By the time I reached the backyard, Charlie had found the soccer ball and set up a small net for us to use. He’d shown promise on the pitch, and as of now, Charlie aspired to play soccer even in college. Time would tell whether that goal would pan out, but if he put his mind to it, he’d reach his goal. Envy—at his youth, his optimism—filled me at times like these.
“So, what’s on your mind?” I kicked the ball his way.
He stopped it easily with his foot. “Nothing...really.”
“It’s not nothing. It was enough to be rude to your sister. I’d have done that to my sister, but you...you don’t normally do that sort of thing.”
He sighed and returned the ball. “Yeah. I was just trying to figure something out.”
“Well, can I help?”
“I’m not sure.” A swift kick sent the ball to Charlie’s right, but he lunged, connected with his left foot, and launched the ball over my head. It landed in a pile of dead hydrangeas behind me.
“Then at least try me.”
Charlie hustled to grab the ball from the plants and looked at me. “When we were first on the porch, when you were sitting on the swing with Lena and Delia, I saw what was going on inside the house. And Mom was in the kitchen with someone.”
“And?”
“And it was that guy Mom sometimes talks about...the one we met at the arboretum. And I guess I just wondered what he was doing here.”
A guy? A thump ticked at the back of my eyes. Was Sadie seeing someone? Charlie wouldn’t meet my gaze. I took a few steps closer to him. “What guy?”
“Mr. MacKinnon.”
The thump swelled into anger simmering in my chest. “Mr. MacKinnon? You’ve met Andrew?”
Charlie swallowed and kicked his foot back and forth, ball secured to his hip with one hand. “Oh. Yeah. I just told you. Mom knows him. And we’ve spent a little time together. His kids are fun. He has two...”
Any further words receded into the background as a rush of heat spread throughout my body. My fingernails dug into my palms, and the need to move—anywhere but my current location—swamped me.
“Where did he go, Charlie! Which way did he go?” I gripped Charlie by the shoulder, shaking him with each word.
“No idea, Dad! I saw him walk—”
Before I did or said anything else to scare Charlie, I let go and stormed out of the yard in the direction he pointed. The Walloon Lake area was too big to investigate on foot, but I knew Andrew’s car. If he was staying on one of the surrounding smaller streets near us, I’d find him. But as the minutes passed with nothing to show for my search, my mind drifted to Doc and her calming techniques. Breathe in, breathe out. One, two, three. Again. Breathe in, breathe out. One, two, three. The chill in the air rolling in off the lake stung my nose, much like the dust in Afghanistan. I had to keep myself from going back there...
My phone buzzed in my pocket. A message from Charlie: Please come home. I’m sorry.
Thank you. I’ll be right back. Charlie didn’t mean to, but he’d just helped keep me here, in the now. And he hadn’t done anything wrong. Even though I wanted to get answers to my questions—what was Andrew doing here, how did Sadie and Andrew know one another, and did he know Sadie and I had a connection? They’d have to wait.
Breathe in, breathe out. One, two, three.
. . . . .
Charlie was waiting for me on the side stoop when I arrived, shoulders slumped, gaze directed at the ground. As I approached, he lifted his head.
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
“For what?”
“For making you angry.”
I sat next to him on the cool concrete, lining my thigh up against his. A few more deep breaths, and I’d be fine. “Did you think what you were going to say would make me angry?”
“No.”
“Then how is it your fault?”
“It just is.”
I turned toward Charlie. “I’m not the best Dad all the time. I get angry too quickly, and I’m trying to work through my anger—” Breathe in, breathe out. One, two, three.
“I know you are, Dad.” Charlie laid his head against my shoulder.
“But this wasn’t your fault. Okay? I have things I need to speak to your mom about. That’s all.” My arm wound around his shoulder, pulling him close. It was one thing to be angry with Sadie but another to be angry with him. And I wasn’t. But I’d made him feel like I was.
“But what about Mr. MacKinnon? Do you know him? You never answered me before.” Charlie’s eyes sparkled in the late afternoon sun.
“I do.”
“Oh.”
“And I thought he was a friend. Now, I’m not so sure.”
Charlie tilted his head and squinted at me. “So why was he talking to Mom?”
“I’m not sure. Do you have an idea?”
A flush moved up Charlie’s neck into his face, and he pulled away. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked. Maybe I didn’t want to hear the details. “Charlie?”
“You’re going to get mad.”
Doc’s voice echoed in my head. “Your family is here to help you. Use them when you can, Theo.”
Before I second-guessed myself, I took Charlie’s hand in mine and held it up to my chest, just over my heart. “I won’t get mad if you help me, Charlie.”
“What do you mean?”
“Here. Keep hold of my hand even if my breathing changes. I’m going to focus on something cool while you tell me whatever it is you want to say, okay?” Would this work? Who knew? But it couldn’t hurt.
“Okay.” He wriggled his fingers against my chest. “What are you focusing on?”
With my eyes closed, I conjured a calming image. Last summer. A hike on the old trail that wound around the lake. “Remember our epic hikes? To the beach and back? Wading in the Bear River? And that one day, when we got really far, you remember what you did?” I smiled at the memory. “You ripped your clothes off and jumped into the raging river and—”
“She kissed him, Dad. Mom kissed Mr. MacKinnon.”
Breathe in, breathe out. One, two, three.
Chapter 26: Sadie
“Mom what are you doing here?” I exited the porch, and the screen door slammed shut behind me, causing her to wince at the noise she’d always despised. Sadly, a rush of pleasure coursed through me for one moment, followed by a surge of guilt.
Mom had opened her car door but still yanked at the seat belt, which had somehow wound its way through her purse strap and back again. “Well, Sadie,” she said, without looking at me, “I thought you might want the company.”
“But who told you we were here?” I had no intention of letting the issue go.
“The receptionist at your office, of course. Who else would know? Who else would tell me?”
Suppressing an urge to get angry and slam the door shut, I gripped the edge of it. Was she serious? I thought I’d been clear when I informed the folks at work I’d be taking a family vacation. For my family. But the woman had driven close to seven hours to get here, no matter having endured twenty-seven hours of labor for my sake (or so she claimed), so I couldn’t just send her home.
“Well, you can have one of the empty rooms upstairs or the one in the basement. Your choice.” An overstuffed suitcase begged to be set free from the rear of the car, and I placed it on the pocked driveway.
“Which room is available upstairs?”
“The yellow one toward the front of the house. It’s the one with the twin beds and the trundle, and it’s got a fan. Don’t be surprised if Charlie wants to bunk in with you, though.” Th
e next suitcase I grasped was lighter, but why had Mom packed two entire suitcases? How long did she plan on staying with us? We had less than two weeks to go here.
“That’s fine. I don’t mind Charlie.” She pulled her purse to her chest and slammed the rear door of the car, turning her head to take in the surroundings. It had been a few years since we’d invited Mom up to stay with us. Her presence usually meant aggravation for me, which in turn meant aggravation for everyone else. What did she see when she looked at the cottage, the lake, the trees? Was it an idyllic space like we’d come to love, or was it something more feral and threatening? Based on our interactions here in the past, I’d have chosen the latter as her answer. The more I thought about my mother, the more my head throbbed at the spot where I’d hit it. Mom had to get settled, soon.
. . . . .
The next few hours passed smoothly as I dusted off most of Mom’s micromanaging and assigned her the task of playing with Lexie and Delia. Charlie was with Theo, and Lena took a trip to the general store for a few perishables. At dinner, after I had placed the baked chicken, potatoes, and fresh veggies into the center of the counter for plating up, my mother turned to grab a bowl and then filled it with leftover soup from the fridge.
“You don’t mind, do you?” My shock escalated as she placed the bowl in the microwave and pressed the start button. Was my cooking not good enough? As an uninvited guest, shouldn’t she be grateful I hadn’t sent her packing when she arrived? Before I answered, she jumped in again. “And where’s Theo?”
He’d opted out of sitting with us for dinner, offering no explanation, and Lena, who had chosen to stay, regarded me with sympathy in her eyes. We hadn’t had time to speak much, but I was grateful for her presence and her apparent understanding and placed her into the category of temporary ally. Her calming presence made me sorry about my rush to judge her the first night, although I had no plans on telling her. I flickered a quick smile in Lena’s direction and stabbed my fork into my chicken; the poultry was clearly done, and so was I.
After the dinner dishes had been put away and Lena had gone home, I asked Mom to take care of the kids so Theo and I could cross the street and sit by the water. The time had come to purge myself, and a bench near the lake might provide the comfortable yet neutral setting I wanted. The old teak seat wasn’t right on the shore, but it set close enough to enjoy the not-quite-frigid breeze wafting off the lake and to watch the late evening waves make their marks on the beach. The journey only used up four minutes on the clock, but by the time we reached the bench, Theo slumped onto the seat and leaned his head back, as if the walk had exhausted him.
Choosing to focus on the water’s wake and the slow descent of the sun over the horizon, I didn’t speak right away. Signs of the approaching evening filled the air, and months from now, my voice would compete against those of the crickets. But this was November, and most insects had taken shelter for the winter. The silence stretching between Theo and me became deafening, and I knew, in that instant, Theo had to suspect something or had to be questioning the mounting tension from the last couple months. Why he hadn’t said something confounded me. Was he trying to push it from his mind and bury his head under the pillow?
In the buzzing quiet of my happy place, I asked myself, what is the best way to tell a man you used to love that you want to be free to love someone else?
I thought back to my conversation with Jackie, who encouraged me to write up my initial encounter. That had been months before, when the idea of loving anyone other than Theo was someone else’s story, not mine. A lump rose in my throat, and I swallowed it, almost choking myself in the process.
In the end, under the eggplant-colored sky, I revealed almost everything to Theo. That I’d met Andrew, the state of heart, my talk to Kate. He was the third person to whom I told the story when he should have been the first. Tears welled up in my eyes as I concluded my litany of words, adding the reason I had fallen at the library was because Andrew MacKinnon happened to be Pickles Martin’s son and—even worse—he had stopped by the cottage that afternoon.
My heart ached with my last admission, and if Theo had turned to me with fury and rage—even hate—written across his face, I would have understood. But he didn’t. Theo’s lack of response, his complete apathy, gutted my soul. I sat still, listening to the rush of blood in my ears as he said, and did, nothing. Finally, my resolve broke. “Say something.”
His troubled gaze met mine. “I...I don’t know what to say.” Another turn of his head dismissed me and my problem. His viewpoint was now of the water—calm, strong, even—unlike our relationship.
We sat there in a thick, suffocating silence, but if I walked away, we would have solved nothing. “Theo?”
“Anything I say isn’t going to make this any better.” He didn’t meet my gaze this time.
“I know. But what do you think?” Willing myself not to vomit from the pain in my gut, I placed my shaking fingers under my thighs to steady them and took a deep breath through my nose.
“What I think? What I think is the woman I loved is attracted to another man, and the thought makes me feel fucking awful. I think I don’t know you anymore, and I wonder when you changed. I think I’m fucking tired, and I’m fucking angry this happened. That you let it happen.”
“I didn’t let anything happen! It just happened. I—”
“Seriously? Didn’t let it happen?” Theo’s cheeks blazed pink in the dim light of the streetlamp, and his fingernails dug into the wood of the bench. “Did you kiss him? Have you fucked him?”
His anger infuriated me, and I rose to my feet. “No and no. And even if I did, we’re not married anymore, haven’t you noticed? You live with us because you need us, because you need the help. But we’re not an us. We’re not what we once were. We aren’t, and you know it.”
Theo took a breath through his nose. “Technically, that is true. But what if I’m not ready to let you go?”
What? Why the flip-flopping of hearts? A year ago, I was ready to help him heal, to stay no matter what, but he fast forwarded the plan to dissolve. I didn’t—
“Do you think I even look at other women?”
Against my thigh, I clenched my fists. “You should be, dammit! If we’re not together, and we’re clearly not, then why aren’t you?”
It took Theo a while to answer, and I willed every muscle to unknot, every line of tension to ease, before the conversation took a complete turn for the worse.
“I don’t know, Sadie. I don’t know. Fear? Maybe I’m afraid of hurting another woman like I hurt you. Or I’m afraid I won’t find anyone. Or I’m afraid after everything is said and done, I was wrong, and I still love you.”
Oh God. An excruciating pain radiated throughout my entire body, stabbing my heart. “You...you can’t say that now and expect me to pick up where we left off—”
He shook his head. “That’s true. But tell me. Where’d you find him? And how’d you find him?”
I fell back into the seat, wanting to be anywhere but there, near the water, having that conversation, and I tried to explain myself. “I can’t...one conversation at the grocery store...I can’t explain it, I just found him. This PTSD is hard on you, but it’s hard on me, too. I thought I could live with you in the house, but everything’s different. Don’t tell me you didn’t recognize we haven’t been the same.”
He faced me again. “What do you mean?”
“We’re not the same couple we were when we got married. We’re not even the same couple who decided to split up and live together! We’ve changed.”
“So you just decide to find whatever it is you’re looking for elsewhere?” Theo rolled his eyes and looked out over the water again.
“You make no sense, Theo. We’re separate
d, so I can go look elsewhere if I want. But this is a relationship, even if it’s unconventional. There are two of us in it. It worked for a few months, but it’s not working now. Not for me at least.” I tugged on his sleeve, wishing to look at the face I used to read so easily.
“I’m not sure that’s true. We haven’t changed that much.”
My anger blazed, and I rose from my seat again, staring down at Theo with a glare I hoped would fluster him. We’d had heated conversations like this in the past, and I usually found myself agitated and furious at how I ended up with someone so hard-headed and literal, someone who wasn’t willing to consider my perspective at times.
“Theo, it’s not always about you, is it? I’m trying hard not to be selfish here, but I just tore open my heart, the heart that has been twisted inside and out over the last couple months, and now we’re back to you and what you think or don’t. As if I don’t have the right to anything besides what you condone. I’m sorry you have this, this, PTSD. I’m sorry about everything that happened to you. I’m sorry I’ve been the way I have been.” Sobs overtook me. “But yes, something’s not right and even though I’m fucking up big time, there might be a reason that hinges partially on you. Your future health and happiness are important, but mine are too.”
Nothing more needed to be said, so I stood from the bench and walked away.
. . . . .
One of the persons most closely involved in my story finally knew the details, and in a way, a great relief settled on me, allowing me to sleep that night. But the next morning, I stumbled out of bed and opened the bedroom door. The cushions in the living room sat empty. The bathroom stood cold and dry. A still-fluffy pillow, a smooth comforter, and cool sheets greeted me in Theo’s room; he hadn’t slept in his bed, and reality hit me. Perhaps I deserved this treatment—him leaving us—after walking out of the argument, but the fact still stung more than I thought it would.
Rewrite the Stars Page 18