The Last Day by John Ramsey Miller Page B

pillow. Why would anyone else do such an absurd thing? It wasn't the first time in recent weeks; either she'd moved things around and accused him or he had done so and didn't remember. Sure, he had felt oddly detached from the real world, but not that disconnected. If one of them was losing his mind, he didn't think it was only him.
    Ward walked down the hall and stood frozen outside Natasha's door. He wanted to go to her. He wanted to hold her, to be in her arms again the way it was before. He raised his hand, but he couldn't force himself to knock. He imagined her lying alone in their bed. He wanted to comfort her, to make love to her, to make her feelsomething for him, but somehow he couldn't make the leap.
    He thought about the last time they'd made love, seven months before, and how mechanical and unsatisfying it had been. Love with a stranger, but who had been the stranger? Filled with the fog of uncertainty and perhaps insecurity, he just could not make himself open the bedroom door.
    He moved silently into the guest bedroom and, without taking off his clothes, lay awake in the dark for what seemed like hours after getting into bed. Something he couldn't understand, or didn't want to admit, was keeping him from reaching out and trying to make things right.
    Ward couldn't imagine life without Natasha, but forgetful or not, he wasn't going to pay some pompous, two-hundred-dollar-an-hour asshole to make him let go of Barney.

EIGHTEEN
    After leaving Ward at the dinner table, Natasha took a long warm shower, brushed her teeth, and toweled off her hair.
    She was still upset—more upset than angry— and mostly because she'd blown an opportunity to really talk with Ward and resolve their problems. Her psychiatrist had suggested that she give Ward an ultimatum of sorts, force him to understand what he was about to throw away. Barney was dead, and she'd accepted that. She knew Ward knew it as well, but he couldn't put it aside and move on with what was left of his life—of their life together.
    She often wondered how she, Barney's mother, was trying so hard to come to terms with Barney's loss and her husband wasn't. She had carried him in her womb, had given birth to him, nursed him, and loved him beyond rationality or description. Yes, Ward had seen him die, had held his cooling body as he waited in immeasurable anguish and pain for the ambulance to arrive. Yes, Ward alone had sufferedthat, but she certainly felt the same horror and grief even so.
    Due to the demands of her career, Ward had spent more time with Barney than she had, and in the last years had been closer. She couldn't compete with the father/son contact and shared interests that became more and more important to them both. As a woman she'd been the odd one out, and she'd accepted that—had welcomed watching their bond strengthen, even at the expense of her own. She knew she loved Barney every bit as much and missed him every bit as deeply. How could it be otherwise?
    Ward appeared to be in more pain, and it most bothered her that there was a wall between them that kept them from sharing the pain, the grief, from talking about their lives, and how they would go forward together. She wanted nothing more than to be in Ward's arms, to feel him against her, his warmth to fight away the cold, his strengths to shore her weaknesses, to lessen her fears, maybe even somehow mute their emptiness.
    Natasha climbed into bed and turned off the lamp. She reached for the familiar stuffed bear, and after not finding it where she'd left it, ran herhands top to bottom and side to side over the bed, seeking it. Turning on the lamp she got on all fours and, from the bed, looked around the floor. Panicked, Natasha slid off the bed to peer under it, but the bear was not there.
    She climbed back into bed, cut the light off, and tried to decide what to do. She didn't want to confront Ward and demand the toy's return. That was impossible after she'd made the point about him taking the