The Miles Between Us Read online

  She took a sip of decaf. “About?”

  “I have to go back to New York. I have an album to finish. Those fat-cat record executives don’t have a sense of humor. Time is money, and the meter’s ticking. Plus, I lost Kitty on the one day she was available, and now I have to try to reschedule.”

  “And it’s all my fault.”

  “Hey.” He shot her a glance. “What happened wasn’t your fault. Shit happens.”

  “Yes,” she said, and took another sip of coffee. “It does.”

  “I want you to come with me.”

  “To New York?” She raised an eyebrow. “What about Emma? And Paige?”

  Upon hearing her name, Emma, who’d been babbling contentedly in the back seat, went silent.

  “We’ll take the girls with us.”

  “Paige has school. She’s starting her senior year soon. She can’t miss that.”

  “School doesn’t start for a few weeks. I may be finished by then. If I’m not, she could probably stay for a while with my sister. Or Trish.”

  “I don’t know. We’re in the middle of construction. Things could go wrong. I might need to make decisions—”

  “You’ll be a phone call away. Besides, Colleen can make decisions as well as you can. She’ll live without you for a few weeks. I want you where I can keep an eye on you.”

  “Damn it, Rob, I don’t need a babysitter.” Darkly, she added, “And you certainly don’t have to worry about me getting pregnant again if you’re not around.”

  “I don’t know, babe. What about those hot guys at the bowling alley? Those shirts? Those shoes?”

  “Although tempting, I’ll have to pass. I’m off the market. Permanently.”

  “I’m being serious here. You just gave me the worst scare of my life. I thought I was about to lose you. I just want you near me for a while, okay? I’m not ready to be hundreds of miles away from you right now. I need you sleeping beside me at night.”

  She let out a hard breath. Wasn’t that the same thing she needed? “What’ll you do if you can’t get Kitty?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t really want to go with anybody else, but I might not have a choice.” He considered her question at length. “Her tour will be finished soon. If I can’t get her to New York before we wrap the recording, maybe I can bring her to the house for a day or two. I’m already planning to do the mixing at home.”

  “I am not having that woman in my home!”

  He swiveled his head and gave her a long, appraising look. “I thought you liked Kitty. Have I missed something?”

  “Do I have to spell it out for you?”

  “I guess you do.”

  “The two of you—” She quickly checked on Emma, who’d gone back to babbling. Casey lowered her voice. “—used to have a relationship.”

  “I’d hardly call it a relationship. Not the way you mean. We were friends.”

  She opened her mouth to counter his argument, remembered Emma in the back seat. “With benefits.”

  His response wasn’t what she expected. His face split in one of those zillion-megawatt grins, the one that was capable of melting even the hardest of women into a hot, bubbling mess. “You’re jealous,” he said, with obvious glee. “Hot damn, Fiore, you’re jealous of Kitty!”

  “She had carnal knowledge of you, Flash. Way before I did.”

  “A lot of women have had carnal knowledge of me.”

  “Don’t remind me. And it’s not the same at all.”

  “How is it different?”

  “With a few exceptions, I didn’t know any of them personally. Or even know their names. They were just notches on your bed post. I know Kitty.”

  “And you’ve always liked her.”

  “The woman has seen you in your birthday suit. Multiple times. Don’t you think that might make for slightly awkward dinner table conversation?”

  “I don’t see why it has to. Kitty and I are ancient history.”

  “The very idea of the two of you together makes me want to wrap my fingers around her neck and squeeze until she stops gurgling.”

  He raised both eyebrows. “Who the hell are you, and what have you done with my sweet, beautiful wife? Jesus Christ, Casey, she’s a nice woman.”

  “She’s a nice woman who used to sleep with my husband. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable when I say I’m not comfortable bringing her into our home.”

  “Fine by me. So if we see her in New York, you won’t be rude to her?”

  “Come on, Flash. Have you ever known me to be rude to anyone? I may be a mess right now, but I’m not about to verbally gut any of your friends.”

  She reached out a hand and laid it atop his, resting on the gearshift. He threaded fingers with hers, brought her hand to his mouth, and kissed it.

  In the back seat, Emma was making vroom-vroom car sounds. “I know you’re feeling like roadkill,” he said. “I know things will be hard for a while. I know you’re grieving. So am I. But we’ll get through this. Together.”

  Her chest contracted with guilt because he’d reminded her, in his subtle way, that he, too, had lost that unborn baby. That she wasn’t alone in this. That while it might have been her body that expelled its precious cargo, his emotional investment was as real as hers. What he didn’t understand, what he couldn’t see, was that it wasn’t grief she was feeling right now. It was numbness.

  “Yes,” she said, curling her fingers around his. “We’ll get through it together.”

  And knew her words for the lie they were.

  * * *

  She’d only been gone for two days, but the house felt different. Strange. Foreign. Not like her house at all. The granite countertops, the Italian tiles, the hardwood floors, felt wrong. Even her mahogany four-poster bed seemed odd, as though its dimensions were off by a half-inch here, two inches there. The strangeness pulled and tugged at her, messing with her head, leaving fingers of anxiety curling up into her throat.

  “Why don’t you lie down?” he said. “Rest for a while?”

  “I spent the last two days lying in bed. I want to get back to my life.”

  “You need to take it slow. You heard what the doctor said. It’ll be a while before you bounce back.”

  Bouncing was the least of her worries. It would be enough to shake off this otherworldly fog that had her feeling as though she didn’t fit in her own skin. “I need to putter. Wander around the house, the yard. Get the smell of the hospital out of my head. Will you keep an eye on Emma for a little while?”

  “Of course. But—”

  “Rob. Please. Don’t hover. I need this.”

  He let out a hard exhalation of breath, those green eyes of his troubled, and nodded. She gave him a faint smile to acknowledge his acquiescence, but didn’t touch him, too afraid that the strangeness would extend to his touch. The thought terrified her. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  The sound of hammering grew louder as she approached the construction site. The drywaller’s van sat in front of the building that would house the spinning and dyeing rooms, as well as her office. The hammering came from the barn, where workers were spreading tar paper over the roof before tacking down the shingles.

  She stopped first in the main building where, trowel in hand, a lone worker was mudding the drywall. An ancient, white-speckled transistor radio, perched on a folding chair, played the Moody Blues. Knights in White Satin. The man looked up and they acknowledged each other. “It’s coming along nicely,” she said.

  “Ayuh. It is. You oughta check out your office.”

  The walls were smooth and white, ready for paint, the floor tiles new and shiny. The baseboards and window trim were already in place. Casey walked to the window, drinking in the view of endless mountains that would be so distracting she’d probably never get any work done here.

  When she’d had her fill of the view, she bade farewell to the drywaller and moved on to the barn. On this hot summer day, it was too warm inside, no ai
r moving anywhere. Once the livestock arrived, the building would be climate controlled. Warm in winter, cool in summer. Casey checked out each corner, each stall, every inch of storage space. Turned on the water taps and confirmed that they were running properly. This was a huge undertaking, one she’d been so enthused about. Today, she felt only an apathy that was so unlike her. She blamed her waning enthusiasm on lack of sleep. Maybe Rob was right. But if he was, then why did the apathy seem to squeeze, like spray foam insulation, into every crevice of her life?

  She returned to the house, where she found that Rob had been a busy boy in her absence. “I have everything set up,” he said. “Colleen will be home on Tuesday, we’ll drive down to New York on Thursday, and I can be back in the studio by Friday. Our hotel reservation is made, and I thought we’d drive down in your car, so I made an appointment for an oil change on Monday morning. I’ve talked to Trish and Rose, and if Paige doesn’t want to come with us, she’s welcome to stay with either of them. I’m hoping she’ll come, though. I think the studio atmosphere would be good for her. Plus, that would give us a built-in babysitter for Miss Emmy Lou Who. I might just want to take my best girl out dancing some night, and I know I can trust Emma with her big sister.”

  “Wow. You have it all figured out, don’t you?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Her words had come out more pointed than she’d intended. Clearly, he’d heard the resentment in them, and clearly, he was trying to figure out why it was there and where it was coming from. Rob was just doing what he always did. Her husband was a go-getter who didn’t let any grass grow under his feet. She’d never minded it before. As a matter of fact, it had always been one of the things she admired most about him. But not today.

  A dull ache flitted across her forehead. “Nothing,” she said. “Where’s Emma?”

  “I put her down for a nap. She was getting fussy.”

  “I’m going for a drive.”

  He didn’t like it. She could tell by the way his nostrils flared and his breathing quickened. He didn’t need to say a word for her to know what he was thinking.

  He said it anyway. “You just got out of the hospital.”

  “And I’m perfectly capable of driving a car.”

  “Let me get Emma up. I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”

  Touching his hand to soften her words, she said, “No. I need to be alone.”

  So he let her go. Rob MacKenzie was a smart man. He knew it was useless to argue with her. Besides, considering her mood, it was just as well that she was going off alone.

  It was a beautiful day for a drive, sunny and warm, with very little humidity, a perfect Maine midsummer afternoon filled with buzzing bees and nodding daisies. She didn’t realize where she was headed until she found herself turning in at the cemetery gate. But it made sense in some parallel-universe way. Casey parked the car at the top of the hill and got out, breathed in the fragrance of ripe summer as a breeze lifted and tangled her dark hair. She passed Danny’s grave without pausing, kept going until she reached a simple rectangular stone topped by a carved marble lamb. Beneath the lamb were the words BELOVED DAUGHTER.

  She’d spent the better part of a decade avoiding this gravestone. For a long time, she’d come to the cemetery regularly to talk to Danny. He was a good listener, and sometimes, she just needed somebody to listen. But those cozy visits had come to an end when she realized how unfair it was to Rob. She belonged to him now. She wore his ring now, slept in his bed, loved him deeply, knew him as well as any woman could know a man. It wasn’t fair to him that she should still visit regularly with her first husband. So she’d stopped visiting Danny.

  But she’d never before come here to talk to Katie. It was too much like ripping the bandage off a wound that had never scabbed over. If she never stood here, never looked down on that BELOVED DAUGHTER, she could hold Katie in her mind, in her memory, and somehow convince herself that none of it was real. That her daughter still lived, still breathed, still laughed, in some alternate dimension. Casey Fiore MacKenzie wasn’t a religious person, but she held firmly and desperately to the belief that one day, she would see Katie again.

  “I failed you,” she said. “I’m so sorry that I failed you.”

  She’d failed not just Katie, but those three unborn babies as well. She pictured them now, lined up like dominoes, those sweet, tender souls that she’d somehow managed to fail in the most horrible of ways. Maybe those lost babies were the penance she had to pay for letting Katie die. Because her daughter’s death had been her fault. What kind of mother would go off on a business trip, three thousand miles from home, and leave her five-year-old daughter in the care of her father? Certainly, Danny had loved Katie as much as she had. Losing her had nearly destroyed their marriage. But he’d been consumed by his career, so Casey was the one who’d nursed their daughter through ear infections and chicken pox and scarlet fever. While Danny was off playing rock star, she had breastfed Katie, potty-trained her, taught her to tie her shoes and drink from a straw. She had a mother’s instincts, an intuition that Danny lacked. It wasn’t his fault, what had happened. If she’d been home where she belonged, instead of in New York with Rob, being wined and dined by a big Broadway producer, she would have rushed her daughter to the hospital hours earlier. Early enough to save her.

  But she hadn’t been home where she belonged. The one time in her life when she’d put her own career ahead of her daughter, the one time when Katie needed her most, she’d been in New York, celebrating a new business partnership with filet mignon and champagne. Because she hadn’t been there to recognize the signs, she and Danny had lost their daughter. And the guilt was crushing.

  It was why she was overprotective of Emma. She knew she was, and so did Rob. The fact that he’d never called her on it was testament to his love and understanding. But the truth was there, hovering in the air between them, like a firefly that briefly flared, then disappeared in the darkness. She tried to temper it. She didn’t want Emmy growing up in a bubble. That was no way to raise a child. But sometimes it was hard, especially when she kept flashing back to all the mistakes she’d made with Katie.

  She tried to imagine what Katie would look like now. She’d be thirteen years old, and undoubtedly a head-turner, for she’d taken her looks from Danny. Would she still have the same sunny disposition, her smooth surface buffeted by the occasional storm cloud? Or would she be dark and angsty, a drama queen, like Paige had been when she first came to them?

  It was pointless to speculate. The past couldn’t be changed. Katie was lost to her, and she’d accepted that truth eight years ago. That was the only way she’d managed to survive. With the stoicism that was bred into her, she’d said her good-byes and moved on, deliberately ignoring the bad and focusing on the good: Rob, love of her life; Paige, daughter of her heart; and Emma. Beautiful, sweet Emma. She focused all her energies on the little girl who needed her now, and had closed the door on the one who needed her no longer.

  So why had this miscarriage unlocked all that negative energy and sent it swirling around her like a miniature tornado?

  She’d managed so well all these years. Sometimes a week or two would go by when she wouldn’t even think about Katie. And then something—a little girl’s laughter, a snippet of song on the radio—would bring back a rush of memory so strong it sent her reeling. But she always recovered. Always managed to hold herself together. What else could she do? Life went on, no matter how much something might hurt. It was a truth she’d learned at the age of fifteen, when she lost her mother, and everything in her life had changed. You kept on going. You raised your chin, threw back your shoulders, and put one foot in front of the other. You continued moving. Because standing still was the worst thing you could do. If you stood still, the demons might catch up to you.

  And nobody wanted the demons to catch up.

  * * *

  When she got home, Rob was on the porch swing, feet propped on the railing, bony ankles
crossed, the swing moving with glorious indolence. His gaze followed her as she approached the house. She paused to deadhead a wilted marigold in the flower bed that lined the walkway, then climbed the steps and crossed the porch to him.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey.” She sat beside him and drew her legs up under her. He raised an arm and she scooted closer to his side, her cheek cushioned against his bicep. He pressed a kiss to the back of her head and said, “Feeling better?”

  She ran a finger down the soft flesh of his inner arm, elbow to wrist. “I went to visit Katie.”

  “Oh,” he said, his tone rife with meaning.

  “I’m sorry I was snotty to you.”

  “I have broad shoulders. You’ve just been through hell. And your hormones are all messed up. Give it a little time. Things will eventually settle down, and you’ll start to feel more like yourself.”

  “I need to see Emma. Come with me?”

  Hand in hand, they climbed the stairs to Emma’s bedroom, where the shades were drawn against the bright midday sun. Still holding hands, they stood by the side of their daughter’s crib and watched her breathing. Her features softened by sleep, Emma lay on her stomach, arms flung haphazardly, her knees bent, her round little rump pointing heavenward.

  “We did this,” Casey said, leaning her head against his shoulder. “We made her. You and I.”

  He wrapped his arm around her and said, “We did.”

  “It still takes my breath away. The miracle of life. The fact that she’s half you and half me. Don’t you think that’s amazing?”

  “I do. I look at her and I see you. Then she changes expression, and I see me. She looks like Paige, and my sister Meg. Then I look at a picture of your mother, and I see a resemblance yet again.”

  “She’s the amazing, ultimate expression of the love I feel for you.”

  He lowered his head and, his breath warm on her ear, kissed her temple. “You worry about her, don’t you?”

  “I can’t help it. After so many losses…I’m not the same person I used to be. I’ve learned, through experience, just how cruel life can be.” In her sleep, Emma grimaced, those pink rosebud lips drawing together in an expression of distaste. Casey gently brushed her knuckles across her daughter’s cheek, and Emma flinched. “You understand, don’t you? Why I need another baby? Why I’m so unwilling to quit?”