I motion around the room. “How many treatments do you have left?”
“Every other day for the next two weeks.” He groans as he adjusts himself in the chair.
“That many?”
He nods. “I’ll need a driver. Are you up for it?”
“Every other day for two weeks?” I shake my head. “We’re not going to be at the lake that long.”
He reaches over and extends his hand, palm up. Then he stares at me and waits. He makes a clenching motion with his fingers and I place my palm against his. He holds it tightly. “Can you give me a week, then, Bess? Please?”
A week. One solid week of sharing a cabin with Eli.
“The lake’s a happy place,” he almost sings out. “The happiest of happy places.”
“I know. It’s just…”
“It’s just what?” he asks, his voice quiet and soft, almost breakable.
“It’s just awkward right now with Eli,” I admit. “We’re right in the middle of the divorce…” I let my voice trail off. “It’s just hard, you know?”
“No, Bess,” he says, still holding tightly to my hand. “I don’t know. I know I’d give anything to have Lynda back, and you’re giving it all up.”
“You don’t understand what it’s like between me and Eli.”
“Then tell me. Explain it to me.” His voice is hurried and urgent.
I shake my head. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“Did it start with the first baby?” he asks. I try to jerk my hand back, but he doesn’t let me go. Instead, he holds on even more tightly. “Or was it the second, or the third?”
Eli and I had tried so many times to get pregnant. And occasionally we did, but it never lasted. We never could make a family.
I let my hand go lax in his. “There were more than three,” I whisper. A tear slips from the corner of my eye and rolls down my cheek, leaving a warm trail behind it. I don’t even try to wipe it away. “I wanted a family so bad.”
“You don’t need children to make a family, Bess. You and Eli are a family, all on your own. The two of you are a whole unit. Don’t ever think differently.”
“It’s too late.”
He looks sad. “I know. You told me.”
The nurse returns with his paperwork and unhooks the medical equipment. Aaron buttons his shirt and stands up, a little wobbly on his feet. “Whoa. You might have to drive, Bess,” he says.
“You hate my driving,” I retort. Actually, he just hates riding with anyone else. He always has.
“I don’t have much of a choice, do I?” he asks. He looks like he can barely hold his head up.
The moment he gets in the passenger seat of the car, he lays the seat back. “Sorry, but I think I’m going to take a quick nap,” he mutters, sounding fatigued.
I reach over and give his arm a squeeze, kind of glad that he’s going to sleep so we can stop talking about the past. Parts of it still hurt too much to discuss.
8
Eli
I’m not at all sure I like Aaron’s kid. The middle one is adorable, with her big curls and her charming grin. And the little one’s a baby, and you can’t help but love babies. They are untapped potential. But Sam…
I’m struggling to like her, and that fact alone makes me feel bad. Her bare feet dangle over the water as she sits and fishes off the end of the wooden dock. Her bobber floats along aimlessly until I can’t see it anymore.