and there was a chafed spot on her bottom lip. She had a bad habit of chewing on her lip when she was upset. He glanced up in sudden realization that he was staring at her mouth and she’d caught him doing it.
Defensiveness made his tone gruff. “You look like hell.”
Her normally warm gray eyes were the color of cold steel. “Thank you so much.”
“I didn’t…” He ran a hand through his hair. “I just worry about you.”
“That’s not your responsibility anymore,” she said with an attempt at a smile, as if she was trying to point out a positive.
His pride—his heart—stung. “I guess we can’t all just turn off our emotions and walk away from vows so easily.”
For a second, he thought she might throw the aspirin bottle at him. Instead, she turned toward the counter, dismissing him with her body language.
He clenched his fists at his sides. He’d known this woman for years. Laughed with her, loved her, said things to her he couldn’t imagine sharing with another person. Yet the prospect of beating himself upside the head with one of the pots hanging over the kitchen island seemed less painful than a three-minute conversation with her. How had they come to this?
“I’m sorry,” he said. He rarely lost his temper, and he needed his composure now more than ever. “That was uncalled for.”
“You’re entitled to your anger.” With an audible pop, the lid finally came off the bottle. “It’ll be easier when I’m at Winnie’s. I’m supposed to go over tonight to spend time with the animals and look over all the instructions with her.”
“Yeah, she phoned to say she was in for the evening and any time was good with her. And your sister called. That’s what I came in here to tell you.” Probably he should have led with that rather than You look like hell. “She said it was important, but not bad news.”
Considering the massive heart attack that had threatened Mr. Nietermyer’s life the year David met Rachel, and the two lesser cardiac episodes that had followed, urgent messages from home tended to make her nervous.
“Thanks.” She washed down two pills with a gulp, placed her cup on the counter, then turned, clearly ready to take her leave of him.
He didn’t move aside. “Did you grab a bite with the ladies?”
“No, Lilah had dinner plans, and everyone else went shopping. I didn’t feel up to it.”
“I’ll fix you something. You should—”
“David.” She smiled tiredly. “Thank you, but I’m a big girl. I’m capable of opening my own aspirin and cooking my own meals.”
Of course she was. He was just so desperate to do something. For most of his life, he’d enjoyed a sense of purpose. His mom had raised him with the notion that he could do anything he set his mind to, and for nearly thirty years, that had held true. Then there’d come the infertility problems, which had made him crazy because there was nothing he could do to help Rach, and then her announcement that she was leaving. He’d been so dumbfounded, so struck by the unfamiliar sensation of being out of control, that he’d just let her go.
Part of him—if he were being brutally honest—might even have been relieved by the time apart, but only as a stopgap measure, not as a permanent life change.
“When you call your sister back, you aren’t going to tell her about us, are you?” It sounded autocratic even in his own ears, a demand. He couldn’t bear anyone knowing that his marriage had failed. Every person who found out would be one more severed tie cutting him adrift.
Rachel glared, exasperated. “I don’t know. I agreed with you that this is a special time for Lilah and Tanner, the whole Waide family, and I didn’t want to ruin it. But don’t you think I deserve a friendly ear? Someone to talk to?”
Why hadn’t she tried harder to talk to him? He’d always listened, always offered suggestions and attempted to soothe the problems away. “Rachel. You know that if it were in my power to—”
“I know.” She surprised him by reaching out, brushing her hand over the arm of his long-sleeved T-shirt. Then she passed by, not looking back as she added, “But it’s not.”
BECAUSE a chilly December rain had started to fall, Rachel drove to Winnie’s on the other side of the subdivision rather than walk. When the windshield wipers did nothing to clear her view, she realized the spots blurring her vision were tears. This was ridiculous. Separating was her decision, yet she’d cried every day since she’d told David that they didn’t belong together.
Despite what logic and intellect told her, on some level she felt she’d failed by not getting pregnant. Why couldn’t her body accomplish what some teenagers achieved unintentionally? When she’d suffered a first-trimester miscarriage last spring, it had devastated her, yet she’d tried to see it as a sign that at least she could conceive. But month after month, hope waned. As did her and David’s tenderness with each other. She could admit that there had been some hormone-triggered mood swings on her part and that she’d been difficult to live with. He’d been patient at first, but no sooner had she lost a child than he began touting adoption as the reasonable solution. His seemingly “just get over it” attitude trivialized everything she’d experienced and made her feel alone even when he was holding her…which was less and less.
David liked to tell people what course of action they should take, whether it was customers at his family’s store, his newly returned brother or councilmen at town meetings. Almost everyone valued his input; Rachel herself had sought his opinion in the early days of marriage. It had taken her until this year to realize how aloof he could be when people didn’t follow his advice. She hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that he didn’t view her as an equal partner.
Tonight was one example of how an endearing habit could turn grating. She’d once found it charming that he would remind her to eat or do little things to take care of her, but lately his suggestions had begun to sound slightly condescending.
Her heart rate kicked up suddenly, her pulse pounding in her ears so loudly that she couldn’t hear her own thoughts—not an altogether bad thing considering their dark tone. Her vision swam. What the hell? Fingers clenched on the steering wheel, she hurriedly parked at the curb. Then she waited, taking deep breaths.
Was she being melodramatic, or had she just almost fainted? She’d never passed out in her life. Though her headache remained in full force, her pulse slowed enough that she could walk to Winnie’s front door and ring the bell without worrying that she looked like a deranged escapee from the nearest hospital.
Winnie Brisbane, receptionist for the town veterinarian, was one of the softest-hearted people in the county. Her two lab mixes had been with her for years; a three-legged cat named Arpeggio and a lop-eared rabbit were more recent additions. Winnie had been negotiating with local pet-sitter Brenna Pierce to care for the menagerie when she’d found an abandoned puppy in a November storm. Though she’d placed a poster in the vet’s office, most people were too preoccupied with approaching holiday chaos to take on a gangly puppy with a nervous bladder and no obedience training. By Thanksgiving, Winnie had named the mutt Hildie.
Short of Winnie canceling the cruise she and her cousins had been planning for over a year, having someone house-sit seemed the only sensible solution. Brenna’s client schedule was too full for the constant care a
