Annabelle Absolutely Everything #3
I could see the tears filling his eyes. “But you have to forgive me, Annabelle. You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved. You know I don’t love her. You know this wasn’t about love.”
I shook my head, feeling the anger rise up in me.
“No, Ben. No, actually. I don’t know it’s not about love.
I don’t know what it was about, but, whatever it was, it sure as hell wasn’t devotion to me.
” I paused and took a deep breath. “And, furthermore, if you can’t talk to me about what’s bothering you, and you’re going to run off to Laura Anne every time you’re upset, then we don’t have a marriage at all. ”
He reached out and took my hand. “But we can work on that. We can go to therapy. Build our communication skills.”
I thought about Lovey, Mom, my great-grandmother and my great-aunt, those pillars of strength and stability, the women who would fight through anything to make good on their promises, the women who would do whatever it took to keep their families together.
Lovey had made some mistakes, sure. We all do.
But she had kept her family together. Holding Ben’s hand, standing across from him on the lawn, it made me sad to know that I wasn’t the woman that they were.
I wasn’t as strong or determined. I wasn’t going to ride out the hurricane and see what happened on the other side.
Because, right now, at this point, I had very little skin in the game.
No children. No joint property. No retirement funds.
No complications. I could get out now and never have to regret, years down the road, when the bomb eventually went off again—and it would; you could just see it in my family members’ faces—that I had stayed and made a life with a man who couldn’t give me what I really needed.
I sat down beside Ben on the bench and, with a final surge of love, kissed him for the last time.
I rested my head on his shoulder, the sore space in my abdomen making me tired, the anger I felt toward Ben floating off into the sky like the seeds of a wish flower.
“I just can’t, Ben. It’s not going to work. ”
He put his head in his hands, and you could tell by the way his back moved that he was crying again. “Oh, God. I can’t believe that I made the one woman I have ever loved hate me so much.”
I rubbed my hand up and down his back. “I don’t hate you,” I whispered.
And I didn’t, not really. I was mad at him.
I was humiliated that he would put me through something so publicly scandalous.
But I didn’t hate him. And that was the problem.
If I had hated him, I would have had something left to give.
But, instead, I felt largely indifferent.
But I knew where he was and what he was feeling, that devastation that had taken hold of me weeks earlier.
But I had had time to sort through these feelings, to come to terms with the fact that we were over. And he had had no idea.
“So what am I supposed to do now?” he asked.
“Get a lawyer.”
“A lawyer?”
“Yeah. You know, to handle your side of the divorce. But, don’t worry, I don’t want anything from you.”
“How can you even say that, Annabelle, when I still want everything from you?”
I shrugged sadly. “I will always love you, Ben, and this will always hurt. But, for now, I just want it to be over.”
I turned to walk into the office, feeling so stupid. How could I have been so na?ve? How could I have thought that this could possibly work out?
I stood in the hallway for a moment to catch my breath, to swallow the tears back from my throat. I put on my best fake smile and walked into Rob’s office. “Good morning, Rob!” I said sunnily.
He pointed to the chair in front of his desk, and I sat down, glancing at the built-in bookcases on either side of the ancient fireplace, wondering if there were any books in there about how to move on after a terrible divorce from a man you trusted completely who cheated on you with the woman who was your biggest fear all along.
Probably not. That seemed like a pretty specific topic. “What’s going on?”
I smiled brightly. “Oh, nothing. What do you need today?”
He gave me a sideways look. “No, I mean, what’s wrong?”
I pursed my lips together in a tight smile and rolled my eyes toward the ceiling.
I guess there’s no hiding things from a priest. I wanted to tell him, I really did.
There was something about him that just made all of your secrets want to come spilling out like stuffing from a ripped teddy bear.
But I had two more weeks at my little bed-and-breakfast haven.
I had two more weeks before I would have to leave town and face the music.
I had two more weeks of getting to be in this cozy office with this wonderful man doing a job that felt really important to me.
So, instead of falling into a pile of distress on his desk, I put my happy face back on and said, “So, what exciting adventure does the Holy Spirit have in store for us this morning?”
He gave me that look that meant he knew I was hiding something, but he was going to let me be, and said, “We’re going to go read with some kids at the elementary school.”
I said, “Amazing!” But what I thought was that story time with a bunch of precious children wasn’t exactly what I needed to take my mind off the one that I had lost only the night before.