He picked her up from work one night, and she fastened her seatbelt as he shifted the car into reverse, then sped off, throwing her back into the seat. She smiled at him, and he smiled back, easily.
"So when are you going to tell me where we're going?"
He chuckled. "I'm not. You're going to figure it out, Miss Detective."
Nancy twirled a lock of long red-blond hair around her fingertip and looked out the window, into the growing dark. Then she pouted at him. "Not even a hint?"
He shifted gears and she was thrown back into her seat again.
At an Italian place in downtown Chicago, he left her in the idling car and came back out with a small pizza box and a bag. He handed her the bag, which was warm.
"Mind if I look inside?"
He smiled. "Nah. Go ahead."
She opened the pizza box first and saw the cheesesticks, and then took a deep inhalation of the bag. She shot him a querying glance, then raised an eyebrow as he turned into a driveway.
Into a drive-in theater.
"So what's playing, Nickerson?"
"Anything other than Nemo."
Nancy looked down. "We used to do this all the time," she said softly. "You got my favorite, didn't you."
"Yup. I'm gonna go get us some drinks," he said, unbuckling his seatbelt.
Nancy leaned over and grabbed his collar, pulling him toward her so she could plant a kiss on his lips. "This is great," she said. "Thanks."
"Sure thing."
Nancy missed Ned's old sedan then, the first car he ever had, the one they always took to the drive-in because it seated six and she could slide across the seat, almost into his lap, while they watched the movies. They split the cheesesticks like they always had, and split each other's subs, sipped each other's drinks, while watching the movie. But they had both seen it, so during the lull times they talked.
She cleaned her fingers meticulously, not wanting to get grease on his seats, with napkins and the moisture condensing on the cup holding her drink. The couple on screen was leaning close to each other, but Nancy couldn't have cared less. She shot a glance sideways and found Ned gazing back at her.
"You know what I always wanted to do, back then, back when we did this all the time?" Nancy finished cleaning her fingers and tossed the napkin into their discard bag.
"What did you always want to do?" Ned asked softly.
Nancy hitched up her skirt and swung onto his lap, her knees planted on either side of his hips. "Something like this," she murmured into his ear.
"We'd never have seen a single movie," Ned said softly, his breath warm against her skin, resting his hands lightly on her hips. "I like, though."
Nancy caught the glint of lightning in the sky as she bent her head to his, trailing kisses down his neck. "I've seen this one before," she whispered.
"I have too."
"It's about to rain," she whispered. "And then we won't be able to see anything."
"I'll be able to see what I need to see," he whispered roughly, and Nancy laughed.
--
Occasionally Nancy and Ned held poker nights where not much poker was played. Especially when the girls were along, the die-hard poker players wanted nothing more than fresh beers and to be left alone.
Which was how, at two-thirty the following Saturday morning, Nancy found herself on their back deck with quite a few of the smoking wives and girlfriends, and even some who had just come out for fresh air and gossip.
Ned was just drawing himself a glass of water when he saw his wife's reddish-gold head passing through the glass doors out to the patio. She was carrying a fresh strawberry daiquiri, and her face was flushed, from excitement or intoxication he couldn't tell.
The silence was deafening when he pushed back the sliding glass door. Nancy met his eyes brightly, very brightly. "Hey," she chirped in his direction.
He knew he couldn't walk straight and that occasionally he saw double of things which really had no business being two, but their sudden, startled silence irritated him. "Hey. Just..." he waved his hands vaguely. "Sorry."
He closed the door and heard one of the girls, a brunette who preferred long island iced teas, ask a question about the water garden Nancy had planned, designed, and kept detailed sketches of in their study.
He smiled.
Ned made his rounds, watched the serious expressions of the players, the eager, almost fawning expressions of the guys caught racing each other on his game console. They were fellow members of his frat, the four of them, overawed because they remembered when he had been their president.
Their suddenly celibate president, who would drink himself to sleep, and maybe, if the game had been especially bad one, would tell them about the one who had gotten away.
He took a break then, from their bright eyes and the gravelly sound of bets being placed, and splashed cold water on his face, suddenly craving, needing, another beer.
He had been different then. But not that much different. Convinced, somehow, that he could make himself good enough for her, better than he had before. That if he had hurt her, that he would never hurt her again; that if she was so afraid of being tied to him, he would assuage every single doubt she had, from the money to the freedom he would allow her to keep...
And when the last guests were saying their goodbyes a while later, that was still on his mind. He had one arm around her shoulders and the other hand holding a beer can as they waved to the last couple. Her skin felt a little sticky under his fingertips, from her being in the night air so long.
She was giggling as they went upstairs, bumping into each other, the house dark and still full of the ghosts and silence of recent human occupancy. He could hear the harsh metallic buzz of the television set, still on downstairs, but he closed the door behind them and pulled his shirt over his head.
"Nan, I love you so much," he said.
She giggled again, hiccuped, stepped out of her jeans. "Just because I suggested we buy that extra box of Triscuits."
"No, no, that's not it," he said, stumbling a few times as he attempted to peel himself out of his own jeans. "I mean, that was an excellent, wonderful suggestion."
"Thank you for saying so." She beamed, then slipped into their bed.
"Have I told you what it was like when you were gone?"
He watched a look of discomfort pass over her face in the near darkness. "It was bad," she said. "It was bad for both of us."
"But you don't know how it was for me."
She reached up and ran a hand over his bare shoulder, and he took it into his own. "Do you need to tell me?" she asked, blinking slowly.
"Yeah," he said thickly. He ran a hand over his hair. "You're drunk, aren't you."
She nodded. "Yeah. It's been a while. But I think I'm good and fucked up. And I'm sleepy and I--" she expelled her breath quickly. "I have this feeling you're about to make me feel bad."
"I just love you so much."
Nancy closed her eyes to block the view of his gleaming ones, in the darkness. "I love you too," she whispered.
"I did everything I could think of," he said to her. "Everything. I studied so hard, made better grades than I ever had before. Almost beat the running yard record at Emerson. I... you remember, I interned at the firm, before, and you were investi- invest- doing a case nearby, and your father said it was a good place to work? I went back there, found the mentor I had, worked my ass off for him in case he somehow knew your father. I made so much money there, was promoted so much that I'm the second youngest guy to be this high in the company.
"And I did this all for you. Because for a while I thought that somehow you would know, you would sense it, and you would come back to me. Because I would finally somehow be good enough. But you didn't, and I knew I had to keep going, I had to do more, be more, have more, because I wanted you back, and I knew that was what it would take."
Nancy drew in a trembling breath and let her fingers drift to over his mouth, to stop his speech. She was shaking her head as he kissed her fingertips and pushed them away.
"Nancy, I rebuilt myself, I remade myself, because I wasn't good enough for you. And we were so young--"
She shook her head, her breath trembling still. "Ned, you've always been good enough for me. Better than good enough for me. I don't deserve you, I never have, I've never been good enough for you, I never meant--"
He stilled her mouth with his thumb. "We were young," he repeated gently. "We were still kids. And back then I could, and did, love you more than life itself, but that wasn't enough."
Nancy buried her face against his chest. "Please stop," she whispered.
"Some mornings I wake up and I don't know how it happened, how someday it was enough and then I found you there in Hong Kong. Some days I think it was a dream and that I'm still building a castle in the sky that will never happen.
"And we're different now, and..." He ran his hand over her trembling back. "You're different now too, Nan. You're not the person who left me. You won't hurt me like that again."
"No," she breathed in affirmative response, reaching up to wipe her wet face. "I won't hurt you again."
"Because after everything, after this life I built for us, I just can't. This is it, the final, the end for me. I can't do it again. I almost killed myself to be right for you, to undo everything I thought I did wrong, that could have made you leave. And I knew then, and I know now, that the only way I could ever let you go, the way that would hurt me so badly that I could never do this again, would be if you were with someone else."
"Ned," she murmured, pained.
"Not Jean," he said, running his thumb over her face. "If you ever could do that again, but Nancy, you won't, you won't be with him again. You can't. You have to tell me I'm the only one, that it was enough, that what I've given you is enough--"
"It is," she responded, reaching up to touch his face. "Oh God, you've given me more than I ever asked for, so much more, and you took me back even after you knew, even after you understood what Jean did to me, after I hurt you, and I can never, never ask for anything more from you."
"Nan," he mumbled, running his fingertips down her bare arm, to her warm waiting skin. "This is it, this is how I wanted it to end," he said. "Everything is right, like this, with you in this house, in my bed, in love with me. Because I want to stop feeling this way."
"It does end this way," she said, rolling over onto her back, sliding her fingers over his face. "Stop fighting. And stop... Ned, you are enough, you were enough, even back then, you've always been the only one and I was just too stupid to see it."
"You're not stupid."
She closed her eyes and nestled against him. "I was a stupid fool and you built a beautiful house for me," she said, her voice slow. "But it's not the beautiful house I'm here for. It's not the grades, or the money, the promotions, the matching Jaguars. I'm here because you are here. And wherever you are, that's where I will be."
Ned leaned down and kissed her deeply.
"You don't owe me anything," she told him softly, her hand still in his hair. "I owe you everything."
"No," he said, shaking his head, and rested his forehead against hers.
"I love you," she whispered, brushing her lips against his. "And I'm too tired to talk anymore."
He was, too, once she drew his face down to hers, once she pulled him into the circle of her arms.
--
After church was Sunday dinner and this week it was with his parents. Nancy eyed Edith, Ned's revelation about her influence over the nursery burning like guilty knowledge in her head. So she was the one responsible for the furniture and the daily reminder that she hadn't yet produced any grandchildren. Nancy took a sip of water.
"Let's go shopping today," Edith said, smiling. "There are some really good sales going on."
Is she going to drag me to a baby store? Maternity? Ask me intensely probing questions about my fertility cycles and how often I drag her son into bed with me?
"Okay," Nancy replied, smiling, acutely aware of Ned's gaze on her.
"And there's a really good game going on today," James said.
"Well, we'll try to get Ned back to catch the end of it," Edith said. "But I'm not promising anything."
"What?" Ned said, protesting.
"I was thinking about buying some things for the house, and I wanted to see how you liked them."
"I trust Nancy's judgement," Ned said, shooting his wife a beatific glance, but she responded with a desperate flutter of her eyelashes.
"Even a grill?"
"Outdoor?" Ned asked.
As a compromise Edith faded the game into the back speakers so Ned could listen to it while she and Nancy talked. "Has Ned been looking at any grills?"
"He wants this monstrosity with cabinets and a plastic cover," Nancy admitted. The only stores she could get Ned to go into involved hardware, electronics, sports memorabilia, lingerie, or the occasional male clothing store. Asking him to go into Pottery Barn was like directly attacking his masculinity.
They left him happily settled in front of a wide flat-panel television set, ostensibly to judge its surround sound quality as it showed the game. Nancy noted Edith's longing glance into a toy store. "I'll be back in just a minute," she said. "Have to buy something for my grand-nephew."
Nancy wandered back to the stuffed animals and looked them over. She saw a watergun that Ned would have tormented her with for hours. A my-sized Barbie dress up kit was on sale, and Nancy almost called Bess to find out if Stephanie already had one. Play tents, sleeping bags, growling beasts, articulate action figures. She spotted a small plastic bottle and thought about it for a minute, then laughed and took it to the checkout.
A familiar profile passed in front of the plate glass window, and Nancy rushed out to grab Ned's shoulder. "Here," she said, pressing the bag into his hand. "Don't look."
His gaze traveled between the bag and her face. "All right," he said. "I'm going to the mattress store."
"Okay."
Nancy and Edith walked through countless clothing stores, and she noticed that Edith kept showing her generously designed tops, doubtless to accommodate any sudden weight gain in the future. After Nancy had rebelliously run her fingers over a silk camisole hanging near the front of the store, she had an idea. "What do you think of these?" she asked, pointing to a pair of sandblasted denim low-rise flares with a metallic belt cinched around the waist.
Edith laughed. "Not for me," she said.
Your son sure likes them, she thought, but didn't say anything. "Ned's at the mattress store," she said. "Should we grab him and make him approve the grill?"
Ned was stretched out contentedly on a display model, a broad smile on his face which widened as he caught sight of Nancy and Edith. "Hey," he said. When Nancy stepped close to his side, he grabbed her hand and pulled her down to the mattress with him, against his side. "How do you like this?"
Her eyes sparkled. "Nice," she said.
Ned sighed dramatically. "Not me, the mattress," he replied, arm still curved around her waist. "This place closes at six, come back by and pick me up." He closed his eyes.
Nancy rolled over onto her back and tilted her head, testing. "It is nice," she said.
"I'll tell them to deliver one to the house tomorrow," Ned replied, his eyes still closed.
Nancy looked over and saw Edith studying the various pillows on display, then put her mouth close to her husband's ear and whispered something. He smiled, then opened his eyes and sat up.
"Thanks a million," he said to the salesperson. "Excellent mattress. Definitely gets my endorsement. The little lady here even wanted to take it for a test drive."
Nancy punched his arm but smiled a little at the shocked look on Edith's face.
Ned's hand stayed in hers as they walked down the aisle, and had almost reached the store Edith had in mind when Nancy turned off. "I want to go in here," she announced, with Ned still trailing along behind her. "Edith?"
Ned breathed a silent prayer, and his features showed his relief as Edith begged off, saying she would be browsing in the next store down. Nancy made some sweet reply and tugged Ned in behind her.
Once they were alone, Nancy spread her arms. "See anything you like?"
He knew her sizes. While she went to find some more panties, to replace the ones he had recently ruined, he lingered in the more expensive section, remembering what she had and what he liked. He selected an entire outfit, down to stockings and high heeled slippers, and brought them to her.
"You sure?"
He hesitated, following their usual script. "I don't know. Maybe you should try them on."
"That sounds like a good idea." She reached up to kiss his cheek. "Give me ten minutes."
"Ten?" he responded into her ear, her flesh warmed by his breath. "Sure you can't speed it up?"
"Just don't make it too obvious," she replied, shooting him an impeccable smile as she found a saleswoman.
Ten minutes and twenty seconds later he ducked behind the door she held open for him, and it clicked decisively behind him. She stood in the muted lighting, hands on her hips. "So?"
Strapless black lace bustier trimmed in red, dangerously low in the front, matching underwear, garters hanging from the bustier and holding up sheer black stockings trimmed in red.
"Damn, I have good taste," he said, stepping forward, kissing her.
She smiled, her eyes closed. "Once we have kids we won't be able to do this anymore," she said.
He leaned back and gazed at her face, his brow furrowing, his palms warm on her skin, stroking her neck. "You've never said that before. It's always been if, not when..."
He kissed her again, insistent, and she responded, a slow wash of tears prickling faintly behind her eyelids for a moment. "I think there are security cameras in the dressing rooms," she said.
"Well, let's give the security guard something to talk about," Ned responded.
Afterward, he sighed. "I guess we should go find my mom."
"And tell her we have photographic evidence that we are committed to making her a grandchild." Ned stuck his tongue out at her, and she laughed, then dug in her purse for a tissue.
"I've marked you," she said, wiping her lipstick off his skin.
He reached down and traced lightly over the ink on her hip. "Yeah," he replied. She rested her hand over his for a minute, and caught his glance as it swept over her. She blushed.
"You got nothing to be ashamed of," he said softly.
She ran her fingertips over his hand for a moment, then reached over and tugged her bra back on. "Go," she said. "I have a few more things I want to pick up, your mom's next door. I'll meet you where the grills are."
His hand slid up to the small of her back, where he held her as he kissed her cheek softly. "Okay," he murmured. "You said when."
She put her arms up around his neck and held him for a long moment, skin tingling as he traced his fingers over her spine. "When," she repeated. "You're too good with kids to not ever be a dad."
He placed the warmth of his palm over her stomach, then kissed her and walked out.
Edith's eyes darted to the overlarge bag of lingerie swinging from Nancy's hand, but she made no comment. Ned was discussing BTUs and charcoal versus propane with the salesman when she walked up. His hand found hers without benefit of a glance in her direction.
"I remember when Ned used to burn the burgers," Edith said, and Nancy shot her a warm, remembering glance.
"Hey," Ned protested, in the middle of his discussion. "That was a long time ago. Now I'm great at it."
"Sure you are." She patted his shoulder. "Actually, you are. I guess that cooking class did wonders."
He looked like he was about to say something else, then stopped short. "Sure did," he said, then returned his attention to the salesman.
--
"They'll deliver tomorrow."
Nancy turned her head and looked in his direction. "Who?"
Ned was sitting on the couch, in front of the television, half watching. He had his laptop on his lap and was checking his email via the wireless network he had running from his study. Nancy was sitting at the table, going through transcripts with a highlighter, in a black silk dressing gown.
"The mattress guys," Ned replied.
"I didn't think you were serious," she said, after a beat. "Are they going to put a mirror on the ceiling too?"
Ned opened his mouth and was about to respond seriously when he caught the expression on her face, and laughed. "I'm sure they would, complete with a hidden video camera."
"Hmm," she said. "You gonna be home to let them in? We have a task force meeting tomorrow that I'm sure I can't beg out of."
Ned clicked on something on his screen, and then his eyes widened. "As long as it's before lunch," he said. "I'll call them and make sure."
"What are you looking at?" she asked, capping her highlighter.
"Checking my work email," he replied. "We have a big meeting Tuesday."
Nancy stood, stretched her arms over her head, conscious of his gaze on her. "Well, if I'd known we really were getting a new mattress, I might have worn something different."
His brow furrowed. "I have some guys coming out to start doing some landscaping tomorrow too," he said, watching as she approached him. "They're going to get rid of that dead tree in the backyard. What would you be wearing?"
"Something other than this," she said, unzipping the gown and letting it fall at her feet.
--
"He said it was his mother who suggested it," Nancy said. "Is that normal?"
"That his mother would have suggested it?"
"That he would blame her for something that was ticking me off. Shift it to someone else."
"Maybe. Do you think he did that?"
She shrugged. "I'd rather believe it was Edith," she admitted. "But he did have the bank accounts, and those, well, we could have ten kids all safely go to Ivy League schools on what's in the fund."
Dr Strathman steepled his fingers. "Ned had some pretty serious stuff going on mentally while you were gone," he said. "If he hadn't been as strong as he was, those things... the nursery, the bank account, those would have served as points where he could have a psychotic break and truly imagine that he was with you, and that he had children with you, and that everything was like you say he wanted it to be. But that didn't happen."
The lack of surprise in her eyes told him that she had considered that. "But he's not crazy."
He answered the faint question in her voice. "He's not crazy. If he were someone else, he might have been."
"Why didn't he go on and find someone else?" She looked away from him then, and started picking at a loose thread on the couch. "I can't--" she shook her head. "If I'd been unattached and seen someone like that, that handsome, independent, that together, I would have snatched him up."
"The wedding. The one on the beach. The same reason you didn't see yourself as unattached."
She bowed her head and chuckled softly. "I kept thinking about it too," she admitted. "Sometimes I think that maybe while Jean was with me that I would just disassociate and go back out to the beach and remember that night. Like a little piece of me that would never belong to him."
"It's a nice thought."
"I don't know if it's true." She shook her head suddenly. "If I hadn't said yes maybe he would be happier with someone else."
Dr Strathman spread his hands. "There is no point to that."
"I want him to be happy," she mumbled.
"How's your sex life with him?"
Her fingers unintentionally clenched slightly on the couch, the throb slightly more acute. "Intense," she said. "Satisfying."
"Do you have flashbacks?"
"No," she said, too quickly. "Not during."
"Is there any particular thing that triggers it?"
She fought to keep her hands still. "No particular thing. Lots of things. Almost anything. And then some days nothing. Sometimes I wake up and I think he's in the house..."
"He's here."
Ned was still half asleep when he heard Nancy's whisper, and as he opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling, still shrouded in blue-grey shadow, waiting for it to come into focus, he could hear her panicked breath. She touched his face and he turned it toward her, mutely.
He had never seen that expression in her eyes before. Gooseflesh prickled over his skin.
"Who's here?" he whispered through a suddenly dry mouth.
She darted her wide-eyed gaze to the doorway. "Downstairs," she breathed. "Don't leave me here."
Still moving slowly, he pushed back the covers and stood, then extended a hand to her. She looked down at the carpet, shaking her head slightly, and her fear touched him. He held himself steady and held out his arms to her, and she clung to him, wrapped securely around his waist.
"Downstairs," she repeated, her face against his neck.
He was reminded of his cousins, as they methodically checked every room, her neck craned and twisting so she could see every shadowed corner. Wide-eyed five year olds who were convinced something lurked in the closet or under the bed or in the kitchen pantry. But here he could feel it, the sudden nervous twitch that sparked between them, it was the windows; she had told him about the night when Jean had come back to claim her, the sudden noise, the face at the window, and his pulse was impossibly fast whenever he even caught his own reflection.
"There's no one here," he murmured, drained of the thin nervous energy that had steeled his limbs.
"Are you--" she bit off her words, her face still close against his.
"You okay?" He shifted her weight.
"The door's locked, right?" she murmured.
Stifling a hasty reply, he nodded and felt the tension leach off a bit more.
"Take me back to bed."
Her muscles were still tight and tense until he locked the bedroom door behind them. She scrambled onto the bed after he released her, her feet having never touched the floor during their entire tour. He caught her movement out of the corner of his eyes, but dismissed it, his body weighted and tired.
She had taken off her nightgown. He knew that as he felt her kiss his cheek, the warmth of her bare skin radiating against his. When she slid her palms down to his hips and started tugging at his boxers, he opened his eyes again.
"Make love to me," she whispered, catching his gaze.
i can hear his voice
His entire body clenched in a convulsive shudder that his previous fear could not touch. He reached up and took her face into his hands, holding her at arm's length even as she tried to move to kiss him, and searched her eyes, afraid to speak. All he could feel was her desperation.
"Lay back down," he whispered, his voice not his own.
She obeyed him, opening her legs, her eyes locked on his face, but he rolled her onto her stomach, still unable to speak. He rested his palms flat on her back, rising and falling softly with her breath, for a few minutes, staring at nothing. She drew breath a few times, as though about to speak, but stayed silent.
He traced his palms down over her skin, then massaged her shoulders gently. He went over her entire back, up to the back of her neck, until her weight was heavy against the mattress, the pulse he could feel under his fingertips slower. When he was finished he thought her asleep, but she turned her face and gave him a tiny smile, the first he had seen since she had woken him.
She nudged him onto his back and pulled off his boxers, then returned the favor, her smaller fingertips digging where his could almost reach, and he wanted to melt into the bed underneath him. He wanted to sleep, but some close relative of dread still lingered in the back of his throat, and when she retreated he turned over, looking up into her face again.
"I'm sorry," she breathed.
He sat up and took her into his arms, her bent knees cradling his waist, her face against his shoulder. "Don't be sorry," he murmured. "It's not your fault."
"Yes it is," she mumbled against his skin, her breath warm. "Ned..."
"Shut up," he whispered roughly, leaving one arm curved around her back as he stroked one palm over her cheek, sliding his fingers into her hair. He tilted his face and stilled her lips with the gentle pressure of his own.
Nancy opened her mouth and leaned into him, her skin trembling and warm, and her soft gasp was lost in his solid warmth as his arm curved tighter around her. He leaned back slightly, until she was tilted forward, off balance, her weight resting against him. He kissed her, hard and insistent, over and over, and she relaxed by slow degrees.
He had thought the insistent terrible weight in his gut would release or at least lessen, the weight that flowed with every pump of his heart into his trembling limbs, but he felt no change. Not as he pulled the covers back and rolled her onto the mattress, meeting the soft gleam of her gaze. Not as he crawled over her and tugged the blanket up like a mantle over his shoulders. Not as his hands grazed the curve of her bent knees, not as he leaned down and pressed his lips to hers, along with the ponderous swell of his weight, the warm yield of her flesh.
He waited for the chaotic haze of arousal to wash it away, and a brief flash accompanying the light touch of her hands on his skin nearly did so, but her caress turned to purchase which tingled over him, and he wondered, traitorous...
He knelt above her, pressed his lips to hers, his forehead to hers. "I love you," he whispered. "Love you so much, Nan, so much..."
"Love you too," she whispered.
