Chapter 7
Seven
D awn had barely lightened the sky the next day as Lauren walked out of her house and headed toward the cliff toward the path that led to Pebble Beach.
This was her favorite time of day. She’d slept better than she had in a while, although still not well. And she figured getting up and taking a walk would be good for her mental state and her physical health.
Interestingly, as she walked down the trail, she heard footsteps behind her and turned to look.
The bookshop owner had already spotted her and waved as soon as she turned around.
He wore jogging shorts and a muscle shirt, seeming oblivious to the chill of the morning. Or maybe he anticipated warming up soon, as it looked like he was going for a jog.
“Hey there, neighbor. I didn’t expect to see you here this morning.
It’s pretty early,” he said as she debated about turning around and continuing on.
She decided against it. It seemed rude, and she was almost certain they would not be going at the same pace, so she wasn’t worried about having to spend her walk beside him.
“This is my favorite time of day,” she said honestly, moving forward as soon as he had reached her. “ I’m Lauren.”
She didn’t want to hang around talking to him any more than she had to.
He seemed like a nice guy, but she wasn’t looking for male friendships and definitely not with single men who seemed to be unattached and possibly looking.
She was making an assumption there, but any man who looked that good was almost certainly used to having a woman on his arm, if not two or three.
She was not interested in a man who didn’t know how to stay true to one woman.
One more check in the positive column for her husband.
He might not have paid a whole lot of attention to her, but at least he’d been faithful.
And she never worried about it. Because that’s just the way he was.
She didn’t think he could manage two women at once.
He’d say he could barely manage the woman he had, and while he meant it as a joke, it was very close to the truth.
Regardless, she wasn’t here to think about Cannon either. She was here to…focus on the future, look on the bright side, train her brain to think about the good things, because she didn’t want to be stuck in the sad and lonely and mourning loop forever. She wanted to get out of it.
“Matteo,” he said, offering his name without offering his hand. “This is the best time to run. I’m from the south, and down there, if you don’t run early, forget about it. After about eight o’clock, it’s too hot to do anything.”
“The South. Texas?” she asked, figuring that the South was a pretty big area.
“South Carolina. So, maybe not as hot as Texas. Although I spent my fair share of time there too.”
He’d traveled. Interesting. She’d gone from here to Cincinnati and back.
That was the extent of her traveling. That was something else that she’d always wanted to do, although she would have preferred to have children with her when she did it.
She had been content to save their money and hold off on taking any trips until they had kids to go with them.
But that didn’t seem like something God was going to give them, and her husband wasn’t the slightest bit interested in looking into adoption or anything else.
At least, the few times she’d asked him, he had barely glanced up from his laptop.
“I’m from here, so I know the mornings can be quite chilly in every season but summer.”
“But they’re still your favorite?”
“I suppose they’re my favorite from a nice warm room in my house during the winter and possibly the fall and the spring. But they’re my favorite outside in the summer.”
“All right. You did need to clarify.”
They hit the bottom of the beach, and she nodded at his last comment, then he said, “I’ll see you around later. Don’t forget, I owe you a couple of books. Be sure to stop by.”
“All right,” she said, waving as he did a few stretches before he started jogging down the beach.
After thinking about it for a minute, she decided to walk north instead of south. Just to go in the opposite direction that he had. She didn’t want to meet him again, and while she thought he was a nice guy, that wasn’t why she’d come here.
Still, it was interesting that she had a handsome, single—if his bare wedding ring finger had anything to say about it—man next door. She, of course, wore her ring, and she assumed that the man had seen it and understood.
Putting that encounter out of her mind, she lifted her face to the light breeze, resisted a shiver, and started heading in the opposite direction as Matteo.
It was a beautiful morning with a sunrise spreading all across the sky and making it glow with oranges and pinks and shades of blue and even green.
It was glorious, and it reminded her that God loved her still, even if it felt like she was going through a winter period of her life.
Maybe she should text her husband. At least let him know that she was okay. His last text had just asked simply,
Are you still alive?
She couldn’t tell whether he was worried or not. He was probably so busy, he barely noticed she was gone.
A nagging voice said that she wasn’t being very considerate.
She wanted to answer back that he hadn’t been very considerate for a really long time.
But the longer she walked, the more clearly she heard that voice.
She would hate it if Cannon had done this to her.
She would be frantic if she didn’t know where he was and if he wasn’t answering her texts.
Frantic and furious when she found out that he was actually okay, reading her texts, and just dismissing her out of hand.
Why had she done this to him? She was a terrible person. Only terrible people made their loved ones worry like this.
That was assuming that Cannon was worried. But what she knew of him indicated that he probably wasn’t worried, unless it had to do with his business. Still, by the time she’d walked a mile and a half and turned around, she felt guilty enough to pull her phone out of her pocket and send him a text.
I’m fine. Keep working.
Maybe that was a little bit of sarcasm. Maybe that was a little bit of her bitterness and anger coming out.
But in a text, they would just be words, not dripping with eye rolls and a you-never-pay-attention-to-me, you-really-don’t-care-about-me, I-feel-lost-in-this-marriage-like-I-don’t-matter kind of attitude.
Her phone buzzed almost immediately.
Where are you?
She bit her lip. She hadn’t wanted to start a conversation, she just felt guilty about him worrying about whether or not she was alive or dead.
She walked another half mile before she decided that she probably ought to answer him. As much as she didn’t want to.
Don’t worry about it. I’m fine. Didn’t you see my note?
I saw it, but it didn’t say where you were. Where are you?
She hadn’t even gotten three steps in before his answer came back.
She didn’t know her husband could text that fast.
Was he going to ask until she answered ?
She pressed her lips together and then figured it wouldn’t hurt.
It wasn’t like she was hiding from him. She just…
didn’t feel like he cared, and she supposed that since he’d asked at least five times where she was, maybe he did care a little.
And she could hardly complain that he didn’t care if she wouldn’t answer his question.
Raspberry Ridge, staying at my mom’s bakery. I think I might open it again.
She looked at that one for a bit before she hit send. After all, that was more information than she had intended to give him.
Come home. We can open a bakery in Cincinnati.
She had never, in all the years of marriage, done what she was about to do right now.
She typed two letters.
No.
Anytime he had expressly asked her to do something, she always replied with yes.
She had made it her mission to say yes to her husband for everything that she could.
Her husband loved Jesus, and he loved her as well, and she knew he would never ask her to do anything that was wrong or immoral.
He’d asked her to do plenty of things that she didn’t want to at times, but because he was her husband, and because she had determined that she would always say yes to him, she’d done them. And she hadn’t complained.
And he hadn’t thanked her.
She wasn’t even sure he’d noticed.
Well, he might be surprised at her answer, and then again, he might not. She wasn’t sure, and she supposed it didn’t matter. She had no intention of going back.
But wasn’t that what she was supposed to do as a submissive, obedient wife? Just because she’d left him didn’t mean that she wasn’t supposed to follow the Bible’s command.
She wanted to kick that thought out of her head.
She also wanted to argue that he had not been a biblical husband and had not loved her as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it.
He also had not dwelt with her according to knowledge, because he had made no effort to find out what she needed after her mother’s death or after losing the babies.
But there was no qualification on her command.
It didn’t say that she was to obey and be submissive as long as her husband treated her well.
Or as long as her husband upheld his end of the bargain, or as long as her husband did anything.
There was no “as long as her husband” in the Bible. The command was just that. A command…
So, knowing that, she made a decision that was very much unlike her.
She wasn’t going to listen to what the Bible said. She was going to ignore that, and ignore her husband, and ignore the fact that she was supposed to be submissive and obedient. She wasn’t going to put up with him.
Even as she made the decision, it made her exceptionally uncomfortable.
This wasn’t the right decision. She knew it, and yet…
she didn’t want to do anything else. That was the bottom line.
She wanted to be happy. She wanted to have someone who cared about her, she wanted to feel safe and secure and…
comforted. Just to have someone understand what she was going through.
Was that too much to ask?
She figured it probably was, but she wasn’t going to think about it anymore.
Because she didn’t want to feel any more guilty than she already did.
Instead, she looked at the beautiful sky, which had started to turn a deep, sober blue, and then looked out at the lake, which reflected the blue back.
Lifting her head, breathing in the bracing, fresh lake air, she focused on what she planned to do that day.
Maybe she would go pick out a couple of books, and sit between the shady grove of peach trees, and read for the day.
Or maybe she should make some cheese bread and take that over and get several books instead of just a couple.
Man cannot live on bread alone , so she probably should take some money too.
But she had a very limited supply of it, and she wasn’t sure what her husband was going to do.
So she didn’t want to spend any more than what she’d saved from her teaching job years ago.
After all, she didn’t want him saying that she had pilfered money from his business in order to leave him and start her own.
Not that she thought her husband would say anything of the kind.
He’d always given her money for whatever she needed.
They had a shared checking account, and there was always at least four figures in it and sometimes five.
She could spend it however she wanted to, and he wouldn’t ask any questions. He was a very, very generous man.
One more point in his favor.
Maybe she was the one who was wrong.