Once in Every Life

ever be the same again. If they?if he?rejected her, it would hurt as nothing in her life had ever hurt before.

Jack stood at the window, his forehead pressed against the cool glass, watching his wife toss flat biscuits to his giggling daughters.

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to think about what was happening to him. What she was making happen with her sudden smiles and casual touches.

He had to remain numb; he knew that. Years ago, when his wife's hatred for him had just begun, he'd learned to squelch his hurt and need beneath a veneer of icy calm. When Amarylis laughed at him, he turned away; when she slapped him, he turned the other cheek.

It had always worked. He'd walked around this house silent, alone and lonely, like an undead thing in the world of the barely alive. After a while, she had stopped even trying to bait him. They lived like strangers, all of them, each one distant and unconnected with the others.

He hated it, of course, but it was the only way to protect his precious children. It was the one thing he and Amarylis had always agreed upon. He was a danger to them all. It was distant, his insanity, but not forgotten. Even now, years after the breakdown, he went to sleep each night afraid, and woke each morning in a cold sweat. He was always desperately afraid that the darkness would take him unaware and that, during a blackout, he'd hurt someone. Maybe even his babies ...

He accepted his isolation from his loved ones as a fact of life, another ramification of his cowardice, and mental defect.

But now things were changing. Until Caleb's birth, he couldn't remember the last time one of Amarylis's cruel games had actually angered him. He watched her manipu-

105

lations from afar, through eyes that understood and anticipated her every move. And that had given him the edge. Now he was losing that edge. She was doing the unexpected, changing her routines. Every time she did something new, he felt it like a hard punch in the stomach. Emotions hurtled through him with frightening velocity? pain, shame, fear. But the strongest of them, the emotion that made him the angriest of all, was need. He'd thought the need for her had died years ago, buried in the icy coffin of her hatred.

Only now it was creeping back, suffusing his senses and sucking the strength from his soul. God, when she smiled at him, the need for her was like a hammerblow to his heart. It had been so long since she'd smiled, he'd almost forgotten. Almost .. .

"Ignore her," he said quietly to himself. Ignore the changes, the smiles, the touches. Ignore it all, and remember who she is and why she hates you.

The sound of Savannah's carefree laughter seeped through the half-open door and filled the small, darkened kitchen.

Jack groaned and pulled away from the window. Turning, he paced across the room, trying not to see the tablecloth and flowers.

Changes. More goddamn changes ...

Ignore it.

The lilting strains of laughter came again. This time it was his wife's soft, throaty chuckle that filtered through the cool night air.

A sharp stab of longing almost shoved him toward the door, but he planted his feet and remained motionless.

"Please, God," he murmured, "I've never asked you for much, and I know I don't deserve help, but I need it. Please, don't let me start believing in her again. Please ..."

106

Tess woke in the middle of the night to feed Caleb. Half-asleep, she nursed the baby, then rediapered him and put him back to bed. She was almost at her bed when she heard a strange, scraping noise coming from the living room.

You know the goddamn rules.

Jack's words came back to her, reminded her that she shouldn't leave her room.

She stared at the door. The old Tess?the one who'd grown up in so many foster homes?wouldn't have questioned Jack's edict. A rule was a rule. A person didn't go where she wasn't wanted.

But the old explanations didn't soothe Tess this time. Something had happened to her tonight. When she'd stood in the moonlit yard, close enough to touch Jack, feeling his breath as a caress across her lips, she'd realized how desperately she wanted to get to know the man who was her husband. And there was only one way to do that. Break a few rules.

Slipping into her wrapper, she went to her door and eased it open. Pale golden light spilled into the hallway from the living room.

Cautiously she made her way down the darkened corridor and paused at the corner of the room.

Jack was sitting on the stone hearth, his body backlit by the red-gold glow of a fire. Between his legs was a large piece of wood. The slow, steady scrape-thunk of a knife slicing along skinned wood filled the room.

Tess narrowed her eyes, trying to see what he was making.

A rocking horse. She could just make out the pointy ears and triangular head, and the huge arched rockers.