She covered her face with her hands, feeling as wrung out as a dishcloth. Hot tears seeped through the cracks of her fingers as she allowed herself to weep for everything that she had lost and was still losing. She was so wrapped up in her own misery that the first she knew of another presence in the room was a comforting arm around her narrow shoulders.
"Shhh, it's okay, it's okay . . ." Rick's pretty wife was perched on the side of the bed, her head bowed toward Bronwyn's. "You'll be all right, both you and your beautiful little girl will be absolutely fine. Bryce will take care of you."
"Bryce hates me," Bronwyn negated miserably.
"Bryce could never hate the woman who has given him such a gorgeous daughter," the other woman denied.
"He blames me for what happened to him," Bronwyn groaned. "And I don't even know what happened to him! How did he lose his hearing?" She lifted her tear-drenched brown eyes to Lisa's face, and the other woman frowned, her expression thoughtful.
"It was an accident. Rick and I hadn't been dating for long-barely a month since the day he first walked into my bookshop-but we were serious enough that he was talking about introducing me to you guys."
So Rick had met Lisa while Bronwyn was still with Bryce. She remembered how euphoric and secretive he'd been during those few weeks before she had left. She'd even teased him about it over dinner one night and he'd stammered and blushed like a schoolboy. The memory warmed her somewhat, but Lisa's sympathetic voice dragged her back into the horror of the present.
"One night Rick called me to cancel one of our dates because his brother had been in an accident. It was pretty bad. I met Bryce a few weeks later while he was still recovering in the hospital. Rick and I married about four months after the accident, when Bryce was well enough to attend. If I hadn't been two months pregnant at the time, we would have postponed the wedding. Both Rick and Bryce refused to talk about you again. I think Rick was merely following Bryce's lead on that score. He was so completely wrecked by what had happened to his brother that he would have walked over hot coals if he thought that it would make Bryce happy. From the rare bits of information about it that I managed to get out of Rick over the past twenty months of our marriage, I thought that you'd opted out because you couldn't cope with his deafness."
"But I didn't even know he was deaf until just now." She coughed painfully and Lisa stroked her hair soothingly.
"Why did you leave him?" Lisa questioned gently.
"I would never willingly have left him. I love him . . . loved him." Lisa raised her eyebrows at the telling slip and nodded.
"I know that now. I took one look at you this morning and I knew. So why did you leave him?"
"Because he told me to leave. He kicked me out," Bronwyn recalled miserably. "He was unhappy about my pregnancy because we had agreed to wait a few years before starting a family. He accused me of getting pregnant deliberately, of tricking him. It was awful."
"I don't understand." Lisa frowned. "Why would he go off the deep end like that? Surely a pregnancy is something to be celebrated?"
"I don't know," Bronwyn confessed. "I left to give him some time to cool off and went to our house in Knysna. I knew that once he had calmed down enough he would come looking for me. I never believed he wouldn't come . . ." Her voice faded away as she remembered the pain, betrayal, and disillusionment she had felt when it became apparent that Bryce would not be coming for her.
"What did you do?" Lisa asked sympathetically.
"I waited. For two weeks I waited. Bryce is usually pretty good about keeping his temper under control, and when he does lose it he usually needs only a couple of hours for his logical thought processes to kick in again. But I'd never seen him as angry as he was that night, so I figured that it would take him a little longer than usual to come to his senses." She shrugged helplessly, battling to keep the pain she still felt at the memory from showing. "After a week, I tried calling him. But I was stonewalled. His staff had closed ranks around him. I couldn't reach him or Rick and I didn't know what to do. It felt as if my whole world had imploded." She bowed her head.
"After the initial disbelief and pain, the anger and resentment kicked in. I decided that if he wanted nothing to do with the baby and me, then I wasn't going to make it easy for him to come crawling back. Not that I believed he would come back. I suppose I started thinking that way to preserve my pride. I went off the grid-no credit, no bank accounts except the one I already had in my maiden name. The only jobs I was qualified to do didn't exactly keep stellar employee records. I never believed he would actually try to find us." She shook her head dazedly.
"I thought he loved me." It shamed her to admit that now, embarrassed her to confess such a foolish belief in front of this woman who was so obviously confident in her husband's love. "Now he blames me for his deafness, and he's practically accusing me of stealing Kayla from him when he had made it abundantly clear that he had no interest in her!" She heard the bitterness creeping into her voice. "He undoubtedly thinks that the way we've been living is beneath him, but I took good care of my baby. I fed her, clothed her, and loved her after he had abandoned us! How dare he waltz back into my life and presume that he'd be the better parent just because he has so much more money than I do!"
"Bryce has kept pretty much to himself in the time since I got married to Rick. He's a difficult man to get to know," Lisa said into the silence that ensued after Bronwyn ran out of steam. "But what I do know I like and respect. I can't really reconcile the picture you've just painted with the man I've come to know."
Bronwyn nodded miserably. "I'm sorry," she responded, forcing the words past her tortured throat. "I don't mean to place you in an awkward position. I shouldn't have said those things."
"No, that's not it at all," Lisa hurriedly corrected. "It's just that you each seem so convinced of the other's wrongdoing that there must have been some crossed wires somewhere."
"Hmm." Bronwyn tried to agree, but she was feeling fuzzy again, unable to concentrate.
"Try to get some rest," Lisa suggested gently. "You look done in."
"I didn't . . . would never . . ." She could not complete the thought and was aware of nothing more as she slid into unconsciousness.
She looked fragile, like the slightest touch would break her, and how he wanted to break her. Bryce glared down at the stranger who was his wife and was eaten up by pure hatred for her. This innocent-looking bitch had destroyed his life and stolen his child. The barely contained violence he felt toward her had been festering for just over two years, and he quite cheerfully would have strangled her in her sleep if it weren't for the fact that their daughter needed her. He watched her labor to breathe and imagined that it sounded hoarse and ragged. He remembered sounds but sometimes wondered if his memory was accurate. For the longest time, despite his unsuccessful attempts to force it out, his most precious memory had been of her voice. Now the memory of the sweet, clear sound of her voice returned unbidden along with the bell-like clarity of her laugh and, lastly, how that lovely voice had sounded during their final argument, thick with tears and entreaties.
She looked so ill. He grimaced, unwilling to feel any compassion for her. If she had worked herself into the ground it was less than she deserved for running out on him, for stealing his child, and for crippling him! He lived in a silent world now, the only sounds he heard were mere echoes of memories and her voice . . . always her voice.
He had hated her for haunting him, and he hated her still for looking so damned vulnerable, for being ill and weak and nearly defenseless, thereby rendering him impotent to lash out and rail at her the way he had fantasized about doing for so long.
Well, she wouldn't always be sick. He could wait. Revenge, they said, was a dish best served cold. He'd been waiting for two years, so a few more weeks wouldn't make a difference. And how much sweeter the payback would be now that he had her very firmly within his grasp!
Kayla decided that she didn't like scary and noisy helicopters and cried during the entire short, chartered flight from Plettenberg Bay to Camps Bay. Her beleaguered father, who was figuring out that parenthood may not be as fabulous as he had first imagined, battled to keep her calm while Bronwyn, who was feeling the effects of some pretty powerful medication, remained mostly oblivious to it all. Bronwyn was vaguely aware of Bryce frantically trying to shush the child. He made funny faces and played silly little games but Kayla refused to be comforted by someone who was a total stranger to her. She was too small to be belted in but she stubbornly refused to stay in Bryce's lap. Instead she kept trying to crawl over onto her mother's lap, and Bronwyn tried her best to soothe the little girl, but Kayla wasn't too impressed with her limp hugs either.