Page 80 of Goodbye Paradise
That afternoon, Chloe had just gone down for a nap and the house was quiet when I saw an unfamiliar car pull up the driveway. It went past the house and toward the workshop.
Feeling nosy, I peeked out the mudroom door, and was surprised to see Caleb get out of the car and go into the workshop.
Today was Friday, when he only worked a half day. But I’d forgotten that.
A couple of minutes later, he emerged again, this time with Daniel. The two of them got into the strange car and then drove away again.
It was hardly the oddest thing that had ever happened. But I still felt a quiver of uncertainty. Would someone please just tell me what was going on?
Forty minutes later, the strange car and the pickup truck both returned. Caleb and Daniel got out. But then they spent a couple minutes talking in the driveway. Strangely, they seemed to be having an argument. It ended when Daniel threw his hands in the air then stomped off toward the workshop.
Caleb turned to look at the house. I held my breath, wondering if he could see the crack in the curtains where I peered through. He seemed to gather himself. Then he began walking toward the house.
By hurrying, I managed to be back in the kitchen, casually pouring myself a cup of coffee in the chipped blue mug when he came in the door. “Hi,” I said when he poked his head in from the mudroom.
“Anyone else here?” he asked by way of a greeting.
My stomach dropped. “Chloe, but she’s napping.”
He nodded, face deathly serious. “We need to talk.”
For a moment, those words just bounced around in my chest. The words weren’t necessarily ominous. But in my gut, I knew that something was wrong. “What about?”
Caleb looked down at his hands. “I’m going to marry Miriam.”
“What?” I could have sworn that he’d just said he wanted tomarryMiriam.
“She needs someone to take care of her,” he said. “And her child needs a father.”
The words settled into my stomach like lead. My first thought was a selfish one.ButIneed you. And wasn’t that just a sissy way to think? Miriam was eighteen years old. She was pregnant and probably unemployable.
She had, however, a family who would care for her.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said carefully. “She isn’t going to starve in the street.”
His eyes were flat. “I get that. But this is better for her. She’ll have someone to lean on. She asked me to marry her once before, and I said no. This time, I’m not going to let her down.”
Oh, no. I realized that I was probably going to cry. I could feel the telltale scratch at the back of my throat, and a burning in my eyes. “I think I hear Chloe,” I said. As casually as I could, I lifted my chin and left the room, expecting Caleb to try to stop me.
He didn’t.
Upstairs, I did not cry. I couldn’t afford to. Chloe could wake up any minute, and she wouldn’t know what to do with a sobbing babysitter.
I tiptoed into her room and lay down on the twin bed that Daniel had put in here just yesterday. It was the bed that had sat in the corner of his shop, the one that he thought nobody needed.
Well I needed it. Probably tonight. Because if Caleb was serious about leaving me, I was not going to spend another night beside him. Not ever again.
I lay there, shocked, trying to wrap my head around Caleb’s so-called decision. It didn’t even seem real. I half expected him to pop his head into the room and say that he’d been kidding.
But he’d never kid me like that.
So if itwasn’tjust a sick joke, I had to sort myself out. And how would that arrangement look? If he actually married her, Caleb and I would need some distance from each other.
Maybe he and Miriam would move out to the apartment.
Ourapartment.
I’d worked so hard on that place. I’d wanted to live there with Caleb so badly. And I’d spent exactly one night there. One!
