Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
June 2024
S tella couldn’t sleep that night. Bruce’s text message felt like a stone in her stomach: We need to talk. She’d called him as soon as she could, but he’d told her firmly over the phone that they needed to talk in person. Stella was no fool. She knew what that meant.
Twisted up in her bedsheets, Stella listened as the summer wind rushed through the trees outside the window. The slosh of waves made it so home was never quiet. It had been hours since she’d attempted sleep, and she was tired of it, tired of her brain eating itself with worry. She got out of bed and padded downstairs for a glass of water and a snack. But the blueberry muffin she selected remained uneaten on a small yellow plate as she stared dully through the dark night outside the window.
If Bruce was preparing to break up with her, what could the reason possibly be?
Maybe she’d done something wrong yesterday on the boat. Maybe her swimsuit hadn’t looked quite right. Maybe she’d bragged too much about publishing her first book. Maybe she was too old, too unsuccessful, too hung up after her divorce.
Or maybe there was another secret reason.
Maybe Bruce had hated her the entire time.
Stella dropped her head onto the table as her heart throbbed. She had half a mind to get into her car and drive to Bruce’s, to knock on the door and demand answers. But it was four in the morning. Bruce had every right to call the cops if she did that.
Stella knew Matt was an early riser. She also knew that Mandy was still in the city, hoping to make up the meeting she’d missed due to traffic yesterday.
At five fifteen, Stella braced herself and called her ex-husband. He answered with a surprised, “Hello?” She could practically smell the coffee on his breath. He’d always been an optimist in the morning.
“Hey.” She sounded raggedy. “Can you talk?”
“Sure I can,” Matt said. “Everything okay?” He sounded gentle and loving.
Stella took a staggered breath. “Bruce says he wants to talk today. I haven’t been able to sleep.”
“He didn’t say what it was about?”
“Nope.”
Matt sighed. “Oh, Stella. That must be so disconcerting.”
“I thought things were going really well,” she offered. She did not add, I thought we were almost as happy as you and Mandy! Because she didn’t want it to be a silly contest.
“You don’t know what’s going on in his head,” Matt assured her. “Maybe he wants to talk about something silly. Maybe he wants to talk about the future.”
“Ugh. The future,” Stella tried to joke.
“We’re in a weird age range,” Matt said. “You remember what it was like when we broke up. We asked ourselves what we wanted from the rest of our lives.”
Stella’s heart cracked at the edges of the memory. She could still see them in the living room, sniveling and coughing with COVID, deciding to divorce.
“And it was a great decision in many respects,” Matt reminded her. “You’ve gone after your dreams of writing a novel. We’re both better parents than ever.”
“Are you suggesting that change is sometimes a good thing?” Stella said with a small laugh.
Matt chuckled. “I hate to say it, but it’s true.”
Despite the ache of her heart, chatting with Matt emboldened Stella. She let him go a few minutes later and headed upstairs to take a quick power nap and shower. By the time eight o’clock hit, she was in front of her laptop, composing emails and making notes about the next book she wanted to write. Her agent and editor were already excited about pre-orders for her book. They wanted to get another Stella Sutton original on shelves by late next year. It would be frantic.
Chloe and Logan were both busy with work and friends and left the house before noon that day. Stella hugged them goodbye and promised herself not to cry in front of them after her talk with Bruce. She wanted them to know that dating in your forties wasn’t scary. Connecting with people was always a good thing, even when it didn’t work out.
Stella agreed to meet Bruce that evening at five. She dressed in a simple white dress and styled her hair and makeup before driving over. A part of her thought that if she looked good enough, Bruce would forget their talk altogether. He’d make her dinner, and they’d kiss in the moonlight.
But Bruce’s face was grim when he opened the door.
“Hi,” he said, reaching to hug her.
Stella felt a shiver down her spine. She carried her bottle of white wine into the kitchen and watched him nervously open it and pour the two glasses. She considered asking him about his day but couldn’t find the words.
“Let’s go outside,” she said finally. She didn’t want him to break up with her in his kitchen, where they’d had so many happy times. The kitchen was so often the heart of every relationship.
“Good idea,” he said.
They walked in bare feet along the sand, watching the water drift closer and closer to the house. Bruce’s son wasn’t home, but he often wasn’t. He worked at the docks during the summertime. Bruce had said early on he believed teenagers should learn how to work and care about their own money. Stella agreed. And both Chloe and Logan really liked their jobs. They liked having responsibilities.
Bruce stopped short on the sand. His eyes were stormy. “I never told you what happened with Simon’s mother.”
Stella’s heart was a butterfly. “You didn’t.”
“That must have been strange,” Bruce said.
“I didn’t want to pry.”
Bruce adjusted his glasses. “Did you ever talk to her at school?”
“A few times,” Stella admitted. “In the halls at parent-teacher conferences. At sporting events.” She’d spoken to Bruce’s ex just as much as she’d spoken to any of the other parents. She didn’t have any clear memories of anything they’d said.
Bruce nodded.
“She must have left ten years ago?” This was Stella’s rough calculation.
“Nine,” Bruce said. “Simon was nine years old.”
Stella couldn’t imagine leaving her children behind at all, let alone when they were only nine years old.
“Karina was half-French,” Bruce said, taking another step across the sand. “She was raised in the States but spent summers in France with her grandparents.”
“I didn’t know that,” Stella said.
“I think her plan was always to graduate from a university here in the States and go to France permanently. She talked about the Sorbonne, extending her education. She was a genius.”
This was no surprise to Stella. Bruce was incredibly intelligent. Their son was always at the top of his class.
“But life happened,” Bruce continued. “She got pregnant, and I asked her to marry me. We agreed to live in Nantucket for just a little while and then decide where we wanted to go next. Maybe France. But my job became more and more advanced. I was making real money.”
Stella glanced back at Bruce’s massive house along the water and thought, You sure did.
“Karina’s job played second fiddle to mine,” Bruce said. “I’m not proud of letting that happen. Her career was incredibly important to her. Although we had nannies and outside help for the house, there was a lot of pressure on her shoulders to be the perfect mother and choose her family before her job. I should have known how unhappy that would make her. But I was busy with work. I thought things would balance themselves out soon enough.”
Stella thought, We always think things will go back to being the same, but they never do.
“When Karina told me about the job in Paris, I was angry,” Bruce said. “I couldn’t understand what she wanted. I worked so hard. I thought all that work was for us. But she felt left behind—career-wise and romance-wise—so she left.”
Stella filled her lungs. It was a horrible story.
“At first, we said we’d make a plan so that Simon could spend summers with his mother,” Bruce said. “But I was so annoyed with her for leaving. I made things very difficult for her to arrange. I signed Simon up for camps and things he wanted to attend here in the States. And Karina got more and more involved in her life in Paris, obviously. So at first, her every other day phone calls to Simon became weekly, then monthly, then every six months. She sent him presents on his birthday. But Simon and I were both resentful.”
Bruce’s cheeks were hollow. “I know how I sound in this story. I sound cruel.”
“No. You sound injured,” Stella said. She touched his shoulder and offered a soft smile.
Bruce looked down at the sand. Stella thought, I can’t tell if he’s breaking up with me or not. I wish he’d just get it over with.
It was too much at once.
“Karina reached out at the end of Simon’s senior year,” Bruce said. “She sent him gifts and well wishes and invited him to come to Paris this summer to spend time with her. I figured he’d say no because he’s never been, and she’s been so distant. But he’s really curious about his mother now. Like I said. It’s been nine years.”
“Nine years,” Stella repeated. She hung her head.
“He asked me to go with him,” Bruce said. He clenched and unclenched his jaw. “It surprised me. I figured an eighteen-year-old guy would want to go to Paris by himself. I figured he’d want to sow his wild oats.”
Stella smiled. “He’s frightened.”
“He’s still frightened,” Bruce agreed.
“Eighteen is not so old,” Stella said. “Sometimes I look at Logan and think he’s still a little boy. That I need to help him to make his sandwiches.”
“Society dictates that eighteen-year-olds make big decisions and go their own way,” Bruce said.
“When has society ever been right about anything?” Stella asked. There were tears in her eyes, but she blinked them away.
Bruce laughed and took her hand.
“You’re going to Paris,” Stella said.
“I’m going to Paris.”
“For how long?” Stella asked.
“I really don’t know,” Bruce admitted.
Stella felt as though her arms and legs were made of lead. She wanted to drop onto the sand and fall asleep.
“Simon mentioned putting off his first semester of college until January,” Bruce said. “He wants to study French and be with his mother. My work has told me they’re fine with me working abroad as long as I deal with the necessary tax paperwork.”
Stella’s eyes widened. “Are you thinking about making a home for yourself there?”
Bruce shook his head. “I don’t know. I just know I feel tremendously guilty that I’ve raised our son by myself. I kept him here. I put a big boundary between Simon and his mother.”
“She’s the one who left.”
“But I forced their relationship to die,” Bruce said. “I need to own up to that.”
Stella looked at Bruce’s face for a long time. Her heart pounded with love for him. She’d come to know every soft wrinkle, the acne scars along his right jawline, and the yellowish tint of his brown eyes. She’d come to know his moods and his likes and dislikes and his generosity and his mind. She’d come to know she didn’t always know what he was talking about, intellectually, and that that was okay.
Could Karina keep up with him?
“Do you have plans to get back together with Karina?”
Bruce raised his eyebrows as though that hadn’t occurred to him. But Stella wasn’t so sure. She knew Bruce’s ex had haunted him.
Then again, Stella had just written an entire memoir about her first love.
The first love who’s haunted me for more than twenty years.
Bruce took both of Stella’s hands and rubbed them with the tips of his thumbs. In his eyes, she saw tremendous love for her.
“I know it’s not fair to you that I’m leaving without any indication of when I might come back,” Bruce said. “It could be two months. It could be five.”
“It could be never,” she reminded him.
Tears drifted down Bruce’s cheeks. Stella was surprised she hadn’t let any fall yet. All night, her heart had been breaking. Maybe it couldn’t break anymore.
Stella tried to laugh. “Maybe it’s a good thing. We only had the really good parts of a relationship. The exciting beginning. The happy times.”
“I don’t want it to be over,” Bruce whispered, his voice rasping. “I love you.”
But you want two lives at once, Stella wanted to say.
Stella realized she had to be strong for both of them. “I love you, too. I really do.” She felt it like a punch to the stomach. “But you need to go to France with your son. You’ll never forgive yourself for everything that already happened if you don’t go.”
Bruce’s eyes swam. Stella squeezed his hands harder. She wanted them to turn around, go back into the house, and forget anything had been said. But there was no turning back.
“We can talk on the phone all the time,” Bruce said. “And maybe you can even come out to France to visit.”
It felt as though Bruce’s history was trying to repeat itself in Stella’s life. Stella didn’t like that cross-pollination. She had her own demons. Her own ghosts.
“I think it would be easier for me to have a clean break,” Stella said. “You need to think about what you want. You need to be there for your son.”
Bruce hung his head. “I understand.”
As Bruce walked Stella to her car, Stella thought, This has been a very adult conversation. We are so mature. But at the same time, she wanted to kneel, take a handful of sand, and throw it. She wanted to scream and cry. She wanted to kick Bruce’s mailbox.
They hugged a final time before she got into her car. Stella didn’t burrow her face in his chest. But she wanted to.
“When do you leave?” she asked.
“Next week,” Bruce said. It was already decided.
“Have a safe flight,” she said.
“Good luck at the book launch,” Bruce said, squeezing her hand one final time. “I can’t wait to read it.”
Stella thought darkly, I loved him more than I could have ever loved you.
And then she drove away.