Making It Last - A Novella (Camelot Series) Page 2

  A breeze blew through the open lobby, cooling the back of her neck and leaving her feeling naked and isolated.

  She shivered.

  She wished Tony hadn’t seen.

  There was no excuse for the tears. She hadn’t yet left the gorgeous resort where she’d spent a few days with her healthy, beautiful family. Money had been tight for so long—was tighter than ever right now—that they never would have come if her brother hadn’t been getting married here, and if he hadn’t insisted on paying for the plane tickets.

  This trip was the first significant vacation her family had taken together, the first time any of the kids had traveled internationally, visited the ocean. The first time they’d had their father to themselves for five days in she didn’t know how long.

  A treat. A luxury that she was grateful for.

  She was.

  Whatever was wrong with her, it was some kind of first-world problem, and she didn’t want to dump it on her husband. He worked so hard—worked as close to constantly as one man could without breaking. The housing market had been in the toilet for longer than anyone had expected, but Tony did everything possible to make up for it. He took jobs all over the state, wherever he could get them, and he never complained.

  The work took him away from her, took him away from their kids, but the work was Tony. It was the way he loved them—by doing what needed to be done. Building them a big, beautiful house, carefully planning the details to suit her, making sure there would be enough room as the boys got older.

  He was a good person, a great father. She didn’t want to resent him for never finding time for her, because they were partners, and they’d worked out their roles a long time ago.

  They both had to pull their part of the load.

  It was just that she was afraid to think about what that look on Tony’s face might mean.

  Amber approached the van and started to file in behind Sean, who was ducking into the back with Katie. Tony turned around from where he was crouching across the front bench. “Hold on a sec, hon. I’m coming back out.”

  “Aren’t we in a hurry?”

  “Yeah. But hold on.”

  She eased back out, apologizing to her aunt when she bumped into her. Jamila gave her a beautiful smile. “That’s all right. Help me up?”

  Amber supported her aunt’s elbow as Jamila lifted her bulk into the van. She was very fat. Amber’s mom was always harping on it, but Jamila carried the weight as though she was supposed to have it. When the sisters stood next to each other, Amber often thought her mother looked starved, rather than Jamila excessive.

  After her aunt was settled in the middle bench seat, she fussed with her purse and then said “Here, honey.” She pressed something into Amber’s hand. An envelope. “Put this in your purse for later.”

  “Thank you,” Amber said, because Jamila was always pressing things into her hand. When she was a kid, it had been rolled-up five-dollar bills. At her college graduation, it was a card with five hundred dollars in it—an unbelievable sum.

  Amber stepped back, tucked the envelope away. Tony followed her. He took her elbow and led her to a spot on the curb.

  “We don’ want to be late!” the driver called. His smile appeared strained. Everyone in the van was watching them. Tony steered her so her back was to the vehicle, but she could still feel all those phantom eyeballs, wondering what this was about.

  She looked at Tony, wondering the same thing.

  Ten years of fatherhood had carved all the lines in his face deeper, and ever since he’d shaved off his hair for a charity fund-raiser he’d been keeping it short—he said because it was more convenient, but she thought mostly because it had grown back much more salt-and-pepper than it used to be.

  She liked that salt-and-pepper. All her favorite things about the way Tony looked were the things no one else noticed or cared about. The way his bottom front teeth had been moving slowly out of alignment, one pushing to the front, the other ducking behind. The dimple in his right ear where he’d had it pierced as a teenager.

  She’d found a snapshot of him with a diamond stud in that ear at his mother’s house. He looked so young in the picture, so unfinished and unsure, that she’d asked her mother-in-law if she could take it home. She’d framed it and put it on top of her dresser, because she loved that boy he’d been once. Long before he met her, when he’d raised hell with his brother Patrick until the horrible day when Patrick struck his daughter with his car and killed her. Tony had been in the backseat. The young, unfinished boy he had been had died that day, too.

  Tragedies happened, and people kept going, but they never forgot. Never really got over it. Grief for Nicole still stood between Tony and Patrick, all these years later.

  Amber looked at the pink slash of scar tissue through Tony’s eyebrow where Patrick had decked him last year. The last night they’d spoken to each other.

  Tony returned her gaze, but he didn’t say anything. It wasn’t like him, and the longer she waited, the farther her stomach sank. Finally, she asked, “What is it?” because she knew, suddenly, that he was about to say something terrible and ill-timed.

  He’d met someone else. Someone young and vibrant who had ambitions beyond fitting back into her pre-pregnancy clothes. A woman who read the newspaper and had opinions, topics of conversation other than her children.

  The idea made her belligerent—so much so that it must have shown in her eyes, because Tony flinched away from her slightly, taken aback.

  I never asked for this to happen to me, she wanted to tell him. I’ve just been trying so hard for so long, I don’t have anything left. Not for you. Not even for me.

  I don’t know who I am anymore.

  “You can stay,” he said. “If you want to.”

  “What?”

  “I want you to stay here a few more days. Take a break.”

  “Where is this coming from?”

  She turned slightly so she could see the driver. He was standing on the running board, his head popping over the top of the van. Beaming discomfort in their direction.

  Tony took her by the shoulder and firmly steered her back around to face him.

  “It was Jamila’s idea, but she’s right. This vacation sucked for you. I think—I think a lot of things must suck for you, and I can’t usually do anything about it.” He exhaled and raked his hand over his head. Pushing his fingers through hair he didn’t have anymore. “This time I can. You know how Jamila’s leaving early?”

  Amber nodded.

  “Well, she says her reservation is completely paid for. Nonrefundable. Their room’s going empty. You can stay there, eat on the resort’s dime, and we can swing the change fee on your ticket. So why don’t you just take a few days?”

  “Without you and the boys?”

  He smiled. “It’ll be better without us. You can eat at that restaurant you wanted to go to—the fancy one—without listening to us complain. And get a massage. Take a nap and read your book on the beach.” He squeezed her shoulder.

  “How come?”

  But she knew. It was because she’d cried, and he’d seen her.

  Because she couldn’t keep it together anymore.

  “You deserve a break.”

  “I’m really okay. Despite any appearances to the contrary.”

  “I know. But you wanted this, right? The whole thing with the beach and the sun and the girly umbrella drinks. And you didn’t get it at all.”

  She had wanted it. She’d bookmarked the website page about the resort’s family-friendly activities. The Kids’ Club. A second honeymoon, she’d told herself. She and Tony, at least halfway unburdened from their ordinary preoccupation with jobs and children.

  Everything he described, she’d thought they would be able to do together.

  But Jacob hadn’t wanted to go with the Kids’ Club employees, and Clark and Anthony had both declared themselves too old for the family activities. Tony had thrown his lot in with them. Why are we here, he’d asked, if not to spend time together as a family?

  And then she’d killed him.

  But not really.

  So it had been a long weekend of buffet dinners, and burgers and fries for lunch. A vacation spent watching Tony toss a Nerf football in the pool with the boys, or listening to him chew out some poor underling on his cell phone while she tried to keep the kids entertained by herself.

  For Amber, it was just like being at home, except more difficult, with Caleb’s wedding in the middle and the blossoming romance of Katie and Sean on display.

  Three sexless, exhausting days that had been the furthest possible thing from a vacation.

  And still, she couldn’t accept that she deserved what he was offering.

  “But you’ve got work,” she said. “And the flight—I can’t leave you with the boys. Who will pick them up from school? Or do the laundry? And somebody’s got to get the dog from the kennel and take her to obedience training tomorrow, because I already think she’s going to be backsliding, considering the way they spoil her. I think—”

  “Your mom and Jamila said they would handle it. I’m sure they can take care of the dog, too.”

  “I don’t know, Tony. This kind of spur-of-the-moment stuff …”

  “Makes you crazy. Yeah, I know. You never say yes to anything like this. I bought you that spa gift certificate, and you left it in the kitchen drawer for four years. So I’m not even going to ask. I’m just telling you, you’re staying here. I’ll change your ticket to Friday and let you know when you have to get on the plane.”

  He pulled her toward the back of the van, where he unloaded her suitcase and set it on the curb. Amber watched him. Mute. Stunned.

  She wanted to clutch his arm.

  Don’t leave me here. I don’t know how to be alone anymore.

  I want you to stay with me. I want you to want to stay.

  I want everything to be different.

  Tony leaned down and kissed her.

  It wasn’t a perfunctory kiss or a sex kiss. Not a kiss like Sean and Katie’s, either.

  It was a very Tony kiss, forceful and direct and unexpected. Bewildering, the way it pushed heat right down through her, right out here where anyone could see.

  It was exactly what she needed.

  “Okay,” she said, when she’d caught her breath.

  Tony smiled. “We’ll miss you. I’ll explain to the boys. All you need to do is wave as we drive away.”

  “Won’t that—”

  “It’ll be fine, bun.” For one long second, he cupped her face in his hand and looked in her eyes. For one long second, she felt like she still knew him, and he still knew her.

  “Have fun,” he said.

  And then he climbed into the van and left her standing there with her suitcase.

  No kids. No husband. No family.

  Just Paradise, for a few more days.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Tony couldn’t get Jacob to stop crying.

  He sat in the cramped window seat of the airplane, parked on the tarmac, with Jake wrapped around him like a baby monkey. Ant was to his left in the aisle seat, and across the way Clark had his own seat.

  Beside Clark, there was nobody. An absence where Amber was supposed to be.

  Jake had cried most of the way to the airport, unconvinced by Tony’s reassurances. He’d thrown himself onto the floor when it was time to move to the front of the security line and then, when that nightmare was over, had sobbed so hard Tony thought the kid might throw up as he dragged him onto the moving walkway toward the gate.

  I want Mom, he said again and again. When is she coming? Why did you leave her there?

  Clark remained sullen and silent, refusing to speak to Tony ever since he’d made him go sit in the van. Ant wouldn’t shut up, wouldn’t stop hopping around like someone had slipped him a hit of some really good drug that made it vitally important for at least one part of his body to remain in motion at all times.

  And his mother-in-law kept looking at him. She had this beady eagle gaze—exactly how she’d looked at him eleven years ago when she found out Tony had gotten Amber pregnant with Clark. Like she was considering shackling him to a rock, ripping open his torso, and leaving him there for the birds to eat his entrails.

  She was doing it now, staring at him with bright eyes and tight lips as she approached along the narrow aisle of the airplane.

  “We should switch seats,” she said. “I’ll take him, and you can sit by Derek.”

  You suck at this, was what she meant. Only my daughter and I know how to calm your kids down, because you are never home. You’re no kind of father at all.

  “I’m fine here,” he said.

  Jacob wailed, “My head hurts!”

  Amber always made Jake drink a Coke after he threw up, but they’d had to rush through security and right onto the plane, and Tony hadn’t been able to buy one yet.

  “Did you give him ibuprofen?” Janet asked.

  It was hard to hear over the wailing. Tony had to shout. “I don’t have any.”

  Probably Amber had ibuprofen in her purse. She carried everything—tissues, medicine, Band-Aids, snacks, water, Super Glue, batteries. He teased her sometimes that her bag was like a magician’s hat. You got a meatball sub in there?

  Janet sighed dramatically.

  “What, and you do?” he asked.

  Her mouth tightened, the frown lines creasing up.

  Fuck. Now he was pissing off his mother-in-law.

  Better to make her feel useful than to get on her bad side. Last time it happened, he’d stayed there for a couple years.

  “Can you do me a favor and ask one of the flight attendants for a can of Coke?”

  “You’re going to reward him for throwing this fit?”

  “The caffeine makes his head feel better.”

  “Oh.” Her eyes flicked down the aisle. “Derek! Don’t put the bag in like that. You have to turn it.”

  “I need a Coke!” Jacob howled.

  “Can I have one, too?” Ant asked.

  “Give Grandma one minute.” To her grandsons, she was soothing. Almost sweet. “We’ll get you sorted out.”

  She moved off down the aisle, and Tony dropped his head against the back of the seat, closing his eyes, smoothing his hand up and down Jacob’s back.

  “Dad?” Ant asked. “Can I have one?”

  “Sure.”

  The wrong answer according to Amber’s rules, but the right one in the sense that it might shut Ant up for the three or four minutes it took him to suck the drink down.

  Jake’s breath turned jerky and ragged—worse instead of better. He could make himself hyperventilate this way. It had been a while since he did it, but Tony didn’t want a repeat show.

  “Breathe, buddy,” he said quietly. “Breathe in. Breathe out. Take it slow.”

  “Why—didn’t—you—tell me?” Jake asked, and on every word his breath hitched and his panic dialed up another notch. “You—said—to—get—in—the—van—but—not—that—she—wasn’t—coming!”

  “I know. I didn’t mean to spring it on you that way. It was just that we were in a big hurry, and we didn’t make this new plan until the last second. But it’s okay, I swear. Take a deep breath. Please. Breathe through a straw, remember? You’re gonna pass out if you don’t.”

  After a few seconds, Jake sucked in a lungful of air.

  “Good. Now blow it out. See? That’s better. Do that again.”

  Tony breathed with his son, in and out, and waited for the galloping of his own heart to ease up.

  He’d often thought, curled around Jake on his son’s twin bed in the darkest hours of the night, that he’d cursed the boy before he was even born. Talked Amber into having a third baby when she wasn’t sure, promised her a daughter, only to give her a son whose fears went as deep as Tony’s own. Whose heart beat in Tony’s body.

  They’d done this so many times, the two of them. This synchronized breathing. This backing off from the sharpest edge of fear.

  “Your mom’s coming home,” he said. “It’s only a few days.”

  Jake lifted his tear-streaked face, fixing Tony with those big brown eyes, so dark. So exactly like his mother’s. Amber’s eyes, Amber’s cheeks. The same flawless skin that tanned with a few hours’ exposure to sunlight. The same straight, dark hair.

  But everything inside this kid was Tony, through and through. The milk intolerance. The fear of the dark, the screwed-up sleep patterns.

  The irrational terror that he would lose everything he cared about.

  He forgets to breathe, Amber had said once, a few weeks after they had him home from the hospital. Just like you, Tony.

  “What d-did I d-do?” Jake asked.

  The question rose and broke, and the fear in his son’s eyes filled Tony with more pain than he could deal with.

  He didn’t know what he’d done or not done. He had no fucking idea.

  All he knew was they’d pulled away from the curb and left Amber there, jeans and tall boots and a bright magenta splash of T-shirt, and even before the van turned onto the road he hadn’t been able to recognize her as his wife.

  She’d looked like she was lost, and even though it didn’t make any sense, he knew it was because he’d lost her.

  He should have stayed with her, like Jamila suggested. But he had work. Five days off was already pushing it.

  He couldn’t stay, so he’d compromised and made it so Amber could stay.

  It felt wrong, though. It felt like shit.

  “You didn’t do anything, buddy. It’s not your fault. It’s not even anything bad. Your mom needs a break, that’s all. She works really hard, you know?”

  Jake braced his palm against Tony’s chest, drawing back. “She says yuh-you work hard.”

  “That’s because I work outside the house, building stuff. But your mom works at home, with you guys, and she doesn’t get half as many breaks as me.”

  “Weren’t we good?”

  “Of course you were good,” Tony said, right as Ant piped up from the aisle seat, “It’s because you ate the chocolate bar, doofus.”