The Husband's Secret(150)

            “It was idiotic. I’m sorry,” he said. “All I can do is keep saying I’m sorry.”

            “You sound robotic,” said Tess. “You don’t even mean it anymore. You’re just saying the words in the hope I’ll finally shut up.” She spoke in a monotone. “‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’”

            “I do mean it,” said Will wearily.

            “Shhh,” said Tess, although he hadn’t really spoken that loudly. “You’ll wake them.” Liam and her mother were both in bed asleep. Their rooms were at the front of the house, and they were both deep sleepers. Tess and Will probably wouldn’t wake them even if they started yelling at each other.

            There had been no yelling. Not yet. Just these short, useless conversations that traveled bitterly down one-way streets. Their reunion   the previous day had been both surreal and mundane, an exasperating clash of personalities and emotion. For a start there was Liam, who was almost deranged with excitement. It was like he’d sensed the danger of losing his father, and the safe little structure of his life, and now his relief at Will’s return manifested itself in six-year-old craziness. He spoke in annoying silly voices, he giggled maniacally, he wanted to wrestle constantly with Will. Will, on the other hand, was completely traumatized by witnessing Polly Fitzpatrick’s accident. “You should have seen the expressions on the parents’ faces,” he kept saying quietly to Tess. “Imagine if that was Liam. If that was us.”

            The shocking news about Polly’s accident should have put everything into perspective for Tess, and in a way it did. If something like that had happened to Liam, then nothing else would have mattered. But at the same time it was if her own feelings were now a trivial matter, and that made her feel defensive and aggressive.

            She couldn’t find big enough words to describe the enormous breadth and depth of her emotions. You hurt me. You really hurt me. How could you hurt me like that? It was so simple in her head but so strangely complex each time she opened her mouth.

            “You wish you were on a plane with Felicity right now,” said Tess. He did. She knew that he did, because she wished she were in Connor’s apartment right now. “Flying to Paris.”

            “You keep saying Paris,” said Will. “Why Paris?” She heard a hint of ordinary Will, the Will she loved, in his voice. The Will who found the humor in everyday stuff. “Do you want to go to Paris?”

            “No,” said Tess.

            “Liam does love his croissants.”

            “No.”

            “Except we’d have to bring our own Vegemite.”

            “I don’t want to go to Paris.”

            She walked across the lawn to the back fence and went to hide an egg near a post, and then changed her mind, worried about spiders.

            “I should mow that lawn for your mother tomorrow,” said Will from the courtyard.

            “A boy down the road does it once every two weeks,” said Tess.

            “Okay.”

            “I know that you’re only here because of Liam,” she said.

            “What?”

            “You heard me.”

            She’d said this before, last night in bed and again when they’d gone for a walk today. She was repeating herself. Acting like an irrational, crazy bitch, as if she wanted to make him regret his decision. Why did she keep bringing it up? She was here for the same reason. She knew that if it weren’t for Liam, she’d be in bed with Connor right now. She wouldn’t have bothered to try to fix it. She would have let herself fall into something fresh and new and delicious.