Page 98 of Everything We Give

He murmurs my name and lifts his head. We look at each other. His eyes are dark and full of anguish. I want to comfort him, but he has other things on his mind. As the sheer curtains surge with a breath of night air, Ian takes my breath. He kisses me and kisses me again, deeply. His hands move to my front and untie the belt at my waist. He parts the flaps and cool air moves over my skin like morning mist over water. Slowly, gently, his hands trace the lines of my waist, the edges of my breasts. His thumbs carefully outline my nipples, and still, he kisses me.

I meet his kisses, take in the lingering taste of hops on his tongue. Then everything changes, happening fast. My robe is off, I’m in the air, the muscles in Ian’s arms twisting and cording underneath me as he carries me to the bed, his lips never leaving mine. My head has barely settled on the feather pillows before he’s stripped and covering me, his flesh on my flesh, his hips between my legs. I close him in my arms and open for him, and he moves against me as though he can’t get enough. He can’t keep still. His hands are everywhere and it’s exquisite.

Our lovemaking has ranged from sensual and seductive to wild and rough, leaving us sore and exhausted. But his fervor, it takes us to a whole new level. It’s lewd and beautiful, dirty and glorious.

He stirs everything inside me as he kisses me, as he flips me over, as I take him deep, and deeper still. Only then does he consume me, his fingers biting into my skin. He moves in a way that makes me hunger for him, and makes me aware he’s exorcising years of pain and unrest. And I take it. I take it all. Everything he has to give me, and when he’s spent, our breathing erratic, his forehead drops to rest between my shoulder blades. We lie like that, in the quiet, enveloped in darkness, until our heartbeats slow. I start to drift off to sleep when I feel a drop on my back followed by another.

Ian.

I roll over. He lifts his head and I cup his face. His jaw is tight and the skin is tense around his eyes—his beautiful, soulful eyes.

“Ian.”My love.

I kiss the moisture from his cheekbones, then hold him to my breast, where he falls into a fitful slumber.

CHAPTER 30

IAN

Don’t look directly into the sun. You’ll burn out your retinas. My parents had the good sense to warn me. It’s what we’ve taught Caty. She listens, and in that matter, I did, too. But sometimes, looking at the sun is unavoidable. I’ll catch a glimpse of a reflection off the window of a passing vehicle. Or I’ll stand under a tree and look up into the skirt of branches to take a photo. A leaf bends and twists, the sun appears, andbam!The outline of the leaf or shape of the car window is seared on my eyeballs. And man, does it burn. I blink, and continue to blink, and eventually the bright spots go away.

I have two clear images of my mom that have left an impression on me. I carry them with me, a virtual keepsake. But rather than a shape captured by the sun that fades and disappears, they are branded in much the same way an image is recorded when light passes through the camera aperture and photons strike the film. Like a photo, the memories have faded over time. They aren’t quite as sharp, but they’re permanent. I can’t blink them away. They haunt me.

I remember my mom, gun in hand, the moment she looked at me, face stricken, as the awareness of what she’d done set in. The look of horror that actors portray in motion pictures doesn’t come close to the real deal. Genuine fear consumes you. It’s palpable, even to an observer. It tastes of dust and asphalt and oil. I can still taste her fear. I can still see the moment she realized she was lost to me. She’d accepted she couldn’t be the mother I needed.

My second memory is of the three of us, my parents and me, on a lakeside picnic. I was eight and my dad had a rare Sunday off work. We spent the afternoon fishing under my mom’s watchful gaze, her back against a tree, a book of poems open on her lap. We took a break for lunch, and I asked what she was reading. Walt Whitman’s “O Me! O Life!” She offered to read it to me and I said no. I was an eight-year-old kid more interested in cramming a PB&J sandwich into my mouth and washing it down with a Coke so I could get back to my fishing pole. I didn’t want to listen to my mom recite romantic prose. It wasn’t until a college literature class that I read the poem. The professor had us dissect it line by line. Had I known then the meaning behind the poem, I would have asked her if she was questioning her own existence. Did she wonder if her life had meaning? Was she feeling helpless? Had she known then the road she intended to travel, the one that led her away from me? I would have taken the time to listen. I would have made sure she was all right.

What I do know about that day is how content she seemed. How she couldn’t not smile when she talked with my dad. How they shared a laugh, their foreheads bent as they whispered to each other. How my dad’s lips lingered on her cheek when he kissed her before joining me at the shore. To the outside observer, we might have appeared to be the perfect family on a Sunday outing. It was the calm before the storm of my life. It’s my last good memory of the three of us.

When Aimee and I arrive at the Tierneys’, we descend upon a similar scene in their backyard. Catherine rests with her back against the giant sycamore that shades the grass, a book open and facedown on her lap. Hugh sits cross-legged on a plaid blanket drinking from a plastic teacup. His shirt has grease stains and his chin is smudged with oil. He was probably in the garage working on his Mustang. But he keeps his pinkie up when he lifts the cup to his lips as Caty instructs. As I watch them, I can’t help thinking of that Sunday afternoon long ago.

Aimee senses I’m drifting. I’m not quite in the moment, and she clasps my hand. I look down at our linked fingers, then up into her eyes.

“Time,” she says. “Give it time. The pain will lessen, it really will.”

I believe her. She would know. But right now, I’m still too raw to make that step forward. “I’m not sure what to do about my mom.”

“I know you aren’t, and that’s OK. You’ll figure it out. Trust your instincts. They’re good to you. They led you to me.” She smiles, and for the moment, I’m lost in her, who we were on our own and who we have become together and where we’re going. Then Caty squeals and the moment is shattered.

“Daddy! Mommy! You’re back!” She runs straight for me. I lift her in my arms and she smothers me with kisses. “I missed you,” she coos, resting her head on my shoulder.

“I missed you, too, Caty-cakes.”

“Did you see your daddy? Mommy said you went to your daddy’s house.”

I look at Aimee over our daughter’s crown of curls. She shakes her head. Caty doesn’t know he’s sick.

“I want to meet him,” Caty says.

I want her to meet him, too. Instead, I showed my dad pictures of Caty on my phone. He had asked about her, but he doesn’t want her to visit. Her one and only impression of her grandfather would be of him on the brink of death hooked up to an oxygen tank. His words, not mine. I don’t agree with him, but if I’ve learned anything, it’s to be respectful of another person’s wishes.

That’s when it hits me. My eyes burn as though I’ve looked into the sun, and in a way, I have. It’s all so clear now. I know what I want, what I’ve wanted all along. I pinch my face to keep myself from falling apart in front of my in-laws. Aimee takes Caty from my arms.

“Hey, you OK?”

I nod stiffly. “Do you mind if we skip lunch here and go home? I have some things I need to take care of.”

“Sure,” she says.

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