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Two By Two Page 53
Author: Nicholas Sparks

My mom felt no guilt whatsoever about using guilt as a tool to control us, and sometimes, I wish could be more like that. I wish I could simply forgive myself and move on, but then again, if I really wanted to change, why didn’t I? Once, when London was still a young toddler, I brought her to a trail just off the park. We didn’t walk long or far, but at the halfway point, I could tell she was getting tired and I pointed out a stump where she could rest.

Seconds later, I heard her cry out, and then all at once she was screaming wildly in obvious pain. I scooped her into my arms in a mad panic, trying to figure out what on earth was happening when I spotted a few ants on her leg.

But they weren’t simply ants. They were fire ants, ants with both jaws and stingers, and wildly aggressive. They swarmed, biting and stinging, leaving welts, and while I swatted at the ants, even more kept appearing. They were in her clothes, in her socks, even in her shoes. In that instant, I put her down and started ripping the clothes from her body as fast as I could, even her diaper. I swatted and brushed, getting stung countless times in the process and rushed my screaming child as fast as I could to the car.

I didn’t know what to do. This, like so many things, was Vivian’s area of expertise, and I drove like a wild man for the five minutes it took me to reach home. I carried London into the house and Vivian took over immediately, her tone sharp with me but soft with London. She brought London into the bathroom and applied rubbing alcohol to the already swelling stings, gave her an antihistamine, and started applying cold washcloths to the affected area.

Perhaps it was the efficiency and confidence she showed that finally ended London’s hysterics. Meanwhile, I felt like a passerby on a city street, in the aftermath of a horrible accident, amazed that Vivian had known exactly what to do.

In the end, there was no long-term damage. I went back to the park and disposed of London’s clothes in a trash bin, since the ants were still swarming over them. The swelling lingered for a day or two but London was soon back to her normal self. She doesn’t remember the event – I’ve asked her – and while that makes me feel better, I still experience guilt when I think back on that awful day. And guilt serves to teach me a lesson. I’m now cautious about where London sits whenever we’re in the woods or in the park, and that’s a good thing. She’s never been swarmed by fire ants again.

Guilt, in other words, isn’t always wasted. It can keep us from making the same mistake twice.

After lunch at Chick-fil-A with Emily, I spent the afternoon working. Wanting to get a sense of how much Taglieri was spending, I spoke to a friend in sales at the cable company. It turned out that Taglieri was paying premium rates and had too many poor slots, a bummer for him but a godsend to me. After that, I touched base with the head of the film crew I intended to use. We’d worked together in the past, and we went over the kinds of shots I wanted, as well as the projected cost. All that information was jotted on a pad of paper for easy retrieval when I needed to add it to the presentation. After that, I continued to perfect the scripts and tweaked a few more of the generic images I’d pulled together; by that point, my outline for two of the commercials was nearly complete.

I was in a good mood as date night approached, despite having to bring London to dance with the evil Ms. Hamshaw. Vivian made it home at a reasonable hour, and after we got London to bed, we ate dinner by candlelight and ended up in the bedroom. And yet, there was less magic than I hoped for; it wasn’t until Vivian started on her third glass of wine that she began to relax and while I know that the honeymoon period of any marriage eventually comes to an end, I suppose that I’d always believed that it would be replaced by something deeper, a two-of-us-against-the-universe bond or even genuine mutual appreciation. For whatever reason – maybe because I sensed a continuing distance between us – the night ended with me feeling vaguely disappointed.

On Saturday morning, Vivian took advantage of her Me Time before spending time with London the rest of the day. It gave me the quiet time I needed to focus on other areas of the presentation: an updated website, Internet advertising, billboards and sporadic periods of radio advertising. I added in projected costs for everything over the course of a year, including vendors’ fees and my own, along with a slide showing Taglieri’s projected savings.

I worked on Sunday as well, finishing up on Sunday afternoon, and wanted to go through it with Vivian. But for whatever reason, she seemed to be in no mood to listen or even talk to me, and the rest of the evening unfolded in the same stilted way that seemed to be becoming our norm. While I understood that our lives had recently veered in directions neither of us could have anticipated, I found myself wondering not whether Vivian still loved me, but whether she even liked me at all.

On Monday morning before London woke, I wandered into the master bathroom while Vivian was applying mascara.

“Do you have a minute?”

“Sure. What’s up?”

“Are you upset with me? You seemed irritated last night.”

“Really? You want to do this now?”

“I know it’s probably not a good time…”

“No, it’s not a good time. I have to leave for work in fifteen minutes. Why do you always do this?”

“Do what?”

“Try to make me the bad guy.”

“I’m not trying to make you the bad guy. After I finished the presentation, you barely spoke to me.”

Her eyes flashed. “You mean because you pretty much ignored me and London all weekend?”

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Nicholas Sparks's Novels
» Two By Two
» See Me
» A Walk To Remember
» Nights in Rodanthe
» The Notebook
» Dear John
» The Last Song
» The Lucky One
» Safe Haven
» The Wedding
» Message in a Bottle
» The Rescue
» The Guardian
» A Bend in the Road
» The Choice
» True Believer
» Three Weeks With My Brother
» The Longest Ride
» At First Sight
» The Best of Me