"The Oak and the Ash" (4/9) by Parda August 2004 CHAPTER 3 - CHANGES Connor got up from his leather wingback chair in the darkened library when he finally heard Alex's footsteps on the stairs, and he waited for her in the hall. There'd been enough of this hunting for each other tonight. "We need to talk, Alex." She stopped five steps up. "Yes, we do," she agreed, but she made no move to come down the rest of the stairs. It took Connor a moment to realize that she didn't want to get any closer to him. Oh, Jesus Christ, he thought in dismay. Had he scared her that much in his earlier rage? Or hurt her that badly? She'd have a bruise on her arm; he was sure. Connor swallowed hard, vowing to himself that he'd make it up to her now. "Let's go to the parlor," he said. There was a sofa there; he could hold her in his arms while they talked and then ... Alex shook her head. "The kitchen." Right back to the scene of their earlier fight, to hard straight-backed chairs and a table that would keep them apart. Connor took one look at the stubborn set of Alex's jaw and headed that way, sitting down before she got there so he wouldn't be too intimidating. She sat down across from him, and Connor suddenly realized with wry amusement that he'd taken the chair she had used earlier, so that their positions were now reversed. Accordingly, he asked her the same question she had asked him. "What's wrong?" She started to speak then shook her head and looked away. "Talk to me, Alex," he said again, but it was a plea this time, not a demand, and he offered her his hand. She looked at it with wary suspicion, in exactly the same way Cassandra often had, and Connor swore a vicious silent oath, damning his temper and himself. He'd never wanted to have another woman look at him that way, certainly not his own wife. "I won't hurt you, Alex," he promised. "Just tell me what's going on. Why are you going to a hotel room in the middle of the day?" And who was she meeting, and why the hell hadn't she told him, and what the fuck was going on? Connor didn't ask those questions, and eventually his patience paid off. "I never even thought about how that would look to you," she finally admitted with a rueful smile. "I'm sorry. I didn't think you'd find out. I didn't want you to know." Know what? Connor nearly exploded. And why? But he said nothing, and after a long and tremulous breath of air, Alex went on. "I'm not seeing a lover, Connor. I'm seeing a therapist." "A therapist," Connor repeated, and at Alex's nod he shoved back his chair and stood, going over to the window to look at their garden behind the house, lit to gray and silver shadows by the street lamp on the corner. "Why?" he demanded, swinging around. Alex was still sitting at the table. She shrugged. "I needed someone to talk to." "Not that," he said, with a chopping motion of his hand. "Why did you keep it a secret from me?" "I didn't want you to know," she said again. "Why?" "Because--," she began, hot and angry just like him, but then she stopped and said calmly, "Because I was embarrassed to need that much help." She gave him half a smile, an attempt to convince him of the truth of her words. "You know I like to do things on my own." She did, that was true, but it wasn't her real reason. He could tell. Connor had had a lot of experience in dealing with women who wrapped up their lies in the truth, creating pretty little packages meant to convince and deceive. Cassandra had taught him well. "Alex," he began, then stopped himself, took a deep breath, and sat down again. No more fighting. No more rage. No more hurting the woman he loved. "No lies between us, right, Alex?" he said, for they had promised each other that twenty-two years ago. "Right," she agreed, her voice shaky with unshed tears. Connor asked the question again, giving her another chance. "Why did you keep this a secret from me?" The tears broke through, and Alex wiped them away with a quick, angry hand then gave him a truth he could believe. "Because I didn't want you to think I was anything like her." "Shit," Connor muttered, because even though Cassandra wasn't living in Scotland now, she was exploding like a bombshell smack in the middle of his life once again. She'd spent ten years in therapy, and Connor had sometimes made less-than-kind comments about Cassandra's neediness to his wife. Alex had gotten up from the table, and Connor followed her to the middle of the room, but he still didn't touch her, not yet. "Alex, you're nothing like her. I love you. You're my wife, you're the mother of my children, you're everything to me. She's an old friend, that's all. Hell, I haven't even seen her in ..." Connor stopped, trying to remember the last time Cassandra had stopped by. "In nearly two years," Alex finished for him. "At the New Year's Eve party. Right?" "Yeah, I guess." She'd moved to London a month later, and then Alex had been hurt in the car accident that spring. After that, Connor had been busy helping Alex with her physical therapy, taking her to doctor's appointments, just being there for her day and night. Then the twins had started college, and John and Gina had had a baby, and Connor and Alex had gone on that trip to New Zealand to see Duncan and Susan ... Connor hadn't given Cassandra a thought in months. "Connor, I'm sorry," Alex said again. "I should have told you, and I guess I shouldn't have met my therapist in a hotel. It never even occurred to me that anyone could think--" "Oh, come on, Alex," Connor said in defense of his earlier mistake. "A hotel, in the middle of the day, once a week, far away from home? What else could anybody think?" "But she and I were--" "She," Connor broke in. "My therapist." Connor let out a slow hiss of realization, now remembering the white-haired woman in the dark blue coat. "I've never seen her fellow," the cleaning maid Cecile had said, and no one else had, either, because Alex's "fellow" didn't exist. Jumping to conclusions, Connor reflected, could put you neck-deep in shit real fast. "And anyway, even if my therapist were a man," Alex said, "nobody would think that, not about me." Connor went still, sensing dangerous ground. "What?" She laughed, harsh and bitter, and repeated her words from before. "Who would want me?" "But--" "I'm almost fifty-four," she broke in. "No one looks at me anymore. I have scars, stretch marks, wrinkles ..." The bitterness seeped through the cracks in her brittle shell of control. "I suppose I'm lucky to have all my teeth." "Alex," Connor whispered, reaching for her now. "Alex, you're beautiful." "I'm getting old," she contradicted, pulling away and crossing her arms against him, rigid and angry again. "I have arthritis. I ache all over when I get out of bed. I take medicine and hormone pills every morning just to keep my body functioning. I limp. I'll never run or ski or dance again. I can't even walk half a mile without pain." "It doesn't matter," Connor insisted. "It does to me!" she snapped, and her eyes glittered with rage as she spat out, "You arrogant, selfish bastard!" "What?" Connor demanded, completely floored now. "How can you say--?" "How can you say that my pain doesn't matter? That my getting old means nothing? That my life is nothing?" "I didn't mean it that way!" he exploded then forced himself to back off. "You know that," he said softly, reasonably. "Do I?" she asked, equally--though dangerously--quiet. "You keep telling me how you feel. Well, what about how I feel?" Connor wasn't taking any bets on her state of mind, not after tonight. "So, talk to me," he said again, as he had said when she had first come home, but gently now. "Tell me, Alex." Then he added hoarsely, "Please." She dropped her hands to her sides and stood before him, unmoving. "Look at me, Connor," she ordered. "See me as I am now, and not the woman you remember from over twenty years ago. Look." So Connor looked at his wife--really looked--for the first time in years, and he saw that she was beautiful. Tall and slender, with a figure that any twenty-year-old would love to have (and Alex worked hard to keep it that way, Connor knew), her delicate features had been distilled to an almost ethereal beauty by the passing of time. But time had also wrought other changes, less kind. The harshness of the kitchen lights drained the color from her face and left her almost sallow in a cruelly honest glare. Her once-golden hair had dimmed years ago to a soft ash blonde. Shadows dredged the fine lines on her face into wrinkles, and Connor knew those wrinkles would become furrows, in the years to come. The scar on her cheek was faint but visible, a pale pink crescent of shiny flesh from hairline to jaw. The plastic surgeon said he could fix that, in time. There were other scars, too, Connor knew, across her abdomen from the hysterectomy, down her leg from the accident, criss-crossing and encircling her once-shattered ankle that would never fully heal. The finely sculpted cheekbones and delicate beauty were faintly blurred now, a face seen through a mist, a painting smeared over. And none of it mattered a damn. "I see some changes," he admitted, "but it doesn't matter. You're still beautiful, Alex. You look fantastic!" "For a woman of my age," she countered. "For a woman of any age," he corrected. "And no matter what you look like, no matter how old you are, you will always be beautiful to me and I will always love you," he told her firmly. "That will never change." "But I will," Alex said, her chin high with that familiar stubbornness, and her eyes hard with a new and bitter resignation. "And I already have." ===== They stopped arguing so they could eat. "OK, you've changed," Connor had acknowledged, seeming more wary than curious. "Want to tell me how?" Alex didn't, not anymore. She'd made him look at her, and suddenly she knew it had been a terrible mistake. "Let's eat first," she suggested, grabbing at that. "It's after nine. We both need food." "Right," Connor agreed. Alex made tea and soup while Connor made sandwiches. She drank two cups of tea and relished every sip going down, but ate only half her soup and merely nibbled at her sandwich because she wasn't very hungry, and besides, she had to watch every bite she ate. Cassandra didn't have to be as careful with her diet. Cassandra wasn't getting old. "You're nothing like her," Connor had said, but Alex had known that for years. Cassandra was an Immortal. Alex was going to die. "You done eating?" Connor asked and at Alex's nod, he picked up her plate and her bowl. "I'm going to take a shower," Alex told him then made her slow and limping way upstairs. "You're nothing like her," Connor had said, and Alex knew it was true. Cassandra wasn't defective. Cassandra didn't limp, and she would never have scars. She would never have children, but then Alex couldn't either anymore. Under the warm water of the shower, she traced one hand along her scar, remembering years ago when she had guided Connor's hands there so that he could feel the life she carried within. He had smiled then, in awe and amazement, and when the twins had been born, she had even glimpsed the shimmer of tears in his eyes. No life now, only that maggot of death within, eating through to the surface, day by day. "You are so morbid," Alex said to her reflection in the mirror, but it stared back at her, the face bone-white, the eyes dark-rimmed and shadowed from tears, the wet gray hair plastered flat to the skull. She looked half-dead right now. Connor mustn't see her this way, not like this. He mustn't know. She locked the bathroom door against him, then blow-dried her hair and got out her makeup, even though it was right before bed. Just a touch, the barest hint. She'd gotten good at hiding this sort of thing. A little eye-shadow, some foundation and some powder, but no mascara or lipstick--that would smear. Alex put away the makeup, wiped down the counter, and flushed the tissue paper with the smear of makeup down the toilet. She'd learned how to hide evidence, too. "Ready?" she said to her reflection, and it smiled back at her, foolishly hopeful, the wrinkles creasing deeper, an old woman's face with a young woman's dreams. Alex slammed her hand into that face, but the glass shuddered and held firm, and Alex had only managed to hurt her palm. The face was still there, and it was still hers. The body was still hers, too: the breasts with their once-proud curves starting to flatten and hang; the skin of her neck and upper chest mottled from sun and wind, and all her skin looser now, a slick layer of softness everywhere, so that fingers sank into her flesh, no matter how much she exercised. Collagen loss, they said. Change in elasticity. Growing old. Alex put her pajamas on, the flannel kind that covered everything. For warmth, she told herself, but the lace teddies had lain untouched in her dresser all summer long. She gritted her teeth, unlocked the bathroom door, and went to join her husband in bed. He opened his arms to her and Alex went to him, her head pillowed on his shoulder, her hand holding his. They lay still for a few moments, keeping each other warm. "How have you changed, Alex?" Connor asked softly, being patient, kind, receptive, willing to listen to her feelings ... a real sensitive new-age kind of guy. I'm older, Alex thought but didn't say, because she didn't want him to realize that, not anymore. Connor was older, too, but on him it didn't show. I'm angry, she thought, but she wasn't sure why, and it seemed too hard to try to figure it out now. She was frightened, but she couldn't say of what, and she was tired, but that was part of getting old, and right now, Alex wanted to feel young, the way she used to be. "It can wait," Alex said and turned off the light, then reached out to him, a careful wondering touch along his arm. They always made love after they fought, and he was so beautiful, this man of hers. "I love you," he told her, in that husky voice that sent shivers down her spine, and his warm fingers were feather-light against her skin. "I love you, too," she answered, and she did. His kisses followed a path from the corner of her mouth to the line of her jaw, and Alex turned her face away, not wanting him to notice the scar on her cheek, not now. "Alex?" Connor asked, his hands and body going still. "Do you ...?" "Yes," she answered, and that was true, too, more than it had ever been. But then she wondered: did he really want her? Was his response just from habit, and not from real desire? Or, even worse, from a sense of duty? She'd made him look at her earlier tonight, really look at her, and he couldn't have liked what he'd seen. Not that he'd say that, of course, but ... "If you want to," she said, the words cautious and controlled. Connor paused then pulled the blankets up over her shoulders. "It's been a long day, Alex. We're both tired." "Connor, I--" "Shhh," he whispered, his arms going around her in a comforting--but passionless--embrace. "It can wait. Let's go to sleep." She didn't dare protest, didn't want to actually hear him say the words she long had feared. His breathing soon grew regular, his arm relaxed. Alex lay in the darkness, her tears silent and unchecked. Connor had just been trying to be kind, to convince her that she was still attractive. He didn't really want her. Oh, he loved her, she didn't doubt that, but he'd obviously been forcing himself to take her to bed for years, maybe more. She wanted him--oh God! how she wanted him--but how could she possibly expect him to want her? ------ (continued in Part 5)