Chapter 41 Eloise
Eloise had wanted to believe that Gus had changed. Of course she had.
Especially with how close Georgiana and Gus were getting again, out sailing and swimming every afternoon when Eloise returned
from work. But the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. And this
time, at least, Eloise refused to be insane.
Maybe it was Georgiana’s bluntness getting to her, or the reference point of Clyde, or just the sirens of her own anxiety,
but she’d pushed Gus for an answer last night. It was after they’d made love (quietly, so Georgiana wouldn’t hear) but before
they’d turned off the bedside lamp.
“What’re your plans?” she’d asked, her head nestled into his shoulder. “For the future?”
“Thought I’d stay here longer.”
“How much longer?” Maybe progress was like that, asking one hard question and then waiting for an answer, not rushing to fill
the silence or give him an out. Outside, an owl hooted from the nearest birch.
“I haven’t really thought that far ahead,” Gus said. “Just taking it one day at a time.”
Eloise felt herself clench. “I’d like to know your plans. By morning, I want an answer.”
Gus massaged Eloise’s neck. The touch wasn’t as soothing as it usually was. Something had changed, and it wasn’t her husband.
“Why so pushy?” he’d asked.
“I just think it’s reasonable. To know where this is going.”
“But that’s not how you and me are. We never really know , do we?”
“That’s the issue.”
She’d slept beside him feeling lonely, more so than on the nights when it was just her in bed.
This morning she asked him again. “Have you decided?” she’d probed, sitting up on the pillows, arranging them around her for
support. She was proud of herself for sticking with her resolve. In the past, mornings were when she relented.
“Decided what?” Gus said groggily.
“If you’re moving back for good.”
He stifled a yawn. “That’s a big decision for this early in the morning.”
“Or this late in life,” Eloise said.
The answer came in how Gus stumbled around it.
“I think you should go,” Eloise heard herself say. It was her own voice, but she had the sensation she had borrowed it from
somewhere, loaned it at a high interest rate.
She got out of bed, put on her most modest nightgown. Something had cracked inside her. It had started cracking long ago but
finally reached the threshold where the fissure became a full-blown fracture. All his old habits scrunching up and unfolding
like an out-of-tune accordion. The way he could never give her a plan, never commit to anything other than his own caprice.
Everything she’d been holding in for years, she released. Not in venom, not in malice. Just in truth.
“I don’t want to live like this any longer, Gus,” she said. “I can’t be your placeholder.”
He told her that she wasn’t his placeholder. That he loved her so much. That he’d never loved a woman half as much as he loved
her.
“Then let me go,” Eloise said. “Please.”
“You really mean it?”
“I do,” she said, the vow taking on a new meaning.
He hardened then, moping around the room, packing up his backpack. “We both know you’re going to call me when you’re lonely.”
Eloise had done this more times than she wanted to admit. She knew she wouldn’t anymore. That was what a breaking point was.
Leveraging momentum from a thousand weaker moments to create one big push of strength. Enough to get you through, enough to
make you new.
She pulled the divorce papers from the desk drawer where they’d been collecting dust. Wordlessly, she handed them to Gus with
a pen. He didn’t read them over; he’d known what they said for years. He just signed them, scrawling his chicken-scratch signature.
“Happy now?”
Eloise put the papers back in the envelope. “Thank you.”
“Tell Gigi to call me,” Gus said, slinging his backpack over his shoulder.
“Don’t you want to say goodbye yourself?”
Gus did not, which riled Eloise more than all the rest of it.
“She deserves an explanation,” Eloise said. “You owe her that.”
“ You owe her that. Gigi understands me better than you ever have. She’ll get it.”
He shoved bare feet into his shoes. Eloise thought about Clyde and how he always wore two pairs of socks. There was a metaphor
there for how he tended to overdo things rather than underdo them. It was a good way to live, a great way to love. Tomorrow
she would go and see him. Tomorrow she would tell him how she felt.
Perhaps he would give her another chance. Perhaps not.
Before Gus left, Eloise brewed a pot of coffee and poured them each a mug and they sat on the front porch, the morning air
stagnant. She sipped hers slowly; Gus chugged his.
Gus stood up and gave her a scruffy kiss on the cheek. She breathed him in one last time before he took off down the drive and disappeared beyond the rise of the hill.
Eloise sat on the porch for a while, counting breaths, counting clouds, counting whitecaps.
We’re okay , Mackinac seemed to be saying to her. We’re okay.
Movements came from inside the house. It was Georgiana, awake with a bounce in her step. Eloise felt a new level of loss.
It was one thing to come to terms with Gus breaking her own heart. It was another when he mangled her daughters’ hearts too.