* * *
Two weeks went by. Amnio results came back good. He’d stayed in the waiting room during the test and had dropped Cassie back off at work immediately after.
He saw her for dinner once a week. Usually on Monday, but she’d had to reschedule for Tuesday once. They texted every night, a way, she’d mentioned a few times, to know that they were each okay. He worked on the furniture. Elaina was out more. Dating, he hoped. It was okay for him to think of living his life alone, but he didn’t want it for her.
She had too much to give. Not that he could affect her choice one way or another.
Mostly life was stagnant, and while normally that would be a good thing for him, he was no longer satisfied with just having no catastrophes with which to deal. For a week or two there, when he and Cassie had been making their plans, possibility, and a new-to-him happiness, had abounded. But instead of them flourishing, he felt...stagnated. Elaina, who knew him so well, called him on his dissatisfaction one night the last week in July.
“Are you mad at me?”
They were at dinner downtown on a Wednesday night. Her suggestion. She’d been excited about a new chef she’d heard about at work. And while the food was as good as promised, he’d have been just as happy at home, his shed waiting for him when the dishes were done.
“Of course I’m not mad at you,” he told her. “I’m just not used to us getting dressed up and going out during the week,” he added, hearing the lameness of his response even before he uttered it.
“It’s not just tonight,” she said, raising her glass of wine for a sip. “You’ve seemed...not yourself lately. You frown more. And aren’t as relaxed when you’re sitting down.”
He had no idea what she was talking about until she said, “Even now, look at you...sitting upright, as though you’re on trial or something. It was the same when I saw you on the couch last week. It’s not like you used to slouch, but you have this way of laying yourself out in a chair like it’s as comfortable as a bed...”
Trying to relax in the chair as though that would make everything go away, he told her, “I’m not at all upset with you. I’m preoccupied with the nursery furniture, though. I took on a lot with only five months to complete it all...” He took a breath to continue explaining himself, not at all sure where he was going or when he’d stop.
“You’re falling in love with her,” she said.
He didn’t know if he was or not.
But seeing the look on her face, the compassion, something inside him gave loose. “Tell me something, El...”
“Of course, anything.”
She was all the family he had left.
“When you agreed to marry me...for that first little bit...when emotions were running so high and we were both still reeling from everything...you felt things for me, didn’t you? You really believed our marriage would work. And, for a few months there, you thought we’d find our happily-ever-after.”
He looked her straight in the eye. Needing her honesty. No matter what it might be.
No matter that his brother had been the love of her life. No matter that she might, in some ways, think he was beneath her—or not—for a while there...
She didn’t look away. Didn’t speak, either.
And he considered that maybe her honest answer was that she’d never felt that way about him. That she was afraid to tell him, thinking it might hurt his feelings.
For a second there, he hoped.
And then she nodded. “I hoped,” she said.
But it hadn’t happened.
He didn’t voice the next question. Did she honestly believe that it wouldn’t happen on Cassie’s part, either? That the feelings he was getting from her were based on all of the other strong emotions she was feeling at the moment, with her life changing so drastically, with the hormones, and with the baby’s health in question, just as Elaina’s had been residual from the shock and grief of losing Peter? And her own physical rehabilitation after the accident?
“Just promise me something?” she asked.
He would if he could.
“Don’t talk yourself into falling for the mother because of the baby.”
He nodded.
“And don’t lose sight of the fact that she’s going through a lot right now.”