CHAPTER FOUR
Carrie
Things did not get better. If anything, they got worse.
Part of the problem was how busy we both were.
Thatcher, as CEO of his company, would be busy forever.
For me, there was the Orchid Ball. I knew logically that being the chair of the ball was a good thing, an honor.
But it sure did keep me busy. There was always something to do.
This was the biggest social event of the year in Indigo Falls, as well as the biggest fundraiser all year for the garden club.
We donated the vast majority of the proceeds to a worthy cause around town.
This year, funds were earmarked to renovate the teen center in the Indigo Falls library.
If it didn’t go as planned, it would be talked about for years.
It wasn’t something I could just put aside and focus on later so that Thatch and I could handle our problems.
And on top of that, Melinda and Drake were getting married.
It was wonderful and something to celebrate, but getting Thatcher to attend the pre-wedding parties and events was becoming more and more difficult.
When I got him there, he usually spent half the time on his stupid phone.
I knew all my friends noticed, and it was embarrassing.
The other things that had gotten worse? Well, Thatcher had returned to texting and emailing constantly once he was finally home from work.
On top of that, he’d started acting as if the things we’d enjoyed with each other for years no longer interested him.
He’d also become less friendly, making it seem like spending time with our friends had become a bother to him.
Like I was a bother to him.
“You’re acting like you don’t want to be here,” I said quietly.
I watched Thatcher’s face as we drifted lazily in the part of the river that led away from the falls.
All our friends were there: Sadie, Melinda and Drake, and Blair and Scott.
Sadie’s brother Tim was there, too, as was some girl he was apparently dating who we couldn’t decide if we’d met before.
We were all acting like we’d met her because we didn’t want to offend her, but the more I looked at her the less I thought I’d seen her before.
Not that it matters. She’s just another thin, giggly blonde with big breasts. Tim definitely had a type.
Tim’s best friend, Natalie, had also come out tubing with us.
She tried to talk to Tim’s girlfriend of the moment, but she seemed to get bored with her.
After a while, she floated over to Sadie instead.
With black hair and blue eyes, Natalie was stunning, but she had never been the type Tim dated.
Maybe that’s why they had remained just friends since childhood.
I couldn’t help noticing that Tim spent more time laughing and talking to Natalie and Sadie than his date.
And then there was Thatcher. He looked like he’d rather be getting a root canal than talk to anyone as we floated down the river.
When we’d first gotten together, he’d been so stiff, so used to doing activities his stuffy family would approve of that I’d wondered if I wanted to keep dating him.
But then he had decided he loved the different things my friends and I would do, and tubing down the Indigo River had been at the top of his list.
We’d kind of met in the middle. He became a little less restrained, less rigid, and less willing to be governed by the rules of his perfect society family.
Even though I was a debutante in Indigo Falls, that didn’t exactly translate to the high society scene in Atlanta.
I’d worked to become more polished, more mature, and had a crash course in the kind of etiquette required of the wife of the CEO of Caldwell Financial.
I’d been required to attend galas, balls, benefits, and more.
It was all part of being a Caldwell. Still, no matter what I did, people made it obvious they found me lacking as Thatcher’s choice of wife.
I think some of the reason was that my own in-laws thought I wasn’t good enough, and everyone seemed to know that.
I had never been looked down on before in my life. It was not a great feeling.
Worse than that, I was starting to think Thatcher didn’t think I was good enough for him, either.
It had been a slowly developing feeling, but as the months since he’d been named CEO wore on, it had become more and more obvious.
Our marriage had been so good before he’d taken over after his father passed away, but it had deteriorated since then.
And now I was convinced something was very wrong. Thatch seemed to be changing more each day, and I was really beginning to worry. We’d been crazy busy lately. Somewhere in all of that, we’d disconnected.
And I was having a hard time getting him to reconnect. I was starting to believe it was because he simply didn’t want to.
“Come on, Thatch,” I said, holding his hand as the current of the river moved us along. “We’re all so busy being adults now that we don’t get to do this anymore. Can’t you just enjoy it?”
He sighed. I couldn’t see his eyes behind the mirrored sunglasses he was wearing, but the rest of his face looked… irritated. He wasn’t smiling. His mouth was set in a firm, thin line, and he was looking at the water with distaste. “That’s the thing. I’m not sure I enjoy this anymore.”
That stung. It wasn’t so much that I wanted him to love tubing down the Indigo. It was that I was starting to feel as if he wasn’t enjoying anything about our life right now.
I noticed my friends looking back at us, and I tried to smile. I knew they could tell something was going on between Thatcher and me, but I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet.
“Fine. I get it. I won’t expect you to do this anymore, okay? I just thought you’d enjoy it. You’ve been so busy lately, and I feel like we haven’t spent much time together…”
He was looking at his watch, a waterproof Patek Phillipe.
He cut me off, and I wasn’t even sure he’d heard what I had said.
“Carrie, I’m sorry but something’s come up at the office.
” He dropped my hand, gave me a quick smile, and started to float towards the side to get out of the river.
He turned back to me. “Can you get a ride with one of your friends?”
My face had turned red with embarrassment and anger. He’d said ‘your’ friends as if he hadn’t hung out with these people for the past five years. And he’d essentially walked off in the middle of a conversation as if I didn’t matter at all.
I looked at Thatcher. Really studied him.
What I saw made me sad, like something was slipping away faster than I could reach for it and make it stay.
He used to love the activities I introduced him to—river rafting, biking along long, winding trails that led us through forests and past rivers, kayaking while we talked about the wildlife on the shore.
It got him out of the urban environment he’d grown up in, released him from the obligations of being a Caldwell.
His only real fun before he’d met me had come from glittering parties where people danced until dawn but said vicious things behind your back while smiling to your face.
He hadn’t been used to the simplicity of the outdoors like I was.
But he’d come to love the change of pace.
He didn’t love it anymore. He made it seem juvenile and pointless, like he was wasting his time.
He pushed his sunglasses on top of his head.
I watched the half smile on his face while he stood on the riverbank and read his ‘work’ texts.
He looked up and met my eyes suddenly, and I saw a flash of something that looked a lot like guilt.
Then he smiled, and it was like a shutter came down over his face.
It seemed like he was wearing a mask, carefully concealing whatever he was hiding from me.
I was coming to fear something else. I was starting to think his love for me had just been a fascination with what was new and completely different from what he was used to. What if that fascination had turned into something else? Something a lot like contempt?
And what if the very things that had made him choose me, love me, had worn away?
I watched him walk off with a sinking feeling in my stomach. I turned away and saw that all my friends were watching me. They felt it, too. They were worried about my marriage. About me. I forced a smile.
“Y’all ready to finish the river?” I asked in a cheery voice.
I wasn’t going to let what was happening between Thatcher and me ruin the day.
Not when it had been ages since we’d been able to get together and do this.
They all smiled back, relieved, and we enjoyed the rest of the long, lazy trip down the river.
We laughed, talked, and relaxed together.
But there was something slightly different, slightly off about the whole day. And I knew that something was Thatcher.