Chapter 8 #2
I read the letter. It was short. Ephraim wanted a discussion.
I had to hand it to him. He was willing to drive across the mountains for it.
He wasn’t summoning me to the ranch. He was coming to me.
Neutral ground. Although a five-star hotel in Bellevue did not exactly feel like it was neutral ground to me.
It felt like more of the same. More of his money and status, his expectations, and his rules.
Even if he was coming to Seattle and not his home turf.
Daphne read over my shoulder, making a disapproving sound in her throat. “Wow, he really doesn’t get it, does he?”
I wasn’t sure how to respond. Part of me appreciated the gesture, the attempt to bridge the gap I had created between us.
But the rest of me felt almost insulted, as if the extravagant flowers were meant to buy what words couldn’t, a substitute for understanding.
“He’s trying,” I said half-heartedly. “In his own way.”
“His way being an extravagant display while not acknowledging the actual issue that drove you away,” Daphne countered. “Tell me he at least mentions the horses in his note somewhere, shows he understands why this place matters to you?”
I scanned the letter again. “He knew to find me here, which is something. But no, he doesn’t mention the horses.”
She sighed dramatically. “Classic Ephraim. Solving a problem with money and influence instead of emotional intelligence.”
It was fair criticism, and I found myself nodding despite a strange defensiveness creeping in.
“He’s not a bad person, Daph. He’s just...
” I struggled to complete the sentence, to articulate what I had come to understand about my husband over our years together.
“He’s built an entire worldview around being in control, and I’ve pulled the foundation out from under him by doing something completely unplanned and on my own terms.”
“So now you’re making excuses for his poor response?”
“No, not excuses.” I folded the letter carefully, slipping it back into the envelope. “Just acknowledging that this is probably the best he can do right now.”
“But not what you need,” she said gently.
I looked at the flowers, their beauty incongruous in this setting of purpose and healing. “No. Definitely not what I need.”
For a moment, we stood in silence, the letter in my hand feeling heavier than its weight suggested.
The decision about whether to accept his dinner invitation should have been straightforward, yet I hesitated, the familiar patterns of our marriage not easily broken.
Part of me still wanted the easy resolution, the return to known territory even with its dissatisfactions.
But as I looked past the flowers to where the last child of the day was saying goodbye to the horses, his smile transforming his whole face, I felt the truth I had been discovering over these past weeks solidify within me.
Going to that hotel room, even to discuss the future of our marriage, would be stepping backward into a version of myself I had only recently escaped.
The woman who had written “I need to find myself again” didn’t belong in those gilded spaces anymore.
I took the flowers from their vase, the water splashing onto my already muddy boots. “Here, take these to the main office,” I told a passing volunteer. “Maybe we can use them to brighten up the reception area.”
I pulled out my phone. His attempts to contact me had lessened recently, but now I knew why.
He had a letter and flowers on the way. He wanted to meet tonight.
There was no sense in him making the trip over here when I wouldn’t meet him.
I could break my silence to at least keep him from wasting his time.
My fingers hovered over his name before I typed out a message, the words chosen carefully but honestly:
I appreciate the gesture, but I’m not ready for this conversation. Please don’t come to Seattle.
I pressed send before I could second-guess the decision, feeling both relief and a twinge of regret as the message delivered.
This wasn’t how I had imagined communicating with him when we said our vows, but neither had I expected to wake up one day feeling so utterly disconnected from the man I had promised to build a life with.
“Good for you,” Daphne said, reading over my shoulder again without apology. “He needs to understand that you’re setting the terms now, not him.”
As I put the phone away, I saw that the kids had all left, the horses were settled for the evening, and the volunteer staff were cleaning up after the day’s activities.
The rescue was returning to its peaceful rhythm, the rain now just a drizzle that softened the edges of the world.
The extravagant flowers sitting awkwardly in a bucket by the office door were already being forgotten.
“Come on,” I said to Daphne, nodding toward my small apartment upstairs. “I have some of that whiskey you like stashed away, and we have weeks of catching up to do.”
As we walked away from Ephraim’s inadequate apology and toward an evening of genuine connection, I felt the rightness of my choice settle over me.
The path forward was still unclear, the future of my marriage uncertain, but for the first time in a long time, I felt aligned with my own decisions, grounded in the truth of what I needed rather than what was expected.
And in that moment of clarity, I realized that whatever came next, I would face it as myself, not as Mrs. Holt or the rescue director or anyone else’s version of who I should be. Just Larkin, finding her way home.