Christening (4 page)

The broken look on his face was about to undo her resolve, so Erin shook off his hand and kept moving to the closet.

Seth had gotten himself under control by the time she returned to the bedroom. His face was cold now and hard—with what she knew was an automatic defense against anything that threatened to hurt him.

Before they’d gotten together, he’d looked that way most of the time.

“Are you actually telling me that you’re thinking about leaving because I had to unexpectedly go into work this evening?” His voice was cool and cutting.

She swallowed. Stared down at the suitcase. Couldn’t believe she was doing this. “You aren’t really stupid enough to think it’s just because of what happened tonight.”

Seth was directly beside her, his tense presence very distracting. “I know I was gone on the trip for too long, but that’s only happened once. And I’m not sure it deserves this severe a response.”

Erin took a shuddering breath and folded up a pair of pants to place in the suitcase. “This isn’t just about your being gone for a month. It’s about
all
of it. Your work has become more important than your family.”

Seth grabbed her shoulder again and turned her to face him. “Work is
not
more important than my family. How can you say that? I’ve been dealing with a lot of very unusual pressures at work lately, and they’ve ended up taking too much of my time. But it has nothing to do with what is important to me.”

Erin shrugged slightly. Pulled away from him again. “I’m sure that’s how you
feel
. But all I know is how you
act
. When you have a choice between your family and work, you always choose work.”

Seth released a frustrated groan and lowered himself to sit on the bed next to her suitcase. “I don’t always have a choice. I know it seems to you like I do. But—at the risk of sounding patronizing—I’m not sure you understand the stakes of what I do. There are some things I simply can’t not do. The result would affect people’s futures, even their lives. I have certain responsibilities that I can’t just put aside.” He was speaking earnestly now, having moved past his protective coldness in a real attempt to make her understand. “Often, when you think I have a choice, I really don’t. At least not one I can responsibly make.”

Erin shook her head. His words made sense, but Seth was the one who didn’t understand. She’d known all of this already. “Why do you think I complain about your work as infrequently as I do? It always seemed petty for me to whine about not having you home for dinner when someone else's future was at stake.” She met his eyes. “But, no matter how much a person understands and tries to tolerate, there will always come a point when you can’t take it anymore.” She paused for a moment. “This is that point for me.”

Seth must have recognized she was serious because his brief attempt to explain his perspective suddenly flared up into a new rush of stifled panic. “Erin,” he said roughly. “This isn’t fair. I’ve been home one day, then I leave to go into work at a bad time, and now you suddenly declare you can’t take anymore. I’ve had no preparation for this. How the hell could I have tried to make it better?”

Erin’s throat was aching so much she could barely breathe, and she couldn’t stand to look at his expression anymore. She stared back down at the clothes in her suitcase. Pretended she was straightening them. “I’m not sure it would have made any difference.”

“Damn it.” He jerked back to his feet with the momentum of his indignation. “That’s ludicrous. You’re saying that I’m not home enough, but then you say it wouldn’t make any difference if I
was
.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Seth stood in frozen silence for a moment, staring fixedly at a spot on the far wall. Erin knew he was thinking, his mind working with rapid precision as he sorted through reasons and possibilities.

Finally, he rubbed a frustrated hand through his hair and began, “I can see I’ve made a lot of mistakes.” His tone was low and hoarse, and he seemed to be thinking quickly as he spoke. “I knew it wasn’t good that I was gone for so long on this trip, although I couldn’t see any way around it. And obviously I know how upsetting it was that I left you and the girls this evening, just when they were starting to relax with me again. I shouldn’t have left tonight. I see that now. I should have…figured out something else to take care of the crisis. And I should have worked harder to get home from the trip sooner than I did. But I just thought…” His voice broke off, as if he’d hit a block in his throat.

Erin was listening carefully, although part of her knew that nothing he said tonight would really make a difference in what she knew she needed to do. “You thought what?” she whispered.

Seth’s face twisted strangely, which was a sure sign he was about to admit something that was too deep and private for him to get spoken easily. “I thought the point of family was that you
could
make mistakes. The last few weeks have been really difficult, but I just kept thinking about you and the girls, waiting for me. You know what things used to be like for me. And it took me a long time to finally trust that there were people in the world who loved me, regardless. Because of that, I just thought that I could count on you…to understand.”

Erin knew how hard the words had been for Seth to say. His voice had grown more and more gravelly, and he could no longer look her in the eyes.

He wasn’t a man who opened up easily. Six years ago, it had taken him months to open up enough to tell her that he loved her at all. So the fact that he had come this far—that he was willing to say something so raw and naked—meant something to Erin, despite everything.

Her chest was flooded with love, with tenderness, with grief. And with a kind of bitterness, that even his blunt sincerity couldn’t fix things.

“You were right,” she responded at last, putting her hand on her breastbone because her chest was hurting so much. “In a lot of ways, you were right. You
can
trust us and count on us.” She made herself continue. “But the problem is that you’re thinking only about yourself.”

Seth glanced up, as if he were surprised.

It told her something.

“You haven’t even thought about how difficult these last weeks have been on
us
. I know how hard you were working and how stressed and overwhelmed you were. But you weren’t the only one who had a hard time. Your daughters had to spend a
month
without you, at an age where that kind of thing really has consequences. A couple of nights ago Anna was afraid that she didn’t even remember what you looked like.”

Seth’s mouth dropped open slightly. “She
what
?”

“And Mackenzie…” Erin had to swallow before she finished her sentence. “Mackenzie—who adores you more than anything in the world—actually told me that she hated you.”

She couldn’t look at Seth after she said that. Knew what she’d see in his face, and couldn’t stand to witness it.

There was a long unbearable silence before he rasped, “Why?”

“Because you kept promising you’d come back but never did.” Erin pushed her hair back impatiently from her face. “Did you even think about what that would do to them? To have their father keep breaking his promises to them?”

“But—”

“I know you didn’t do it on purpose. I explained it as much as I could. But I also had to comfort them when they kept crying about it.”

Seth turned on his heel and started striding out of the room.

“Seth,” Erin demanded loudly. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to apologize. To make sure they know—”

This time, Erin hurried over and grabbed him by the arm. “No. They’re asleep. If you wake them up now, you’ll just confuse them.” He seemed to resist, to still try to pull away, but Erin hung on resiliently. “You can talk to them in the morning. Mackenzie doesn’t really hate you. You know that as well as I do. But do you realize how much she had to be hurting for her to say that…about
you
?”

Of course, Seth realized it. The knowledge had almost leveled him. His face and posture were still composed, but the coiled tension was so tight in his body that she was afraid he might shatter.

“I see your point,” he said at last, roughly and still not fully meeting her eyes. “I wasn’t looking at the whole picture. I figured they’d miss me some, but I didn’t think it would…” He shook his head jerkily. “I was just expecting you all to be waiting for me, without thinking about what the waiting might do to the girls. I was foolish. I made a mistake. I won't do it again. But that doesn’t explain why you’re still packing.”

And this was perhaps the hardest thing of all. She dropped her arms to her sides. Turned back toward her open suitcase on the bed. “Because the girls aren’t the only ones who've been hurt.”

Seth was perfectly still for a long, pregnant moment. Then, “Erin.” The word was a thick caress, and he took the two steps over until he could pull her into his arms. “Erin, baby, I’m so sorry. You know how much I love you. That’s never going to change.”

She was shaking, and she felt so safe and secure in his’s arms that it took all the strength she possessed to pull out of his embrace. “I know,” she choked, the emotional pressure in her chest pushing her into tears at last.

Eventually, strong emotion always did.

Wiping her eyes in exasperation, she continued, “I know you love me. That’s not the point. This isn’t just one incident. It’s not just the last month. You’ve been prioritizing work over family more and more for the last year. It’s getting worse, not better. And I’m…I’m getting lost. I need to get away in order to find my way again.”

“Erin.” Seth seemed to be actively holding himself back from touching her, now that she'd pulled away from him. “I messed up. I can see that. But how is leaving going to help? How can I change if you’re not here?”

Her eyes burned as painfully as her throat now. In another minute she was going to be sobbing for real. “You still don’t get it, Seth. I’m not trying to punish you. This isn’t to make you suffer or to make some sort of dramatic point. You’re not the only one who’s made this situation into what it is.
I’ve
made it too. I’ve let this happen to us, to me. And I need to get away—for a little while.  I’m not even sure who I am anymore.”

Seth’s jaw was clenched so tightly that a little muscle worked in his cheek. He was staring at her, with that hint of panic growing deeper in his eyes. “Is this about having to give up your career?”

Erin made a face. “Not exactly. Maybe a little. It’s connected some, I guess. But it’s not the main thing.”

“I thought you’d reconciled yourself to that,” he said, looking suddenly wary. “I know it was hard for you, but you haven’t been looking for a job so… so I thought you were happy being a wife and mother.”

“I am,” she burst out, the tears streaming out of the corners of her eyes now. “I am. I
want
to be a wife and mother, but I want to be
Erin
too.”

It wasn’t a very good explanation, but Seth seemed to understand. He closed down, shutting off his expressions and responses the way he always did when something hurt too much. Finally he muttered, “Aren’t you still Erin?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, turning around so he wouldn’t see how hard she was crying. “I’m not sure.”

There wasn’t anything else she could do, so she moved back to the bed and folded another pair of jeans into the suitcase, her eyes still streaming with tears.

Seth recovered more quickly than she’d expected, and he stepped over to gently put his hand on her shoulder. “Erin,” he murmured, mildly, huskily, “Erin, I had no idea you were worried about losing your identity.”

“I know. I didn’t tell you. That’s part of the problem. As I said, you aren’t the only one who’s contributed to this situation.”

“But why can’t we work this out together. We both need to deal with some things, but surely we can do it better together. We can’t work on being a family if we’re apart.”

She nodded and sniffed urgently. Tried to compose herself the way Seth had. “I know. And we
will
work on it. But I need some time without you first.” Before he could object, she hurried on. “I know what will happen if I stay. This will have scared you, so you’ll be attentive and loving and sweet for weeks or maybe even months. And it will feel so good to have you back again that I’ll just fall back into our old patterns. And then weeks from now, or months, or however long it takes, you’ll get absorbed in work again, you’ll pull more and more away, and I’ll just let it happen—because I still won’t really know who I am or what I want out of life. I need to get away, Seth. I need to think through this objectively.”

“But you’re not supposed to think about your family objectively. You’re supposed to think about us with your heart.”

Erin was crying again. Louder than before. But she forced out between sobs. “I love you, Seth. That hasn’t changed. But I want to love myself too.”

Seth’s head jerked to the side, and she was relieved she couldn’t see his eyes. His dress shirt was wrinkled and slightly damp in the middle of his back, and there were more lines than she remembered beside his eyes and mouth. She knew how drained he was after working so hard for the last month. She knew she was slamming him with this on the day after he’d returned, and she ached for him, as much as for herself.