11. Chapter Eleven
Chapter Eleven
Are you coming to my session after lunch?” I asked Lizbeth when I saw her the next morning.
I had barely seen her since I had brought her dinner a few days ago.
I knew she was busy with everything she had to keep up with for this conference.
I had made a point of picking up a scone and coffee for her on my way over.
I had stopped at Carrie’s yarn shop to see what the cafe was like.
I knew Lizbeth, even if she had stopped to have breakfast, would likely need something to fuel the next part of her day.
The blueberry scones had been busting with fruit.
Lizbeth had taken a bite of the pastry and shut her eyes as she savored the flavor. “Thank you,” she said once she had swallowed. “I’m putting out fires when you’re doing the session, so I can’t go.”
My smile fell. “Too bad. I was hoping you and Cooper would be here to make sure the conversation didn’t stall out.”
Lizbeth smiled. She understood as well as I did that open conversations could falter when nobody had any topics to bring up or conversation to share. I always liked to plant someone in a group who knew how to keep the conversation flowing.
“I think Mason wants to go to it,” she said. “I’m pretty sure he has some questions to bring up.”
I raised an eyebrow, ready for her to share more, but someone called her name.
As she rushed off with a quick wave, my mind reeled with what Mason could intend to bring up during an open session with me.
Would he make it personal? There were over eight years of anger between us.
How would I respond? My body had betrayed me yesterday when I overheard him fighting with Lois.
Would it happen again? I spent the morning trying to focus on the sessions I attended, but my mind kept drifting into fantasies of what our discussions had once led to and how it would play out if it happened again today.
If not that, then the nightmare it could be if he wanted to lash out at me like he had with Lois.
Our break up had been nastier than I expected.
After weeks of using our dissertation defenses to avoid the fight, it had come to a head when he showed me the contract Lois had given him.
It wasn’t a discussion or negotiation at this point.
It was signed and sent back to Human Resources.
The deal was done and being with him meant I was stuck here and held hostage by his choice.
“You can work from the house,” he argued when I was clearly unhappy. “You said the job you took is remote.”
The heat rose to my face but quickly spread through my body. “I’m not staying in this city,” I spat back. “I don’t feel safe here.”
This shouldn’t have surprised him given how often I complained about accessibility. He had watched as I often wheeled my chair into the street, nearly toppling over or getting hit by a car.
“Citation needed, Penny,” he said with a sneer. “We both know Lois will make it safer here.”
I dug my nails into the soft padding on the arms of my chair.
My voice was low and even. “What’s your evidence for thinking Lois will make it safer?
Why do I need to cite my sources when you can’t?
You’ve seen it yourself! You know the campus barely meets the legal requirement.
How many times have I had to wait for someone to open a door for me because the accessibility button is out of reach or I can’t get to a classroom because the elevators are so old they randomly stop working? ”
Mason’s face was red. “You know I need to stay here.”
“We were going to go to Cape Cod. It’s only two hours away. You could have tried to get a job at one of the countless universities and colleges around Boston. We could see your grandparents all the time.”
Mason shook his head. “They’re all I have left. I want to be here.”
“You have me!” I yelled as I wheeled to the bedroom.
My heart pounded in my chest, but not from a thrill.
My heart was breaking even if my mind was taking its time realizing the truth.
I fought tears that burned with my anger and grief.
My cries caught in my throat because I didn’t want him to see what I wasn’t ready to admit.
Mason followed me and stood in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest. I locked the wheels of my chair so I could get on the bed.
“Lois was right,” he said. “You’re only thinking of your needs.
You want to leave, so we both have to leave.
You want to start a foundation, so who cares if there’s no guarantee that it will work.
We could lose everything, but you want it. ”
I had suspected what Lois had been saying to Mason, but to hear the words come out of his mouth was heartbreaking.
“What does the great Lois Fairfax, future university president, think about me?” I said with a smirk.
Mason narrowed his eyes. “We both know how you look down on academia. You just want to be able to say you have the PhD and not use it to help people. The only reason you agreed to marry me was to make it easier to get me to take care of you.”
My jaw fell open, and I was speechless. To have the man I loved say this to me hurt more than the moment I first learned I would never walk again.
This came out of the blue, as if he was saving it to destroy any chance we had of being together.
It was his secret weapon to make me turn my anger towards him instead of using it to help him.
I knew I could have a great life from a wheelchair, with or without him.
I hadn’t ever suggested I needed him to take care of me.
That Lois had claimed this, and he had believed it, was more of a betrayal than I could forgive.
While he and his grandparents celebrated his graduation, I moved my things out of the apartment we shared and left my engagement ring on the kitchen table.
He didn’t need to say that he didn’t want to marry me.
Everything he said during that fight made his opinion clear.