Secrets from a Happy Marriage

by Maisey Yates

  She had taken this place where she was beginning to rebuild herself, bit by bit, and she had reminded her that wherever she went in Sunset Bay...someone would know. And someone would have an opinion.

  And in some cases, would be absolutely and completely bound to making her feel bad.

  And maybe for every five of them there would be a Laura.

  But she would definitely be rarer than those who came to point and laugh at her failure.

  Because it wasn’t as gratifying to try to lift someone up as it was to kick them while they were down.

  “I don’t know what I would’ve done,” Anna said suddenly.

  Rachel zipped up her coat, stuffing her hands in her pockets, and continued walking beside her. “If what? If Laura hadn’t of come out there? No worries. I was going to punch her in the face.”

  “No. Not that.” Anna kept on walking, the mist stinging her face. But she didn’t mind. It gave her some relief from the stinging in her chest.

  “What if it wasn’t me?” Anna asked. “What if it had been one of the worship pastor’s wives? What if it was some other woman at the church? It has been. Over the years it has been. I might not have been Hannah, but I was never Laura for them, either. It was easy for me to just turn away and pretend it didn’t happen. For me...partly because I was afraid that if I would have let myself speak to someone who had gotten out of their marriage I would have started thinking about my own. And I put that off for as many years as I could. Trust me on that.” She cleared her throat. “I feel alone. And it so easy for me to be upset, but I wouldn’t have been a better person. I just wouldn’t have been.”

  “You don’t know that,” Rachel said.

  “No,” Anna said. “I do. I do. And the bottom line is whatever motivates someone like Hannah, it’s not actually just to make me feel bad. She needs to hold that position that she does because...if she doesn’t maybe her life will break apart.”

  “Or maybe,” Rachel said, grabbing hold of Anna’s arm as the path ended, turning into sand, “she’s a bitch.”

  Anna laughed. “I mean, maybe that, too. But... I don’t know. This is the problem. I spent a whole lot of time without any perspective at all, and now... I’m so desperate for people to try and see deeply into what I did that I’m trying to see more in what everyone is and does.”

  “Yeah, being empathetic isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”

  “I don’t have the energy for it,” Anna said. “I just want to be angry. I can’t even have that.”

  “Maybe that’s that personal growth I’m always hearing about? I’ve been told that I am experiencing an enormous amount of that.”

  “No way,” Anna said.

  “Not since Jacob died. But when he was sick. I’m extra strong, Anna. That’s what I hear. God gave him to me because I’m extra strong.”

  “That’s...”

  “Not fair? Makes him sound like a burden? Makes it sound like God did something to us? Yeah.” Rachel laughed, the husky sound barely rising up over the waves. “People say stupid things even when they mean well. But I don’t think Hannah meant well. And that was beyond stupid. It was cruel. And you didn’t deserve that.” Rachel’s voice broke. “I’m sorry for what I said to you. Because it was about my feelings. Not yours.”

  “I imagine that you’re even more out of empathy than I am.” The constant barrage of idiocy Rachel must have received over the years... Anna couldn’t imagine how tired she was.

  Well-meaning might not cut deep like mean, but it wore you down like a rock being slammed by the waves.

  “Maybe,” Rachel said. “But I shouldn’t have been out of empathy for you.”

  “I can’t get away from this feeling,” Anna said. “That what I did was the ugliest thing someone could do. Because somehow I put it all out of my head when I was in it. When it was me, it seemed like there were a thousand different ways to justify it. When it was just me and Micahel, I could pretend the rest of the world—the church, Thomas, you and mom—didn’t exist, not in our world. And then...now it’s like I see everything real. Not two sections of my life, but one life. It all crashed together and the wreckage is so bad. And I realized that I’m exactly like our dad.”

  “Not exactly,” Rachel said.

  A laugh burst out of Anna, in spite of herself. “Just a little bit?”

  “No. It’s... Dad toyed with Mom for years. Got her pregnant with me, left, came back and got her pregnant with you, and then left again. He—he messed around for years. And he left her devastated and with two children. And I don’t think your husband is devastated. And therein lies the problem. The problem with all of this. I kept comparing you and your marriage to me and Jacob. But Jacob loved me. And I loved him. And losing him has left a hole in what I used to be because we were one person. Our souls were one. Losing him is changing the shape of me. Is it like that with Thomas? I don’t think it is. I watched him up there in front of the whole church like I was having an out-of-body experience. I watched him talk about you leaving him, and I didn’t feel like he was a man overwhelmed by grief. I felt like he was a man doing damage control. I know what it’s like to lose your other half. Damage control is the furthest thing from your mind.”

  They let silence lapse between them, the waves battering the shore.

  “I can’t go back and change it,” Anna said. “And I don’t think I would. But that doesn’t make it easy.”

  “You know, all that stupid stuff that people say to me, all that yelling that Hannah did to you... It’s all people just trying to explain life in easy, neat ways. Because we don’t want to believe that it’s messy and painful and sometimes good men die for no reason.”

  Rachel took her hands out of her pockets and pushed her windblown hair out of her face before she continued. “They want to believe I’m stronger, and special, to be able to handle such a tragedy, because they want to believe that they aren’t. And because of that they’ll be spared. They’re not going to watch their husband waste away in front of them.”

  She toed at the pile of black, tan and gray rocks piled in a line in the sand. Dropped there by the sea, looking ordered and perfect in their randomness. Like a painting, when they were really just deposited there by water without care at all.

  “They want to believe,” Rachel said, “like Hannah clearly does, that no man would ever appear and treat them better than their husband, seduce them away. They want to believe that there’s a weakness in you that isn’t in them, because it’s how they sleep at night. The same way they want to believe that there’s a strength in me that God won’t find in them. So maybe he won’t test their faith.”

  Anna looked up at the hill, at the lighthouse. It was automated now, not dependent on three lightkeepers to stay up all night and keep it burning. It was just there. Eight beams of light turning in a slow circle.

  Guiding those out at sea right on back home.

  “So,” Anna said slowly, “between us, we’re Job and Judas. And people are desperate to believe they could never be either one.”

  “Exactly. Not righteous enough to be tested, not weak enough to betray.”

  “If only it were that simple.”

  “The thing is, any of us could be either one, depending on the circumstances. We’re all so much weaker and so much stronger than we think.”

  Anna hoped so. Because her weakness had been tested already and she needed some of that strength Rachel seemed to believe existed in everyone to be found somewhere inside her. “I’m going to need a lot more strength than I’ve got right now to get through this.”

  She wondered if Rachel would ask if she was going to leave. She almost hoped she would. So they could discuss it. So Anna could sort through that thought and decide what she wanted.

  The problem was, she wasn’t sure she wanted to go.

  And if her sister did suggest it...

  But
she didn’t.

  “I got asked on a date,” Rachel said.

  Anna looked at her, shocked by that. “A date?”

  “Yes.” She paused. “And I understand. Why Michael making you feel pretty stopped the world for you. I’ve never thought of Mark that way at all. I—I still don’t. And even then his attention felt good because I haven’t had anything like that in ages. And knowing a random guy could think I was pretty, well...”

  Anna nodded, her heart clenching tight. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “It’s like you said. You were afraid to look too deeply at what you missed, at what you didn’t have because it would make you discontent. I didn’t have a choice but to decide my life was fine. Jacob wasn’t doing anything to me. Him being sick wasn’t about me, it was about him. Of course, it was hard. Of course, I missed what we couldn’t have anymore. Of course, I wished... Of course, I wished we could just...have a miracle. Or an alternate reality. Something where he wasn’t sick. But I could never ever let myself wish for a different life for me. It wouldn’t have been fair.”

  Anna touched her sister’s arm. “It’s okay if you wanted one sometimes, though. It doesn’t mean you didn’t love him.”

  Tears slipped down Rachel’s cheeks and she didn’t have a chance to brush them away before the wind carried them off for her.

  “Are you going to...? Are you going to go?” Anna asked.

  “I can’t go,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “He hasn’t been...gone long enough, surely.”

  “What’s long enough?”

  “I don’t know,” Rachel said. “I feel like there can’t be a long enough. For twenty years of marriage? Twenty great years?”

  “Do you want to go?”

  “I don’t... I mean... It wasn’t like him asking me was exciting because of who it was. But it was nice to have someone notice me. Actually me.”

  Anna made an understanding sound in the back of her throat. “I mean, maybe I’m not the person you should ask, though. About the appropriate time to start dating a new man. Since I don’t exactly have a grasp on that.”

  The laugh that Rachel let out went over the waves this time, a short, sharp burst, followed by a string of laughter. She put her hand on her stomach, doubling over.

  And then Anna couldn’t help but laugh, too. Until the tears were falling down her face, because it was either laugh or cry.

  And out here, under the low-hanging sky, the mist all around them, the light from that lighthouse still cut through. And maybe that’s what this was. Maybe it was what they needed.

  There was no one here to see that they were laughing, anyway. At the sharp, painful, absurd things. There was nothing to do but laugh, because it was either that or cry forever. And right now, Anna was doing both.

  Without judgment.

  With her sister.

  “How did we end up here?” Rachel asked when their laughter had died down.

  “I don’t know. It definitely wasn’t my plan when I was a little girl. My MASH game said that I was going to have one husband and live in a shoe in Italy. Not one husband, one lover and end up in my childhood home in Oregon.”

  “Yeah, I was supposed to have a Lamborghini,” Rachel said. “That didn’t pan out, either.”

  Silence fell again and Anna thought about her sister’s date. Yeah, maybe it seemed soon, but a date wasn’t marriage. And she knew that Rachel had been a caregiving wife in the end, and that her role had been different than what it originally was. Maybe she needed a little romance. Not love, but romance.

  “You should go out with him if you want to. There’s not a time. I mean, maybe you shouldn’t go getting married again yet...”

  “I don’t want to get married. I don’t even want to fall in love. I don’t want to have feelings. I’d like to scoop them out of my chest with a spoon. But... I don’t know, going on a dinner date with someone who thinks I’m pretty doesn’t sound terrible. Maybe in another month.”

  “Maybe. That makes sense. You told me... You told me that was part of your marriage that you didn’t have anymore. It makes sense you would be ready for that first.”

  “Sex? Oh, I am not there yet.” She paused. “Well, maybe I’m a little bit getting there.”

  “Do you want to hear a secret?” Anna asked.

  “In the spirit of sharing, I suppose so.”

  “Michael was the best sex I’ve ever had. And sometimes, when I regret that everything fell apart around me... I just think of that. Because I didn’t know it could be that good. Fourteen years with the same man, and I didn’t know it could be that good.”

  “And that is something else Thomas has to answer for. Because I’ve had some good sex, Anna.”

  “Well, I hadn’t. Not like that.” Her mouth twitched. “I guess... I guess that’s not supposed to be very important. I mean...”

  “But it is,” Rachel said. “And I say that as someone who couldn’t have it in their marriage for quite a while. We did have it. Real intimacy. And we took pleasure in each other. And I loved being with him. It mattered because it was something only we shared, and something only we wanted to share with each other. It’s so much harder when you don’t have that. If you never did. We spent so many years taking it for granted, and then clinging to it while it lasted. And then like seasons of life, we let it go, and we did it together. We held the memory. Because it wasn’t my life and his. It was ours.”

  Anna couldn’t grasp the concept. Not in a tangible way. “We were just never like that. I think we wanted to be. I think in the beginning...even he wanted to be. The thing is, it just didn’t ever come together. I don’t know if it was getting married young and growing in different directions or...what.”

  “You don’t have to know,” she said. “The marriage isn’t your burden anymore. Sure, you have all this divorce stuff. But...the marriage is gone. You could sift through the wreckage, but it won’t put it back together now. You don’t have to know what caused it.”

  She blinked, feeling like she had just been staring at a web of knots and tangles that she’d been trying to sort out for so long she was strained with the effort of it. And suddenly, she realized she could put it down.

  That was the gift, she supposed. If you decided to throw something away and start over...you didn’t have anything left to untangle.

  The only knots left to go through were inside of herself.

  Because their lives were separate, and she could begin again from there.

  Those knots, though—those she couldn’t leave alone. Because they came with her.

  “Thank you,” Anna said.

  “For what?”

  “For trying to understand me, even though it’s hard.”

  “It’s really not all that hard,” she said. “The further I get into examining everything in my life, the more I feel like we’re a lot more alike than I realized.”

  “Well, it means everything to me.”

  “To me, too,” Rachel said.

  They turned and walked back up the path, heading toward the Captain’s House. Their mom would be wondering where they’d gotten to, and that made Anna smile slightly.

  That was the gift of being home.

  There were definitely downsides to it as well, but the gift was that sense that any moment she could step backward in time. Find a simpler version of herself and maybe start from there, instead of contending with this complicated adult version of herself that she had never aspired to be.

  Wendy didn’t ask where they’d been, but as they worked on dessert, Anna turned to her mother.

  “What happens if you don’t end up with the perfect life you dreamed of?”

  Wendy blinked. “You either change your life, or find a new version of perfect.”

  “Is that what you did?”

  Her mom faltered. “
Yes. I found a new version of perfect. And I never looked back. This place, you girls and all the years since became my dream. At first it seemed impossible. When I came here with nothing—nothing but a dream for what this place might become. But gradually... I fell in love with this house, I fell in love with being your mother, and then what I’d lost didn’t seemed to matter so much.”

  Michael was gone. Thomas was gone, and her love for him had faded a long time ago. There was no one left for Anna to love but her family and herself. And no life for her to love but the one she would go and make.

  So she supposed she would have to start making something.

  16

  It’s really a terrible thing to fall in love. You can forget who you are, thinking so much about another person.

  —FROM THE DIARY OF SUSAN BRIGHT, AUGUST 1961

  EMMA

  Emma had spent her shift in a state of discomfort, because she had chosen her outfit based on what she wanted to wear to have dinner with Luke that night, and not based on practicality.

  She had on flat shoes because she wasn’t that much of a martyr to beauty, but she was wearing a pair of tight high-waisted jeans and a crop top, which made maneuvering around for the job difficult. And her waist was beginning to feel constricted beyond the point of reason.

  They had spoken a little. A few stolen conversations with him during lunch delivery.

  They’d kept it light, not getting into details about their lives, but mostly talking about the people in the town, TV shows and other ridiculous things.

  She liked him so much more than she’d imagined she even could.

  When the to-go order came in at closing time, Luke had placed it for two. She didn’t even have to make her own order. Which made it feel much more like a date than the initial request had been.

  He had paid over the phone, and she beat a hasty retreat as soon as the clock rolled over and her shift was finished, the bag of food in hand as she scurried across the street to the garage.

  He was standing there by the bench and stools that he had eaten at yesterday, but his hands were clean, and the surface itself was entirely clear, with a cloth set over the workbench itself.