12
“Not right now. I’ve got to go.”
I stared at Hayden, speechless, while he sat on the side of our bed, jamming his work boots on while looking like he was a million miles away.
Only after a few seconds was I finally able to speak. “So, you don’t want to give me a kiss before you leave?”
Still looking like he was a million miles away, Hayden didn’t answer.
“Hayden? Did you even hear what I just said?”
He finally finished lacing his heavy brown work boots and looked up at me. “What?”
I resisted the urge to scoff, instead willing myself to simply speak with all the patience I could muster. “I asked you if I could have a kiss before you leave.”
Raking a hand through his hair, Hayden stood up from the bed. “Oh. Sorry. I thought you were asking me earlier if I wanted to check on Chrissy with you before I leave.”
I almost didn’t know how to respond. “I…didn’t ask you anything even remotely like that. I just asked if I could have a kiss, which…I don’t even want anymore.”
With his expression apologetic, Hayden came over to where I was standing by the dresser and pulled me into his arms. “I’m sorry, Syd. I really am. My mind is just a million miles away right now.”
“I can see that.”
“I do want to give you a kiss before I leave. We’ll have to make it quick, though.”
“I know. It’s the same with everything lately. We can feed Chrissy together, but we’ll have to make it quick. We can read her a book together, but we’ll have to make it quick. Now our kisses have to be set on a timer, too.”
“Syd, listen. I—”
“No, you don’t have to explain anything to me. I get it. This is a difficult time with all the Warren attacks, and you’re under a ton of stress. I do understand. I also understand that you’re working as hard as you are just to keep me, Chrissy, and everyone else safe. I appreciate you for that, and I love you for that. But even with all that being said, I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t getting frustrated about all this and I’m starting to wonder when, and if, it’ll all be over. I just want some semblance of a normal life with you and our daughter, Hayden.”
He said he understood completely. “I do, too…and I think we’ll get there. But for right now, until the Warrens launch their final attack, we’re just kind of stuck in this place that neither of us wants to be. I don’t think this will last much longer, though. The Warrens are bound to launch their full-scale attack sooner or later, and I’m starting to think it’ll be sooner. They’re escalating daily, and I don’t think it’ll be much longer now before Axel finally decides that he doesn’t want to wait any longer.”
After giving me a brief kiss, Hayden told me he loved me and then left, leaving me to pace around our bedroom.
Feeling as if our marriage had suddenly taken some sort of a nosedive, even after our resolution to make a fresh start just a few weeks earlier, I just couldn’t figure out what to do about it. Really, there was nothing I could do, short of contacting Axel Warren myself, and begging him to just attack the farm, already. Obviously, this wasn’t an option, so I realized that I would just have to be patient a while longer, hoping that my marriage could weather feeling like there was some huge wedge between me and Hayden for an indefinite length of time.
After changing into my pajamas, I felt slightly agitated and didn’t want to try to go to sleep yet, so I decided to go see what Jen was up to, if anything. In hindsight, I realized that I should have known better than to think that there was any possibility that she wasn’t “up to something.”
After knocking on her bedroom door and hearing her say come in, I did, and found her sitting in bed with Wanted, making a banana split, with all the necessary ingredients, and then some, spread out beside her. The ingredients included two pints of ice cream, one chocolate and one mint chip; a bunch of bananas; jars of hot fudge sauce, caramel sauce, and cherries; a canister of peanuts; a tall can of whipped cream; and inexplicably, a big bag of pretzels.
Shutting her bedroom door behind me, I asked Jen if she was enjoying the new mini-fridge and mini-freezer that Mark had allowed her to bring up to her room a few days earlier.
Setting her ice cream scoop on a paper plate, Jen grinned. “Oh, am I ever. Carol even helped me bring food up here, and she said as long as I don’t make any huge messes and draw rats up here, I can keep the fridge and freezer up here with me forever.”
I smiled at Jen, thinking that with the mini-fridge and freezer set, she pretty much had a full kitchenette in her room now. She still had the easy-bake oven that she’d gotten the year before, and she still used it regularly to bake cupcakes and muffins, and she also had a microwave oven in its own special cabinet in her room.
On top of the cabinet was a toaster and a plug-in portable quesadilla maker, but Mark had put his foot down when Jen had asked for a hot plate as well. “Too dangerous,” he’d said, probably wisely. I wondered if eventually, he and Carol would simply have Jen’s enormous bedroom converted into some kind of a studio apartment, not that it wasn’t basically that already.
Jen had been watching a movie before I’d come in, and after making me a banana split of my own, complete with a few pretzel twists on top, which Jen insisted no kind of a sundae should ever be without, we finished watching the movie together, with Wanted dozing beside us. When the movie was over, he wasn’t the only one who was dozing, as Jen had fallen asleep, too. I, however, still felt curiously wide-awake, wondering when Hayden might be home that evening, if at all.
After rinsing out the Styrofoam bowls we’d had our sundaes in and then putting them in a recycling bag in Jen’s closet, I turned off her TV, shut off her lights, and went back to my own room, leaving Jen’s door open just a crack so that Wanted could get out if he wanted to.
Even though I felt like I should be tired after having dug holes for fence posts pretty much all day, I paced around Hayden’s and my bedroom for a while, feeling as if I could actually go out for a run or something. It was nearly eleven, though, and with as frequently as the Warrens were attacking the farm, I decided that taking a run around the property in the dark probably wouldn’t be the very best idea.
Instead, I eventually found myself flopping on my bed with my phone, having a sudden idea to text my Aunt Pam. I didn’t even know exactly why I wanted to do this, except that with all the turmoil with the Warrens and Hayden, having some kind of a relationship with my own family suddenly seemed somehow very important. I at least tried to have some kind of a relationship with my own family. At present, I wasn’t even bothered by the fact that Pam had said some pretty nasty things to me when she’d found out I was pregnant. I recalled saying a few pretty rude things to her, too.
Besides, I thought, maybe she’s changed a little since I’ve been gone. It was possible. Her text had seemed polite. Maybe she’s ready to have that same distant-yet-polite-and-very-occasionally-borderline-warm type of relationship that we used to have before I got pregnant, I thought. That would be something, anyway.
After hesitating briefly, still not sure whether I was going to text her or not, I glanced at the clock and saw that it still wasn’t yet eleven. Normally an extreme night owl, Pam usually didn’t go to sleep until one or two in the morning, playing games on the computer downstairs or watching old movies until her eyes began closing of their own accord.
A little oddly, she was also something of a morning person, too, often saying that she felt lazy if she remained in bed a minute later than seven in the morning. This meant that she never got more than five or six hours of sleep, which just didn’t seem like enough to me. Half the time when I’d lived with her, I’d wondered if part of her problem wasn’t chronic sleep deprivation and the crabbiness that often came along with it.
Finally deciding to just write the text and then see how I felt about hitting send, I began typing. Hope you’ve been recovering well. How have you been doing? That was all I could think of to say. I’d been thinking that I’d be able to come up with a little more, but now that I was typing, I just couldn’t.
Sighing every now and again, I wracked my brain for a minute, trying to come up with something else. Something maybe just a little warmer, to let Pam know that I was possibly willing to let the past stay in the past, and move forward with some kind of a new family relationship, if she was, too.
Going back to the text, I added a line. Please let me know if you need anything. I quickly deleted that, because for one thing, even though I supposed it was a nice thought, I wasn’t sure what she could possibly need that I could give her. For another thing, the sentence almost seemed to put a close on the conversation before it even got started, or it made it sound as if I’d be sending one text only, or something.
You always overthink this stuff, I thought to myself, frustrated. That was when I suddenly thought of Chrissy. I’d just taken an adorable picture of her sitting up on the couch like a big girl that day, grinning, with Wanted curled up by her side. Now I wondered if maybe I should send that picture to Pam, just to add a little something else to my text.
Now that the idea was in my mind, it seemed like a good one, and I added a few more lines of text to what I’d already written. This is your great-niece Chrissy, although her full name is Christine Alexandria MacGregor. She says hello.
Finally satisfied with the content of my text, I attached the picture of Chrissy and hit send before I could change my mind. If I’d known then what the result of my text was going to be, I would not have.
*
Within a minute of me sending the text, my phone began ringing. Hoping that it was Hayden, maybe just calling to check in on a break from patrol or something, I snatched it up and looked at the screen, but it wasn’t him. Instead, it was Pam.
Stunned although a little hopeful that she’d answered my text with a call, I answered right away, although Pam cut off my hello with words just dripping with anger.
“How dare you. How dare you, Sydney.”
With a rush of adrenaline flooding my veins, I jumped out of bed, wondering what I could have possibly done wrong. “What do you mean? ‘How dare’ I what?”
“You know what.”
“No, I don’t. Wat—”
“How dare you name your daughter what you did.”
Standing in the soft glow of a tiny nightstand lamp, I couldn’t even respond right away, thoroughly baffled. “Pam, I named Chrissy what I did as a way to honor Christopher and Alexander. I figured that since they were my only cousins, and since I never got the chance to meet them, it would be a nice way—”
“Oh, spare me. Just spare me all this ‘little miss innocent’ crap. I know damn well why you named your daughter what you did.”
“Well, why—”
“My boys are dead, Sydney. Do you understand me? They’re never coming back. They’re dead. They’re gone. And I know that you named your daughter what you did just to rub my face in it.”
Again, I couldn’t answer right away. “Pam, if you think I named Chrissy what I did just to rub your face in the fact that your sons are gone….” I paused for a moment, just incredulous. “Pam, you’re not thinking clearly. No matter how we left things, and no matter what rude or nasty things were said, surely you must know that I’m not pure evil.”
She didn’t answer me. A few moments went by. And then, I heard quiet sniffling. Stunned, I just listened. I was positive I’d never seen or heard Pam cry in my entire life.
However, if I thought we were about to have some kind of an emotional breakthrough, which I kind of did, I was soon about to be proved wrong. Because after a few moments, Pam suddenly sniffed loudly, and then her angry voice was back.
“I’ve told you this before, and I mean it. Do not ever contact me again. Not for anything. Do you understand me, Sydney? Just leave me be.”
Suddenly feeling my own eyes fill with tears, I said that was just fine. “I don’t have room for your bitter hatefulness in my happy new life anyway.”
With that, I ended the call. After tossing my phone on the bed, I had a seat and buried my face in my hands while my shoulders began to shake with sobs, not sure why someone with such a “happy new life” should be crying so hard.
Minutes passed before my sobs finally subsided, and after drying my eyes and blowing my nose, I called Hayden. However, when he answered right away, which kind of surprised me, my waterworks started back up again, and they continued while I began blurting out what had happened with Pam.
“She’s so hateful, Hayden…my Aunt Pam. I just got off the phone with her. She actually thinks that I named Chrissy what I did just to rub it in her face that her toddler sons died. Can you even believe that? She actually accused me of something that sick and evil, even though I told her exactly why I named Chrissy what I did. I told her that it was just to honor Christopher and Alexander, because they were my only cousins, and I never met them.
There was some tiny part of me that even thought that Pam might be pleased. Can you believe that? I actually thought she’d maybe tell me that I’d given her some little bit of comfort or happiness or something by naming Chrissy what I did. What a…what a complete dumbass I was.”
Sniffling with tears streaming down my face, I waited for Hayden to respond, but a few moments went by, and he said nothing. Wondering if he was still on the line, I said his name, and he responded by saying he was still there.
“Well, did you hear all what I just said?”
“Yeah. I did, but….”
There was another long pause, and I thought I heard distant shouting before hearing Hayden’s voice again.
“I’m sorry, Sydney. We’ve spotted a few Warrens by the main road. Gotta go.”
He ended the call, and I threw my phone on our bed, frustrated beyond all belief.
“Why can’t you ever just be there for me?”
I knew full well why he couldn’t be, but this knowing didn’t make anything any easier.
About an hour later, after a long bath spent just trying to clear my mind, I turned the lights out and got into bed. There, I remained awake for some time, weighing my options. Option number one, not that Hayden would ever go for this or that I’d ever really want him to, was having a fully-present husband and father, but while possibly allowing the Warrens to overtake the farm and kill everyone. Option number two was simply suffering through what was currently happening, which was having a safe farm, but no husband at home for me, and no daddy at home for Chrissy.
I knew that I really didn’t have options. Obviously, Hayden had to protect the farm and everyone living on it. I didn’t have to be joyful about this, though, I figured, not that I could have even forced myself to be.
Finding that I wasn’t quite out of tears just yet, even after my supposedly calming bath, I cried myself to sleep, thinking about Hayden’s and my reality, versus what I wanted our relationship to be.
Hayden finally came home the next morning, apologizing profusely for ending our call so abruptly the night before. Feeding Chrissy her breakfast at the island, I told him it was okay, and he pulled up a barstool to visit with us. For some reason, I just knew it would be a short visit.
For a while, Hayden just primarily visited with Chrissy, feeding her bites of applesauce and mushy baby cereal, and this was more than fine with me. After all, the way I saw it, Chrissy was missing out even more than I was because of the Warrens and Hayden’s absence. She was only going to be a baby once, and she was losing precious time with her daddy that she could never get back.
Not to mention that as a baby, she surely couldn’t understand why her daddy could only spend a precious few minutes a day with her and always kept leaving. No wonder she can’t say Dada yet, I thought, even though she hadn’t yet mastered saying Mama, either.
Once Chrissy had finished her breakfast, or at least had finished most of it while spitting the rest out on her white-and-pink bib, Hayden removed her bib, wiped her face, and pulled her out of her high chair and into his arms, a sight which melted my heart.
“How’s Daddy’s big girl? How is she?”
How she was, at the moment, was “ecstatically happy.” Making the most adorable little shrieks of joy, she clapped her hands together wildly, then began patting Hayden’s face, gurgling.
Clearly thoroughly in love with her, Hayden grinned. “Chrissy loves her dada, doesn’t she? Chrissy loves Dada, and Dada loves her.”
Kicking her little legs, Chrissy shrieked with joy, her sweetness and obvious love for Hayden nearly cracking my heart in two. Suddenly, I felt like maybe I hadn’t spent my entire tear reserve the night before, and my eyes became full of moisture.
However, I managed not to cry. Instead, I just focused on smiling while Hayden began feeding Chrissy the rest of her breakfast bottle.
Once she’d settled down a little and really got into draining the rest of her bottle, holding Hayden’s hand while she did so, Hayden glanced over at me, again apologizing for having to end our call so abruptly the night before, and then asked me if I was doing all right.
Shrugging, I said I guessed so. “To be honest, I was kind of rattled after hanging up on Pam last night, but today…I don’t know. The whole thing just seems like just one of the many things in my life that’s not perfect lately, and it seems like kind of an insignificant thing at that. I guess we just have bigger, more pressing problems to deal with, don’t we? Namely, making sure the Warrens don’t kill us.”
Almost in spite of myself, I’d cracked a wry smile, and Hayden now returned it, then told me not to worry about the Warrens.
“My fighters and I have everything under control.”
“I know, but….” Chewing my lip, I hesitated for a long moment before continuing. “It’s just, how long can we go on like this, Hayden? How long do we have to live our life basically on pause, just waiting for this horrible, calamitous thing to happen? And in the meantime, you, me, and Chrissy basically have to live apart, only able to spend time all together for a few minutes a day. I mean, is this all worth it?”
Hayden’s expression suddenly went from neutral, or maybe contemplative, to dead serious and vaguely troubled. And when he spoke, it was with a deep crease between his eyes, like Mark sometimes got.
“I promise you, Sydney…this is all worth it. Because at the end of it, when everything is all over, and the Warrens are decimated, you, Chrissy, and I will have the life that we all want. There will be no more threats, at least not on the level of the ones we’ve been facing, and we’ll all be able to live happily, and in relative peace. That’s what I want. Isn’t that what you still want?”
I said of course it was. “But right now, that happy life is just seeming so far away.”
Extending his free, non-Chrissy-holding hand to take mine, he offered me a small smile. “Then, just have faith. You’ve said that you trust me now, so just try to have faith that it won’t be long now, and we’ll defeat the Warrens on our own turf, and then things will be the way we want them to be. Just have faith, Sydney.”
With a slant of bright morning sunlight bathing his lightly tanned skin in a golden glow, Hayden offered me another small, comforting sort of smile, and I marveled at what a strong, kind heart my husband had, and how incredibly handsome he was. God, how I loved him.
So, mustering every shred of positivity and resolve, I promised him that I’d have faith. I’d have faith in our marriage, our family, and us. However, this soon proved to be much easier said than done.