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So many nights, I lay awake thinking of possibilities. I’d gone so far as to picture myself standing beside Liam at our boys’ graduation, holding his hand while trying to hide my tears so they wouldn’t see. I’d dreamed of buying an RV and traveling once the boys were grown and out of the house. Of time spent together at home, gardening and painting side by side in the sun, stealing glances and blowing kisses.
“Then…yeah. It would be incredible. Look, I do feel this. Of course I do. But we can’t go further. We can’t do it all over again…I won’t…they won’t survive it. I can’t do that to them.” My voice was as weak as the rest of me, wobbly and uncertain. I’d told myself that cutting this short was the right thing to do. I’d convinced myself that once I’d done it, I’d feel like the mature, responsible mother I was supposed to be. But as hurt flitted through his eyes, as disappointment washed over his expression, as he shrank right in front of me, it all felt wrong.
Before we’d started this project, I never would have considered a second chance with Liam. So how, then, after just a few short weeks, could I throw our history aside and pretend like none of the bad parts happened?
“Can we at least talk about it?”
“About what?”
“The day you left.”
Instantly, I broke out in a sweat and my stomach twisted itself in knots. I turned away, moving back so I was standing behind him again. I couldn’t look at him as I was hit with the anguish that memories of that day always brought on. It was a touchy subject, like stabbing a wound all over again. Only his wounds had healed a whole lot faster than mine.
He cleared his throat and sat up a little straighter. “We never really discussed it.”
Because it hurt. It hurt to even think about, much less talk to him about.
I’d tried to explain it to the girls one night. They were my best friends. If I could talk to anyone, it was them. But I couldn’t. Instead, I’d choked up and switched subjects. After all this time, I’d finally felt like I was accepting the reality of our demise, only for it to be brought back to the surface. A wound that just kept reopening.
I set the scissors down at my station and ran my hands through his hair, grasping for a semblance of composure. Impostor. The voice in the back of my head said. It was right. Not a single part of me could be composed right now. My heart was racing, my pulse thumping in my ears. My mind was reeling, desperately searching for a way to make this stop. For the words to tell him how I truly felt. To explain to him that I didn’t want to be apart from him any longer.
He grasped my wrist and gently pulled, bringing me back to the moment. Then he turned in his chair to face me, leaving nowhere for me to hide. “We have to talk, Marigold.”
She was going to give up.
I could see it in the way she kept looking at the door, like she was hoping for a distraction or contemplating just bolting out of here. She was anxious, but not the fun, kind of flirty, almost anticipatory nervousness I’d seen over the last couple of weeks. This was dread. She was going to leave us exactly where we started, and I had no clue how to fix it.
The idea of discussing our divorce sat like a lead weight in my gut. Those were the darkest days of my life, but I was desperate for the woman I’d fallen in love with, and until we faced the demons of our past, I didn’t think it was possible that I could have her.
Back then, I’d thought we were at a turning point, though I hadn’t expected the route we ended up taking. We weren’t exactly broken, but we were definitely in need of repair. I’d called my mom a few months before, since she was an expert on basically everything. I’d told her about how Marigold was slipping further and further away. Her advice had been to give her some time. So that’s what I’d done. I’d given her the time and space I thought she needed. Except that time dragged on, and our distance only grew until the divide was so wide it felt impossible to reach her. Then I was coming home to a nearly empty house and being served divorce papers. I’d lost this huge piece of my life in an instant, and suddenly, there was nothing left to fight for.
Now, though, we had the chance to bring it back to life. And yet she still didn’t want to.
She shook her head. “I don’t like talking about it—”
“I don’t like bringing it up either. But Goldie, we have to figure this out.”
She clenched her fists and gritted her teeth. “Because,” she snapped, “we were both drowning, and if one of us didn’t get out, would have both sunk, and we would have taken the boys down with us.”
Drowning?
I stood and tore the cape from my neck. “Look.” I spun and stepped closer. “I know things weren’t ideal back then, but we could have worked through it. We could have fought for each other.”
She scoffed. “But you didn’t fight. You didn’t chase after us. You didn’t ask me to stay. You didn’t even blink when the papers got served.”
My heart twisted in my chest. “Is that why you’ve been so pissed at me all these years? Because I didn’t run after you?” I cleared away the tears burning in my throat. “I wish I had. More than anything, I wish I could go back and yell at my young and dumb self and tell him that he was losing the best thing that had ever happened to him. But I can’t. I can’t change the past.”
All I could do was live in the present, and right now, in this moment, there was nothing I needed more than for Marigold to admit that she was mine. That she always had been. That there were reasons why neither of us had moved on. Why we had been bouncing around, driving each other crazy for all these years.
She took a deep breath, forcing her shoulders to lower, hiding behind this facade that she was okay. “No, you can’t. So let’s just leave it there.” She walked to another station, Cindy’s, I guessed, and picked up random products, only to set them down again.
“I don’t want to leave it there.” I followed her, every inch of me aching for her to look at me, to feel my sincerity.
“Liam.” The sigh she let out was shaky. “I quit my job for you. I gave up my career so we could succeed as a family. Then you ran away. Every day, you took off for work while I was drowning in diapers and screaming toddlers.”
If it was possible to relax and tense at the same time, then that was exactly what I did. She was explaining herself. I’d been desperate for answers from her for so long. Yet this wasn’t at all what I’d expected to hear. “I provided for us. I did what a husband has to do. I brought money, food, and stability to the table.” I roughed a hand down my face and blew out a breath. “You wanted to live in a big white house with land for our kids to run. You wanted to settle in a good school district and drive a nice family SUV. And I wanted you to have all of it. I worked hard every day to get us there.”
She threw her hands in the air and let out the saddest cry, her eyes welling with tears and her nose turning red. “Liam, we were practically kids when I told you I wanted that. We were teenagers with no real concept of money or how life or parenthood worked.” Her voice went higher. “What I wanted was you. That’s all I ever cared about. But I lost you to your job. Day by day, I watched my best friend slip away from me, and it didn’t matter what I did. There was no stopping it.”
