by Maisey Yates
It was weird to look at him now.
Detached somehow. Like she was looking at a stranger.
He was a handsome man, her husband. The man who would be her ex-husband soon enough.
He looked at her, and he didn’t say anything, and she searched his face. For something. Anger, longing, sadness. She couldn’t read any of it there. But, then, she always had difficulty reading him. That calming presence that he had more often than not just felt opaque to her.
“Hi, Thomas,” she said.
“What brings you by, Anna?” The question was calm, as he always was, but tight-lipped.
“Believe it or not, I just want to talk to you.”
She expected him to say that he was busy. After all, he had been busy for the whole of their marriage. Too busy to talk. Too busy for much of anything.
“Come in,” he said, backing away from the door.
She walked in slowly, enveloped by the familiarity like a white-and-cream cocoon. She’d walked through this door every day for years. Arms empty, arms full. With this man and by herself.
Home. For so many years, it had been home.
She didn’t know what she expected when she walked in, but it wasn’t this.
It was strange, but she didn’t miss this house.
Having spent months away, coming back into it, she could recognize all the things in it that weren’t hers. So many things. From the carpets to the couches, it was all clean and sterile. Very much Thomas’s taste and not hers.
“You can sit,” he said.
So she did. She crossed the room and sat down slowly on the couch, trying not to get too caught up in the absurdity of being invited to sit down in the living room that she had called her own for more than a decade.
Except...
It really did feel like someone else’s.
This oatmeal-colored carpet and sedate, cream-colored couch.
She couldn’t blame him, though, for this room that looked more like him than her.
She had chosen it.
And so she wondered if it wasn’t so much that it was his taste, but as if at one time it had been both of theirs, and something had happened along the way that had changed her irrevocably. Something that had taken her from a place where this couch, and this man, seemed like decisions that she wanted to live with for the rest of her life.
Until they didn’t.
“I assume you’re here because you’ve been to speak to a lawyer?”
“No,” she said, realizing that she did need to do that. “I didn’t. I—I genuinely wanted to talk to you.”
“About?”
“Us.”
He crossed his arms, his posture defensive. “Okay.”
“Did you care? That I had an affair. Did you care?” Well, that hadn’t been what she’d meant to ask, but suddenly it mattered.
A muscle in his jaw worked. “That’s an unfair question. Of course I cared. You betrayed me.”
“Yeah. I did. You’re right. But what did I betray, exactly? Vows? Your pride? Or your heart.”
“Why does any of it matter, Anna?”
“Because you were my choice, my life, for fourteen years. And what I do with that life, our life, is going to matter in terms of how I go on. How the two of us continue to live in this town, how you continue to have your ministry. How I continue to have a life. I could leave. But my family’s here.”
And whether or not things were complicated with her mother, that was true. Her mother was here. Her sister was here. Emma was here, for now. And even if Emma left, this would be her home base.
She was angry at her mother, but did that mean she would leave? She—she didn’t know. She didn’t know what she wanted or if they could heal their relationship. She didn’t know what her future held.
Somehow she felt like her answer was here somewhere. Wrapped up in her past.
“I never cheated on you,” he bit out.
“No. You didn’t. So what were you doing? When you weren’t in my bed, where were you?”
“In my office, writing. Or at the church seeing to issues with the congregation. I was seeing to my work, Anna, not betraying our marriage.”
“You know that’s not the question I’m asking you, Thomas. I don’t need an accounting of what you did with your time. What happened to us?”
“I didn’t change,” he said. “I’m everything that I showed you that I was from the moment we first got together.”
She stared at him, and she realized that he believed it. More importantly, she realized it was true. He had always been polite, but not overly impassioned. Had always been a steady presence, rather than an intense one.
And she had imagined in her head that some of those things would change. Because they had been chaste prior to marrying, she had assumed that he’d been holding something back, but now she wondered if he had been.
She took in every detail of his face. So handsome. So...impossible to read. “Are you attracted to me?”
He drew back, and the strangest thing of all was that he looked...embarrassed.
“As much as I am to anyone.”
“What does that mean?”
His throat worked. “Desire is not a huge factor in my life.”
She frowned. It wasn’t like she lived under a rock. She understood that people had different sex drives, and that some people didn’t really have them. But it had never occurred to her that...her husband was one of those people.
That he simply didn’t want...her. Or sex at all.
“So you’re just not that into sex?”
“This entire thing is about sex for you?” He looked flustered. Uncomfortable. Things he so rarely was.
“No. But it’s a symptom. A symptom of everything I thought was wrong with me. Of everything I thought was wrong with us. It’s why...” She swallowed hard. “Thomas, I’ve only been with you. Before Michael, I’d only been with you.”
“I’ve only been with you.”
“I know.” This had to come out, for her own soul more than his. Because she’d tried to show him with actions what she’d felt and she’d asked—in a basic sense—for more. But time had given her a clearer understanding of what she’d been missing and she needed it said.
“And during our marriage I told you that I thought you were an attractive man. I took pleasure in being with you. And I wanted you to do the same with me. But when you quit being interested in touching me at all, I just felt like I was broken. And I felt like it meant you didn’t love me, because for me...that’s part of being in love. Desiring someone. Being desired. I can’t separate those things. And it would never have occurred to me to. So when another man came in and started telling me that I was beautiful, that he did want me, it felt like...more than what we had. And it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair for you to stand up in front of the congregation and make me out to be the one who was weak. It’s not a temptation for you, apparently. You don’t...miss that. But you were perfectly happy to have me miss it for the rest of my life. To have me...dying up in that bedroom by myself at night wondering what I had done to make you fall out of love with me.”
“Anna...” His voice was uncharacteristically rough, and he sank into the chair across from her, looking genuinely upset. “When I was young, I thought...marriage was the path that I would take. Because it seemed to be the path that everyone expected me to take. And the younger I did it, the better. That was especially the opinion of my mentor. Because what you don’t want is for a young pastor to be constantly pursued by every woman in the congregation.”
He cleared his throat. “I wasn’t tempted. But... I thought perhaps that spoke of my spirituality. That I wasn’t led into temptation. By the time I realized that perhaps I wasn’t all that suited to marriage—”
“We were already married.” She tried to smile.
“A
nd had been for a while. I’ve always cared about you. I loved you. And I was... I was upset by you sleeping with him.”
She huffed out a laugh. “Well, I guess there’s that.”
His eyes met hers and she felt...nothing. Not anger. Just a strange kind of wistfulness that you might feel looking at old yearbook photos. The love she’d felt for him once was a faded memory that couldn’t be recaptured.
While the years had knit Rachel and Jacob together, they had left Thomas and Anna isolated.
She’d never made a fuss about the furniture because in her heart, she didn’t want this to be her house.
It had never seemed like the right time to have kids because for her, he was the wrong man.
The wrong marriage.
And she hadn’t fully realized all that until now. Until she’d become a stranger to her life. Until she had come back to look at it all from the outside.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry that I didn’t have the courage to end things in a better way.”
He looked genuinely shocked with her. “What?”
“I shouldn’t have slept with him. I tried to fix what we had. I realize now there was no fixing us. Our versions of love, of marriage, are two different things. I don’t think we could ever even bend enough to meet in the middle.”
“But you know how the church looks at divorce,” he said.
“People in church divorce, Thomas, and life goes on. You made me a villain so that you didn’t have to be vulnerable. So you didn’t have to admit that you didn’t really want to be a husband. That you hid things from me. The way you hid your issues with desire was a betrayal. You let me think I was flawed, instead of just admitting we were different.”
“Anna...”
“You could have just said nothing. You could have let people talk, and be above it. Instead, you let them talk about me.”
“It was true,” he insisted.
“Yes. But it was half. I told you I was unhappy. I told you over and over. I didn’t want to make waves because I believed in what you were doing. We’re all a mess, and that doesn’t mean we don’t have things to offer the world. And God knows you’ve offered more to the broader world than I ever have. But you didn’t ever bring it to my life.”
She closed her eyes. “And if I’ve paid attention in church at all, then I’ve learned that being perfect isn’t required to lead. To affect change. Your example is teaching people that perfection is required, and it isn’t. I’m not proud of how I ended our marriage. I used him to make myself unforgivable, because I know that if I had done anything less you wouldn’t have divorced me. What I did felt like the only way. But I wish we could have found the bravery in ourselves to sit down and talk. To admit that we were wrong for each other. Not that I was wrong. I’m sorry that I hurt you. But less sorry than I might have been, because I’m not sure you’ve ever been sorry you were hurting me. Actively. For years.”
He just stared straight ahead. “I didn’t do anything.”
The truth of it resonated in her. But she knew it didn’t echo in him. Knew that he still felt that nothing meant innocent.
“Exactly,” she said. “You didn’t do anything. Love isn’t passive, and neither is marriage. It isn’t stagnant. Someone is always moving, and if you’re not moving together...you’re moving away from each other. And that’s what we did. I just... I wanted to see you. Because I wanted to make sure that you were...damn it, Thomas.” Her mild swear word made him jolt. “I was afraid that I’d hurt you. Not your reputation. You. I didn’t. Did I?”
He stared straight ahead for a long time. “Does it help that I wish it could have?”
“No. If we could bring wishes into the equation, then I would have wished us into a different couple. Different people, who could make it work, because I would’ve spared us this. I would have spared myself this.”
She got up and started to walk away.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I used you, Anna, and I didn’t mean to. To make a life that looked perfect, and I thought that if it felt perfect to me, then it must to you. That if I took joy in the way things were going...it must be all right to you. And when you would tell me that you wanted something different, I—I lied to myself. I told myself my explanations were sufficient for you, and that they’d handled things. But they weren’t.”
“No,” she said. “They weren’t.”
He stood and crossed the room, stopping in front of her. She looked up at him and part of her wanted to demand his pain. His anger. And another part of her realized...that wasn’t fair. Because if he’d possessed that kind of passion in him for her, then what she’d done was terrible. In the end, it just left her looking at the reality of it all. At a dismantled, broken mess that neither of them felt strongly enough about to try to put back together. Not after this.
And if Thomas had been the kind of man to rail and rant and carry on, if he had been incensed, and wounded by her betrayal, then...it might have been different.
And ultimately, she never would’ve betrayed him in the first place.
He cupped her chin, his touch familiar in a way that made her hurt. And then he leaned in and pressed his mouth to hers, the kiss dry and soft, and over quickly.
Her body responded, because she’d always been attracted to him.
When they parted, his eyes were cool. It had never been more clear to her that the man she’d loved, the man she’d wanted all this time, had never existed.
The problem was, he wasn’t cold, and he wasn’t intentionally cruel. He was just a man lost deeply in his perspective, who didn’t feel things the same way she did, and who didn’t want a marriage that looked like the one she required.
They both thought they could fashion each other into the image of the perfect husband or wife. She’d imagined that her desire for him could fill him, and he would feel the same things she did. While he’d imagined that the fervor he felt for his sermons, for his books, was enough for him, and so it could be for her.
They were two people whose marriage vows had never managed to make them one.
“I guess...we should start doing the legal things now,” she said.
“I guess. Do you want...? Just going into things, ahead of it all...should we sell the house, and split the proceeds? I’m not interested in leaving you with nothing, Anna. I’m not. Whatever you might think about me, and what I did after I discovered the affair... I don’t actually want to hurt you.”
She looked around, and she shook her head. “No. This place is yours. I’m happy for you to have it.” There was nothing noble about the gesture on her part. She wanted to be done. That was it.
And she found she wasn’t here to place blame. Casting fault on someone else could never—would never—heal her.
“What are you going to do?”
“Well, I did all the work of wrecking my life. So now it’s up to me to fix it into the thing I want it to be. I hope you’re able to do the same.”
Then she turned and walked out the front door, and was surprised to see that the clouds had cleared, and the sky was blue over a much more cheerful-than-usual ocean.
If she’d been waiting for a sign that the conversation with Thomas needed to happen, then this was it.
She didn’t necessarily feel fixed, didn’t entirely feel whole. But that had confirmed to her that when she was with him she hadn’t been, either. That what she’d left behind she needed to leave, even if she could have done it in a different way.
She wished she could’ve been brave enough to walk away on her own two feet, rather than with the help of Michael, and her affair with him.
“I just have to be that strong from now on,” she said, to no one in particular except the blue sky.
And she was determined that she would be. But she needed to start by repairing what was broken with her mother.
Blame wouldn’t h
eal anyone—it would only keep them broken.
And Anna refused to live broken anymore.
27
I hope you get this letter. I’m trying frantically to reach you. Someone from the college finally agreed to give me your address. You should know, I’m pregnant.
—FROM A LETTER WRITTEN BY SUSAN BRIGHT, OCTOBER 1961. RETURNED TO SENDER UNOPENED. STAMPED: DECEASED.
WENDY
The last person Wendy expected to see at her door was Anna.
Well, maybe Rachel had moved to the position of last on the list, after last night. But Anna would have been second to last, and seeing her beautiful, stubborn daughter standing there with her cheeks and nose flushed from the cold made Wendy’s heart clench tight. Somehow, Wendy saw straight past all the years and felt like she was looking at her little girl again.
A little girl who might just need a Band-Aid and a kiss to make the pain of a scraped knee go away.
She missed those days. When you could fix things that easily.
But they were living in a tangle of betrayal, and lies, largely created by her, and even if she had the power to make all this go away with a Band-Aid, she had taken that right from herself.
“Are you here to yell at me again? Because I’ll be honest, I deserve it.”
“No,” Anna said. “I came to talk. Not...accuse you of anything.” She bit her lip, and suddenly, tears filled her eyes. “I don’t know why it’s so easy for me to realize that things are complicated and have lots of sides to them when it’s me. But so difficult for me to see when it’s other people. Still. I keep thinking I’ve learned the lesson, but I haven’t. It’s also much harder, and more complicated than that. Then just knowing it. And I... Mom, I wanted to blame you for my unhappiness, because I wanted to blame anyone but myself. I went to see Thomas today, to blame him.”
“Oh,” Wendy said, her heart contracting with sympathy.
