She knew they’d been breaking down his walls these past weeks—but she hadn’t expected such a quick and thorough razing.
“No,” he told her. Somehow, with his denial, he gave her more confidence in his sudden reversal. “I have no idea how much—or how little—I’m going to be capable of,” he said. “All I know is that I don’t necessarily have to dismiss the notion of a future different from the one I expected. And because I have two children on the way—children I’m finding it difficult to turn my back on—I also find myself exploring the possibility that I might have fallen in love with their mother.”
Phyllis choked.
And then started to cry, quiet, painful tears.
Matt watched her, his eyes narrowed. But nothing she did seemed to put him off.
“What I see when I look at you is a woman who was so badly hurt by something that she’s in hiding.”
“How can you say that?” Phyllis cried, anger her only defense at the moment. “I’m the one with all the friends!”
“Yes. There’s safety in numbers.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Think about it, Phyllis. You don’t have to share your life with anyone because no one knows all of you. You flit from one person to the next, giving this here and that there, and everyone’s happy thinking that if you aren’t with them, you’re with someone else.”
“That’s because I usually am.”
“Except when you’re by yourself.”
She watched him warily.
“And that’s what you do whenever you’re hurting, isn’t it?” he asked softly. “That’s the real reason you didn’t want to tell everyone you were pregnant. Because you were frightened and in pain and you had to handle that on your own, deal with the confusion and uncertainty before you shared the news with the very people who should’ve been there to support you through it.”
“They have their own problems to worry about, families and kids and lives.”
“Exactly,” Matt said, his eyes filled with an emotion she couldn’t describe. It wasn’t pity. And it wasn’t simply caring, either. “You’re always on the outside looking in. And what I really want to know is why?”
On the outside looking in. How dared he? This man who’d rejoined the living less than twenty four hours ago was suddenly the expert?
Phyllis closed her eyes. Searching for the perfect rebuttal, the logical conclusion, so she could throw it at him and shut him up.
Except that, instead of finding the logical conclusion she expected, instead of voicing the rebuttal she’d planned, she started to shake.
“Maybe it’s because I’m not all that lovable.” The words hurt so much she could barely say them. “Simply by being myself, doing what I can’t help doing. I…seem to intimidate people,” she continued slowly, staring at the Christmas tree that had brought such hope the night before. “And since my ability to understand people, to see what they need, sense what they need, sometimes even before they do, isn’t something I can change or control, I control what I can. My environment.”
“If you don’t get close enough to people, don’t spend too much time with any one person, you don’t have to worry about any of them deciding they can’t stand to be around you.”
Sounded pretty damn pathetic and sad to her. It also sounded exactly right.
“I guess.”
“Can I pose another theory?”
“Of course.” Not that she hadn’t already been around and around this thing a hundred times herself. But he really was the sweetest man. Sensitive and strong…and still there.
“I think maybe you just hadn’t met the right people yet when you felt rejected for having gifts that can heal hearts and minds and lives.”
They were pretty words. She continued to stare at the tree, discovering that if she allowed her vision to blur just a
little, the colored lights all flowed together and formed a rainbow.
“I suppose, if someone’s insecure or, worse, being dishonest with you, having his head examined all the time would be a drag.”
She could hardly see the ornaments now, only rows of rainbows.