Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
“And then the mother told me that it was the father who needed the therapy, not the kids!” Summer ended her story, and Gilbert barked out a laugh.
She was funny, she knew how to poke fun at herself, and she didn’t mind him laughing at her too.
They’d fixed eight or nine places in the fence that needed some attention, and together they were walking back through the far end of the pasture toward the house.
He wanted to find a few more holes in the fence to fix, but as much as he searched, he couldn’t find anything. He just wanted their time together to never end.
“I really appreciate you coming out with me today.”
“Of course. I appreciate you telling me that you were doing it. After all, it’s my horses that are going to benefit.”
“That might be true, but—”
“If you’re even going to say something about me giving your kids therapy without charging you, I don’t want to hear it. You said that so much already, and it really wasn’t that big of a deal. I told you, I had an affinity toward your kids, and especially Larissa. I just want to see them succeed.”
“I think that’s what you want with everyone. You are selfless, in the very best way, and I admire that. I’d like to be more like that.”
“I’d like to be more like that too. You make me sound better than what I am.”
“No, I don’t think so, and trust me, I know what selfishness looks like. My wife—” He stopped abruptly. He hadn’t meant to talk about Desire. He didn’t want to ruin the day.
“I’m sure those memories are painful for you,” Summer said, all traces of a smile off her face and concern and sadness replacing it.
He hated that she was deceived. She didn’t understand that it certainly wasn’t sadness or pain that kept him from talking.
“She cheated on me.” There, the words were out. It felt good to say them.
Summer’s eyes widened, and she stopped walking, planting the stick that she used as a walking stick in the ground. “What? I’ve never heard anything about that around town. Not that I listen to a whole lot of gossip, but that’s definitely something that would have made the rounds.”
“It certainly would have. But I never said it.”
“Oh. All right. Well, you can rest assured that I won’t say anything.”
“I knew you wouldn’t. I guess that’s why I felt safe saying it. You can’t begin to imagine how good that felt.”
“Yeah. Why in the world would you keep that to yourself?”
“My kids. I didn’t want them to think badly about their mother.”
“It’s one thing to think badly about their mother because you’re smearing her, trying to make her look bad. It’s another thing to speak the truth about her.” Summer still sounded like she couldn’t quite believe either that his wife cheated or that he hadn’t told his kids. He wasn’t sure which.
“But she’s not here. She can’t defend herself, although she admitted to me that she had been cheating.”
“That’s devastating,” she said, immediately getting to the word that best described how he felt.
“Yeah. We’d… We’d been together for so long, and I eventually found out that the time I discovered wasn’t the first time.”
“Oh no.” She put her hand over her mouth.
“Yeah. I’m sorry, I kind of feel like I’m dumping on you, but I hadn’t told anyone. I didn’t want people to know. I guess part of it’s because I’m so embarrassed. What kind of man am I that I couldn’t even keep my wife?”
“It’s not your fault that she doesn’t have character.”
“I know those words are true, but it’s hard to apply that to yourself when it’s your spouse that doesn’t stay true to you. You wonder what’s wrong with you? What did you do? What didn’t you do? How could you have prevented this?”
“It’s not on you. It’s on them. It shouldn’t matter how terrible you are, if they can’t keep their word, if they can’t keep their eyes on themselves, if they don’t have the character to do right, it’s not your fault.”
“Yes, I know what you’re saying is true, but—”
“Okay. I believe you. I suppose it would be devastating in a way, but I guess I would be angry.”
“Oh, trust me. There were plenty of times where I was angry,” he said, holding a two-by-four braced against the ground as he stood and stared at her.
He couldn’t believe he had admitted to her something he hadn’t admitted to anyone, not his mother or sisters, or his best friends. But she just felt so safe.
“It was tough when she died. Because of course the kids were sad, and that was the thing that ripped my heart. Because I had trouble feeling anything. Other than a faint sense of relief and a little bit of wonderment about whether or not that might be God’s punishment for her.”
“I guess it could be. I hate to think that that’s what God does, although in the Old Testament, He certainly did punish people that way.”
“I know. And he is the same God yesterday, today, and forever, but we’re living in the dispensation of grace.
Which I need, even more than she did maybe.
Because like I said, I was angry. I didn’t think about killing her, but I did wish she would die.
So then I felt guilty when she got cancer.
Was that my fault? Did I wish that upon her? ”
“If wishes were horses, beggars would drive,” she said, repeating the little ditty that he hadn’t heard in a long time.
“I suppose that’s true, but it’s still tough.
I… I guess we kind of came to a mutual understanding, but I always wondered, and I wonder now a lot, if she hadn’t died, would we still be together?
Because I was determined that if she cheated on me again, I wasn’t going to stay.
Or maybe more accurately, I wasn’t going to allow her to stay.
But she didn’t seem to be able to help herself. ”
“I’ve heard that. Like serial cheaters who really, truly love the person that they’re with, but just… I don’t know if they get bored exactly, or if they just can’t stay true to one person.”
“Yeah, part of me wonders if she could help it, and then another part of me thinks about the times that I intend to do wrong, want to do wrong, and I don’t. I’d like to be able to say I can’t help it, but I do? So couldn’t she?”
“That’s a good point. Why do some people seem to be incapable of resisting temptation, and seem to thrive on doing whatever they want, and then just issue an apology like that will make it all go away. It doesn’t really seem fair or right.”
“Exactly.”
He looked at the ground, the grass green underneath, but brown on top. Typical for November. Maybe if he had been there, they could have gotten another cutting off that and made some hay.
That seemed like an odd thing to think about after he had just told this woman, this woman who seemed to fit him perfectly, about his wife.
“So that was a real struggle then. As she was dying, it would have been hard to see your children so sad. I guess it would have been tempting for me to let them know that they weren’t losing as much as they thought they were. And let them know about her character.”
“I suppose sometimes I wanted to, but mostly I don’t want them to know.
I don’t want them to think less of her. But at the same time…
it’s the truth. And I wondered too if it would help them get over her better if I told them that maybe we weren’t going to stay together, or if that would rock the foundations of everything that they believed. ”
“I think that’s probably right. And sometimes we have a tendency to attack the messenger. They might turn around and hate you for telling them the truth about their mom. That doesn’t make any sense, but sometimes humans don’t make any sense.”
“Tell me about it,” he muttered, and she laughed. He had been being serious, but he supposed it was funny, too.
“Humans really don’t make sense sometimes. And I suppose you can’t say this, but I can: especially women.”
“Amen,” he said, and then he laughed too. He liked that she wasn’t afraid to poke fun at her gender. And she could say the things that were true or obvious, but things people often didn’t want to say because they were too scared.
“I think maybe women have a tendency to run on emotion more than men do. And that’s what makes us so illogical.
Because we allow our emotions to control us.
I’ve noticed my tendency toward doing that, and I try to curtail that, because while I feel emotion is important, obviously God gave it to us, and it serves an important purpose in our life, it’s not what we should allow to direct our day-to-day life.
We should do things because they’re right, because we’re supposed to do them, because we have character and we do the right thing, we choose that, not because we feel like it or don’t feel like it. ”
“It’s too bad more people don’t feel that way, because you’re absolutely right. People run on emotion, and they don’t feel like doing it, so they don’t. That doesn’t get you anywhere.”
“It’s not right. I mean, I don’t necessarily think that we should shove our emotions aside and pretend that we don’t have any, but at the same time, we can’t allow them to dictate how we live our lives.
Otherwise no one would stay true, because there’s always going to be a time when you’re attracted to someone you shouldn’t be attracted to, and how are you going to handle that? Go with your emotions? That’s wrong.”
“Maybe that was Desire’s problem. She had never learned to put what she felt aside and do the right thing.”
“Well, she did stay with you. There was that at least.”
“She tried to run off with her boyfriend, but he was married too, and he didn’t want to leave his wife.
He just wanted someone to play with on the side.
” He looked at his shoulder. “At least that was one of her lovers. There were apparently other ones, and I’m not sure why she didn’t run off with any of them.
I suppose I could try to dig it all up, but I don’t want to, you know? ”