Chapter 37 Eloise
Eloise had intended to finalize the divorce, she really had.
Maybe not the first year after he left, nor the second, but in the third year she put her foot down. She retained Laurel Summers
as her attorney. They drew up the papers and had them delivered to the latest address Gus had given her. The papers bounced
back. This happened several more times, the envelopes either returning unopened or disappearing into the void.
“I’ll get around to it, Ellie, I will,” Gus had said when Eloise confronted him over the phone. “It’s just not my biggest
priority right now.”
“And what is your biggest priority?” Eloise had asked. It was not his wife, nor their daughters, nor the money he swore he
would send but never did (he scraped by on odd jobs, so Eloise didn’t feel it was fair to push for anything).
“Finding myself,” Gus had said. “I need to know who I am before I can be there for anyone else.”
This was where he lost Eloise. She did not believe in finding yourself because she didn’t believe in losing yourself. “It’s
not fair to me, Gus,” she’d told him, delivering the words she had practiced in front of the bathroom mirror. “You’re keeping
me from moving on.”
“You want to move on?” He’d sounded so hurt by this, so crushed.
“I need to move on.”
“I still believe in us, Ellie.” There was a whimper in his voice. “I know you’re still my forever. Signing the papers would be throwing all that away.”
Eloise might have pointed out that moving out had thrown all that away. Instead, she told him they could revisit the subject
in a few months. In that time, she’d decided she wasn’t so ready to move on after all. So she’d let it drop, liking how it
felt to still be linked to him, legally if not physically.
A few years later, it had been Gus requesting that Eloise sign the papers (he’d lost the original documents she’d sent, so
he’d had new ones drawn up). Gus was engaged to a twenty-six-year-old surf instructor he’d met in Hawaii. Her name was Honour.
Eloise decided to make him wait. She wasn’t going to stall forever, but she didn’t see a need to hurry when he’d been dragging
his feet so long. It was better for the girls, she told herself, if Gus took his time before bringing another woman into their
lives. The idea that Georgiana and Rebecca might have Honour as a stepmother was enough to draw out every last speck of spite
that had been balled up inside her.
The engagement crumbled after eight weeks, when Honour told Gus she wanted to explore polygamy and hoped he would be “evolved
enough to support an open marriage.”
“An open marriage!” Gus vented to Eloise over the phone. “What’s even the point?”
“What’s the point indeed?” Eloise said. Not so honorable , she’d thought happily.
“How about I come see you and the girls next week?” Gus said. “I need to get out of this place.”
Eloise thought this might be it, his come-to-Jesus moment. Getting his midlife crisis out of his system, flinging into a failed
engagement, then realizing what he had back home. But he only stayed ten days before the itch to leave returned, flaring up
like eczema.
“Let’s go to Florida,” he’d said to Eloise one night when they were on the screened-in porch watching the sun slip down over the lake. “Live by the ocean. I’ll run fishing excursions.”
“I can’t just pick up and move,” Eloise had said. “The girls are in school. They have their activities, their friends. And
my dad’s health...”
“The girls will make new friends. Adaptability is good for kids. And we’ll come back and visit your parents every summer.
A child’s job isn’t to be their parents’ caretaker.”
Eloise thought that was exactly what a child’s job was. “We’re not moving,” Eloise had said. Which meant Gus was moving without
them.
“Someday my legs will lose their restlessness,” he’d told her when he kissed her goodbye that time. “I’m just not there yet.”
Neither of them brought up the legal documents again. The islanders assumed they were divorced and Eloise didn’t correct them.
Only Deirdre knew. She didn’t want Rebecca and Georgiana to find out. They would think she was weak. And if Eloise’s mother
found out... well, Eloise would feel like even more of a disappointment.
Eloise had known she would have to pay for her sin at some point. She just hadn’t expected it to be one month into a fresh
relationship, her new beau showing up at her door and telling her he had just met her husband.
“I’m so sorry,” Eloise told Clyde. Her head was cloudy. “I should have told you.”
Clyde looked the most somber she had ever seen him. The blue of his irises had darkened three shades. “You should have.”
“There’s nothing still between us,” Eloise said. “Really. He’s just swinging by to see Georgiana.”
“I might write fiction, but I’m not bad with facts,” Clyde said. “You two aren’t over.”
Eloise hated how her very first reaction was hope. She swatted it away like a horsefly. “Does anyone ever really get over
their first love?”
“Yes,” Clyde said. “They do. Or at least they make space for someone new.”
“I have space for you, Clyde.”
Clyde let his stare linger. “How long is he staying?”
“I’m not sure.”
A beat passed, squeezing them both. “You know where to find me if something changes,” he said. “But I’m not going to be your
backup. I deserve more than that.”
“So much more.” Eloise felt like she was spinning. Not in a romantic way, but a ruinous way.
Tipping his fedora, Clyde walked down the drive, disappearing over the crest. Eloise drew two shallow breaths and went inside.
***
“Does Rebecca know?” had been Gigi’s first question this afternoon, after verifying it was true that Eloise and Gus were still
legally married.
“No,” Eloise had said, and Georgiana looked glad about that.
“I mean, it makes sense. Kind of explains a lot, actually.”
“Explains what?”
“Why you’ve never moved on. Why you never changed your name back.”
“I didn’t go back to my maiden name because I like sharing a name with my daughters.”
“Right,” Georgiana had said. “Of course.”
Now Georgiana cornered Eloise in the kitchen as they cleaned up from a dinner of pork chops and cheesy potatoes. Gus’s favorite.
“Where is Dad sleeping?” Georgiana wanted to know.
“On the couch.” Eloise told herself the lie was to protect her daughter from any false hopes of a reconciliation. “Won’t you
join us for a while?” she called after Georgiana. “We could watch a movie.”
“I’m pretty tired,” she said. “Unemployment is hard work.”
Eloise knew Georgiana had been hoping Gus would visit all summer. Now he was here and she was sulking. She wanted Georgiana to enjoy the time with her father, though it was slightly gratifying that her daughter’s moods applied to Gus too, not just Eloise.
“It really is,” Gus chimed in from the couch where he was watching a game on TV. His plate was on his lap, his bourbon on
the coffee table. Place mats and coasters didn’t seem so important right now. “Most people just toil away at their little
jobs, not picking their head up to think about the world,” he went on. “But you and me, Gigi, we’re big-picture people.”
Eloise felt attacked. She worked hard to put food on the table. Not everyone had the luxury of thinking about the big picture.
“It’s easier to think on a full stomach,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound as conflicted as she felt.
Just yesterday she’d been envisioning a potential future with Clyde, and now here she was, reverting to her old ways with
her ex. Gus seemed to think he’d won her back, just like that. Eloise’s heart wasn’t so clear.
Losing Clyde felt like a high price to pay for a momentary reunion with Gus. Because that’s all this would be with Gus—momentary.
Though that was all it would have been with Clyde too. At least she was a throughline in Gus’s life.
But Gus just grinned, that smile of his splashing like the light of a trusty old lantern. “I’ve missed your cooking, Ellie.
Campsite food tastes like bricks compared to this.”
Eloise wasn’t sure it was much of a compliment.
“There’s plenty more,” Eloise said and took Gus’s plate to the kitchen for a refill.