A Marriage Worth Saving

by Therese Beharrie

  ‘Worth the hassle of the accreditation process?’

  She remembered the hours he’d had to spend on the phone, and the countless meetings when he’d first had the idea for a research institution for wine microbiology. He had wanted to give back—to contribute to the wine industry in some way other than just selling—and setting up an educational institution that would ensure the quality of the wines the Thomas Vineyard made as well as allow continued research into wine production had seemed like the way to do it. But getting accreditation from the Department of Education for some kind of qualification for the fellows had been a mission—as Jordan’s facial expression now proved.

  ‘Right now, with twenty fellows, I’m going to say yes.’

  ‘Seems like you did a good thing, then.’ She meant it—though she wished it hadn’t been at the expense of their relationship. But then again, they’d already established that that hadn’t been the real reason—at least not the only one—that he’d left.

  ‘How was living there?’ she asked suddenly, thinking that perhaps knowing how Jordan had lived in his year without her would bring her some peace.

  He frowned again, his hands still on the steering wheel, and she realised that they were already in front of the house. She waited a few more minutes and then shook her head in disappointment, feeling the cold run through her as she said, ‘Don’t tell me, then. I’ll just add it to the list.’

  She opened the car door, happy to escape from the desperate need inside her to know more about him. To know more about the aspects of his life that she hadn’t been a part of.

  To escape the need to demand to know about them.

  ‘Mila, wait!’ he called after her.

  But she had already reached the front door and was trying to find her key to get in—to get away from him. The key fell from her hand, and she let out an exasperated breath as he came from behind her and picked it up.

  He inserted the key into the door, but didn’t turn it. ‘I’ll tell you,’ he said, without looking at her, and she scoffed.

  ‘I’m not pulling your teeth, Jordan. Talking to people is supposed to be natural. Or at least it’s supposed to be with your wife.’

  It was the first time she had referred to herself like that since learning that she was still his wife, and it sounded strange—maybe even terrifying—to hear it. But at the same time something came to rest inside her at the term—an acknowledgement of why learning about him had become so important.

  She cared about him.

  As a friend, she assured herself, not because she had been his wife. But even through her self-assurance she knew she was more hurt than she cared to admit that after all the revelations she’d made to him, he refused to share his own with her.

  ‘I want to tell you,’ he insisted. ‘I want to talk to you... It’s just difficult.’

  Her eyebrows rose. ‘Why?’

  He exhaled sharply, and then turned the key in the lock. He pushed the door open and waited for her to walk through. When she had, she took her coat and hung it on the rack, then looked at him expectantly.

  He would tell her this at least, she thought.

  He took his jacket off, and then rubbed at his chin, which was already starting to show stubble. She remembered the slight burn on her skin from the friction earlier and her body responded with need.

  To combat it, she folded her arms, and waited for him to speak.

  ‘There’s a lot I have to deal with. Since I came back here after Dad died...’ He stuffed his hands into his pockets. ‘It’s hard for me to verbalise it. It’s...a lot.’

  She steeled herself against the softening that inevitably touched her heart, and said, ‘We’ve both had to deal with “a lot,” Jordan.’ Her next words were already forming, and she ignored the voice telling her not to say them. ‘Don’t accuse me of pushing away the people who care about me when you’re doing exactly the same thing.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  SHE HAD A POINT, Jordan thought, even as he wished for the old Mila. The one who would have understood him saying he had a lot to deal with and wouldn’t have pushed. But hadn’t he, only a few hours earlier, thought about how much he liked this new Mila? He couldn’t change his mind now, just because she was making him uncomfortable. Especially when she was right.

  ‘Fine—let’s talk, then,’ he forced himself to say, though he wasn’t sure what he was prepared to talk about. ‘But let me change first. I’d feel better in comfortable clothes.’

  He wasn’t sure how true that was, but he wasn’t about to bare his soul in a tuxedo. Mila nodded, and he went to his bedroom, already unbuttoning his shirt.

  The room hadn’t changed much since his childhood, Jordan thought as he pulled on a pair of worn jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. It was still painted the blue his mother had chosen for him when he was younger. It had been one of their last activities together, before she had become too sick to get out of bed.

  His memories of her had faded over time, but he still remembered how much time she had wanted to spend with him. He would play in front of the house on the patio, shouting for her to look when he did something that only a four-year-old would find impressive. And she had always sat on those chairs beside the front door, cheering for him, sharing his pride and telling him how happy he made her.

  Even when his father had no longer joined her she’d sat there, watching over him. Even when she’d grown frailer, paler, more sickly, with his father hovering around, she’d spent hours with Jordan outdoors. His heart ached at the memories, which suddenly seemed so clear now, and he took a deep breath.

  Why was he thinking about this now? There was no purpose in rehashing that part of his past. The part that reminded him of his father’s anger towards him and, ever since he had learned the truth about his mother’s death, his anger towards himself and the guilt he felt.

  The thought had already put him on edge, and he forced himself to control it or he knew the conversation he was preparing to have with Mila could only go poorly.

  It didn’t work, since he found himself considering why he was preparing to have this conversation in the first place. Why had it all of a sudden become so important for her to see him trying? For her to see that he wanted to let her in, to tell her the real reasons behind why he had left?

  There was no answer that would pull him away from the edge, and his insides tensed even further.

  When he walked into the lounge, he noticed that she had started a fire. And then she walked into the room, a glass of wine in each hand, and his gut tightened.

  She had changed, too, into a long-sleeved shirt he recognised as an old one of his. It was worn, and stretched so much that it almost touched her knees, which were clad in tights. She hadn’t worn that particular shirt before, but it still reminded him of the times when she would wear his clothes. They smelled like him, she had always said, and he wondered if that was the reason she was wearing the shirt now.

  The emotions that thought evoked—and his physical reaction to her—did nothing to make him feel better.

  ‘How was my father before his death?’ he asked abruptly, his voice harsher than he’d intended.

  Her eyebrows rose in response, and he saw the flash of annoyance before it was replaced with ice.

  Back to this again, he thought, but knew he was to blame for her reaction.

  She set his glass down on the table in front of him, hard enough that he watched the contents swirl in disruption, and then she said, ‘No, I’m not doing this with you when you’re in this mood.’

  ‘Mila, I don’t have—’

  ‘Whatever you’re going to say, I’m sure I’ve heard it before. You don’t feel like talking right now...or you’re going through a lot...or can we postpone?’ She shook her head. ‘We don’t have to have this conversation at all, Jordan.’

&nbs
p; ‘No.’ The word came quickly—something he was sure was a result of the answers he hadn’t wanted to consider earlier.

  ‘Are you sure?’ She raised her eyebrow, and her sassy look sent a shock of desire through him.

  ‘Yes.’

  Both brows rose now, and then she picked up her wine and settled back. ‘We can start with something simple. Tell me about your life in Johannesburg.’

  ‘There’s not much to say. And I’m not saying that because I don’t want to tell you,’ he said quickly, when he saw the expression on her face. ‘I spent most of my time at the institute. Too much time, probably. But it helped to focus on something other than...’

  ‘Me,’ she finished when he trailed off.

  He nodded. ‘And on everything else that had happened. I thought that if I could make a success of this, something I could actually control, then my failures at home...’

  He was messing it up, he thought. Her finger was tracing the rim of her glass again, so although her face was unreadable he knew she was thinking about what he was saying. But he couldn’t tell what she was thinking, and it was driving him crazy.

  ‘I get that,’ she said finally, and raised her eyes to look at him. ‘When your dad got sick and asked me to move in...focusing on him instead of the things going on in my life helped me deal with everything.’ She cocked her head. ‘Did you have a social life?’

  ‘You mean did I date?’

  Her mouth opened slightly at the blunt question, and then she straightened her shoulders. ‘I suppose so. Though I was talking about whether or not you had friends.’

  His lips curved at the slight blush on her cheeks. But he answered her question,

  ‘No dates, but I did go out for drinks with some of the people from work sometimes. Not often enough to keep in touch outside work now, though.’

  She nodded, and sipped from her wine. It gave him a clear view of the line of her throat, and again he felt his need for her run through his blood with the memory of how he had kissed her there that afternoon.

  ‘Can I ask about my father now?’ he asked quickly, before the need consumed him and he did something he regretted.

  ‘Of course. What do you want to know?’

  ‘Anything.’

  Everything, he thought, but stopped the word before it came out.

  ‘Well, he was devastated about the baby,’ she began. ‘Not that he would ever have said it. You know how he was.’

  Yes, he did. And wasn’t that part of why he was absorbing everything she was telling him now?

  ‘I didn’t speak to him that first month. Not to anyone, really, as you know. But he eventually told me he’d stayed away because he wanted us to deal with it together.’

  Jordan remembered that. His father hadn’t visited them much after Mila’s fall, and when Jordan had turned up at the vineyard Greg hadn’t got involved. Not that Jordan had given him a chance to. Jordan hadn’t spoken about it—not the accident, not his wife. The only reason he had been there was because Mila hadn’t wanted him around. That was the first time he had noticed the anger seep in, the resentment. The signs that he had it in him to react as his father had after his mother’s death.

  Jordan reached for his glass of wine at the unsettling thought.

  ‘But then you left.’ She looked up at him. ‘I’d like to say your father and I helped each other through it, but that isn’t true. Like with everyone else...I pushed him away. I wanted nothing to do with him since he only reminded me of you, and of what I’d lost.’

  She cleared her throat, as though the admission had taken her by surprise. And since it had surprised him, too, he didn’t interrupt.

  ‘I was staying at the beach house—I couldn’t stay at our place alone, not after what had happened—and I told Greg because I didn’t want him to worry. And then I got the divorce papers, and Greg was the only person who would understand...’

  She stopped, and he heard her take a shaky breath. He didn’t blame her—her story was peppered with anecdotes that he wasn’t sure she would have shared with him if they hadn’t agreed on having an honest conversation.

  ‘I could see that you leaving had hurt him. I’m not saying that to hurt you, Jordan,’ she said immediately, and he wondered what it was in his face that had told her he needed reassurance. ‘I’m telling you because you need to know to move on. He was hurt, but I think he understood. He didn’t blame you.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s true.’

  ‘It is,’ she said firmly.

  ‘You didn’t know him like I knew him, Mila. And he asked me not to go. Told me I would be destroying our relationship if I did.’ He could feel his breathing hitch, and he emptied his wine glass.

  ‘Maybe that’s true,’ she said when he’d set the wine glass down, and he saw that she was watching him. ‘But you didn’t know him like I did either.’

  He wondered what she meant by that—was about to ask—and then she continued, ‘He was growing frailer, I saw. At first I thought it was because of everything that had happened over the last months. I’d lost some weight, too, so I didn’t think too much of it. And then he had the first heart attack. He was out in the fields with Frank. They had people around them, who rallied round to get Greg to the car, to the hospital, the moment they realised what was happening. He wasn’t alone.’

  Jordan didn’t know if she’d done it purposely, but that piece of information seemed to have settled something inside him.

  ‘I didn’t think twice when he asked me to move in after that. It was the only admission of needing help that he would ever give, I knew. So I moved in...helped around the house.’

  ‘How long?’

  She took a moment to respond, and then she said, ‘The time between his first and second heart attacks was short, and between his second and third even shorter.’ She was watching him carefully. ‘The whole period was just over seven months.’

  Seven months. It was shorter than the time his mother had had to suffer, and that comforted him. They’d found out about her cancer when Jordan was two, and she’d had to suffer for three long, agonising years—two without treatment and one with—before she’d passed away.

  He thought of watching his mother suffer, and of how his father had suffered because of the pain he’d seen his wife go through. Felt relief that he hadn’t been there to witness what Greg had gone through during the past year, and the overwhelming guilt at the thought. And realised how exactly his childhood had impacted him...

  ‘Was he in pain? My father?’

  The words escaped his lips before he’d realised he wanted to know the answer. But knowing the answer would confirm what he had just learned about himself—that he couldn’t see anyone he cared about suffer.

  The compassion in her eyes sent a blow to his heart. ‘Sometimes. It made him miserable, difficult. More so than usual.’ She paused. ‘But it also made him more honest than usual.’

  He raised his eyebrows, but she shook her head. ‘I’m not going to tell you about that until you share something with me.’

  The calm tone of her voice infuriated him. ‘Tit for tat? Are we children?’

  ‘If that’s what it takes.’ She shrugged, but the gesture was anything but casual.

  ‘You have no right to keep things from me!’ he spat, his heart pounding furiously. ‘He was my father.’

  ‘And maybe I wouldn’t have to keep things from you if you’d been here.’

  ‘Back to this, are we?’ He shook his head and thought that he needed to get out of the room.

  ‘Yes, we are. But we wouldn’t need to get back to it if you just told me why you left,’ she shot back.

  ‘Because of you,’ he said angrily. ‘You wouldn’t listen to me, just like my mother didn’t listen to my father. And where did that get her?’

  He was
breathing heavily, and it took him a moment to compose himself.

  ‘What does that mean?’ she asked in a shaky voice when he finally looked at her.

  Her face had lost its colour, and it shook him more than he wanted it to. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Yes, it does,’ she said, in a voice that twisted his insides. ‘Please, Jordan, just let me in for once.’

  ‘You know more about me than anyone else.’

  ‘I don’t know enough,’ she contradicted him. ‘There’s more—I know there’s more. I’ve shared so much with you,’ she said, in a tone that told him that that wasn’t necessarily what she had wanted. ‘Please, Jordan. I...I...need you to tell me.’

  ‘I can’t give you more than this, Mila,’ he rasped, and pushed up from his seat. He didn’t need to see the torment on her face when he had his own to deal with.

  He walked out of the room, ignoring the voice that mocked him for running away from her for the second time.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  MILA WATCHED HIM leave and pain tore through her. She had been honest with him. She had pushed through her reservations about opening up to him and told him she needed him.

  And he’d rejected her.

  She gasped when the pain turned into a burn that consumed her entire body, and sank to her knees. This was why she didn’t want him back. This was exactly what she was afraid of. Showing people the real her, showing him the real her, and having them—him—reject her.

  Though she didn’t know how it was possible, this was worse than the first time. Maybe it was because then Jordan hadn’t been leaving her. Not the real her. No, back then he’d been leaving the person she was pretending to be. The one who didn’t believe that she was worth him, who didn’t speak her mind, who was waiting—expecting—for him to leave. The one who had failed as a mother, as a wife.

  But since he’d come back she had shown him more and more of herself. She hadn’t realised how much until right at that moment when she hadn’t been able to hide behind the person she showed the world.