Not Easily Broken Read online

  David and Julie were involved. That explained so many things. And suddenly, Clarice knew what she had to do. With the clarity that comes only through a sudden crisis, Clarice realized she didn’t want to lose her marriage. Not to Julie, not to anybody.

  She went into the bedroom. David was in the bathroom, so she stood and waited for him to come out. The door opened and he saw her standing there, and she could tell by his face that he knew everything was different now.

  “David, I’m going to ask you a question, maybe the most important question I’ll ever ask.” Clarice surprised herself by how calm she sounded. “And I need for you to understand that if you lie to me, I’ll know. David, are you having an affair with Julie Sawyer?”

  She watched his face. His eyes flickered back and forth like a cornered animal looking for an escape route that wasn’t there; his jaw clenched, then opened, but no words came out. The longer he looked at her without saying anything, the more certain she was that this whole thing wasn’t just in her imagination.

  In her sales courses, they’d taught that once you asked the prospect a closing question, the next person to speak is the loser. A sale could be killed by an agent who couldn’t stand the silence that inevitably followed the closing question. She’d just asked David the closing question and she had no intention of losing.

  “What made you ask me that?” he said finally. His voice wasn’t loud or angry, just curious more than anything. Clarice nearly lost it; she’d have felt so much better if he’d blustered or yelled. But he didn’t. He sounded like a criminal who thought he’d pulled off the perfect crime and was honestly surprised at getting caught.

  “That doesn’t really matter, does it?” she said, still able to control her voice. “The point is, I asked you a question. What is your answer?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Can I sit down?”She shrugged. She had no intention of moving from her spot.

  He crossed to the corner of the bed and sat. He looked away from her into a dark corner of the bedroom. He scratched his face and ran a hand across his hair.

  “Nothing’s happened,” he said finally. Clarice was surprised at how much it hurt her that he didn’t even bother with the pretense of a denial. “We’ve talked on the phone. We’ve had lunch. Once.” He looked at her. “I swear to you, Reesie. That’s all.”

  She knew the next question she had to ask, but it was slicing her throat like a thousand tiny knives. She closed her eyes for a few seconds, then looked at him again. She felt like Mama was looking over her shoulder and judging her daughter as harshly as her son-in-law.

  “Does that mean nothing’s happened because nothing’s ever going to, or nothing’s happened—yet?” Clarice said.

  He took a deep breath and let it puff out his cheeks as he released it. He shook his head.

  “I don’t know, Reesie. I honestly don’t.”

  “Can you please try—” her voice started to tremble and she stopped talking, swallowed, and went on “—try to tell me what you were thinking?”

  “Clarice, you got to understand. She appreciates me. She likes me for who I am. That’s a nice thing to feel. It’s . . . it’s been a long time.”

  He still wouldn’t look at her. Clarice felt his words jabbing her like thumbtacks, hurting her with the sting of truth. Again, his quietness had more impact than if he’d ranted and raved. David was telling her what was on his heart, and it was ripping her apart.

  “Reesie, come and sit down. We got to talk this out.”

  Clarice wavered for a moment, then moved toward a chair.

  As Dave looked at his wife, he thought about the words he’d exchanged with Brock and realized he still felt soiled by what he’d said. Granny used to say she thought maybe lying was the worst sin a person could commit. “Even worse than killing,” she’d say. “Sometimes you can’t help killing. But the truth ain’t never done nothing to nobody that didn’t deserve it.”

  Or maybe . . . maybe he really had wanted Clarice to know, in some strange, roundabout way. Maybe he wished she’d care enough to do something about it.

  “I’m not going to even try to pretend we can settle this between us right now,” Dave said. “But we got to get started. If we don’t, then it’s all over.”

  “Maybe it’s all over anyway,” she said, looking at him with shimmering, pain-filled eyes.

  “Maybe so. Can you look me in the face and tell me with no doubt in your mind that’s what you want?”

  He watched her and waited.

  Dave tried to figure out what was happening. When she asked him point-blank and out of the blue, he knew he couldn’t just deny it as he had with Brock. If he looked deep, deep down within himself, Dave knew he still loved his wife. The way things had been for a while now, it would have been easy for him to say otherwise, but he knew it wasn’t true. Things weren’t all bad with Clarice; if they were, he’d have already been gone. No, the misery of marriage problems was that you had something that was worth saving—you just didn’t know how to do it.

  It didn’t make any difference one way or the other now; the beans were spilled, and they weren’t going back in the bag. He wondered what she was going to say. He thought about saying a little prayer, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it right this moment.

  “David, right now I honestly don’t know what I’m feeling. When I walked in here, I had every intention of telling you I’d do whatever I had to do to keep our marriage alive. I think part of me was hoping my guess was wrong, that I was making it all up in my head, that we’d be okay like we’ve always been. But now . . .”

  “Clarice, I’m going to say this as easy as I can: we haven’t been okay for quite a while now.”

  The tears spilled over her eyelids; they followed each other in quick tracks down her smooth brown cheeks. “I know,” she said, in little more than a whisper. “But I couldn’t ever figure out what to do about it.”

  After a while, he said, “What we’re doing now seems like a start.”

  She nodded.

  “I’m not saying I was right to let myself get in this far with Julie. But, Reesie, it didn’t happen in a vacuum. You understand what I’m saying?”

  She nodded again.

  “I know I’m not everything you want in a man. But I’m a man who wants to be with you. I haven’t known how to ask for that, but that’s what I’ve always wanted. I’ve wanted to take care of you and protect you. But sometimes, baby girl, you . . .”

  She wiped her face with the back of her hand.

  “Here, let me get you a tissue or something,” he said, getting up and going into the bathroom. When he came back and handed it to her, she said, “Do you know what I was looking at on the computer, those times you came home?”

  He shook his head.

  “I was on the Internet, looking for information on depression.”

  He started to say something like, “Julie told me that might be a problem,” but thought better of it. Instead, he just waited.

  “I couldn’t understand what was happening to me, David. All my life I’ve prided myself on being independent, on taking care of myself. Even after we got married, I was determined to be an equal partner, not some little woman you kept in the kitchen and the bedroom.”

  “Aw, Reesie, I never—”

  “I know, I know. You backed me all the way. I guess some part of me kept expecting it to wind up being a trick to get on my good side so you could get something you wanted later. And when you started talking about having children, I . . . I guess I thought that was the sound of the other shoe dropping. I think I started pushing you away.”

  “I might have pushed back a little too hard sometimes,” he said after a few seconds.

  She shrugged. “I guess there’s plenty of blame to go around.”

  For maybe as much as a couple of minutes, neither of them said anything.

  “Well,” Dave said finally, “what’s the next step, do you think?”

  She looked at him. “I know
you wish we could just kiss and make up, David, but I think this is too complicated for that.”

  He shrugged and nodded.

  “I think we might need to talk to somebody. A counselor, maybe, or somebody from church.”

  “I’ll do whatever you say, Reesie.”

  “And I think neither one of us needs to see Julie again.”

  Dave sat for a minute and let this soak in. Of course he knew Clarice was right. What chance did they have to put their marriage back together if Julie was always in the background, literally or figuratively looking over their shoulders?

  But . . . never see her again? Never again be able to see the look on Bryson’s face when somebody put a gold medal around his neck?

  Dave felt as if he were staring down a long dark tunnel and somebody had just taken the flashlight out of his hand. They might come out of the tunnel together, he and Clarice, or they might not. But once he walked in, it was for sure he was going to be in the dark for a while.

  He took a deep breath. Without looking at her, he said, “You’re right. But I think it needs to come from me.”

  “You handle that however you need to,” she said. “But just make sure you handle it. This is nonnegotiable, David.”

  “I know, I know.”

  He knew, all right. What he didn’t know was how.

  A low-hanging cloud had been following her around all morning, but Julie couldn’t figure out what it was. Sitting at her desk, she was staring blindly at her day planner and wondering why none of the marks in her own handwriting made any sense to her. Her cell phone rang.

  She looked at the screen; it was Dave. Feeling a ray of sunshine break through her personal overcast, she answered. “Hey there!”

  “Hi, Julie. I’ve, uh, got something to tell you, and it’s not going to be easy.”

  A cold place started in the pit of her stomach and began spreading up toward her heart. She knew where this was going. “Yeah, sure, Dave. What’s up?”

  “Julie, what we’re doing is wrong. At least, what I’m doing is wrong. I’ve got a responsibility to my wife, and when I’m with you, that responsibility goes way on the back burner. I’m sorry, and really, this is my fault, but I’ve got to tell you I can’t see you anymore.”

  Julie suddenly felt divided in half. One part of her was holding her phone, trying to get her mind around what Dave had just said—words that, though she knew they had to be spoken, were still banging in on her like an emotional pile driver. The other part of her was watching like a director watches a play, waiting to see what the character named Julie would say next.

  So this is what breaking up feels like. It’s a little better than being abandoned, but not much . . .

  “You can hate me, cuss me out, whatever you need to do,” he was saying. “I deserve whatever you can dish out, most likely.”

  “Oh, Dave, don’t be ridiculous. Of course I’m not going to cuss you out, you sorry son of a—” she broke off and gave her best attempt at a chuckle.

  “That was a joke, by the way.”

  “Yeah. Nice.” She could feel his sad smile coming through the line.

  “The fact is, you’re exactly right. And we both know it. And no, it’s not your fault alone. I was skating along on the same thin ice, in case you didn’t know it. And starting to wonder when it was going to crack.”

  “For real?”

  “For real.”

  “Well . . . I guess I won’t be watching Bryson’s meet this weekend, after all. Actually, I almost feel worse about that than anything else.”

  “I’m going to take that as a compliment to my son,” she said. “Although some less charitable women would actually start swearing right about here.”

  This time she actually heard him chuckle.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it with Bryson,” she said. “He’s a pretty tough kid, in his own way. He’ll deal.”

  “He’s an awesome kid,” Dave said. “I’m really going to miss him . . . and you.”

  “Now, let’s not start back down that trail,” she said around the growing constriction in her throat. “That way lies madness.”

  “Okay, well . . .”

  “I take it this also means I’m now one physical therapy patient short?”

  “Yeah. ’Fraid so.”

  “Well, no problem. I’ll just have to go out and hustle up some more business. For what it’s worth, I owe Clarice a thank-you. I kind of like this idea of working in the patient’s home. I may start doing some more of that.”

  “Cool. Well, you’ll be great at it, because you’re great.”

  “Yeah, well . . . you’re not so bad, yourself, Mr. Johnson.”

  “There comes that path again.”

  “Yep. Sorry. Okay, well . . . I guess that’s it, then?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. You, uh . . . you take care, awright?”

  “You can count on it.”

  “Okay, then. Well . . . bye.”

  “Bye, Dave.”

  She pushed the end button before either of them could say anything else. She got up from her desk and walked at a brisk pace through the double doors into the main hallway, out through the front reception area, and onto the sidewalk outside. She crossed the tightly clipped lawn to a bench that sat in a secluded corner of the hospital grounds, partly shielded by hedges of red-tipped forsythia. And there, she sat down and held her face in her hands and wept like a little lost girl.

  Dave hung up feeling as if someone had just reached down his throat and yanked one of his lungs out through his teeth. But there was one more call he had to make. He started dialing.

  “Bryan, Wilkes, and Houseman; how may I direct your call?”

  “Brock Houseman, please.”

  “And who may I say is calling?”

  “Dave Johnson.”

  The music on hold was some kind of white folks’ elevator music. That was bad enough. What made it unbearable was that it was some syrupy arrangement of “Three Times a Lady.” Dave was pretty sure Lionel Ritchie would get indigestion from listening to it, no matter how big the royalty check was.

  “Yeah, Dave?”

  “Hey, Brock. I, uh . . . I owe you an apology, man.”

  “For what?”

  “For being out of line last night, coming back from practice.”

  “Hey, forget about it. So was I, probably.”

  “No, that’s the trouble. You were right.”

  “I was? About what?”

  “About me and Julie. Or at least, you used to be right.”

  “No kidding.”

  Silence.

  “But I just wanted to tell you, first of all, that I’m sorry I acted like a jerk,” Dave said, “and second, that Julie and I won’t be seeing each other anymore.”

  “I see.”

  “She’s a classy lady, and she deserves a lot better than being somebody’s squeeze on the side. Not that that ever happened; I mean, we never—”

  “Yeah, I get it.”

  “Anyway . . . that’s all. I just wanted to tell you that, and that I’m sorry. And thanks for having the guts to say something about it. That’s what a friend would do.”

  “You got it, bro. Anytime, day or night.”

  “Yeah. Well . . . thanks again.”

  Dave hung up, suddenly realizing that through the haze of pain and sadness, he was also feeling cleaner and more honest than he had in a while. That had to be a good thing, didn’t it?

  His phone rang. “All-Pro, this is Dave.”

  “Hey, Dave, it’s Brock again. You and Clarice . . . you guys are going to try and work things out, right?”

  “Right. That’s what started all this, actually.”

  “Okay, cool. Well, glad to hear it. Do whatever it takes, you know?”

  “Yeah, I intend to. Thanks, man.”

  “You got it.”

  Dave hung up again. He realized then that neither Julie nor Brock had asked him, in so many words, if Clarice knew what was going on. Dave guessed the
y assumed she did. He wondered briefly if he ought to call Julie, at least, and let her know, in case she should ever run into Clarice in the store or something. Yeah, maybe he should . . .

  No. That was just a goofy way of talking to her one more time, he decided. No point in it; the sting wasn’t going to go away any quicker if he kept putting her back in his mind.

  When he got home, Clarice was on the computer. But this time she didn’t close the Web browser when he walked in the room.

  “I’m looking for marriage counselors,” she said. “I called the church today, and Pastor Wilkes recommended some people. I’m checking out their Web sites.”

  Dave had to hand it to her. When Clarice got started on a project, she went full bore. She’d attacked her physical therapy that way, and now she was attacking marriage rehab.

  “What else did the pastor say?”

  Clarice swiveled her chair to look at him. “He said he was sorry to hear we were having trouble, but that he appreciated the courage it took to admit it and then seek help. He said no marriage was past saving until somebody gave up trying, and he would pray that we’d both have the strength not to do that.”

  Dave nodded. “Sounds like good advice. Anybody on here look good to you?”

  Clarice turned back to the screen. “I’m kind of interested in this one, here.” She tapped the monitor with a red-lacquered fingernail. “Carmen McAtee. She’s got a PhD. I guess that’s good.”

  “Beats me,” Dave said. “But I’ll go wherever you say, baby girl. You hungry?”

  “Not really.”

  Dave warmed up a helping of whatever casserole they’d cooked most recently. He poured himself a glass of tea and sat down at the kitchen counter to eat. He hoped Clarice came up with somebody good; he really wanted things to work out. But he was worried, because the only thing on his mind all day had been Julie.

  He felt bad about it, he really did. And it wasn’t as if he had sat at his desk mooning over her all day, writing her name on his blotter. He’d worked. He’d completed his quarterly spreadsheets; he’d gone out and called on some prospective accounts; he’d even interviewed several applicants for crew positions, a task he usually left to his office manager. He’d done his best to keep himself busy all day, because he knew if he didn’t, he’d probably do something stupid.