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“Jeanette’s retiring.” He looked across the room, steadying himself before making eye contact again.
The impact of those two words hit like an atomic bomb of epically ironic proportions. I breathed out slowly. I knew why he was telling me. Why he’d waited until now.
“And Stacy?”
“Doesn’t want it.” He shook his head.
I closed my eyes. I could practically hear the creaky hinges as the gates of my dream job swung wide the fuck open—before slamming shut again, just as I reached the threshold. “Anyone else?”
“It’s too political for them. Too public. You know what it’s like there. They just want to dig in the dirt and maybe take on a few students. You’re the one who has the charisma for it. I’m just saying, if you want it, you’ll have to submit your C.V., go through the proper channels. There might be some international competition, but since you’ve got the DMORT qualifications, the years in the field, the publications, plus Jeanette as your old mentor...” He trailed off. He didn’t have to say it.
Then he did.
“Fuck it. This is your dream, Decca.”
Yeah. It was.
Being the Director of the Forensic Anthropology Center was what I’d always wanted. What I earned my Ph.D. for. What I’d nearly broken myself researching and publishing for. It was exactly what Jeanette had groomed me for.
And now, if what Chris was saying was true, the directorship was about to be handed to me.
And I couldn’t take it. Because I’d married a man who didn’t get to decide where he lived. Being a priestwaslike being in the military. His bishop placed him where he was needed. And where he was needed was his home parish in Franklin. Three hours and a whole world away from the Body Farm in Knoxville.
The news stung, but remarkably, it didn’t knock me off my feet. As the seconds ticked by, the knowledge sank in, and I realized I wasn’t that fazed. The venom wasn’t as painful as I might have expected.
“Well, thanks. But I’m not going to leave Gus for a job, no matter how much I want the job. It’s still just a job.”
He shrugged. “Plenty of couples commute. Especially in academia.”
“I... No. I’m in this for real, so I need to be here for real. Work used to be the thing I did for me. My only hobby. Now I’m starting to hate that it’s so constant. I married Gus so I could have a life. I’m trying to scale back.”
Saying it made me realize it was all true.
I continued. “It’s been really hard these past three years. Sometimes, I just want to go back to how things used to be. Before Granny died. Sometimes I want her to make me a pot of beans and cornbread and tell me some proverb that’s so soft on my heart it feels like being wrapped in an old quilt. Gus doesn’t even know it, but he’s helped me through a lot of that grief. He’s made me feel less alone. Even when he was just a face and a voice on a computer. I can’t cut us off at the ankles before we’ve even gotten a chance to see what we could be to each other.” Tears stung my eyes, and it became a lot harder to talk.
Chris leaned against me, his tall, lean body warm through his rumpled gingham button-down, offering comfort, but not too much.
It was subtle, but he was graciously bowing out, letting me know he’d already accepted a smaller space in my heart.
Normally, he would have hugged me. For all his thin wiriness, he was a good hugger. His body was good at other things too, but now it felt so foreign that we had ever been sexually involved. I loved him as a friend. As a romantic partner, he was kind of like an old shirt that wasn’t quite your style, but it was flattering enough, and you kept it in your closet anyway, and wore it way too often just because it was still hanging there.
That painted an entirely unflattering portrait of an entirely good man. Chris was so much more than that. Way too good for me. Though I really had thought we’d end up together one day for real.
Then I met Gus, and from our first conversation, he was like the most buttery black leather jacket you found in a cool vintage shop. It fit just right. It even smelled like pipe tobacco and not the floor of the original CBGBs.
Now I was married to that jacket. Its magic swept me away every time I put it on, but he never allowed me to wear it very long. There was no romance. No sex. My sex life had been better when I’d only had platonic feelings. Now that I was head over heels for Gus, I lived like a nun.
Here I was, bitterly craving the arms of the old shirt again, just for some of the human companionship that had fled when Gus and I were married.
The kettle boiled, pulling me out of my self-centeredness. I poured the water over the grounds, stirring them and setting a timer.
“You know what’s really hard to admit? Sometimes, I just want to go to Gus’s hockey games and make big dinners and do domestic shit. My work is my life, but for the first time, I find myself hoping that someday... it won’t be.”
“Sounds like you made the right decision, then. Forget about the job. Like you said, it’s just a job, anyway.”
“I’m too young, anyway.” I plunged the thing down to trap the grounds. “Thirty-two is really young to be a university admin. And I’ve only gotten this far, this fast, because I was a precocious wunderkind with no life. Jeanette was still getting her Ph.D. at forty-something. There’s plenty of time. If things fall through.”
“That’s smart. I think it’s normal to want to slow down and start thinking of the people in our lives and how much spending time with them matters to us.” He looked down at his shoes, biting his lip.
