The Stairs Between Us, Chapter 1

No matter how much time passed, part of me would always long to be back in that house. I wanted the man I’d married. The man who looked at me as if I was his whole world, his eyes filled with the dreams he had for us. The Levi who saw the whole picture and wanted to keep looking.

That Levi was gone. I didn’t know how to get him back, so I left.

Noah

The early morning glow filtered through the blinds—the wrong kind of light. It should’ve tipped me off, but it never did. I rolled onto my side to face him, a hand automatically stretching out. My fingers touched cool sheets.

Empty bed.

No husband.

There were still mornings when I woke, half expecting to find myself in my husband’s house, in our bed. Most mornings, actually. I should’ve been used to it, but somewhere between sleep and the land of the living, my brain kept glitching out.

Levi always kept blackout curtains in our bedroom. Those sheets never saw the light of day. With his odd hours, he needed to be able to sleep no matter what time of day.

I squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself back to that bedroom, to that life. To the person that I was. The velvet inside of my eyelids glowed red from the diffused light, the illusion shattered.

Even though I’d divorced my husband, I still missed him.

No matter how much I missed him, though, I’d had to leave.

I glanced at the alarm clock on my nightstand. I didn’t have to get up for another fifteen minutes, but I couldn’t go back to sleep. My brain already ticked through each thing I had to do for the day, a perpetual running list that never shut up—even while I slept.

Running feet pounded the carpeted hallway as my six-year-old son zoomed toward my room. He flew through the open door and bounded into bed with me.

“Good morning, Momma!”

Pushing away all of my worries, I snuggled him into my arms. “I love my cup of morning Joey.” I inhaled the scent of his mousy brown hair, breathing in the scent of sleep and berry kids’ shampoo from his bath the night before.

“Am I going to Daddy’s today?”

“Tomorrow, buddy.” I hugged him tighter. “Today’s Friday.”

Joey giggled. “No, Momma. Today’s Saturday.”

He was right. I threw on a smile to hide my grimace. “Are you sure? I can still bring you to school.” My fingers found his ribs, tickling lightly.

He squealed, wriggling away from me. “No school. I want to go home. I mean, to Daddy’s.” He studied my face with dark eyes that were so like Levi’s, waiting for my reaction.

“Daddy’s house is your home, too,” I reminded him. My heart throbbed with guilt. What I did hadn’t been easy on my son. As much as I missed Levi, I knew Joey missed the three of us being together even more, no matter how much of a brave face he put on.

“Why . . . ?” His voice trailed off.

“What, buddy?” I sat up in bed, tendrils of dark hair reaching down my back, tickling my skin as they tumbled over my shoulders.

“Never mind,” he mumbled. His eyebrows remained pinched together, though.

“Honey? Talk to me.” I stroked his smooth, creamy white cheek with my thumb.

“Why can’t we go home?” Those round brown eyes stared up at me.

“We are home.” I gathered him into my lap. “This is my home, and Daddy’s house is his home, and both of those places are your home. Remember?”

Twisting in my arms, Joey came face to face with me. “Seems like a lot of homes.”

I chuffed a tiny laugh through my nose, a smile touching my lips. That was another way that Joey was like Levi. They both thought logically. All of the pieces needed to fit, no room for arguments or emotions. Sometimes I wondered if this boy was even mine. The only physical feature he’d inherited from me was my chin. My sapphire eyes skipped him, and his genes took off running after his father.

“Sometimes mommies and daddies need to have more than one home.” I patted his leg.

“Yes,” he said, as if explaining to a toddler, “but one home costs less money.”

“I know you want things to be the way they used to be, but we’re still a family.”

Joey slid out of my arms and off the bed. “We have a lot of bills.” He turned and padded toward the hall in his bare feet. “Can we have pancakes?” he asked over his shoulder as he ambled out of sight.

I sighed. Even though he was only six, he saw and heard everything. He noted the bills piling on the table, some with red PAST DUE stamps, and assembled the pieces. Just like he saw Levi’s empty kitchen table, the mortgage already paid off and the bills automatically withdrawn from his checking account.

Leaving my husband had cost me more than I’d been prepared to lose.

Life went on, though. It had to. If I spent too much time assessing my decision, I might doubt it. And I didn’t have room in my life to start second-guessing myself.

The damage was done, as they said.

I climbed out of bed and wrapped myself in my thick flannel bathrobe, tucking my feet into slippers. As I moved through my room, I glanced out the window. Part of me hoped that I’d see snow on the ground, January continuing its pattern of dumping snow on our small New England town just so I could keep Joey for one more day. No such luck, though. Both the sky and streets were clear.

That soft morning sunlight kept on shining.

On Saturday mornings before it all fell apart, Levi let me sleep in. I’d wake up to coffee in the carafe and my husband flipping omelettes on the stove. I’d hop up onto the counter, he’d hand me a plate, and I’d wrap my legs around his waist. Then I’d feed us both little bites while we talked about our dreams and laughed.

Sometimes dreams can turn into nightmares, though. You can become consumed by what you think you want, until your view of everything around you slowly narrows and you lose sight of what’s important. The people you leave behind are forced to pick up the pieces, to make the hard decisions.

I couldn’t explain these things to my son, though. At only six, his world view was simple: mommies and daddies stayed together. At least, his were supposed to. No matter how many times I read him children’s books about divorce, or how many kids in his first grade class told him their parents separated too, Joey would always want us back together.

I couldn’t blame him.

No matter how much time passed, part of me would always long to be back in that house. The days I longed for, though, weren’t the later years of our marriage. I wanted to return to before Joey was born. Not because I didn’t want my son, but because I wanted the man I’d married. The man who held my hand on our walk over to campus, who slipped sweet little notes into my backpack.

I wanted the Levi who looked at me as if I was his whole world, his brown almond-shaped eyes filled with the dreams he had for us. The Levi who saw the whole picture and wanted to keep looking.

That Levi was gone, though, replaced with a cold lookalike who barely saw me when he bothered to come home. The doppelgänger who came home from the hospital hardly glanced at our son, ignoring his pleas to “Come play dinosaurs with me, Daddy.”

I shuffled into the kitchen where Joey already stood on a chair at the counter. A mixing bowl and the box of pancake mix sat in front of him.

“I waited for you,” he told me.

Kissing the top of his head, I grabbed a measuring cup. He was already six. There weren’t too many pancake mornings left, fewer still afternoons spent playing with dinosaurs in a sandbox.

Whether you paid attention or not, time kept moving forward.

“Wanna stir?” I asked my son. He nodded and I handed him a rubber spatula. “Go for it.”

“Momma,” he began as I poured water into the mix.

I paused, holding the measuring cup over the board. “Yeah?”

“You’re putting too much water.”

Peering at the pancake mix and the water already in the bowl, I shook my head. “Honey, I’ve been making pancakes since before you were born.”

“Momma,” he said again. “It’s a two to three ratio.”

I blinked at him. “It’s a do what now?”

Joey sighed. “It’s one and a half cups of water for every two cups of mix.” Gently, he took the measuring cup from my hand and set it down. Then he grabbed the box and pointed to the chart on the back. “See?”

Shaking my head, I moved toward the coffee pot. “I’ll just let you handle that, then,” I told him, reminded again of how like Levi he was. Math and science—those came easily to the men of my heart. When I made pancakes, I just added water until the batter was right. When Levi made them, the measurements had to be exact.

Precision made for a fantastic surgeon. Surgeons made for terrible spouses. I just hoped that Joey wouldn’t take after his father in that department, too.

Read Chapter 2