Chapter 19 Rudderless
Rudderless
Nadine
The next night the front door opened letting in a blast of arctic wind. Aaron shut it behind him, his face haggard. I had hope he would find his way back to himself until we ran into that horrible woman. I empathized with her, I did, but not at the expense of my sweet husband.
I rubbed my upper arms to stave off the cold that came in with him. The truth slapped my in the face. He needed to leave sooner rather than later. “Honey,” I breathed then added without thinking, “You need to talk to Max.”
He faced me, his gaze flat. “I can’t leave the practice.”
The chill in the air seeped into my bloodstream. I’d lost so much and with the way he was now, Aaron, too, was as good as gone. We couldn’t go on like this. “What do you mean? Why?”
He waved a dismissive hand. “This doesn’t change anything for you.”
I ground my back teeth together.
With barely a glance in my direction, he continued, “There’s nothing stopping you from chasing your dreams. I fully support you. And you won’t have to worry about selling the house.”
A cold, empty house in exchange for a loving husband and an unidentified dream. The deal of the century. I didn’t want the house. I wanted him. Us. And I’d told him that, over and fucking over. I worked to steady my voice even as my blood thrummed in my ears. “And what about you?”
He shook his head brusquely and turned to walk away. Dismissing me. Dismissing my fears, my concern, my dreams, my love. “I can’t. I can’t screw up Max and Mom’s plans. And I owe—”
My hands closed into fists at my sides, my fingernails digging into my palms. My pulse spiked and my guts knotted. He would sacrifice us on the alter of an imaginary obligation. I didn’t recognize my own voice as I screamed at him, “You owe them nothing!”
He spun back around. His eyes widened momentarily until his brows crashed down over them. “Nadine…”
I jammed my index finger into my chest. “Me, Aaron. You owe me.” I spread my hands wide at my sides. “You owe us!”
Mirroring me, his own hands flew out to his sides. “I’m doing everything for you! You’re the reason I go to work every day! None of this means anything without you!”
“No,” I paced and shook my head. “You don’t get to pin this on me.”
“Pin what?” he asked, exasperated.
“All these years, all these years I supported your late hours, your drive to help people, while I carried the bulk of child-raising. And I don’t regret it. Not one bit. Because you loved your job.”
“Nadine—”
“I’m not done!” I fumed, my breath escaping in harsh pants.
“I’m not supporting you working sixty hours a week for a job that is hurting you and killing us.
You’ve had enough. You’ve done enough! You don’t owe Max or your mom or Sage Ridge or that poor kid who is suffering or his bitch of a mother who is lashing out at you instead of looking at her own damn self. ”
“It’s okay…”
“It’s not.” I shook my head vehemently. “You filled my head with this pipe dream of a better life. ‘Consciously choosing what we want going forward’”, I mocked.
“ ‘Facing the next years with excitement instead of drifting through them mindlessly.’ You don’t get to say the status quo is suddenly okay just because you’re afraid. ”
“I’m not afraid!” he roared, sending me back on my heels in shock. “I have a responsibility to these people!”
“No, Aaron!” I stabbed my index finger into my chest. “You have a responsibility to me. You have a responsibility to us. And most importantly, you have a responsibility to yourself!”
I spun away and paced in a tight circle like a wild, caged, beast. Trapped in a life I no longer wanted, I fisted my hands on my hips. For the first time in all our life together, I wanted to leave.
Storming down the hallway to the front door, I bent and crammed my feet into my boots.
Aaron’s heavy footsteps pounded behind me.
I turned and stared at him, daring him to say another word in defense of a decision he made without consulting me, a decision that had the power to tear him, us, and me, apart.
He clasped the back of his neck and closed his eyes for a moment before pinning me with his gaze. “Where are you going?”
It hit me then that I had no place to go. At this time of night, everything was closed. Frustration suffocated me.
There were times throughout the years I regretted moving back to Sage Ridge. Times when I felt all my decisions had to be run past a hundred other people before I could carry on. Times when I felt Aaron put his loyalty to his mom before his commitment to me.
This was one of those times.
I scowled at him, and snarled, “I don’t know! There’s nowhere I can go in this fucking town without every-fucking-body talking about it!
He answered immediately. “Go to Harley’s.”
I nodded sharply.
I’d go to Harley like I’d always gone to Harley. Harley was blunt. Non-judgmental. She was the person I was closest to in the whole world other than Aaron. And she had more compassion in her blunt, outspoken, sassy, heart than anyone else I knew.
And her husband, Daire, also the product of a single mom, had never failed to help me understand my husband and his extreme attachment to his mother.
I loved Wren, I did, but there were times Aaron’s drive to protect her feelings left me out in the cold.
Harley took one look at me standing on her doorstep and stood back, opening the door wide. “Trouble in paradise?”
I burst into tears.
“Shit.” Daire’s voice came to me over Harley’s shoulder. “Is this a hen party or do you want me here?”
“You can stay,” I blubbered. “I’d like your opinion, too.”
They ushered me to the couch and Harley, God bless her, pressed a wine cooler into my hand before settling across from me with Daire’s arm slung over the back of the loveseat behind her.
Without betraying Aaron’s confidence, I gave them what I could.
I gave them my lack of rudder and my fear of time running out.
I gave them my grief over the end of my child-bearing years and my uncertainty about what comes next.
I gave them my loneliness and my pain, the losses over the year that had compounded, with interest, with Aaron’s withdrawal.
I gave them my guilt that I had failed to support him when he had never, not once, let me down.
And I gave it all through a steady stream of silent tears.
Only when my words ran out, did they speak.
“When our children moved out,” Harley mused. “I was a bit of a bear.”
“Even more than usual,” Daire winked, winding his fingers in Harley’s hair.
She rolled her eyes at him before returning her attention to me. “If it’s a job at the resort he’s after, I can take him. I need to pull back, way back.”
I palmed the tears off my cheeks. “I’ll tell him.”
“I’m not sure it’ll make much difference,” Daire interjected softly. “I think there are bigger issues at play.”
“Like what?”
He tipped his head to the side. “When I started making moves to leave the classroom, I felt like I was leaving the trenches, abandoning my post.”
“I remember,” Harley murmured. “You had a tough time with it.”
A faraway look glossed over his eyes. “My whole purpose in becoming a teacher was to give kids a positive start. Moving into administration seemed like a betrayal of that ideal. It took a while for me to accept that it was okay for things to evolve. It was okay to change my path when my path no longer lined up with my needs. It took time to accept that my needs were also important.”
“I think that’s pretty standard when your work demands service to others,” Harley added, then looked pointedly at me. “Like motherhood.”
I snorted my agreement and pressed the pads of my fingers against my swollen eyes.
“The only thing you can do,” Harley continued, “is make the best decision you can for you while still putting your marriage first.”
“Even if he isn’t?”
Harley tucked herself tighter into Daire’s side. “In the best marriages, both people give 100%. But nobody can give 100% all the time. This may be one of those times.”
After another wine cooler, Harley set me up in the guest room where I lay down and stared at the ceiling until the early hours of the morning.
Within two years, my children moved out, my father got sick and passed away, and I lost my mother. My relationship with both of my parents was solid, but it had taken time to get there. We wasted so much of it.
Another loss I came to terms with after their death.
And at the same time, my nest emptied, my ovaries shut down, and my purpose wavered like summer heatwaves over black asphalt.
I hadn’t, not once, given myself space to absorb it all.
It was a tsunami of loss whipped ever higher by a storm of hormones. And after years of my children needing me, I was suddenly obsolete.
Of course, I was reeling.
Turning to my side, I cuddled the pillow close. I missed my husband. I missed his warmth, his solid, steady, presence. The sound of his heartbeat under my ear, the feel of his hand in my hair.
Perhaps, it was simply time to change my focus.
Aaron needed me. Whatever he chose for himself, he would need my support.
If he wanted to change, he had to make that decision for himself.
If I wanted to change, I had to take responsibility for myself.
I would always choose us.
But now, for the first time since my teens, I also chose myself.