“We paid the deposit on the bistro where we’re having the rehearsal, remember? She’s reimbursing you and Dad,” Emma interrupted.
“Oh. Well. Okay.” Melanie felt bad for jumping to conclusions. She was good at that. Or so Kit liked to imply.
Kit strolled out of the kitchen, leaving his banana peel on the counter. His phone and briefcase also cluttered the space she’d cleaned before going into the garden.
Melanie tried not to be irritated, because her husband had been so patient and kind with her over the past weeks. He seemed to feel guilty for having stayed in Florida for his presentation before driving back with Charlotte and arriving a full twenty-four hours after her sister had died. Melanie couldn’t deny that his failure to be there for her had been disappointing. Yeah, his presentation had been important to him, but was it more important than being with his wife, who’d just lost her sister?
She wasn’t really buying that it was.
Once Melanie had left Tennyson’s house, she’d been engulfed in duty—signing the death certificate, making arrangements, picking out Hillary’s favorite dress to wear even though her mother had elected to have a private viewing for the family and closed casket for the general public. She’d made too many pots of coffee, selected the flowers for the casket spray, contacted the pastor, and every other detail that went with the passing of someone as young as Hillary, all the while trying to cope with the waves of intense grief that washed over her. Once Kit had arrived, he’d patted her back, offered her a shoulder, and made himself a bit more useful around the house.
Still, his messiness aggravated her.
For the next thirty minutes, she and Emma went over the checklist Marc had sent. Mostly it consisted of confirming numbers for everything from the number of honorary cake and punch servers to those who checked a vegan/gluten-free option. She and Emma chuckled over her uncle John making his own box on the RSVP titled “meat and flour” lover. Of course he’d spelled flour as flower, which made it that much more amusing, so she’d handwritten flower lover under his name on the place card.
After they’d emailed the list to Marc, Emma carried herself off to get ready for her shower and bachelorette party. Instead of a traditional bachelorette party, her friends were throwing her a cocktail lingerie shower, and then they would take limos to drag queen bingo at a local bar and grill. The theme for the evening was Getting Married’s Not a Drag.
Melanie figured Tennyson would be in her element with all the sequins, glitter, and fake boobs.
She headed toward the bedroom, intent on starting the shower so she could wash her hair. She’d asked her stylist to give her layers and highlights that made her look younger. The mission had been accomplished, but it required a good ten minutes more of style time. But the end result took years off her face. Not to mention, the upside to grieving was weight loss. She’d dropped another ten pounds and found a muted blue mother-of-the-bride dress that had a little sparkle, a plunging back, and a cute, small mermaid-ish swoosh just below her knees. And, bonus, it was a size 8. She was rather proud of how good she looked in it. She couldn’t wait for Kit to see her on Saturday. Their therapy had been going really well. It was as if her sister’s death had allowed her to open up and reveal some of the issues she’d been so quick to hide from her husband. Even though her heart still hurt over Hillary’s death, she felt like her marriage was finally on the right track.
Kit sat on the bed, still clad in his work clothes, staring at the framed picture of the family in Turks and Caicos. Something about his expression made her feel itchy.
“What? Thinking about going back? We could go for our anniversary,” she said, stopping and studying him.
“I need to talk to you,” he said.
Something in his tone made her stomach drop down to her recently manicured toenails. He sounded so serious. And sad. “What’s wrong?”
He sucked in a deep breath. “Look, I know things are really, really stressful for you these days. With the wedding and Hillary’s death, you’ve had more than you can handle.”
She walked over to the bed and sank down beside him. Taking his hand, she looked up at him with a small smile. “It’s been very stressful, but we’re getting through it. After this weekend, things will go back to normal. Hopefully.”
He gave her hand a squeeze and then released it. He set the frame on the bedside table. “So maybe I haven’t been completely honest with you in therapy. You’ve been through a lot, especially with Hillary, so I didn’t want to put any other burdens on you. You needed time to heal, and I think you’re getting there. But I have been struggling myself here lately. Work has been difficult. You know how tough it is getting the permits and lining up all the vendors. I’m up to my eyeballs.”
“I hope you haven’t avoided being honest with me because you wanted to protect me. Just because I’m grieving my sister doesn’t mean you have to hide your feelings. If work is stressing you out, you should say so.”
Kit shrugged. “Yeah, work has been tough, that and some other things. Tennyson came by today.”
Melanie rose and padded into the bathroom, her stomach still fluttering with a weird premonition. It was as if she’d seen this scenario played out before. Maybe in a dream or a movie. Something ominous. She opened the shower door and twisted the knobs to the perfect temperature combination. “You told me she came by. To repay the rehearsal venue deposit.”
Kit followed her into the large bathroom, sinking onto the upholstered ottoman in the center. She could see his toenail clippings on the oriental rug beneath the linen skirt. She’d asked him fifteen million times to collect his stupid clippings. He never did.
Her husband sat with knees spread and hands clasped. “Yeah, she brought the check.”
Melanie wanted to strip out of the sweaty T-shirt and old gym shorts, but something about the vibe in the bathroom kept her in her clothes. She and Kit hadn’t had sex since Destin. Her hopes of resuming a closer, intimate relationship afterward had flown out the window with her sister’s death. Just getting through the day and the incessant wedding preparations had been hard enough. Each night she stayed up while Kit went to bed, watching the Hallmark channel, working on crocheting the scarf she’d started for Hillary and never finished. For some reason, it seemed really important to complete the colorful accessory her sister would never wear, and weirdly enough she found great comfort in the characters on television getting their nauseating happily ever after. She did not, however, go to bed and take solace in the arms of her husband. Maybe that was what this was about.
Kit liked sex. And he’d initiated it several times over the past week or so only to have her start crying. She’d felt bad about that, but she couldn’t seem to want to be physical. It made her feel too alive, which made her feel guilty. And sad.
“So . . . ?” Melanie finally asked when he’d stared at his hands long enough.
“I think we need to consider a separation,” Kit said.
Melanie blinked. “What?”
“Just a trial separation. You know?”
At that moment, Melanie knew exactly how Wile E. Coyote felt when the wrecking ball came out of nowhere and smashed him into a cliffside. “You want to file for separation? Like, as in the first step of dissolving our marriage?”