Chapter 10 The Committee
The Committee
Jackson
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The community center smells like stale coffee and floor wax, same as it has for every monthly meeting since I started coming here with my father at sixteen.
Same folding chairs. Same fluorescent lights.
Same faces around the same tables, watching me walk in like I'm a dead man who forgot to lie down.
I take my usual seat. Mom settles in beside me without a word. She's been doing that lately, showing up places I am, not hovering but present. I don't know if she's protecting me or monitoring me. Probably both.
Helen Marsh calls the meeting to order with that brisk efficiency she's had through the decade she's run this committee. Agenda items blur past. Budget reports. Event scheduling. The usual business that keeps this county running.
I'm not listening. I'm watching the empty chair across the table where Maren sat at the last meeting. Helen said she sent her vendor notes ahead; she's working an event today. Her work is here even when she isn't. I catch myself wanting her to walk through the door anyway.
While Helen looks for a page in the fair agenda, I hear Patricia behind me.
"Well, I heard she just up and left." Patricia Simmons leans toward the woman beside her, voice pitched to carry. "After everything that family's done for her. Ungrateful, if you ask me."
My hands go still on the table.
"Overreacted, that's what my Carl says." The other woman, whose name I should know but can't remember, shakes her head with performative sympathy. "A little burglary and she runs off like the house was on fire. Some people just can't handle ranch life."
Mom's hand lands on my arm. Warning or support, I'm not sure which.
I stand up.
The room goes quiet. Helen Marsh stops mid-sentence, her reading glasses sliding down her nose as she looks at me.
"Jackson?" She sounds concerned. "Did you have something to add about the vendor permits?"
I ignore the vendor permits. I turn to face Patricia Simmons and the woman beside her, and I make sure my voice carries to every corner of the room.
"My wife didn't overreact." The words come out steadier than I feel. "She didn't leave because of a little burglary. She left because I failed her."
Silence. Absolute silence. Somewhere in the back, someone's chair creaks.
Patricia's face goes red. "Jackson, I didn't mean..."
"You don't know what she went through." I keep my voice level. I owe Maren that much. "And I won't turn it into a story for this room. She had reason to leave me. That is all you need to know."
The woman beside Patricia looks like she wants the floor to swallow her. Good.
"I'm not going to share the details of our private life." I grip the back of my chair because my hands want to shake. "But I will say this once, and I won't say it again. Whatever you've heard about my wife leaving, you heard wrong. She had every reason to go. The fault is mine."
Mom sits very still beside me. I can't look at her. If I look at her, I'll lose my nerve.
"I know I stood up for Maren at the last meeting, when Shay questioned her qualifications." The memory of that moment sits sour in my chest now. "I meant what I said then. But defending her once doesn't make me a good husband. I should have been consistent. I wasn't."
Helen Marsh takes off her reading glasses and sets them on the table. She's looking at me like she's seeing something new.
"I'm not asking anyone to take sides." I finally let go of the chair. "I'm asking you to stop spreading gossip about a woman who did nothing wrong. If you want to talk about what happened to the Wilder marriage, talk about me. I'm the one who earned it."
I sit down.
Helen clears her throat and returns to the agenda. I keep my hands on the table until they stop shaking.
Mom's hand finds mine under the table. She squeezes once. Doesn't say anything.
I make it through the rest of the meeting on autopilot. Budget votes. Event assignments. All the machinery of small-town life grinding forward while I sit there replaying every mistake I've made since Shay came back.
When Helen adjourns, I'm the first one out the door.
People are still gathering their things inside. I wait beside my truck. I lean against the driver's side door and stare up at a sky that doesn't care about any of this.
Mom finds me there before I've managed to unlock the door. She doesn't say anything at first, just stands beside me and looks up at the same sky.
"They needed to hear it." Mom keeps her voice quiet.
I shake my head. "That was the bare minimum."
Mom touches my arm, asking me to stop dismissing her. "Jackson."
"I'm not fishing for praise, Mom." I dig my keys out of my pocket. "I said what needed saying. That doesn't make me a hero."
She turns to face me, and her expression is complicated in a way I can't quite parse. "You're not sleeping."
I almost laugh. "You told Maren that?"
She doesn't defend it. "I mentioned it. She asked me to stop, so I stopped."
The sky is getting dark. I need to drive home to an empty house and eat dinner alone and lie awake in our bed wondering if my wife is ever coming back.
"I want to call her." I say it out loud because Mom is the only person I can say it to. "I pick up my phone and almost do it. She asked me not to call that night. She hasn't asked for daily calls since, and I don't want to make her fend me off."
Mom doesn't tell me to call anyway. Doesn't tell me to give her more time. She just stands there, solid and real, while I try to hold myself together.
"She texted me yesterday." The words feel like a confession. "Said I could come by this week if I wanted. Drop off some things she left behind."
Hope flickers in Mom's face. I hate that I put it there.
"I'm going to go." I open the truck door. "I'm going to try to apologize. And it's probably going to go badly, because I don't know how to fix what I broke."
Mom catches my arm before I climb in. "She said you could bring her things. Don't turn that into a demand to come home."
I leave the door open between us. "I know."
She waits until I look at her. "Then bring what she asked for. And listen when she talks."
I drive home with Maren's text still unanswered on my phone. Her apartment is in town. I could turn around and be there while she's still awake. I keep driving toward the ranch; she offered a visit later this week, not tonight.
At the stop sign, I remember her waiting across the anniversary table. I knew she was hurt then. Why did I need a deputy to call me before I stopped explaining it away?
I pull into the driveway of a house that feels like a museum of my failures. The bedroom light is off because there's no one there to turn it on.
Her blue mixing bowl is in the cupboard where she always kept it. I take it down and set it beside the things she asked me to bring. I used to hear her working in here. Now the room is silent even with me in it.
She texted me yesterday. Said I could come by.
I take out my phone and answer her text. Thursday works. I'll bring the box. I type that I miss her, then delete it. She asked about her belongings. I can answer one question without asking her to comfort me.
I put the phone down beside her bowl and finish packing the box.
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