Chapter 26
Waylen pulled into the post office, squinting. Was that Agathe?
He smiled, but his heart felt heavy. She was going through the exact same thing that he had gone through not that long ago. The pain and the long, hard days, and the heaviness that settled over him, the darkness too, were way too fresh.
He probably would never forget watching his beloved wife slowly leave him. Some days, she knew him, some days she didn’t, and he wasn’t sure which days were harder.
All the time, he wanted to cry, and he had never been a crier.
He had been totally and completely in love with his wife and hadn’t ever looked at another woman, not ever. Now that she was gone, even now, more than a year later, it was hard to get into the idea that he was free to look if he wanted to. He had trained himself for so long to not.
And then Agathe had walked into the support group meeting, just as he was about to quit going. He didn’t need it anymore, and while he felt like his wisdom and experience was helpful, it could also be discouraging, because he had spent so long...he didn’t want to say waiting for his wife to die, but that’s kind of how it was.
Since she wasn’t herself anymore, they didn’t have a husband-wife relationship. Once she got to the point where she no longer knew who he was ever, the days were long, hard to fill, and it was hard for him not to...wish that things would hurry along. He couldn’t admit that to just anyone, because people who had never been there wouldn’t understand.
Not that he wanted to lose her, because he didn’t, but he already had. The shell that was her body didn’t contain the woman he loved. He couldn’t tell anyone what the medical terminology was, he just knew that for the last several years he took care of his wife, it wasn’t really his wife.
But it was her body, and he had pledged his life to her; whether she was inside that shell, or whether she wasn’t, the only thing he could do was to keep his vows.
Now, his eyes had been taken by Agathe, but...she had all these years of agony ahead of her. And he wasn’t getting any younger. But he also knew, from the years that he’d spent alive on the earth, that he was blessed to have had such a beautiful marriage the first time around. Most people were not blessed with one marriage like he had, let alone two. And yet he felt like he could have a second one with Agathe.
The problem was, she wasn’t ready and wasn’t going to be for a long time, so he had determined to be a friend to her.
That was harder than it seemed. The line between friends and more got blurry at times, and while he wanted to be her shoulder to cry on, her rock, the person who helped her when she needed it, he couldn’t keep his emotions from getting involved. At his age, he would have thought that he wouldn’t have had trouble with that type of thing, but he definitely wanted to be more than friends.
Shoving all those thoughts aside, he parked in a spot near her, and she didn’t even seem to notice. She was just staring at her phone, looking like she was having a panic attack in place.
He opened his door and got out and took the two strides to her, closing the distance between them and putting a hand on her shoulder.
“Agathe? Are you okay?”
She didn’t flinch at the touch of his hand, but at his voice, her head jerked up.
“Waylen!” she said, like she had been on a deserted island for thirty years and he had just come to rescue her. “Oh my goodness. I am so glad to see you. I’ve lost my husband. He has the car!” She ended that last sentence on a wail, and he knew exactly how panicked she was.
“Hold up. Start from the beginning. Where was he going?”
“Right there.” She pointed to the drugstore across the parking lot. “He dropped me off at the post office, he was supposed to go through the drive-through window and come right back. He wasn’t going to be gone but three minutes, five tops. I ended up talking for ten. I didn’t mean to, but there was the fire at the Clybornes—”
“I know. Sometimes you just get caught up in conversation.” Especially when a person was stuck at home, caring for someone who didn’t recognize them. “So it was ten minutes that he’s been gone?”
“I must’ve been standing here for five. So fifteen minutes.”
“All right. I’ll call the police.”
“I don’t want him to be in trouble. He hasn’t done anything wrong.” She lowered her voice. “At least not yet.”
It had that tone in it that said that she was well aware that in the state that he was in, he could cause all kinds of problems.
“I didn’t mean to give him the keys. I mean, I didn’t want to. But he was...he was himself!”
He patted her shoulder. Totally understanding. As his wife slowly left him, the few times that she was herself, he didn’t want to do anything that might cause an argument and turn her into the person that he didn’t know. He could well imagine Agathe being the same. Jim being all kind, like he always had been, and her not wanting to rock the boat.
It might be time for him to go to a home, but Agathe was probably just like him and wouldn’t want to give the care of the person she pledged her life to to someone else. Not while there was still breath in her body and the ability for her to do it.
Not that it was wrong for anyone else to make that choice, it just wasn’t a choice that he could make. He had said he would take care of his wife in sickness and health, and he would do everything in his power to keep that vow.
He could imagine Agathe felt the same.
He had dialed 911, and the operator picked up. He briefly explained what was going on, and she said she would dispatch a trooper who was in the area as well as alert local authorities. They would be watching out for the car, and someone would find him, she assured him.
He thanked her and then hung up. “They are looking for him now. If you want, you and I can look for him, too.”
“Oh. Do you mind? I don’t want to keep you from anything if you’re busy.”
“I’m retired. My whole day stretches out in front of me, and I can do whatever I want to.” He was busier now that he was retired than he had been before, although in the months after his wife died, he had become somewhat of a recluse. He supposed that was normal. He was...not shocked that she died, it was just hard to face the fact that she was never getting better, never coming back. That he was alone. Permanently.
Except, he wasn’t, or he didn’t need to be. He could find another woman. Not just anyone, someone with whom he had the opportunity to have a second chance at love. It seemed a little selfish since his first chance had gone so well, but when Agathe walked in, he knew that she was the one.
But sometimes when a man saw a woman he knew he wanted, it wasn’t the right time.
He didn’t want to covet another man’s wife, and he wasn’t sure where the line was there between right and wrong. He had wondered that at times himself when he was taking care of his own wife, who was his wife, of course, but her mind wasn’t there. She wasn’t being a wife to him, and he had been lonely, sad, and longed for the companionship that a wife provided.
He hadn’t talked about that to anyone, not even at the support group. And definitely not to Agathe. He supposed the vows, “as long as you both shall live,” said it all. Even though he wanted to split hairs and make it right to find companionship somewhere else.
He would never encourage her to break her vows or do something that she was uncomfortable with. She wouldn’t be the woman he admired if she was willing to do so.
But since he first started talking to her, no other women came close to being what she was, and he had decided that it might be better for him, even though he had a limited amount of time left, to wait for the right one or not have one at all.
Of course, he assumed that she felt the same way about him that he felt about her, which he did not want to talk to her about, because that could open a can of worms that they might never get closed.
Since he’d managed to make it through his entire life without once committing adultery or fornication, he didn’t want to start when he was the age that he was now.
He was closer to meeting his Maker than he ever was before, and he wanted sin to be behind him.
So for now, he would help her find her husband—he had confidence her husband would be found—and he would support her however he needed to, even if that meant just being friends.