I Want You Back | Completed |

Negotiations (2)

1. Family

Luke read the word silently and looked at her. "Your family has never accepted me, and I don't think they ever will. You have never introduced me to any of your friends." Luke went to refute her but Janice beat him to it. "Anybody I have ever met has been in an official function. I know you have friends outside the office. You go on trips with them, visit them and attend their children's birthday parties, yet you have never taken me along."

Luke inwardly winced acknowledging the truth of her words.

2. Time and Acknowledgement

" You're never home anymore. You don't call me, spend time with me."
"And acknowledgment?"
"All the efforts I have made to assist you in your career. All the time I spend planning your extravagant parties, making connections between you and investors, politicians, judges. You never even say thank you."

Luke looked at her in confusion. "Investors? What investors? And Sean organizes all my events."
Janice smiled sadly and shook her head. "I took over from him almost two years ago," she said as she sat down across him at the table. "He's good but even he needs help sometimes. I took over when I saw him beginning to get overwhelmed."

3.
Janice hesitated before writing.

3. Rosemary

Luke read the single word and closed his eyes. After all this time, it still hurt. He wondered when he would feel anything but pain when he thought of her.

" Why is this coming up now?" he asked.
" Because it's the elephant in the room. It's been fifteen months and we haven't talked about what happened."
Luke sighed and turned to look out the window at the waves lapping at the dandy beach. The sea today mirrored the clear blue sky. The blue-green was so crisp it almost hurt the eyes. He didn't want to talk about it.

Janice looked at his averted face and asked the question that had haunted her since then. "Do you blame me? For what happened?"
He looked back at her with a frown.
"What?"
"Do you blame me?"
"Why would you ask that?"
"Because I need to know."
He saw the fear and despair in her eyes. He got up and went over to her side, sliding in beside her on the bench and put his hand over her shoulders, turning her to face him. He lifted her face by her chin forcing her to look into his eyes.

" You think I blame you for her death?"
"Everything changed that night, Luke. You didn't come home." She whispered again as her heart broke all over again and her eyes overflowed. "You didn't come home."

Luke gathered her into his arms. His hold was tight as he swallowed hard to avoid his own tears.
"No, I don't blame you. Never have I blamed you. She would have never had a mother who loved her or wanted her more than you."
Janice sobbed into his chest. "You didn't come home."
He shut his eyes as the pain of losing his daughter washed over him again.

"I couldn't. I couldn't. I was numb for so long. I couldn't believe she was gone. That I would never see her eyes crinkle at me when she smiled or never feel her little hand squeeze my fingers again. Never hold her in my arms again. I just couldn't..." He paused as his voice cracked.
" I needed you so much." Janice said, rising to look into his eyes.
" I know. I'm sorry. The pain. I wanted to come back, but the thought of walking in and not hearing her cry or fuss or laugh..."

Janice wanted to rail at him. To tell him that she had felt the pain too. That she had left her baby in a cold morgue and come back to an even colder house.
She thought of the nights she cried, rolled in a ball on the floor of the nursery. How she had gone half-mad thinking she heard Rose's cries in the night. Nights she spent trying to claw her ears out just to make the sound stop.

But she also remembered the nights he spent drinking in his office. The angry days when he wrecked half the house in his pain as she sat listening on the stairs. How until now he wouldn't walk down the corridor in the house that opened into what used to be the nursery. How on her birthday, he'd stood outside listening to her crying inside even as she willed him to enter. To be with her.
But she also remembered that he didn't. And that he'd never bought another rose for her. And never held her for the last year.

"Thank you," Janice said, pulling away from him and looking into his eyes. "I needed to know that. But Luke, we can't be together anymore. Our time has come and passed."

His arms tightened around hers. "No, I won't let you go. I love you."
She smiled sadly at him. "I love you too. But Luke, what we have isn't a healthy marriage anymore. I've subsumed myself in you and you have detached yourself from me."
"I'll quit my job, spend more time with you."
She shook her head. "No, you value your work and your family. You wouldn't be the man I married if you didn't. You would come to resent me if I tore you away from being who you are."

Luke pulled her back into his arms tightly running his lips desperately over her face. "You can't leave me. You are my heart. I could never be happy without you."
She kissed him. Taking his taste into her mouth, into her memory. "You are the love of my life, Luke. I won't be happy without you."
"Then why leave?" Luke asked in agitation. "Stay. Stay with me. Be mine. Be mine always."
"We're not happy Luke. Eventually, we'll hate each other and I'm selfish enough to want to keep remembering you as the man who changed my life. It would break me to hate you."

Luke stared down the road long after the red lights of the cab had faded away. The numbness had taken over until the world was tinged grey. He turned back to the house but he had no will to go back to its empty rooms, so he stuck his hands in his shorts and walked, letting his legs lead him where they would.
When he looked up he found himself at the cottage. Mary took one look at him and got up from their breakfast with an unintelligible murmur.
"She left Mary. She's gone."
For the first time in a long time, she threw her arms around him and his tears soaked through her dress as she comforted her little boy again.