I nearly dropped the wet glass I was drying on the linoleum floor. “What?”
“I didn’t think you were serious about the divorce,” he explained. “I thought you guys might be having a rough patch, but I always expected you to work through it.”
My stomach churned and my heart squeezed with racing panic. I tried to keep my voice steady when I replied, “It was worse than a rough patch.”
“He didn’t hit you or anything, did he?” Josh paused mid-rinse to look at me seriously.
I hated that people always jumped to that conclusion. Did all men have this hard of a time divorcing? Were they always silently questioned about spousal abuse?
“He never touched me like that, Josh. Don’t ever think he did. We just… we don’t get along. We’re not right for each other.”
“You haven’t really tried,” he countered immediately. “You guys are still newlyweds. Give it some time.”
“We’ve been married for seven years.”
My brother was nothing if not persistent. He got it from our mother. “It’s nothing a couple kids won’t fix. Try that. See what a baby can do for you guys. You could still save this.”
I sucked in a sharp breath and kept my tumbling thoughts to myself. I could have told him that I hadn’t talked to my husband in four months and that if he wanted to speak to me, he would have by now. If he had cared just a little bit about salvaging what we had, he would have reached out. I could have told Josh that we knew each other too well. That our faults had become walls that kept the other out and that our fights had scarred us so deeply we would never heal.
I should have told him that a baby wasn’t a magical potion that made people stop fighting and every problem disappear.
But instead, I told him the reason that would shut him up for good, the one thing he couldn’t argue with.
“We did try to have kids.” My voice was a shaking whisper, reflecting all of the shattered emotions I couldn’t reconcile. “We tried for two years.”
He was silent for a long time. I had kept this to myself during our entire struggle. Only Nick knew how desperately I wanted a baby and how impossible it seemed. We hadn’t told our parents or our families because we wanted to avoid this moment. We wanted to avoid the questions and the pity and the attempts to understand something that devastated both of us- something we couldn’t understand ourselves.
“Oh,” Josh finally groaned. “I wondered-”
“It’s me,” I said quickly. “Or at least that’s what our lab results say. I’m the one that stopped it from happening.”
My brother had rolled up the sleeves to his oxford and looked out of place next to the sudsy water and pile of dirty dishes. He had the face of a corporate man. He was all clean angles and sharp edges.
But at this moment, he looked as lost as I felt.
“That’s not a reason to get a divorce, Katie.” His rasping rumble grated against my heart and I wanted to cry.
“That’s not why we’re getting divorced, Josh.”
“It’s a reason for something,” he pushed.
“Then it’s a reason that led up to the reason we’re getting divorced. There’s a lot to us that you never saw or heard about. A lot you will never hear about. Whatever my reasons for ending my marriage are mine alone. I don’t expect you to understand.”
“Does he know them?”
“Does he know what?”
“Your reasons for leaving him.”
The wind rushed out of me and I thought I might pass out for a minute. The pain was too acute, too blinding. I couldn’t breathe through this. I couldn’t live through this. My brother had dealt the final blow, but the expression on Nick’s face, when he had grabbed the pillow off our bed to take it downstairs all those months ago, annihilated whatever was left of my heart.
“Yes,” I whispered. “And he has his own reasons for wanting to leave me too.”
We finished the dishes in silence. I left my parent’s house soon after that, using the valid excuse that I had a ton of papers to grade. My parents weren’t happy to see me leave, but I wasn’t sure they would have been happy to have me stay either.
I drove back to the small house I’d shared with Nick for the last five years. It was empty when I got there except for my puppy. Of course. I lived by myself now.
It was quiet too.
Too quiet.
It was dark and quiet and for the first time since we bought this damn house, I hated it. I hated it because it represented everything I couldn’t have. Everything I lost.
I hated Nick too.
He wasn’t supposed to let our marriage end like this. He wasn’t supposed to let things get this bad.
And most of all.
I hated myself.
I couldn’t help it. At the end of the day… after all of my explanations and logical choices, after my lists of his wrongdoings and all of the reasons we were wrong for each other, I hated myself and what I had done.
I hated myself for what I couldn’t take back.
Chapter Three
10. He misses the dog.
I threw my keys down on the counter and looked at the leftover dishes from last night. I should have done them after dinner, but I couldn’t find the energy. At the time, I told myself it was a reward for not picking up fast food on the way home from work again, but now I recognized my laziness for what it was.
It was funny how living by myself spotlighted all of these faults I hadn’t noticed before. When Nick lived here, I always cleaned up after dinner. He hadn’t asked me to or expected it, but I had always felt the drive to please him.
Okay, maybe not in every way. But he did things for me. He took out the trash without being asked. He changed lightbulbs when they burned out. He walked the dog when it rained. The dishes were part of my portion of housekeeping and whatever else you could say about me or about how I treated Nick, at least I kept that part of our bargain.
For better or worse, in sickness and in health, you mow the yard and I’ll scrub the pans.
Now my vows were as empty and meaningless as my chores. What was the point of cleaning up if there was no one here to appreciate my effort?
I wanted gold stars and verbal affirmation.
The dog gave me neither of those things.
My feet ached and my head buzzed with the chaos of the day. I yawned so long and wide I half expected my jaw to unhinge.
I stood at the counter listening to the house. The ice machine kicked on and the refrigerator started buzzing. I could hear the hallway clock ticking its rhythmic tocks as it kept time. The most beautiful dog in the entire world plopped on the ground at my feet and let out a long puppy sigh.
I could see it in her big brown eyes. Finally, you’re home, woman. Now pay me attention and fetch my chewie.
To be honest, she really wasn’t the most beautiful dog in the world, but she was really close. And she was beyond spoiled, making her intolerably high maintenance and prissy. But she was mine. I loved her as much as I loved any human.
She was a petite beagle with big floppy ears that perked up when she was interested in something and huge chocolate eyes that conveyed more emotion than I thought a dog should be capable of. Her shiny coat was a mixture of caramel and white and was nice and silky because Nick insisted on the expensive dog food and weekly baths.
I named her Anne after my favorite teacher, Anne Shirley, from the Anne of Avonlea books. But Nick had started calling her Annie from the very beginning and the nickname stuck. She was my Annie-girl and when all other people failed me, she was my rock.
I swept down and rubbed her ears with my two hands. Immediately the stress of the day started to melt from my shoulders and the dishes, the bills left discarded on the table and my looming divorce didn’t feel so impossible anymore.
“What did you do all day?” I asked her with a soft voice. “Did you miss me?”
A deep, masculine voice came out of her, answering my question, “I doubt that. She was too busy eating
my socks.”
I let out an ear-splitting scream and fell backward on my butt. After a few seconds of blind panic in which I contemplated the distance to my nearest butcher knife, sanity returned. I eventually recognized the voice and that it hadn’t come from my dog.
It had come from my husband. My soon to be ex-husband.
I hadn’t seen him in four months and now he was here. I had to brace myself before I could look at him.
“Nick! God!” My hand landed on my chest and I pushed down, trying to slow my racing heart. “You scared the hell out of me!”
He leaned over the white-tiled island and stared at me with listless eyes. “I thought you heard me come in.”
I pressed my lips together and tried to ignore the pang of pain that hit me low in the gut. His eyes used to be his most expressive feature. They could glisten with humor or darken with lust in the span of three seconds. They were what had pulled me so deeply into him so quickly. All he had to do was look at me and I had been his.
Until now. Now they stared at me as if I were the most uninteresting thing on the planet. They didn’t light up when I walked into the room. They didn’t dance with some sarcastic thought spinning around in his sharp mind. They didn’t heat with desire or harden with frustration.
They just barely glanced at me, shuttered and apathetic.
“I didn’t,” I snapped. My heart hadn’t found its normal beat yet and my voice sounded frustratingly breathless.
He moved around the island and held out his hand to me. I reluctantly took it and tried to be civil.
We had promised each other a peaceful divorce. This was something we both wanted. We had no reason to be anything but nice to each other.
Once I was standing, he looked me over again but refrained from speaking his opinion. I tried to swallow back my annoyance. After living with him for seven years and hearing every little insignificant thought that came out of his mouth, it bothered me that he had suddenly learned restraint.
What did he think about my outfit? Did he notice I’d lost weight? Could he see the dark bags beneath my eyes?
Did he think I was losing sleep because of him?
Habits, I reminded myself. These were just familiar patterns from our marriage. I was used to being able to ask him his thoughts, which he always gave freely.
Now we acted like strangers, even though we knew each other more intimately than I knew any other person.
“What are you doing here?” I finally asked when it didn’t seem he wanted to explain his presence.
“I didn’t think you were going to be here.”
His casual words lit a fire inside of me that I couldn’t ignore. My polite words tasted bitter and acrid in my mouth. “Teacher’s meeting was canceled tonight. Mr. Kellar had a family emergency.”
“Is everything alright?” Finally, some kind of sympathy flared in his blue eyes, but it wasn’t meant for me.
My principal got his compassion, but not his wife.
“His eight-year-old broke his leg. It’s nothing serious.” My words came out clipped and short. Nick noticed immediately. His gaze sharpened and his lips parted as if to defend himself.
I braced myself for fighting words, the ones that would spiral us into a never-ending argument. He would set me off and I would retaliate with something blade-sharp and cutting. He would return by nagging me to death until I explained every last one of my emotions, at which point I would shut down and the barrier around my heart would thicken and expand.
Sometime in the last seven years, I had started to pay attention to our fights. We fought in phases, each argument trying to outdo the last. What was worse was that we had developed this toxic cycle that could not be broken.
“Huh,” was Nick’s intelligent reply.
“So why are you here?”
His gaze drifted to the dog. “I need to grab a few things of mine.”
Righteous anger spread from the fire in my belly, snaking through my veins and reaching my fingertips and toes. “You should have called me first. You can’t just walk in here unannounced. This isn’t your house anymore.”
Nick took an aggressive step forward. “This isn’t my house? Are you kidding me? This is our house. As far as I know, my name is still on the mortgage. I can come and go as I please.”
“I’m a single female, living alone. Don’t you think I deserve privacy? I thought you were a murderer!”
“You’re a single female, huh? Just like that? I’m gone for a couple months and suddenly you’re living the high life?”
“That’s not at all what I meant! And you know it!” I took another step forward and swallowed down the bitterness that bubbled up my throat. I wanted to claw at my itchy skin and burst into hysterical tears. How did we get like this?
Why couldn’t we have just one decent conversation?
Nick’s face heated with his matching anger. “I don’t know what you mean, Kate. I’m starting to wonder if I ever knew what you meant. You kicked me out.”
“Oh, that’s nice. That’s really lovely.” I spun around and threw my hands out. “I love how I’m the bad guy in this thing. How it’s all my fault.” I turned back to face him and let my words punctuate the air with every ounce of resentment and exhaustion I felt. “We came to this decision together, Nick. Don’t you dare put the blame on me. I’ve been the villain for seven goddamn years, but I refuse to this time. We did this together.”
He rocked back on his heels and his shoulders deflated like the anger had leaked from his body. He was a puffed-up balloon with a quarter-sized hole. But he wasn’t any less worked up. This was the quiet rage that cut deeper, sliced in jagged, unhealable ways.
“Sure, Kate. We both wanted this.” His voice pitched low and firm when he launched his final assault. “At least it’s what we both want now. You’re not the only one that’s been living in freedom lately. God, it feels good to get out from under…” I waited for the end of his sentence, knowing it would be about me, knowing it would be the agonizing reminder of what a terrible wife I was. But he shocked me when he finished with, “this roof.”
It wasn’t any less hurtful, but it didn’t pack quite the punch I had been expecting.
My surprise quelled some of my fury and I found myself able to reply to him without goading him further. I ran my hands over my face and in a deflated voice, I asked, “What are you really doing here, Nick? I know you didn’t stop by to fight with me.”
He jerked his chin to the side so he didn’t have to look at me. “I didn’t think you were going to be here.”
“Nick, god. Just come clean already.” A wave of violent exhaustion knocked into me and I teetered backward. He did this to me. He wore me out completely. And he didn’t even notice. He wouldn’t even look at me anymore.
And somehow that was worse. Somehow I could take his harsh words and cruel accusations, but it was his neglect that pierced the hardest.
“I missed Annie,” he mumbled.
I knew I misheard him. He hated the dog. He complained about her daily. “What?”
He lifted his chin as if he was prepared to defend his words and the damn dog to the grave. “I missed Annie, okay? I just wanted… needed to make sure she was okay.”
A weird mixture of sorrow and affection twisted through me. I didn’t know whether to scream at him or hug him. Confused and tired, I turned away from him and faced the sink. I needed to do something. I needed to use my hands and think about anything else but my husband and the dog.
“I thought you hated her,” I accused weakly, my voice broken with hurt feelings and bewilderment.
His voice was lower to the ground when he responded. He’d bent over and started petting her in his rough, affectionate way. “I thought I did too.”
A lump so big and intrusive clogged my throat that I had to gasp for air. I didn’t bother to swipe at the tears leaking from my eyes. I didn’t want to draw attention to them.
So while Nick petted the dog he had avoided, complained about
and glared at for three years, I focused on scrubbing the dishes I left out last night. The water burned my hands, turning my skin bright red, but I welcomed the heat and the pain. I needed to focus on something else. I needed to redirect my mind from whatever dangerous place it wanted to go.
Nick murmured sweet things to Annie and I forbid my body to turn around. Listening to his familiar voice, with his low, gravelly baritone did funny things to my resolve. I started questioning everything I’d decided about him. I wanted to reconsider my decisions and accusations.
I wanted to fall on my knees next to him and beg for his forgiveness.
Which was so silly. So completely ridiculous.
If anything, his surprise visit should hammer down the point. We weren’t right for each other. We couldn’t even be in the same room together without wanting to strangle each other.
We might be good people separately, but we were monsters together.
I was doing the right thing. I wanted to be happy. I wanted to live a life without screaming and name-calling.
I wanted to breathe again.
“Have you taken her for a walk yet?” His question was asked with a soft pleading that I couldn’t ignore, no matter how much the bitter part of me wanted to punish and torture him.
I shook my head, unable to speak the words that clawed at my throat. I kept my chin tucked to my chest so that my dark hair would fall in front of my face and cover the tears streaking my cheeks.
His voice grated when he asked, “Do you mind if… do you mind if I take her?”
I hoped he didn’t notice my quiet sobbing. I couldn’t stand the idea that he saw how weak I was acting. But the longer I thought about it, I decided the obvious emotion in his voice probably came from asking me permission.
Nick was nothing if not proud.
Instead of using this moment against him, I surprised myself by shrugging one shoulder and whispering in a thick voice, “Go ahead. She would love it.”
He stood there silently for a long minute. I felt his eyes sear into my back. I sucked in slow breaths and tried not to fidget. The only sound in the kitchen was the sound of Annie’s paws dancing on the tile and the splash of water as I worked on the dishes.
Every Wrong Reason Page 4
