“Jeez, Finn. Don’t be such a sexist pig. Mom works. She just doesn’t get paid. But she contributes, and that means she should get half of everything.”
Finn’s head jerked back. “Whoa … half? For staying home?”
“Dude … you are such an idiot!” Bella barked at him.
“Bella … Finn …” I rubbed my temples. “Don’t. Please. Just … don’t. We will make sure your lives are disrupted as little as possible. But you’ll feel it, the tension. For that, I want to apologize. Bella, I’m incredibly sorry you had to hear us arguing earlier. Twenty-two years of marriage doesn’t end without hurt feelings and anger. We’ll work through this, and we’ll make sure you don’t feel like you have to take sides or worry about who lives where or who gets what. Okay?”
They nodded.
Everything would be okay. The hardest part was over. We’d tell the twins later. We’d work through the anger and make the divorce amicable for the kids. Craig and I would be bound for life by our four children. Eternity was a long time to hold a grudge. I refused to do it.
Later that day, the kids headed off to be with friends. I considered calling the twins, Chase and Linc (Lincoln), but I thought it would be best to let Craig in on the conversation after he cooled off.
However, he didn’t come home that night. Only one other time in our marriage did he leave and not come home until the next day. It was when we had a fight over him losing his temper with Bella when he caught her vaping late at night in the front yard with friends. She’d just turned fifteen, and I wasn’t happy either. We simply disagreed on the appropriateness of making a huge scene in the front yard, embarrassing her in front of her friends, and waking up the neighbors and all dogs in a mile radius.
“Stop telling me how to parent my child! I don’t tell you how to discipline the kids!”
I replied with, “Take a breath, Craig.”
He sped off in his truck, spent the night with Leroy, his buddy from college, and came back the next morning with his head hanging and a much calmer demeanor.
So I wasn’t surprised when the “ending our marriage” announcement didn’t bring him back home the same night.
“Are you worried?” my friend, Amie, asked as we chatted on the phone around one in the morning. We’d been best friends since fourth grade and still lived in the same town of Epperly. She was a chiropractor and my most trusted sounding board. Asking Craig for a divorce wasn’t a surprise to her, just the timing—on the cusp of Christmas.
“He’ll come home. He’s impulsive and his ego gets bruised easily, but he loves his kids. I know he’ll want to plead his case or make his feelings known to them. I just hope it doesn’t involve throwing me under the bus. We really need to be civil about this. I refuse to let this turn into a taking sides situation.”
“That’s very mature of you. I think a lot of couples try to be mature at first, but when it’s time to discuss splitting assets and sharing kids, things get messy. You remember how it was with Travis and me. And we only had a dog and some furniture to fight over.”
I sighed, leaning back on my bed and picking at the frayed hem of my long-sleeved tee. “I’m going to move out and let him stay here in the house he paid for …”
Amie laughed.
“And when Bella goes to college, we’ll sell the house and spilt everything fifty-fifty. I won’t ask for a dime from his business, even though I helped keep it going all these years. He can keep his investments. I don’t want any of it.”
“Well, it’s an outdated food specialty store with nothing special, Elsie. You can do better. But he made some really smart investments when you first got married. I wouldn’t let that go so easily, especially since some of that money was inheritance from your grandparents. You have half a degree. Go finish it. I agree. Let Craig keep the soft cheddar cheese, rolls of turkey sausage, and tins of caramel corn. Sorry, but it’s all outdated—even for Epperly’s low standards.”
“Right?” I rolled onto my side, burying my nose in Craig’s pillow.
What happened to pheromones? I was crazy for his scent when we met. Clean, sweaty … it didn’t matter. My nose always went straight to his neck. I stole his sweatshirts just to wear his scent.
My nose scrunched as I rolled the other way onto my pillow. What happened? I was no longer attracted to anything about him. It wasn’t that I hated him … even if I hated some of the things he did or said. The passion was gone. The attraction died too.
“Amie, he didn’t see it coming. Not even a tiny glimpse or subtle vibe. The look on his face was that of complete shock. Like … how could he not sense it?”
“Because you married him. You took the for-better-or-for-worse vows. You’ve been together forever. You have four kids. It’s called insurance. You’re more relaxed when you know you have insurance on something. It doesn’t guarantee nothing will go wrong, but you’re covered. You know? Or really more like a contract. The reason you get married is so it’s not so easy to just walk away. Right?”
“No. I got married because I was raised to think you needed to get married or you’d go to Hell.”
“And you wanted all the women who used to chase your husband to back off.”
I rubbed my hand over my face. “True. Where did those days go? The days of being insanely jealous. The days of wanting to jump him the moment he walked into the house. I used to wrap my arm around him and slide my hand into his back pocket when we were in public just so other women would know he was mine. Now …” My heart constricted.
I wanted to still feel that way about him. It just wasn’t something I felt anymore, no matter how hard I tried. And I couldn’t fake it.
“Now you secretly hope other women notice him. You secretly hope he notices them. You’ve been secretly hoping—”
“He’d end it first.” I finished her sentence.
“Being faithful isn’t a flaw.”
Grunting a laugh, I stared at the ceiling fan slowly turning. Craig was always excessively warm, so I had to live in a house with the thermostat set at sixty-five degrees year-round and the bedroom ceiling fan always on.
Not that night.
I climbed out of bed and shut it off.
“I know being faithful is not a flaw, but it would have been so much easier if we would have fallen out of love together the way we fell in love together. Selfish? Yes. But it’s my truth.”
“Falling out of love is not a flaw either, Elsie. So don’t beat yourself up over your feelings that you can’t control.”
Turning on the bathroom light, I put my phone on speaker and set it on the vanity while I shed my clothes and slipped on a nightshirt. “I’ll beat myself up because I don’t have control over my guilt either. After all, it is a feeling. And it’s just how incredibly petty it sounds when I list all the things about him that drive me crazy. Like … not a single one by itself would warrant a divorce, but all of them put together are just too much.”
“You’re preaching to the choir. Travis had a million little things that drove me crazy. Squeezing the toothpaste in the middle. Using my kitchen towel to clean messes on the floor then putting it back on the counter as if I wanted to use a dirty towel to dry my clean dishes. But let’s be honest … it was the trunk that pushed me over the edge.”