Cutler 03 - Twilight's Child

but now I found a mere hour or-so seemed to exhaust me. I had to retreat to take frequent naps. Sometimes I would just lie there with my eyes open, wondering and dreaming about the baby I had lost.
    Jimmy tried to get me to take a winter vacation. He wanted to go fishing in the Florida Keys, but I kept postponing it until he finally gave up.
    "You're behaving like a bear in hibernation," he told me. I did welcome the gray, cold days because they drove me to sleep, and sleep seemed to provide the only hours of relief.
    Nothing excited me, not even Jimmy's plans for our house. I tried to show interest, but he took one look at my face as he explained the architectural drawings and saw that I wasn't really listening. I knew he had deliberately thrown himself into this project soon after my miscarriage in the hope that it would plant new seeds of happiness and joy in the garden of our marriage. He was trying so hard, every way he could, to pull me out of the doldrums.
    Finally, one spring afternoon when he came up to our room and found me staring blankly up at the ceiling, he exploded. I hadn't seen him in this sort of a rage since our early days when Daddy Longchamp would rip us abruptly out of one place to speed us through the night to another, making us leave treasured possessions and new friends behind.
    Jimmy threw up his hands and almost made me jump out of my skin with his outburst.
    "This can't go on, Dawn!" he exclaimed. He paced in front of me, pounding his feet down so hard, the whole room shook. "You're letting everything get the best of you. Everyone's noticed it and is upset. It's even affecting Christie."
    "I'm sorry, Jimmy," I said. My tears began to rise against the floodgates, threatening to overflow and send torrents down my cheeks.
    "It's not enough to apologize, to lie there day after day, night after night, for months and months, feeling sorry for yourself. A terrible thing has happened, I know. I hate that it has happened, but we can't change that now. We've got to go on and build anew," he lectured.
    "I've spoken repeatedly to the doctor, and he assures me there's no physical reason for you to be this way," he added. "What you've been doing," he fumed, "is letting Clara Sue win, giving her the satisfaction of knowing she's succeeded in destroying you, and in destroying you, she's destroyed us." He flopped into a chair, lowered his head to his chest and folded his hands in his lap, exhausted.
    I couldn't stand to see Jimmy so unhappy, looking so beaten down. I hated myself for doing this to him. He had been so patient and loving and understanding, but even he had limited tolerance. For the first time I realized that I could very well drive him away from me. What was I doing? I had to get hold of myself.
    "Oh, Jimmy, I'm sorry," I repeated, sitting up. "I don't mean to be this way. Really, I don't. But every time I try to snap out of it a dark gray cloud sweeps in and makes me feel as if I will live under stormy skies forever."
    "Dawn, you're beginning to sound and act more and more like your mother," he replied. "Is that what you want to happen to you? Do you want to become that sort of invalid, just lying around all day and night moaning and groaning about how hard life has been to you?
    "Well, it has been hard, and it might even be harder before we're through, but we're still very young, and we've got to be strong and do the best we can to overcome every defeat. What about Christie? What about our new baby when he or she finally comes? What about each other?" he pleaded, his eyes filled with tears.
    I swallowed mine back and bit down on my lower lip. Then I nodded.
    "You're right, Jimmy. I am being like Mother, self-centered, self-pitying. It's not fair to you," I confessed.
    "Not just me," he corrected quickly. "It's not fair to yourself, either. Now I insist," he said, rising, "that you get yourself up from that bed and follow me outside."
    "Outside?"
    "I'm about to break ground for our new home," he announced, “and that requires some celebration."
    "You're about to break ground?" I asked incredulously. All this was going on around me, and I hadn't even noticed. Before the miscarriage I had gotten so a doorknob wasn't changed on a room without my knowing about it.
    "Yes. I rushed things along as soon as the warm weather permitted," he admitted. "I want us to be living in our own home by this summer season. I've come to the conclusion that you might have been right about our lives in the hotel.