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Chapter 69

Claire’s eyes flew back open at six-thirty the following morning, when her alarm clock awoke her. Slapping the alarm clock hastily, she managed to turn it off, but not before Nick stirred next to her.

“Mm… what time is it?” he asked groggily, rubbing his eyes with his fists before blinking up at her.

“Only six-thirty,” she told him. “Go back to sleep.”

“You need any help?”

“Nope, not right now. I’ve just gotta go put the turkey in,” she replied, leaning over to plant a kiss on his lips before she scrambled out of bed and made her way to the kitchen downstairs.

She was only a little surprised to find both of her grandparents already in the kitchen when she walked in. They were sitting at the kitchen table, sipping coffee, her grandpa reading the morning paper while her grandma spread strawberry jam over a piece of toast.

“Morning,” she greeted them both, giving them each a kiss on the cheek and asking how they had slept before she set about getting the turkey ready to put in the oven, stealing glances at the cookbook her mom had let her borrow when she thought her grandmother was not looking.

Before long, the turkey was safely in the oven, and she was feeling pretty good about it. She smiled as she took her morning pills with a glass of orange juice, picturing the look on her brother’s face when he sat down to a picturesque Thanksgiving feast, perfectly prepared by her.

***

Like Kyle, Nick had had his doubts, but he had to admit, by noon that day, it appeared that Claire was actually pulling it off. In the oven, the browning turkey had been joined by its counterparts: stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, candied yams, rolls… Nick’s mouth had started to water every time he entered the kitchen just from the smell of it all.

Claire, on the other hand, kept shooing him out. Despite the fact that things appeared to be going smoothly – to Nick, at least – she was completely frazzled and apparently didn’t like having people in the kitchen when she was trying to work.

“It’s not you,” she told him apologetically after she’d slapped his hand away from the casserole she’d pulled out of the oven to check. “It’s my grandma,” she added in a hushed whisper. “I love her to death, but she’s driving me crazy! She keeps coming in here and changing the temperature on the oven, telling me what I’m doing wrong and what I should be doing differently… I’m gonna scream!”

“Well, don’t do that,” said Nick, placing a kiss on her lips to stifle any scream that wanted to escape them. “You must be doing somethin’ right, cause this all smells awesome.”

“Thank you!” Claire beamed.

“No problem. Anything I can do?”

“Hm… you could start setting the table,” offered Claire. “If you don’t know the right place for everything, ask Grandma; she’ll be more than happy to tell you.”

Nick laughed. “Okay.” He opened the cupboards where he kept his nicest dishes and started pulling them out, carefully stacking them on the only free bit of counter space he could find.

As he carried a load of them out of the kitchen, he passed Claire’s grandmother on her way in. Even as he continued on into the dining room, he could hear her telling Claire, “Now, dear, you’ll want to turn that oven up just a tad; you don’t want the meat to be undercooked – it’s not sanitary.”

Chuckling to himself, Nick set to work assembling the dishes on the table, setting eight places for himself and Claire and her family. He had no idea which order the silverware were supposed to be in or on what side of the plate the glasses and napkins went, but he set them the first way that came to mind and figured Claire’s grandma would correct him if he was wrong.

He was just finishing when the doorbell rang; abandoning the last napkin he’d been trying to fold in half, he clambered around the dining room table as fast he could and went to answer the door.

“Kris, Carrie… come on in! Happy Thanksgiving,” he said, standing back to hold the door as he ushered Claire’s parents in.

“Well, thanks, Nick; Happy Thanksgiving to you too,” Claire’s mother Carrie chirped back politely, looking around his foyer as she slipped off her shoes, setting them carefully off to the side of the front door. “It was so sweet of you to offer up your home for the holiday. It’s such a beautiful place.”

“Thanks,” Nick grinned. “You guys are welcome to come over anytime, you know. So how are you feeling, Kris?” he asked, watching Claire’s father lean on her mother’s shoulder as he slowly and painfully bent to remove his shoes. Nick hated the ‘how are you feeling?’ question himself, but in Kris Ryan’s case, he felt it was warranted – the man had only been out of the hospital a couple of days.

“Better every day, thanks,” Kris returned with a smile that was not quite as jovial as Nick remembered it.

Nick nodded, cautiously returning the smile. “The recouping part is the hardest, you know,” he offered casually, hoping he wasn’t being too forward. He’d certainly never been through a heart attack himself – God willing, he never would – but with the medical hell he had been through, he felt he was allowed to say such a thing. And it had been true, with every setback, every procedure, he’d had to endure. “It does get easier though.”

Now Kris nodded. “That’s what I’ve heard,” he said. “For now, I’m just taking things one day at a time. Been sticking to the strict diet the doc put me on, although if Claire’s cooking turns out as well as her mother’s, I think I’m gonna have to cheat.” He laughed, winking at Carrie, who shot him the loving sort of frown only a wife could give. Like mother, like daughter – Nick had seen the same look on Claire’s face before.

“Daddy?” At the sound of Claire’s voice, they all glanced up to see her scurrying down the stairs. Nick hadn’t even realized she had left the kitchen, but apparently she’d gone up to change her clothes. She had traded the sweatpants and raggy old t-shirt she’d worn all morning for a pair of avocado green chinos and a lightweight, apricot-colored sweater that made her hair look even redder. The flush had left her cheeks, and she looked much calmer than she had all day as she smiled brightly and jumped the last step. “I thought I heard you come in,” she said, hugging both of her parents. “Dinner should be ready in a little while; I think the turkey’s almost done. Nick, you wouldn’t wanna go check on it, would you, while I show them into the living room?”

She gave him a hopeful look, and he smiled dutifully. “Sure thing,” he said and meandered into the kitchen. He pulled open the oven door, and as soon as he glanced in, he gasped, leaping back as searing flames shot out at him, nearly missing his hand.

“Holy shit!” he cried, slamming the door shut again to imprison the fire. Then he looked around the kitchen wildly, wondering what to do. His eyes landed on the sink, and he hurried over, grabbing a used mixing bowl off the counter and thrusting it under the faucet. He filled it with water, then crept back to the oven and cautiously cracked the door. Immediately, he felt the heat from within surging towards him, and he didn’t hesitate. Acting on impulse, he jerked the door open wider and practically tossed the bowl of water in. The flames receded with a sizzle as clouds of steam billowed from the oven.

Coughing, Nick quickly turned away from the heat just in time to see Claire walked in. As her eyes came to rest on the scene before her, her mouth dropped open, and she gasped, “Oh my God, what happened??”

“Fire!” Nick choked. “I opened the oven, and it was like a freaking inferno!”

Claire clapped her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide with shock. “Are you serious?? Oh no!” She hurried over to inspect the damage. The steam was beginning to clear, and as soon as she got a good look at what was inside the oven, Nick saw her face crumple. “Oh my God, this is a nightmare,” she moaned, her hands going helplessly to her head.

Nick peered over her shoulder and saw with dismay that their Thanksgiving dinner was ruined. The candied yams had overflowed, swelling and spilling out of their pan until there were bits of burnt, black marshmallow all over the bottom of the oven. In fact, the entire top of the dish was coal black, and Nick suspected it was this that had first caught fire. The other dishes were scorched and now drenched in water, and even the turkey looked sooty.

“It’s ruined,” Claire whimpered, shaking her head in disbelief. “I can’t serve any of this… it’s all ruined.”

Nick didn’t know what to say. She’d worked so hard on this, slaved over it for practically two days, and now…

“I’m sorry,” he offered helplessly.

She turned to him. “What are we gonna do?? What am I gonna do? There’s no time to make it all over again… Do you think the inside of the turkey might still taste okay? It might be dry, but maybe with – no, the stuffing’s burnt too. Well, there’s still the gravy; I hadn’t put that in yet, so-“

She was starting to ramble very rapidly now, something she did when she was upset. He reached out, putting his hands on her shoulders in an attempt to calm her down, and interrupted, “Baby, don’t worry about it. I’m gonna take care of it, okay?”

She blinked and looked up at him skeptically. “How are you-? You can’t possibly- There’s no time to-”

“I know a great catering place, and I’m one of their favorite customers. We’ll have food on the table in no time,” Nick assured her calmly and strode off to his office to find the right phone number while Claire remained in the kitchen to salvage or scrap the burnt remnants of their home-cooked Thanksgiving dinner.

When he came back, smiling over the caterer’s promise that he’d have a full turkey dinner delivered within the hour, he found her slumped in one of the kitchen chairs, crying. “Claire?” he asked in disbelief, startled by the sight of the tears streaming down her flushed cheeks. “Baby, what’s wrong??” His eyes shooting over to the oven, he realized it was a stupid question as soon as he asked it. But that wasn’t what he meant.

“Why are you crying??” That was what he wanted to know. Claire rarely cried, only when there was a damn good reason to. Her dad’s sudden heart attack… his own risky lung surgery… her complicated bone marrow transplant… all perfectly legitimate reasons to cry. But burnt Thanksgiving dinner? For a woman like Claire, not so much.

When she just shook her head and didn’t answer, he pulled a chair up beside her and sat down, slinging his arm around her shoulders. “Babe,” he said soothingly, “This isn’t something to cry over; it’s gonna be okay. I called the caterer, and our dinner is on its way.”

“Thank you, Nick,” she murmured tremulously.

“Is that why you’re crying? Or is there something else?” He was very concerned; this couldn’t really be all it was, could it? She’d been acting so ‘off’ lately… and not just in the last few days either – more like the last few weeks. Things had seemed different ever since he had started working in LA, and as much as he didn’t want to admit it, he feared the distance was starting to hurt their relationship. But could that be why she was crying? Why now; what had set her off? It made no sense. Women as a whole didn’t make sense to Nick a lot of the time, but most of the time, he and Claire just got each other. Now he was totally bewildered by her behavior.

She shook her head again. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I’m just… I can’t explain it.”

“It’s not something I did, is it?” he asked, racking his brain as he tried to figure out what he possibly could have done to make her cry.

“No, no, it’s not you,” she replied, giving him déjà vu of the night before. “It’s not you, it’s me,” she had said.

“Well, what is it then? What’s going on with you?” he pressed gently.

“I don’t know, Nick, okay?” her voice rose. “I feel like an idiot, sitting here crying over practically nothing, but I can’t help it; it just kinda came on! God, I feel like a pregnant woman or something, all hormonal; it’s like when I used to get PMS.”

She paused to sniffle and wiped her eyes, and in her silence, Nick asked the first question that popped into his head. “You don’t think… you aren’t pregnant, are you?”

“You know I can’t be!” she snapped, glowering at him briefly before her features softened and fell once again. “I’m sorry,” she whispered and wrapped her arms around him, pulling him close to her. “I’m acting like a total spaz, aren’t I?” she muttered, her voice muffled by his shoulder.

“No,” he said firmly, running his hand over her back. ‘Spaz’ wasn’t the exact word that had formed in his head, although he was still wondering what the hell was up with her. “You’ve just been under a lot of stress this week. You need to relax, eat a good meal and get a good night’s sleep in,” he told her, deciding himself that that must be what it was.

Slowly pulling back from him, she nodded and sheepishly swiped at her blotchy cheeks. “Great, now I probably look like a mess,” she said with a huge sigh. “Are my eyes all red?”

“Kinda,” Nick answered truthfully. When Claire grimaced, he added, “But don’t worry – I’ll cover for ya. How about you run upstairs and wash your face or whatever you need to do, and I’ll go break the news to everybody else.”

Claire swallowed and nodded again. “Thank you,” she whispered gratefully, her arm lingering around his waist briefly before she backed away and ducked out of the kitchen, no doubt hurrying upstairs before her family could get a glimpse of her tearstained face.

Nick remained in the kitchen for a few moments, still slightly bewildered by the scene that had just taken place. Then he dutifully stepped into the living room.

***

True to Nick’s word, a hot, gourmet Thanksgiving dinner was delivered to his doorstep just under an hour later. Though even Nick had to admit it was not quite the same as a genuine homecooked meal, the food was very good, and there were no complaints. Claire’s brother, of course, couldn’t resist teasing her a little, but it didn’t take long for everyone to realize the yam disaster had not been entirely her fault – Grandma had confessed to turning up the oven while Nick was setting the table. That made Claire feel better, and by the time night had fallen and her grandparents had gone to bed, she and Nick were able to have a good laugh over it before they collapsed into bed themselves.

Beneath the comfort of the covers, Nick slipped his arm around Claire and eased her closer to him, glad that she seemed to be back to her old self. Resting her head against his shoulder, she sighed. “Wow… I’m pooped.”

“I’ll bet,” Nick replied, forcing a chuckle to hide his disappointment. He’d known she would be tired, probably too tired to make love. Again. After what had happened last night, he didn’t push the issue tonight. He caressed her upper arm as she lay snuggled against him, his fingers sliding underneath the strap of her camisole, and when she did not react to his touch, he knew he had guessed right.

He couldn’t exactly blame her – she had been up and running around the house since the wee hours of the morning, after all – but the knowledge didn’t do much to ease his desire for her or the dull sting of rejection that accompanied his failure to fulfill that desire. Though he kept telling himself that there had been perfectly legitimate reasons – her father’s heart attack, the stressful holiday – the truth was that they hadn’t made love in weeks, not since the night before their last fight. Yeah, he’d been gone for most of those few weeks, but for him, their separation made him crave her all the more. When they were together, he longed for the intimacy he missed when they were apart. Yet all week, she had seemed so distant, so disinterested…

Again, he reminded himself what she’d been through that week, trying to reassure himself that, as she’d said, it had nothing to do with him. She was tired, she was stressed out – perfectly understandable. Yet a little part of him, the ugly voice that had set up shop in the back of his mind around the time he had lost his leg, wondered if it was something else. What if he just didn’t satisfy her anymore? The thought made him frown, and as he changed positions, rolling inward towards her, he was uncomfortably aware of the stump on the left side of his body, which made such motions difficult. He ran his hand over the top of the covers, feeling the lopsided half of his body, and his stomach gave a jerk as an even worse thought occurred to him. What if he never had satisfied her?

He tried to tell himself that he was worrying over nothing. Claire loved him, and if she didn’t want to be with him, she would have bailed a long time ago. But she hadn’t. She was still by his side even now, and when she kissed him goodnight, her kiss was no different. They said their “I love you”s as always, leaving Nick with no tangible evidence of any problems between them. Still, as the tryptophan from the leftover turkey lulled him to sleep, he couldn’t keep his imagination from running wild with other explanations for her behavior, each more upsetting than the last.

***