Marriage in Jeopardy. Anna Adams

Josh?”

      He stopped, midway across the room. A vein stood out on his forearm as his knuckles whitened around the bucket’s handle.

      “Sometimes I wonder what I’d have to do to make you as angry with me.”

      “As angry?”

      “As you are with your parents.”

      “Are you looking for an argument?”

      “No.” But she was tired of trying to keep the peace. “I don’t know.”

      “I get that you don’t want to be here.”

      She couldn’t control a shiver as she thought of the nursery and their bedroom. She hadn’t forced herself to climb the stairs yet. Too many memories waited up there. “Listen.” She willed him to understand how the nothingness pressed in on her. “Don’t you hear the silence? I know you mean well, but all the fires and blankets and warm drinks in the world won’t help. I’m afraid to say anything because I’m hurt. And I’m afraid your mind is at the office.”

      “What do you want?” Long and lean and unreachable, he went to the door. “I’m trying. I don’t want to lose you, but I can’t quit my job and sell this house today.” He glanced at the ceiling. “I feel that room, too, but this is our home. I want to learn to live with the empty nursery and your anger and my—” He paused, shaking his head. “My fear,” he said. “That you’re going to leave me because it’s my fault our baby died.”

      “Let’s do something,” Lydia said. “Let’s get out of here, spend some time somewhere else, just the two of us.”

      “And then come back to the problems you say we’ve ignored for years?”

      The phone rang. A frown crossed his face. He picked up the receiver and scanned the caller ID. Then he crossed the room and handed it to her. “I don’t want to talk to them,” he said.

      His parents. She clicked the talk button as Josh took the bucket out. “Evelyn?”

      “How are you? Is Josh all right?”

      “I’m fine. He’s quiet.”

      “How quiet? You have to make him talk.”

      Or he’d retreat from her as he had from Evelyn and Bart? “We’re settling back in.”

      “Come up here instead.”

      Lydia knew she should say no. Josh couldn’t talk to his mother and father. He’d refuse to see them. “I’m tired. Staying here might be—”

      “Come tomorrow, then. You don’t want to be in that house right now. Let me pamper you and make sure you’re taking care of yourself. Let me have a daughter for a week or two.”

      Her voice broke on the final plea. Lydia’s tears, never far away, thickened in her throat. “I want to, but you know how things are, Evelyn.”

      “Josh will come if you do. Don’t give him a choice for once.”

      Lydia laughed, as convincingly as she was able. “You wouldn’t take advantage of me to soften Josh?”

      “I guess I would.” Evelyn was always truthful. “But I only left the hospital because I knew he didn’t want me there. I’ve worried about you. Come let me look after you.”

      “Josh is taking great care of me.” Lydia jumped to his defense.

      “I’m saying Josh may not tuck you in, or make sure you have nice clean sheets warm from the dryer.”

      “I’m not taking to my bed.” But such loving concern tempted her.

      “And Josh won’t bring you lobster fresh out of the trap. Bart will bring enough for both of you. Come, Lydia. And bring our son. Families should be together when they’re hurting.”

      Lydia licked her lips. It was not a perfect answer, but she couldn’t stand this house. She dreaded sleeping in her own bed, seeing the baby clothes stacked on the end of her dresser, the copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting on her nightstand. “I can’t do that to Josh.”

      “Ask him.”

      “It’s not right.” And if she asked and he said no, she’d resent him for not seeing how much she needed to be away.

      “I understand, but when do you think our family should try to love each other?”

      Lydia splayed her fingers across her belly. All her hopes had died, and raising them was proving difficult. “I’m sorry, Evelyn. I can’t answer you.”

      JOSH EMPTIED the ashes into the garbage can behind the door to their walkout basement. He gathered a couple logs from the pile beside the fence. But then he couldn’t make himself go inside. As long as he stayed out here, he had an excuse to avoid talking to his parents.

      Ridiculous. Childish.

      He didn’t care. His guilt over losing his unborn son hurt enough, but it had also opened the lid on his guilt about Clara. He should have found a way to keep her safe when he couldn’t be home. It hadn’t been normal for a high school freshman to take all responsibility for his five-year-old sister, but he hadn’t had a choice.

      He turned his attention to the dead plants in the small yard. He put down the logs. Halloween was in two days, and the cool weather was upon them. Usually, he and Lydia had cleared out her summer garden by now, but purple and blue flowers had spread as far as the gray-brown plants the frost had already killed.

      “Josh?”

      He turned, a couple of withered begonias in his grasp. She stood in the doorway, her hands braced on the frame.

      “You should stay away from those stairs. They’re too narrow and you’re not steady on your feet.”

      “I’m all right.” She’d never accepted help or advice with enthusiasm. “What are you doing?”

      “Yard work.” He yanked another brown, crumbling shrub out of the ground.

      “You can come in now. Your mother hung up.”

      “Did she ask you to go to Maine?”

      Lydia widened her eyes. “How did you know?”

      “Know my mother?”

      Lydia let that question lie. “She asked us both, but I told her you wouldn’t want to.”

      Another plant gave up its grip on the ground. “You were right.”

      “So we stay here.”

      “Where you don’t want to be.”

      She started to turn away, but hesitated, distraction on her face. She loved his parents. If not for him, she’d have jumped at the chance to visit Maine.

      He reached blindly for a shrub, breathing in as he got a handful of sharp holly leaves.

      Lydia went to him and opened his palm. “Are you all right?”

      Not with her scent wafting off the top of her head as she peered at the drops of blood on his hand.

      “What were you thinking?” She blotted his palm with the hem of her sweatshirt. Grateful for her tenderness, he didn’t have the strength to stop her.

      “I’m realizing my parents will come between us some day.”

      She froze. “Come inside and let’s clean that with something sterile.”

      “They will, won’t they, Lydia? You’d rather be with my mother than with me right now. And my father’s always ready to ply you with lobster.”

      “I was an only child. My parents are dead. Your mother and father have showered me with all the love you won’t let them give you.”

      “Because of what they did to Clara.”