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She knew what kind of man Zack was. Good. Responsible. Loving. He’d proven it over and over. Her problem wasn’t with Zack. It was with her own fear of letting go, of trusting him because trusting her first husband had been such a disaster.
“What is it, Laurel? If you love me and I love you, then what’s stopping you? Do you trust me?”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Zack. I don’t trust myself.”
“I don’t understand. What does that mean?”
“My marriage was…a disaster.” Which really didn’t even touch how bad it had been.
“Lots of people get divorced.”
She was silent, struggling with wanting to tell him the truth and being ashamed. “There are things about my marriage that no one knows. It wasn’t something I could ever talk about. I was…ashamed. I guess I still am.”
“What happened, Laurel?”
“Stan and I got married young. Not because I was pregnant or anything like that. But because we were young and in love. He came from an upper middle class family. They didn’t like me. Well, they didn’t know me but they didn’t like the fact that my family was not socially on par with them. You know back then the family had just started to dig out of the hole they’d been in as long as I could remember. And this was right before Dad got a better job and they moved away.
“Stan went to law school in San Antonio. With his parents’ help we bought a house here in Whiskey River. Nothing fancy but decent. I’d been working at Kelly Boots since high school and still did. Stan had planned to work in Whiskey River after he graduated, but he was offered a really good job in San Antonio, so he took it and commuted to work. We had Cody and everything was still mostly okay. But he started to become more and more distant. Katrina was an accident. I suspected he was cheating on me during my pregnancy but I couldn’t prove it. I’m not sure I wanted to prove it. I thought it was my fault. That I wasn’t enough for him, and never had been.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Maybe so, but it was bullshit I believed. Don’t forget his parents were continually telling him I wasn’t good enough for him. He should dump me and take the kids. He was a lawyer. I knew he could do it. But he had no interest in Cody and Katrina. Thank God.” It destroyed her to think what could have happened if Stan had wanted the children.
“He continued to work in San Antonio. We saw less and less of him. I…still loved him. Or thought I did. Stan began defending criminals. Small-time at first, but the longer he did it, the less cautious he became. Until he was defending a slew of drug dealers and the like.”
“Did you know?”
“Very little. I knew he was a defense attorney, of course. But I had no idea who his clientele were. I was too busy trying to raise two kids on my own with a full-time job and a husband I hardly saw. And I was naive. Stupid, actually.”
“I don’t believe that. Naive, maybe. Stupid? Never.”
“You’re wrong,” she said flatly. “I deliberately closed my eyes to…all kinds of things. I put up with my suspicions about the women. But then he started coming home more. I thought he wanted to make a go of it.” She laughed unhappily.
“He didn’t.”
“No, he did not. He was getting worse. More irrational. Meaner. No patience with the kids or with me. Of course, he’d never had much. But by then he’d decided I couldn’t do anything right. He hit me.”
“Jesus, Laurel. He abused you?”
“He hit me a few times.” She shrugged. “Not a lot and never very bad. Each time he’d swear he’d never do it again. I wanted to believe him. But then I discovered he’d taken out a second mortgage on our house. I couldn’t understand why. So I confronted him. He blew up at me and shoved me against the wall. I’m pretty sure I broke a rib.”
“Pretty sure? You didn’t go to the hospital or the doctor?”
“No,” she said simply. “I was ashamed. But I knew it would only get worse. I made plans to leave him. But I couldn’t follow through. I knew I should, but the kids were still so young and I was afraid I couldn’t make it on my own. So I kept hoping, and all the while I was completely clueless as to what the real problem was.”
“What was it?”
“Cocaine.”
“Shit,” Zack said.
“Yes. Stan was a cocaine addict.”
