby’s nursery was on the second floor. She walked up the sidewalk as fast as her aching body would let her to avoid looking at that window.

      EVELYN STARED at the white phone that hung on her white kitchen wall.

      “I should call him.”

      “He won’t feel better if you do.”

      She jumped. “Bart, I didn’t know you were home.” Turning, she crossed the kitchen to take her husband’s coat and hang it on one of the pegs in the mudroom.

      He took off his boots and stared at them. “I forgot to change when I got off the boat.”

      “Put them in the bench. If we can’t stand the smell of our own lobster and fish and ocean water by now…” She didn’t know how to end that sentence. “It doesn’t matter. You really think Josh wouldn’t want me to call? Isn’t this different?”

      “To us. Not to him.”

      “We were supposed to have a grandchild.” A grandchild that might have brought Josh back to them.

      Bart pulled her close and kissed her forehead. Usually that made her feel better. “For all we know, it’s brought back memories of Clara and he hates us more than ever.”