Assuming, of course, that Winston was going to take some ownership of his child—that he’d be willing to put up that facade all the time instead of just on weekends. At the moment that assumption felt kind of like counting on the lottery to pay her bills.
But she was discounting time. And the miracle of unconditional love children brought into the world with them.
She glanced down at the box. “What’s up with this stuff?”
He knew she knew what it was. At least there was still enough understanding between them for her to be certain of that now.
“I was clearing it out of the desk.”
Clearing it to where?
“You need more space?” she pushed, though her chest felt heavy with the question.
“Not really. I just...didn’t want it there.”
“Because you want it somewhere else?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
He watched her and silence grew. She couldn’t move. Almost couldn’t feel.
“My closet shelf.”
The tone of his voice, a look in his eye, something warned her that there was more. But she was so damned relieved that their precious mementos weren’t going into the trash—even if they’d been headed there minutes ago—that she nodded and rose.
“I’m going to start dinner,” she said, and left him alone with his box.
Chapter Fourteen
He didn’t want to be a father. He wouldn’t make a good one. The child would inevitably be hurt by his shortcomings. His inability to play. Get excited. Express affection. Feel joy.
It wasn’t so much that he’d had an “emotionotomy” as it was that he just no longer trusted nebulous sensations that made it harder to do what had to be done.
Some guys got to be dentists and car mechanics. They did their jobs and went home. Winston was a soldier. He was required to lay his life on the line for the good of his country, and that mind-set wasn’t something he could let go. He didn’t regret the choices he’d made.
At the same time, he had to learn from them.
Loving meant allowing others to count on you.
And they couldn’t count on him. Plain and simple.
No matter how many cards and notes and memories swamped him—and they were definitely swamping him more and more as days turned into weeks and months, some just in little ways, others, like the night he’d woken up hard next to Emily, in more difficult-to-brush-off fashion—they didn’t change the facts.
His country could count on him. His loved ones couldn’t.
Because loyalty and duty won out over love. Love wasn’t the huge, all-encompassing highest power as he and Emily had once believed it to be. It hadn’t protected “them.”
He’d thought about letting Emily in on some of those inner thoughts—trying to help her understand why things were happening as they were—but every time came back to the same assessment he’d had the first night in her home. She’d think he was just suffering from a form of post-traumatic stress. She’d take his words with a “pat on the head” attitude, telling him that in time his feelings would change.
Meaning, would return to what she thought was normal. His counselor continued to give him some of the same rhetoric. Telling him to give it time. Not to make major life-changing decisions in the first six months after his return.
They didn’t get who and what he was—that this was his normal now.
Seeing Emily look at his box the other night, he’d been pretty certain that she’d been right to say that time would bring clarity.
Not his. Hers.