Married...Again

by Stephanie Doyle

  “I’m not pissed because she booked a band and then told us about it after the fact. That’s vintage Marilyn. I’m pissed because you don’t even like that band, and you still won’t say anything to her about it. This is our wedding, your wedding. And you’re going to dance around to a band you think sucks because you can’t stand up to your mother.”

  Allie bit her lip. He was right. When her mother had told her what she’d done, she’d been furious. Listening to her rattle off about how she was getting a steal and someone else wanting that day so she had to act fast, and the whole time Allie had been thinking no.

  No, she didn’t want that band.

  No, her mother shouldn’t have done what she did.

  No. No. No.

  The word had been in her head. She just couldn’t seem to get it out of her mouth.

  Eleanor raised her eyebrow.

  “Oh, no. Not a word out of you. You’re running away from your back-from-the-dead husband because you’re scared. You don’t get to lecture me about my mommy issues right now.”

  Mike shook his head. “Allie, I love you. I’m going to marry you no matter what. But if you don’t figure this shit out with your mother, I swear it is going to build up inside you. It’ll feel and taste like resentment, and it will ruin the relationship you have with your only living parent.”

  “What Mike said,” Eleanor agreed. “Because let’s face it, between the two of us, she actually likes you. It’s only fair that she has a good relationship with one of her daughters.”

  “Fine. I will do this. I will tell her that I do not want that band. Eventually. In the meantime, I’m just going to cancel them and pray Mom didn’t put a deposit down.”

  “That’s the passive-aggressive woman I know and love,” Mike said with a smirk.

  Allie stuck out her tongue at him.

  “Now, if you’re both done giving me shit, I’m sensing Eleanor needs chocolate ice cream and lots of it.”

  “I thought we were having a big ‘healthy’ salad,” Mike said.

  “Can you please stop saying healthy like it’s a bad word. I’m trying to inject vegetables into your diet. This is not a crime.”

  “I always had to hide them with Max,” Eleanor said, really to no one. “Put them in things so he would barely notice. Like the spinach. He probably didn’t even realize I had stuffed the chicken with it.”

  Allie looked to Mike, and he seemed to immediately understand.

  “I’m thinking you’re going to want some whiskey with that chocolate ice cream.”

  “Yes,” Eleanor whispered. “I think I’m going to need exactly that.”

  * * *

  TWO DAYS LATER Eleanor was sitting at the kitchen table cursing the single monitor on her laptop. If she were sitting at her desk in her office, she would have two monitors and, in theory, be doing twice the work.

  As it stood, she was keeping up with emails, but, in the long run, this was not sustainable. She needed to be in her damn office.

  And of course, she would be if she weren’t such a coward.

  Her lawyer had sent a courier last night to the hotel where Max was staying to serve him with the divorce papers. Eleanor figured he might try to track her down at the office today, maybe try and wiggle a phone number out of Selena. Although at last check with her number two, he hadn’t been in contact.

  His last option would be to call Marilyn. Except Eleanor knew her mother would not give out any information to him. Marilyn seemed to be on her side when it came to Max. Which was strange.

  They were never on the same side.

  As if she’d summoned her, Eleanor heard the back door open and her mother call out with her usual, “Hellloooo?”

  Shit. This was going to require an explanation.

  Her mother glanced around and immediately spotted her, even as Eleanor stood to greet her.

  “Eleanor, for goodness’ sakes, what are you doing here?” It took her mother a few seconds to think about how odd her appearance really was. “Why aren’t you working? Are you ill? Why didn’t you stay with me if you’re ill?”

  “I’m not sick, Mom.”

  Then it was like it suddenly all made sense to her. “This is about Max. You’re back from the cabin, except you’re here instead of at work, which is very much not like you.”

  Eleanor winced. She could hear the faint echoes of I told you underneath his name.

  Marilyn put her handbag—which always seemed to be ridiculously big, every season—on the counter with a sigh. Then she began opening kitchen cabinets like she lived there instead of Allie, and pulled out two mugs.

  “I’m making tea, and then we’ll talk about it.”

  Eleanor plopped into her chair. “I don’t suppose I can say I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “No.”

  Right. Who was she kidding?

  “Where is Allie?” her mother asked.

  “In town picking up groceries. Mike is out in the barn.”

  “And you’ve been here how long?”

  “A couple days.”

  She’d literally driven Max to her office to drop him off, then straight to Allie. Calling her lawyer on the way, of course.

  Eventually, Marilyn set a mug in front of Eleanor, and, oddly, it was almost as soothing as the whiskey Mike had fed her.

  Marilyn took a seat at the table and, in that formidable way she had, demanded Eleanor start speaking with nothing more than two raised eyebrows.

  “There is nothing to tell. He wants us to stay married. I want to move on.”

  “And you’re here because...”

  “Because my attorney served him with divorce papers last night. I thought it would be easier if I was out of town when that happened. I didn’t go to you because...well, Max knows your house.”

  “I take that to mean he didn’t know what you were planning on doing when you left him.”

  Eleanor shook her head.

  “So you’re hiding.”

  Eleanor took a sip of her tea. “If you want to call it that.”

  “Since when did you become a coward?”

  “That’s not fair, Mom. You said yourself, I shouldn’t have gone with him to the cabin.”

  “Yes, because I feared it would tie you in knots, which clearly it has. It’s one thing to end it before it starts. It’s something else entirely to run away from something once it’s started. He was your husband, Eleanor.”

  “I know that! You can acknowledge my situation is complicated.”

  Marilyn nodded. “And complications should be dealt with head-on. Are you certain you want to divorce him?”

  “Yes. No. Yes. Uh! That’s the problem. I have this idea that we could have this second chance. That I could believe everything he’s saying and we could have all the positives of our marriage back without any of the negatives. Then I think about the real world and how people don’t change. He hurt me, and the likelihood is he’ll hurt me again. The logical sensible solution is to end it now.”

  Marilyn blew out a slow breath.

  “You think I’m wrong?”

  “I think, unfortunately, your father and I weren’t the best example as far as marriages go. It’s not something I ever thought I would bring up...of course, people didn’t speak of such things back in my time. You just pretended like nothing happened, and you moved on. I wasn’t very good at that.”

  “Mom, you don’t have to...”

  “No. Your sister called me out about it the other day. She was right. Your father and I weren’t happy. He cheated on me.”

  “Oh, Mom. I’m so sorry.”

  “Yes, I am sorry for telling you. It’s not that I want you to think ill of your father. He was a good father to both of you girls.”

  “Was it a one-time thing?”

  “No. It was a woman he wo
rked with. It lasted for a period of time. I found out about it and gave him a choice. His mistress or his family. He chose us, and I believe he honored that commitment until his death, but what had gotten lost in all of that was how I felt. I was angry. I was humiliated. And the truth was, after that...I didn’t love him anymore. Yes, he was my husband and the father of my children, and we needed to stay together for the sake of all of that...but I wonder. If things had been different, or like they are today, we could have gotten a divorce, shared custody. Maybe found someone else along the way. I regret not doing that. For both of us.”

  It was strange, Eleanor thought. Such a sad story, but in that moment, she felt connected to her mother in a way she’d never felt before. Marilyn would probably humph if Eleanor said anything, so, instead, she sipped her tea and tried to extrapolate the moral of the story.

  “So you agree. Divorce makes the most sense.”

  Marilyn shook her head. “You weren’t listening. Divorce made sense because I didn’t love your father anymore. It wouldn’t have made sense if I had. You spent two days with Max, and your gut reaction was to run from him. I think that says something about the state of your feelings.”

  “I thought you were on my side,” Eleanor complained. “You never liked Max.”

  “Oh, Eleanor, don’t you get it? I’m your mother. I’m always on your side. Whether you can see it or not. And it’s not that I never liked Max, it was that he was as headstrong as I was and I knew how you battled me.”

  “It might be too late,” Eleanor said, shaking her head. “The petition...he’s not expecting it. It will hurt him that I did it without talking to him first. He thinks...he thinks we still have a chance.”

  “Hmm. If he thinks that, then doesn’t he?”

  Eleanor didn’t know how to respond to that, so she didn’t.

  “Hey!” Allie announced coming through the back door with two bags of groceries. “Mom, this is a nice surprise.”

  “Is it?” Marilyn asked, and suddenly Eleanor knew she was no longer in the spotlight of her mother’s attention. “Why did I have to learn, and not from my daughter, that she had chosen to cancel the band I arranged to play at her wedding?”

  Allie busied herself with putting away groceries and not looking at her mother. “I was going to call you. I was.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Allie, just tell her the truth,” Eleanor encouraged her.

  Allie, apparently, had other ideas.

  “Mom, Eleanor is hiding from Max who she obviously still has feelings for, but served him with divorce papers anyway.”

  “Nice try,” Marilyn said sardonically. “That ground has already been covered.”

  “She doesn’t like the band,” Eleanor said. It seemed like such a simple thing to do. She would never understand her sister’s reluctance to be open about what Eleanor considered minor decisions. “It’s her wedding and she doesn’t like the band. You shouldn’t have booked it without asking her.”

  “Well, I know that, there wasn’t time. Why didn’t you just tell me when I told you what I had done?”

  Allie shrugged.

  “Two cowards,” Marilyn said with disgust. “It seems I’ve raised two cowards. Allie, next time just let me know if you don’t like something I’ve done. It was embarrassing to take the call from the booking agent, not realizing you had canceled. They were very nice and refunded my deposit. Eleanor, you have a company to run. Hiding out at your sister’s place is a disgrace to Max, yourself and intelligent, independent women everywhere. Get off your butt and deal with your problems. Can people change? That’s what you wanted to know? I did. I changed. If only I’d had the courage to follow through with it, both your father and I would have been a lot happier.”

  Marilyn then picked up her teacup, put it in the sink, grabbed her oversize handbag and left without another word.

  Allie looked at Eleanor. “Well, I hope you’re happy. See how you’ve upset her.”

  “She’s right,” Eleanor said flatly.

  “I know. I really hate that,” Allie agreed.

  “I have to go back to Denver,” Eleanor said, more to herself than her sister. “I’ll go pack my stuff now.”

  “Good luck,” Allie said. “And you know when I say that I mean good luck for Max.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  ELEANOR DROVE TO her building that Monday morning after a long and miserable weekend waiting for the other shoe to drop. Except Max hadn’t called or found out where she lived. Maybe he’d been so angry about what she’d done that he was done with her?

  That thought shouldn’t have made her so miserable. She pulled inside the garage and parked in her usual spot. She’d already spoken to Selena on her way to Denver. She knew that Max had, in fact, stopped by the office on Friday afternoon. He’d been polite and gracious. Simply asking where she was.

  Selena, of course, told him nothing.

  “Did he seem angry?” Eleanor had asked her, even as she clutched the phone in her hand so hard she feared she might break the case.

  “No. But he did seem sad. Maybe even a little defeated. I’m not going to lie. I felt sorry for the guy.”

  Of course Selena would. It was rather a sad story to tell. Happily married couple splits up because the wife can’t handle her husband being away for long stretches only for him to almost die, do everything in his power to find her, then get served with divorce papers a few days after his miraculous return.

  It sounded heartless to Eleanor, and she was the woman in question.

  She got out of her SUV and hit the locks. It was only as she made her way to the elevator that she saw him.

  “I know. This is creepy as hell, but I didn’t have any other way of finding you, and Selena wouldn’t let me wait upstairs,” Max said. “And I didn’t want to do this over a phone call.”

  This was it. This was about confronting her problems head-on. Except seeing him again, all she could remember was the feel of him between her legs, the smell of him, the taste of him.

  The rush of him.

  This man who had made her feel so loved. As if fairy tales existed and she’d been selected as one of the lucky princesses.

  Divorcing a man like that...some would consider it impossible.

  Eleanor lifted her chin. “I was a coward to do it the way I did it. I apologize for that.”

  “I thought we left things with...you would be in touch. I thought you were thinking about things.”

  “I did think. And I was in touch, just by courier,” she said, then winced. “It was easier to do it from far away.”

  This time it was Max who sighed. “Doesn’t that tell you anything, Nor? Doesn’t it say something to you that you’re so freaking uncomfortable around me you had to run away?”

  “I’m willing to admit that, but it doesn’t change my mind. In the end, the thing that makes the most sense...”

  He rushed forward. “Stop saying that. Stop saying that we don’t make sense. Not when you’re the only thing in my life that’s ever made sense to me. Say you stopped loving me. Say you don’t want to be with me anymore. Say that. But stop talking about us as if we’re this business problem you have to solve.”

  Eleanor felt every single one of his words like they were knife jabs into her chest.

  Stop loving him. Was that even possible?

  “What are you going to do, Max?”

  “Do?”

  “You can fight it, I guess. Plus there is my company at stake. Colorado isn’t necessarily a fifty-fifty state—”

  He closed his eyes. “Please stop talking. I don’t want your money. I don’t want your company. I don’t want to fight you. I wanted to fight for you. I lived for more than two years with a single thought in my head that I might be lucky enough to have a second chance with you. I guess I got that chance. That’s all I can ask for, really.”
/>
  “Max...we could—Maybe we don’t have to not be in each other’s lives. Maybe we could try and be friends...of a sort.”

  He laughed, but there was no humor in it. “No, you were right. If we try to become something else, we’ll never move on from each other. You wanted kids someday—”

  He stopped talking, and now Eleanor felt like crying.

  “It hurt too much, Max.”

  He nodded. “I guess some things you can’t fix.”

  “What will you do now?”

  “I meant what I said. I’m not going back to research or field assignments. University of Denver has offered me a job. I’ll take that, find a place and settle down. You’re okay with me staying in Denver?”

  She wasn’t. She had fears that she would spend her days looking for him. At a coffee shop or a restaurant. At some point, she might see him out on a date with another woman.

  There was a delayed sense of pain. She remembered the woman he’d gotten drunk with, the one he’d had revenge sex with, and suddenly she wanted to hit him really hard in the arm. For the drunk woman and any woman who would come next.

  But of course, she couldn’t. Because she was making the choice to let him go. She had no claim on him anymore.

  “We still need to talk about your parents’ estate—”

  “I told you, I don’t care about that.”

  “Max, it’s not just the money. I have to turn over the cabin to you, too.”

  He flinched then. “That cabin was my parents’. It was us. I don’t want the damn cabin. Sell it.”

  That hurt, but she supposed it was her due. She’d held on to the cabin to hold on to a piece of him. Now she was being offered all of him, but she was choosing to walk away.

  “Max...”

  “No. I get it. I’ll contact your lawyer. Give her all my information. That way...that way we don’t have to do this again. You’re right about that. It hurts too much.”

  Eleanor’s chin wobbled, but she nodded.

  “I’ll let you get back to work.”

  She watched as he walked away, and she held back the scream in her throat. Then he turned and gave her a salute with his two fingers. “Have a good life, Eleanor Gaffney. Please try and be happy.”