Scattered Ashes (16 page)

“Don’t you get it, Jordan?  Keeping silent about this isn’t going to make it better.  Ever.  You can’t just ignore it.”  Her blue eyes glared at him venomously, and she straightened her back sharply.

“I’m not trying to ignore anything,” he snapped, thrusting his hands to his hips.  “You act like none of this bothers me, like it’s so easy for me to watch.”

“It is easy for you,” she spat, the hand holding the glass trembling so badly the wine threatened to spill.

“What the hell do you want from me?  What more can I do?”  Although he’d meant to keep his voice down, he couldn’t take the way she looked at him, everything about her so accusing that even breathing seemed wrong.

“I want you to be understanding!  I want you to think about the reason my job is so difficult!”  She leaned toward him, and some of the wine spilled onto her bare foot and yet it never registered.  All she could do was glare at him as though everything in the world were his fault somehow.

“I do understand!” he shouted and reached out to grab her shoulders. “This isn’t just about you, Alyssa.  This was supposed to be about us, remember?  Or don’t you get that anymore?” 

“You son of a bitch!” she yelled and slapped him, spilling the rest of the wine on his leg and the floor.

Jordan immediately let her go and took a step back, feeling himself boiling with a rage he couldn’t seem to keep under wraps.  He stood there for a moment, watching tears spring into her eyes as she threw the wine glass against the wall, watching it shatter.

At one time, he would have gathered her into his arms and said all the right words, but he didn’t know the right words anymore, and he didn’t feel anything but rage.  He balled his hands into fists and whirled, heading toward the door.

“That’s right.  Just pretend this never happened like you always do!” she shouted as he strode toward the office to cool down.

No such luck.  Alyssa followed him.

"You can't just hide from this, Jordan."

His back stiffened, and he wished he'd never come in.  He'd known this was coming, but like a fool, he'd thought he could fix it somehow.

"You can't ignore me, either."  Alyssa picked up the camera, and as Jordan gauged the wild look in her eyes, she was about to throw it so he caught her hand.

"Fine.  I'm not ignoring you.  I'm leaving."  He jerked the camera out of her hand and rushed out the door,  slamming it. For a moment he just stood there, trying to keep standing despite the frantic turmoil of his world falling apart.  He strode to his car and drove away.

As he headed away from the house, the sky opened up and rain spewed down upon the car so hard he could scarcely see.  Despite the anger, he felt tears seeping into his eyes, and they quickly spilled down his face, blurring his world even more.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he muttered, seeing a red light just ahead and easing the car to a stop.  As he sat there, he forced himself to look anywhere but the mirror.  Right now, he didn’t think he could take looking at his reflection, afraid he just might see what his wife saw.

Looking around, he spotted a woman walking through the deluge.  Her long, brown hair seemed familiar, and in that instant, he thought of Nicole and a day that had seemed lost until now.  His heart sped up, and he veered to the left so he could park the car in at the corner.  Jerking the key free, he shot out of the vehicle and ran after her, trying to ignore the violent rain hurtling from the sky like ice.

“Nicole,” he called, rushing after her.

She didn’t respond, so he kept running, thankfully gaining on her.  At last his fingers curled around her arm and turned her.  Immediately she jerked free of him.

“Let go of me!”

Although the long, brown hair was right, the eyes were blue, and her nose longer and skinnier.  From a distance, she might have looked like Nicole, but not up close, not by a long shot.

Jordan held up his hands and stepped back, blinking to try to clear the rain from his eyes.  “I’m sorry.  I thought you were someone else.”

She glared at him for a moment longer before striding away.  More than once, she glanced over her shoulder to make sure he didn’t follow.  Closing his eyes, he stood there, letting the cold rain wash over him until his body was wet and numb.  He needed all the distraction he could get, and when he realized the rain could never fully take away the pain drumming through him, he turned slowly and headed back to his car, feeling more empty than he had before he'd gotten out.

He damn sure couldn’t explain why he always seemed to "find" Nicole without even realizing he was looking for her.  They hadn’t seen each other in years, but somehow, whenever things felt tough, he often thought of her and wondered how things were in her life.  She’d probably be married by now and have kids, and as usual, he had no place in her life.

Of course, he realized, sitting behind the wheel, that he sometimes spent more time than he should wondering what would have happened had he chosen not to marry Alyssa and instead gone with his gut feeling that Nicole was right for him.  Would he still be sitting in the rain, trying to put his world back together?

Chilled, he started the car, more to turn on the heat than anything.  He wasn’t planning on driving, but it was as if his body and mind weren’t on speaking terms as he drove without knowing where he was going or why.  At times, the rain fell so hard he had to pull over and give it a few minutes to ease up; the wipers couldn’t keep up.

Then, at other times, the drops barely spattered the windshield, and even if he didn’t know exactly where he was headed, he did understand that he needed to go somewhere--that sitting here, staring at nothing wasn’t allowed.

The silence seemed to wrap itself around him, suffocating him, but he kept driving, promising himself there were answers somewhere.  He simply needed to find them.  He needed time to face Alyssa because he couldn’t do it like this.

He looked at the camera in the passenger seat and frowned.  No, he still hadn't gotten all the parts.  Some of them were proving incredibly difficult to find, but that didn't stop him.  He would fix it.  Hell, it might be the only thing he could fix, at this rate.

He'd arrived before he'd realized it, and even though he’d thought he was driving at random, he now recognized the parking lot.  Yes, some of the landscaping had changed a bit, but not the thing he'd seemed to be headed for all along—the rope bridge just ahead, the same one where he’d met Nicole and thought everything had already been so mapped out that nothing could happen to drive him away from Alyssa.

Despite the rain, Jordan parked the car and slowly got out.  As he hadn’t dried off from his previous excursion, the cold didn’t bother him much.  The only thing that really distracted him was how the rain kept falling into his eyes, blinding him.

He gritted his teeth as he reached the seam where the concrete path ended and the bridge began.  For a moment, he just stood there, remembering how, the last time he’d stepped across its threshold, things seemed to change, and he wondered if perhaps, by crossing again, he could force another change.  The question was, if that did happen, would it be a change for the better or one for the worse?  He shook his head, and rain sprayed around him from his sodden hair.  Never mind.  He couldn’t imagine things getting much worse than they were right now.  He didn’t even know if there were even a way to go back to his former idyllic bliss.  He wanted to, God help him, but he was wise enough to know that Alyssa had to want that as much as he did or it would never work.

Then again, it was just a bridge, and there was no point in being superstitious.  It’s not like taking another step would force anything,  like anything could simply force happiness. That was like a dragonfly.  Some people just got lucky enough to have one light on their shoulders for a while.  Catching it, however, was out of the question.

That’s when he did edge his right foot atop the first wooden plank.  The left followed, and he kept on until he'd reached the center of the bridge, roughly where Nicole had sat when they first met.  At that moment, the rain abruptly died away and a ray of sunshine broke through the overwhelming grey overhead.  To his right, he saw a perfect unbroken rainbow and smiled.  Had he been superstitious, he might actually have believed this an omen.  Hell, part of him definitely
wanted
to believe.

But he wasn’t.  Rainbows wouldn't change things between him and Alyssa, and even if he did end up single again, God forbid, it wouldn’t help that Nicole would now be married--happily, he hoped.

Still, despite the water glistening on the wood and the small pockets of moisture in the cracks of the bridge, he slowly sat where Nicole had sat and tried to meditate as she’d done that day.  Once again, he didn’t know what he’d hoped to accomplish, maybe just to find a few moments of peace before he went back to the chaos which had become his life.  He didn’t know. 

The only thing he knew was that for once, he found the quiet restorative, and that had to brave the coming storms.

Chapter Eleven

Two years later

She was a whale.

Nicole tried not to look at her reflection.  She’d look two months from now, after she’d had the son currently disguised as a basketball in her tummy.  Right now, she was incredibly hot and uncomfortable.  Pinning her long hair high on her head didn’t help.  Nothing helped.  It was summer, and she was pregnant.  What had made this a good idea, anyway?

Sighing, she leaned back against the couch and tried to get comfortable as she propped up her feet,
tried
being the magic word.  She’d probably never be able to get comfortable until the growing mass inside had finally come out.  Then she probably wouldn’t get any sleep, or at least that’s what she'd heard more than once.

The doorbell chimed unexpectedly, and Nicole glanced down at her watch, frowning.  Who could that be?  With effort, she forced herself to shift back toward the edge of the couch and rise, her hand immediately drifting to her stomach as though she were afraid the movement were going to disturb her baby.

“Hang on, Nick.  Let’s answer the door,” she told her tummy, giving it a couple of soft pats as she waddled to the door.

Sarah stood on the step, a small pink gift bag in her hand.  She immediately gazed at Nicole, taking her in from head to foot.  “OMG,” she said, shaking her head.  “You’re huge!  You sure you haven’t got twins in there or something?”  She reached to feel Nicole’s belly.

“Nope, just one little boy who refuses to sleep at night and keeps kicking me like he’s ready for Michael to teach him the ways of football.”

Nicole felt her son give Sarah’s hand a kick, and her best friend giggled.  “Wow!  That is so cool.”  Sarah drifted inside.

“Well, you know, you could have one if you ever settled down, Sarah.” 

“Eh,” Sarah said and shrugged.  “I’ll just spoil yours.”  She handed Nicole the bag.

“You do know we’re having a boy, right?” Nicole asked, pointing to the pink polka dots.

“Yeah, so?  Pink is just a color.  You know that.”

“But I’m not sure Michael does.”

The two women sat on the couch, Sarah perched on the edge of the sofa as though not quite comfortable.  Then again, Sarah had never totally been comfortable with Michael.  Yeah, at first, she'd thought he was cute and all that.  Sarah probably just didn’t like the stodgy lawyer feeling that came with Michael.  Of course, there was nothing anyone could do about that.

Sarah looked around and cleared her throat.  “Speaking of Michael, where is he?”

“On a business trip.”

Sarah pursed her lips and Nicole thought of Thumper from Bambi.  her best friend was like that, sitting there, saying, “If I can’t say nothing nice, I won’t say nothing at all.”  It didn’t really matter, her expression gave it away.