Phew! Blood, sweat and tears have gone into this chapter in my quest to hit the right note! I hope you enjoy it!
Cynthia, thank you for your 'diatribe' as you called it. So insightful as always! Thanks to all my wonderful reviewers. Hope this hits the right note for all of you too!
When Evelyn came out of the bathroom the following morning, she found herself pausing to take in the scene before her. Pamela and Peter were dragging themselves to the table in their pyjamas, arguing over which of them needed the most sleep, whilst Ben was busy trying to serve breakfast to everyone's specifications and bat away the complaints over there being no white bread and why couldn't Pamela have coffee. As she stood watching the rough and tumble of family life, she suddenly realised that this could be her life. Not every other month or even every other weekend, but every day if Ben made good on his threat and it dawned on her that in every conversation she had had, both with her mother and Shambala and, indeed with herself over the future, she had been focused on what Ben would want...what Ben would say...how Ben would react to having another child at this time of his life. She had barely given any thought as to what she wanted. She wanted the baby, his baby, but wanting it and having it meant becoming part of something far bigger than just the three of them and she wasn't quite sure if she was ready for it.
"Evelyn..." Pamela whined when she saw her, "Why can't I have coffee?"
"Because your father said no," she replied, shaking herself slightly and walking over to join them at the table. "You've got years ahead of you to drink bad coffee, believe me."
"Uh...I'll have you know my coffee is not bad," Ben said, waving the pot at her. "But, despite that, the answer is still no."
"So what are we doing today?" Peter asked once they were all seated to eat. "Maybe the park again?"
Evelyn looked over and caught Ben's eye, realising that he hadn't yet told them about Laura's plans. "Well..." he said slowly. "Your mother called late last night and...uh...she's coming to collect you at lunchtime, so I'm afraid there won't be much time to do anything."
Both children stopped what they were doing, Peter with his toast halfway to his mouth, Pamela with her spoon raised over her cereal, and stared at him, their expressions verging on horrified. Evelyn frowned. Hardly the typical reaction of teenagers told they were simply going home, she would have thought, but then, aside from herself, what experience of teenagers did she really have? And what did she really know about the Stone childrens' home life anyway? In any event, at the moment, it really was nothing to do with her, so she concentrated on the cereal in her bowl and kept quiet.
"But why? Why can't we just get the train home?" Pamela asked when she had recovered herself. "Why is she coming here?"
"I don't know," Ben said. "I guess she's missed you. That's not a bad thing, is it?"
"Is he coming?"
"He who?"
"Mark," Peter supplied darkly.
"I've no idea."
"It's not fair," Pamela looked over at Evelyn, seeking support. "You'll still be here when she comes, won't you?"
Evelyn paused and looked up. Though she couldn't help but be curious about Laura, a woman she had only seen in one picture tucked at the back in Ben's office, she knew that it was probably best she make herself scarce, not least of all to give herself some more time to think. "Oh...no, I'll be away by then."
"Why?" Pamela wailed, dropping her spoon onto her plate with a clatter.
"Don't you want to meet our mom?" Peter asked, the slight edge that had been initially evident in his voice upon his arrival on Friday, returning.
"Of course I do, eventually," she replied as diplomatically as she could. "But I think it's best that it's just the four of you this time." Glancing over, she caught Ben's eye and knew that he was thinking along the same lines. "Besides, I've got a trial starting tomorrow and I need some time to go over all the evidence."
"Is it a murder?" Peter asked.
"No, a robbery," she replied, hiding a smile as he visibly wilted with disappointment.
"I don't see why we have to go home at all," Pamela said, viciously stabbing at a piece of toast with a butter knife. "It's not as if we've got school tomorrow. Can't we stay a few more days?"
"No," Ben said.
"Please..."
"Evelyn and I have to work. There would be no-one to take care of you."
"We're not kids, we can take care of ourselves," Peter said.
"We're not having this argument again," Ben said lightly. "Anyway, we said we'd come up for your game in two weeks time and we will."
"Really?" Peter asked, his gaze switching hopefully between them.
"Yes," Evelyn agreed. On that point at least she was sure. "We wouldn't miss it." Seemingly satisfied, he dug back into his bowl, though Pamela still looked unhappy. When breakfast was finished, the two of them disappeared to get dressed and she started helping Ben clear up the dishes, stopping only when he pulled her into him for a long kiss that whilst reminded her of the enforced, silent passion on the couch the night before, almost succeeded in making her drop the plates onto the floor. "What was that for?" she asked when they broke apart.
"For knowing the right things to say," he replied. "I want you to meet Laura too but..."
"Don't worry about it," she said. "I'm sure you have a lot to talk about."
"I guess we do..." he released her and leaned back against the counter. "I know she's not going to be happy, judging by how she was with me on the phone last night."
"They're your children, Ben. You need to do what you think is best."
"Sometimes it's hard to know what is best," he mused.
"I know," she said, lifting a cloth to wipe the table and realising that anything further she could say would simply ring hollow. In reality, she knew nothing. "I know."
XXXX
The buzzer rang at twelve-thirty on the dot.
Evelyn had left an hour or so earlier, despite Peter and Pamela's best efforts to encourage her to stay. Although he knew it wasn't the right time for an introduction, Ben couldn't help but miss her comforting presence. If he was going to peruse the notion of having the children come and live with him, he would need her backing and it was clear from even the short time they had all spent together that both of them liked her. Neither of the children made any move to answer the door so Ben went over and lifted the receiver. "Hello?"
"It's me," Laura said, her tone inexplicably pleasant. "Is it ok to come up?"
"Sure," he pressed the button and heard the security door click, then opened the apartment door and waited for her to come out of the elevator. When she did, she smiled broadly at him, an action that threw him completely, given that he had been ready to fight with her.
"You look well," she complimented him as she reached the door, going so far as to offer her cheek for a kiss.
"So do you," he replied, unable to help noticing that she did, in fact, look good. She'd cut and coloured her hair since he had last seen her and the white pants and striped navel top she was wearing showed off all of her best features, but though at one time he might have reacted, he couldn't help but think that her show of sexual femininity was calculatingly deliberate. "Come in."
"Thanks," she moved past him into the apartment, her gaze flitting around as though searching for something. Or someone. "Well, you two look happy to see me." Peter and Pamela were sat on the couch, wearing expressions that could only be described as mournful and showing no signs of being pleased to see their mother. "I take it you've had a good weekend?"
"Why couldn't we just get the train home?" Pamela asked, avoiding the question.
"Because we decided to come and get you," Laura replied lightly, in a tone that Ben recognised as indicating that the subject, whilst closed for the moment, would very soon be reopened.
"But..."
"If you've got all your things then why don't you take them down to the car? Mark's down there waiting."
The brusqueness of her tone and the mention of Mark's name seemed to send both children into slow motion and Ben watched as they dragged themselves off of the couch and made a big pretence of lifting their bags and moving towards the door, almost as if they were waiting for him to grant some form of reprieve. Pamela hugged him tightly, Peter slightly less so, and then they trudged out of the apartment.
Once they were gone, Laura turned to look at him, tossing her hair as she did so. "I wasn't sure if I'd find you alone."
"Meaning what?" he asked, though he had a fair idea.
"I wasn't sure if she would be here."
"By she I take it you mean Evelyn?"
"Is there more than one?"
He elected not to engage her. "She went home a few hours ago."
"Oh, so she spent the night then."
"Is that a problem?"
"Well you've only known her, what, a few months?"
"Five months," he replied shortly.
"Oh well..." she laughed. "A long time then."
"You said you wanted to talk," he said, diverting the conversation back to its intended purpose. "So talk."
She raised her eyebrows. "There's no need to be like that, Ben. Is it completely out of line for me to show an interest in who you're dating? Surely if my children are going to be around a person then it's not unreasonable for me to know something about her." She turned and casually strolled along the back of the couch, running her hand along the top as she did so. "Can I take it that it's...serious?"
"Yes, it is."
Laura nodded, "I suppose I should be happy for you. After all, you seem to have spent most of the last ten years buried in your work. Much like you did when we were married." She paused. "Does Evelyn know what you're like?"
Ben sighed, "Laura..."
"Does she know that she'll never see you for weeks on end? That you'll forget to call and say that you're going to be late? That the DA's office will always be more important than her...?"
"That's enough."
"No it isn't, Ben. It isn't nearly enough!" She snapped. "Do you have any idea how much you've hurt me? How much you've hurt the kids...?"
"Laura..." he interrupted her, somewhat amazed that she was bringing up the same bones of contention from somewhere circa 1983. "We have been divorced for ten years..."
"And do you really think it doesn't still hurt?!" She moved towards him, her eyes suddenly awash with unshed tears. "Do you really think that I don't still wonder why you picked your work over me...over us? I loved you, Ben and I know you loved me and yet...when the going got tough you just threw in the towel!"
"I threw in the towel? You're the one who walked out!"
"And you didn't stop me! Why didn't you come running after me? Why didn't you promise me that we could make it work? Why didn't you drag me home again? Why did you stop loving me?!"
She was standing mere feet away from him now, her fists balled at her sides, completely altered from the woman who had walked through the door not five minutes earlier, the first tears slipping down her cheeks and Ben found himself...utterly blindsided. In all of their arguments, both pre and post separation, she had displayed nothing but anger...hatred almost. She had railed at him, at his selfishness, his ego, his apparent belief that serving justice was more important than family, she had called him every name under the sun but not once...not once...had she cried.
"I...uh..." he fought hard for the right thing to say, adrift at her shift in tactic. "I didn't stop loving you, Laura, you should know that. I thought that we were happy until the day you told me that you were leaving and taking the children with you. I didn't have the chance to stop loving you."
She moved closer to him again and he could see that she was trembling. "Do you still love me, Ben?"
He had never been very good at hiding his true emotions and he could tell by the look on her face that that hadn't changed. Lord only knew he didn't want to hurt her anymore than she perceived she had already been hurt, but he also knew he couldn't lie. "You're the mother of my children," he said after a long pause. "I will always love you because of them and because of what we once had but..." Before he could finish his sentence, she rushed towards him, a sob escaping from her lips and, for the briefest of seconds, he thought she was going to strike him. But instead, her arms went around his neck and she pressed herself against him at the same time as her mouth crashed against his.
The Ben of five years ago...hell, probably even the Ben of one year ago...would have responded in the way she clearly wanted him to. They had so much shared history after all and if he closed his eyes he could still remember the college girl he had first seen on that September morning with the pencil behind her ear...but the present Ben, the Ben that was in love with one woman and one woman only, couldn't. "Laura..." he pulled back, holding her at arms length. "Don't do this."
She stared at him, her cheeks streaked with tears, her eyes wide as though she couldn't quite believe what was happening herself. Then she wrenched her arm out of his grip and stepped back, wiping her hand viciously across her face. When she next spoke, her voice was low and full of the familiar anger he had grown used to over the years. "You are not taking my children away from me."
"I want what's best for them..."
"You don't know what's best for them, Ben. You have no fucking idea! You barely even know who they are!"
"I know them well enough to know that something isn't right when our thirteen year old daughter takes it upon herself to cut school and come all the way down here on her own! Not to mention the fact that neither of them clearly want to go home with you and your latest bit of rough!"
"Well I didn't realise that you were a fucking psychiatrist on top of being a fucking know-it-all lawyer!" Laura spat. "You don't know what their lives are like because you haven't shown the slightest bit of interest in them for years. Now, all of a sudden, you take up with some whore and you want to be father of the fucking year!"
He bit his tongue, hard, against the reaction that he knew she wanted and rewarded her with a muted one instead. "If you're jealous, that is not my problem."
She laughed loudly. "Jealous? Give me a fucking break, Ben. Compared to Mark you were, what I can only describe as, an extremely unsatisfying fuck. I don't know how I survived seven minutes of marriage to you let alone seven years." Tossing her hair again, she moved past him to the door. "Try and take my children if you want, but you won't succeed. I'll see you and that bitch in hell before I see my children living with either of you."
He shrugged, "Well I guess I'll see you in court."
"Yes," she said, looking him up and down distastefully. "I guess you will."
XXXX
"She kissed you?"
"Yes, she kissed me." He leaned forwards as though to emphasise the point. "I didn't kiss her, I didn't want her to kiss me and the second she did I pushed her away. I need you to believe that."
Evelyn pulled her cardigan tighter around her body. She felt slightly chilled at the revelation of what had gone on between Ben and Laura that afternoon, but symbolically, it also felt as though she was protecting herself and her baby. When he had turned up at her door, earnestly declaring he had something important to tell her, she had had no clue what he was going to say and the truth had genuinely shocked her, despite knowing deep down he would never do anything to hurt her. "I do believe that. I just...what was she hoping to achieve?"
Ben shook his head, "I don't know...she's crazy. It was like talking to two different people! One minute she's coming onto me, the next she's acting as though I'm the devil's spawn. She certainly isn't the woman I married, that's for sure."
"She's the mother of your children."
"That doesn't mean anything."
Evelyn paused at the casual way he dismissed her words, "Doesn't it?"
"Not any more, not for a long time. A few years ago...if she had given any indication she wanted to reconcile..." he shrugged, "maybe I might have considered it but now...now there's no way.
All these years she's paraded a succession of men through her life, and the kids' lives, while I've worked my ass off and practically lived the life of a monk. Now, all of a sudden, she can see that I'm moving on and she can't take it. Not to mention the fact that she's obviously terrified that I'm going to take the kids away from her. Why else would she throw herself at me?"
"You don't give yourself enough credit," Evelyn joked lamely.
"Yeah, well...I like to think you're biased."
"And are you?"
"What?"
"Going to take the kids."
"They're not happy. Even you could see that, right?"
Evelyn sighed, "I don't know, Ben..."
"Did you think their reaction to hearing she was coming to get them was normal? You should have seen their faces when she walked in." He got to his feet and thrust his hands in his pockets. "I don't know if it's her or Mark or both of them. If she hadn't acted so crazy we might have been able to sit down and have a rational conversation about it. Now...now all I reckon I can do is ask them both if they want to come and live here and, if they do...do whatever I need to do to get the order reopened in court."
"And if they don't?"
"I don't even want to think about that right now."
"Do you want some tea?" Evelyn got to her feet, her mind whirring, and walked into the kitchen. He seemed to have it all figured out. If Pamela and Peter wanted to move back to New York, he was going to make it happen and yet...she had knowledge of something that could change everything. Keeping it from him any longer suddenly seemed so very wrong.
"I need to know that you support me in this," Ben said, coming up behind her as she filled the kettle.
"They're your children..." she said quietly, immediately feeling his arms go around her and gently pull her round to face him. "It's not really anything to do with me..."
"You keep saying that they're my children..."
"They are."
"But how can you say that this decision has nothing to do with you? It has everything to do with you. I love you, Evelyn...you mean everything to me. Don't you know that? I want a life with you. I want to be with you." He took a breath. "When all this is over and done with and you're free of Edward...I want to marry you."
If ever words could have a physical reaction on a person, his did. Her heart started to thud, her throat suddenly went dry and she felt a stab deep inside her womb. "What...?"
He cupped her face in his hands, "I know that it sounds crazy and that you're not even divorced yet but...I don't want to think about my future without you in it. I don't want to wake up and not have you lying beside me. I don't want to grow old and not have you grow old with me. I know that an overworked guy in his fifties with a seemingly crazy ex-wife and two teenagers probably isn't what you had in mind..."
"Ben..."
"And I know that if the kids decide they do want to come and live here with me, then it'll impact on our relationship more than I have any right to ask it to, but..."
"I'm pregnant."
She heard herself say the words, the ones she had been longing to say to him since she had seen the positive test result and yet been too afraid to utter, and she waited for the reaction she had hoped for. She waited for the look of joy to cross his face, for him to laugh and lift her up in his arms and tell her that it was the best news he had heard in years. She waited for him to kiss her and tell her that he loved her and that he would look after both of them. She waited for everything that she had never received from Edward any one of the four times she had told him he was going to be a father.
She waited.
Ben stared at her, as though he wasn't sure he had heard her correctly and his hands dropped from her face. "You're...uh...you're pregnant?" She nodded. "How...uh...when...?"
"How is probably pretty obvious," she replied. "As for when...I need to wait until tomorrow for the blood test results and then they'll send me for a scan but...but I'm guessing it happened sometime in early August."
His eyes widened, "So you're...almost three months pregnant?"
"No, I don't think as far along as that. Maybe about two months, give or take..." she trailed off as it became more and more clear that she wasn't going to get the reaction she had longed for and could only be grateful that she wasn't near a flight of stairs. "I'm...I'm sorry."
He was looking at her, but not looking at her, more looking through her, his mind clearly gone from the present moment. She knew her expectations were unfair, after all he had only known for a matter of seconds whereas she had carried the knowledge for days so she waited, waited as he slowly came back to her, as his eyes refocused, as he swallowed hard and pulled her gently into his arms again.
"No," he said, burying his face in her hair. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't take better care of you."
Confused, she pulled back. "I don't..."
"You've been through so much," he said, his face pained. "I shouldn't have...I should have been more careful...I shouldn't have...wanted you so badly..."
"Ben, we're both adults...we're both responsible."
"I'm the man," he said stridently. "I should have..."
"That's a very sweet if somewhat old fashioned notion," she smiled tentatively.
"You've been to the doctor?" She nodded. "What did he say, I mean, about...what's happened before?"
"He said there was no reason why this pregnancy shouldn't be successful just because the others weren't."
"So he didn't say...he didn't say that you shouldn't have it?"
"No." She paused. "Unless...you don't want me to have it?"
"No! I would never..." he looked at her earnestly. "Do you want to have it?"
She slid her arms around his waist, finally allowing herself to say what she felt. "Yes. I love it already, more than you could know, and I love you completely. I want us to do this together, but...if you feel that you can't...then I know I can do it on my own."
He pulled her close to him again and let out a long breath. "As if I could let you do that. I just...God, I don't want anything to happen to you because of...because of me."
She closed her eyes and breathed him in. "Think of it this way," she said, her voice muffled against his chest. "If I did fall pregnant in early August, then...then this baby survived through what Edward tried to do to me at the hotel that night. That's got to mean something, right?"
"Yes," he said, squeezing her gently but firmly. "It means I hate him even more."
