Broken Read online

  The conversation didn’t even pause when I got up and went into the empty steam room. Here, at least, I could be alone without feeling like a social misfit. The tiles were warm and the air thick with steam that writhed around me like the embrace of a phantom. I settled onto the bench and breathed deeply, letting the heat and moisture embrace me. Unlike the locker room and hot tub, the steam room cosseted me with its silence. Somnolent. Lugubrious. Stygian.

  I made myself laugh a little, thinking of the very best and most flowery words to describe this small room. Thus, I was cheered a bit by the time they called me for my appointment.

  My masseuse introduced herself as Marta, and she stepped out of the room while I got comfortable under the sheet. Comfortable wasn’t exactly what I felt. The staff recommended nudity for massage, and when was the last time I’d been naked in front of a stranger?

  She rapped quietly on the door and came in at my murmured assent that I was, indeed ready. She asked me a few questions and dimmed the lights. Soft music burbled from hidden speakers. She positioned herself behind my head.

  “You tell me if you need more or less.”

  I promised I would and tensed with the waiting for her touch. The music shifted and changed. Marta’s strong, nimble fingers cupped the back of my neck and worked tension spots at the base of my skull. I wanted to ask her how she knew what I needed, how she know how and where to touch me, to ease aches I hadn’t even noticed, but fortunately for my dignity, such silly questions were rendered impossible by my mouth’s refusal to form words. I floated in that dim room, with music and the scents of lavender and rosemary to cradle me while she worked.

  After a few moments she left my neck and moved to my side, exposing my arm but tucking the sheet around my body to maintain my modesty. Her hands moved along my bicep, then my forearm, working muscles I abused with daily typing and writing of my notes, but to which I rarely paid notice. I let out a small groan when she hit a particularly tender spot on the underside of my wrist. Her fingers pressed and kneaded and worked their way down toward my hand where she tugged each of my fingers. My hand in hers, my fingers closed and opened involuntarily as she massaged my palm and the back of my hand. She closed both hands over mine, holding it between them for a second or two before massaging between each of my fingers.

  Emotion rushed into my throat with the force and bitterness of acid. When was the last time someone had held my hand this way, with such tenderness and care? When was the last time anyone had held my hand at all?

  I forced myself to swallow against the knot lodged in my throat, but could do nothing about the sting of tears behind my closed eyelids. Marta moved to my other arm and worked it with the same tender force she’d used on the first. By the time she got to my right hand, her palm against mine as she manipulated my fingers, I couldn’t even pretend not to be weeping. Tears made silent, burning trails down my cheeks, puddled in my ears and leaked down the side of my neck.

  “I’m going to ask you to roll over now.” She squeezed my hand between both of hers, then patted my shoulder.

  Grateful for the chance to hide my face and gain control, I rolled quickly onto my stomach and nestled my face into the doughnut-shaped cushion at the head of the table. The smooth, crinkling paper covering pressed coolness to my heated face, against my eyes, so I didn’t even have to close them in order to blind myself. It blocked out everything, cocooning me.

  Nobody touched me anymore. A handshake or the kind of casual hug that kept inches between upper bodies and didn’t even come close to lower body contact were not enough for me. I missed Adam’s all encompassing hugs, his legs and thighs and pelvis pressed against me. I missed being engulfed by him.

  Dealing with someone else’s tears is never a comfortable business, not even when you’re expecting them. I tried to keep them silent, to keep my shoulders from tensing with sobs I couldn’t bear to release. Marta had to know I was crying, but said nothing, only kept up her work.

  I wept in silence, without sobs, without effort. I heard the snap of the cap opening, the liquid slush of oil poured into her hands, and felt them once more my skin. My knotted muscles unraveled, and so did I.

  Marta placed her palm flat on my back, between my shoulder blades. “I’m finished. I’ll get you a cup of water. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  She discreetly left a bunch of tissues next to me. I waited for the door to close before I sat, clutching the sheet around my breasts with hands still slick from oil. I wiped my face and pulled on the spa’s robe, recovering a bit by the time she returned with a paper cup of tepid water I didn’t really want to drink.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, feeling like a puppy who’d piddled on the rug.

  “You don’t have to be sorry. Massage releases endorphins and can be an intensely emotional experience.” She squeezed my shoulder kindly. “Have a good rest of your day, okay?”

  I nodded, feeling less of a fool than I thought I would.

  I stepped into my quiet house without announcing my presence. I moved with muscles still loose and soft, feeling something like a dancer in the way I set each foot heel to toe along the hardwood floor and the sweep of my hands as I unbuttoned my coat and hung it up, as I settled my briefcase onto the hook. I paused, listening to the noises of a house not expecting my presence.

  The soft tick of the grandfather clock in the living room melded with the low mutter of daytime television from the kitchen, and the steady sound of a knife on a cutting board. I put my hand to the newel post, my foot to the stair and drank in the peace of my home with eyes closed and slow, deep breaths.

  “Dr. Danning?”

  I opened my eyes at once. “Hi, Mrs. Lapp.”

  “You’re home early.” She looked concerned. “Are you sick?”

  “No. I had an outside appointment today and decided to come home early, that’s all.”

  She still looked concerned. I figured the evidence of my afternoon’s distress was stamped all over my face. Wiping her hands on a dishtowel, she nodded, looking unconvinced but perhaps not certain of what wasn’t convincing her.

  “All right,” she said. “Do you want me to go, then?”

  “If you’d like to, that would be fine.”

  She nodded. “I’ll call Samuel. We’ve got the grandkids for a few days while Emma and her husband are on a trip.”

  “Then of course you should go home,” I told her. “Go spend time with them!”

  She beamed, her gaze still sweeping me up and down. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  She bustled away and I went upstairs. The quiet up here was more pervasive. Dennis would be sleeping, most likely, since he usually didn’t get up until around 5:00 p.m. Adam was probably working.

  I moved on quiet feet to his door and pushed it open a little. “Adam?”

  He wasn’t working. He was in bed, his computer on but open to a blank document. He’d turned his face toward the window, where early afternoon sunshine moved in shadows cast by the tree outside.

  I’d seen him thousands of times this way, his long, lean body covered with sheets and blankets to keep him warm because he could no longer regulate his temperature effectively on his own.

  “Hey,” I said quietly, little more than a whisper.

  He turned to look at me. Once, his eyes or the curve of his mouth would have told me what he was thinking. He’d have reached for me, murmuring my name, and taken me to bed where he might have undressed me slowly or barely bothered at all, and we’d have made love for hours.

  “What are you doing home?” he said, instead, his voice hoarse with a touch of a cold.

  “I used the gift certificate Katie gave me today.” I moved toward the bed to sit beside him. I reached to smooth his hair off his forehead. It was getting too long again. “You need a trim, Cap’n.”

  “How was it?” His eyes moved over me, and I wondered what he saw.

  “Very relaxing.” I stroked my fingers through his hair. It felt different, now. He’d always worn it long,