Page 55 of She Didn’t See It Coming
Paige is on edge, in the living room of the condo on Sunday afternoon with Sam and Clara.
She can tell that Sam is frustrated with his daughter.
Sam had tried to get Angela to watch her, but she’d gone out.
Clara is being demanding, refusing to watch TV, or play on the iPad, or play with her toys, or do anything on her own at all.
She’s tearful and cranky, and Sam is losing his patience.
He looks like he wants to yell at Clara and put her in her room for a timeout.
Paige steps in and tries to soothe her. “Come here, sweetie, let me do your hair. You love it when I do your hair.”
“No! I want my mommy.”
Paige feels sudden tears prick behind her eyelids. “I know, honey.”
“I hate you!” Clara suddenly screams. And it’s not clear who she means—she’s looking at both of them.
“Clara, go to your room,” Sam says in a stern voice.
“No!” She says it with all the defiance of a typical three-year-old.
But Clara has never been typical—she’s always been quiet, sensitive, and well behaved.
Paige wonders if that will all change now, because of what’s happened.
Maybe she’ll become a troubled little girl.
Difficult. Paige hadn’t really considered that before. She glances at Sam uneasily.
“Clara,” Sam says, with a warning in his voice, “go to your room, right now.”
“I hate you!” she screams again.
Sam rises from the sofa so quickly it takes Paige by surprise. Paige sees the sudden fear in the little girl’s eyes. In two strides, he’s grabbed Clara around the waist and is carrying her, kicking and screaming, toward her bedroom.
Paige has never seen Sam behave this way either.
The whole scene is troubling her. Sam had been cold to her today from the moment she arrived.
She thinks about slipping out. But then she remembers she promised to pick up some groceries for them.
While she’s thinking this, she hears Sam slam the bedroom door, and he reappears in the living room, looking angry and exhausted.
He brushes a hand across his face. “She’s not handling this well.”
“She’s only three,” Paige says, smiling tentatively. “She’s lost her mother.”
“It’s just so fucking difficult…” He trails off. He doesn’t need to explain.
“You know I’m here to help—you don’t have to do this all on your own.”
“I know. And I’m grateful.”
They can both hear Clara crying her heart out in her bedroom. It’s setting their nerves on edge.
“Maybe you could take her with you when you go out for groceries,” Sam suggests. “I could use the break. And Clara used to love grocery shopping with Bryden.”
Paige’s immediate reaction is annoyance.
What is she, a babysitting service? He could use the break.
She remembers how Bryden used to complain sometimes about how she did the bulk of the household chores and the bulk of the childcare too.
Paige had told Bryden she was being taken for granted.
Secretly, Paige had thought it was because Bryden put up with it.
She hesitates. She doesn’t want to be taken for granted. But he looks like he’s at the end of his rope, and these are extenuating circumstances. “All right,” she agrees.
A short time later, after Clara has calmed down and Paige has prepared a shopping list, she bundles the little girl up and takes her out to get groceries. In the car, on the way to the store, Clara is quiet, and Paige is able to think.
If she’s honest with herself, she’s had feelings for Sam for a long time.
And now, when she thinks about the possibility of a future with Sam, she feels warm inside.
Some good could come out of the tragedy of Bryden’s death.
She hopes that after a suitable interval, they can stop pretending.
She hopes that she can eventually become Sam’s wife, and mother to Clara.
She tells herself that Bryden would have liked that.
She thinks he cares for her, even though he sometimes seems distant.
Bryden hasn’t even been dead a week. He can’t accept that he has feelings for her now, so soon.
She thinks about yesterday, when he pulled her into his bedroom to make love, almost the moment he saw her.
He couldn’t help himself, and neither could she.
She thinks he could fall in love with her.
And that’s how it should be. Because she’s already fallen in love with him.
She hadn’t meant to. She held back for the longest time, because Bryden was her best friend.
And then that first time—it was like magic.
It was like nothing she’d ever felt before.
When she was in his arms, she felt both safe and wildly excited at the same time.
She was hooked. She felt guilty as hell in the beginning, but she got used to it. The guilt faded after a while.
And Clara. Her sweet goddaughter. How terrible for her to lose her mother, and in such a terrible way.
But she’s so young, she probably won’t even remember.
Some good must come of all this tragedy, Paige tells herself.
She can love Clara almost as much as her real mother.
And maybe Clara will have a sibling someday after all.
There’s all that baby stuff that Bryden had packed away, while they waited for another baby to come along.
Bryden had confided in Paige about her frustration at how long it was taking for her to conceive a second child.
Clara had happened so quickly. But they’d been trying for a year, and nothing.
She’d had all the baby clothes and equipment stored in the den.
And Bryden told her how she’d go in and look at it, every day, handling the onesies, the cute little outfits that Clara had outgrown.
Finally, she decided to move it all to the storage locker in the basement so she wouldn’t have to look at it.
She decided that they’d been putting too much pressure on themselves to conceive.
She said she had to stop making it a priority, realize it was going to take time.
Paige had helped her move everything down to the basement a few weeks ago.
She thinks of that storage locker now and shudders.
She’s running this errand for Sam, but it’s just this once. She tells herself that as their relationship matures, she will make sure he doesn’t treat her the way he treated Bryden. She will not be taken for granted. She expects better than that. She’s stronger than Bryden was.