Page 43 of Love What's Left
A little while later, I glance up to find her sleeping with her legs curved to the side and her hand curled under her cheek. With baggy clothing covering her thinner frame and her braid hiding the sharper curve of her jaw, she looks exactly like Sydney from six months ago.
I turn back to the report in front of me.The report. I’m working in our vacation home, when Sydney and I never do that here. We both spent notoriously long hours on the job, and the time we took for R & R was sacrosanct. Balance kept both of us steady.
Now, I work here because I have to do something to keep from smothering her and because our companies require consistent oversight.
I’m the last thing from a micromanager, but the best team members are ambitious. And ambition can lead to a tendency to circumvent ethics in the single-minded pursuit of a goal. Everyone needs checks and balances.
A message from the security officer at the front gate pops up on my phone. My chest floods with relief, then I send my sleeping wife a look of guilty concern.She’s not ready for these visitors.
Leaning back, I work the kinks out of my neck and jaw before I reply:Let them in. I’ll be right there.
Before I leave to locate our visitors, I drape a cream-colored throw blanket over Sydney and remove the tablet from her lax fingers and place it on the table beside her.
With any luck, she’ll remain asleep until I get our surprise visitors settled into the bungalow at the edge of the property. She’ll never even know they were here.
17
Sydney
Iwake to a woman’s laugh somewhere in the distance, followed by the gentle rumble of my husband speaking. Her sweet voice, when she says something in return, sounds affectionate and familiar.
I throw off the blanket and climb from the chair. If I escape down the hallway to the bedroom, I don’t have to see who McRae is laughing with at all. The thought barely makes an appearance before I dismiss it. The woman sounds too friendly. I didn’t trust him in my memories. Maybe the woman attached to the voice is why.
When I leave the library, I turn left, not right. What I don’t do is announce myself when I reach the kitchen. Instead, I hover near the edge of the doorway, peeking around the wood-trimmed casement opening like I’m two kids stacked in a trench coat playing private eye.
The woman in my kitchen reminds me a little of an actress I’ve seen in some movies. Her caramel-colored hair balances precariously on top of her head in a loose bun, and she holds a baby dressed in blue in her arms—a baby with eyes shaped like my husband’s and the same divot in his chin. The familial resemblance is impossible to miss.
My insides twist. I knew there was something off about our marriage, but I didn’t think he’d have an infant with another woman or that he’d sneak her into our house while I was sleeping.
The baby reaches a hand toward him. He kisses his chubby fist, then lifts him into his arms. “Hey, little man. I missed you.”
Two or three months old. I helped with the younger ones a lot in foster care, and that’s my guess for the baby’s age. He’d have been conceived during or only a little before our marriage.
The woman leans against McRae’s side. He wraps his free arm around her shoulder and presses a kiss to her temple. “I’m glad you guys came.”
They look like a perfect little family.
“If Sydney isn’t ready for us to invade her space, we’re fine to get a rental nearby. We won’t mind.” She sounds so nice as she explains how she and her child will make accommodations for me. I want to puke.
“I don’t think she’s ready for you guys to stay here in the house, but the bungalow should be fine,” he says.
McRae told me that even if we weren’t together, he’d be here for me. That he loves me like family. Now it makes perfect sense. He has an entire life that has nothing to do with me, but since I “needed” him, he stepped up.
The pain in my throat and pounding heart shock me. I barely know him, but I hurt like a woman losing the love of her life. It makes no sense.
Tears burning in my sinuses, I back up. One step. Two steps. Then I turn and hurry for the front of the house. I swing the front door open, then jolt to a stop at the sight of a man filling the doorframe.
His navy-blue eyes glint behind wire-framed glasses, and his mouth tips up at the corners as he shifts a leather carry-on bag off his shoulder and onto the stone at his feet. “Hello.”
“H-hello.”
“Are you lost?” he asks gently.
I shake my head.
He dips his chin and glances down. “If you go outside like that, you’ll cut your feet. Burn them too.”
“I can’t go back inside.”
