12. Rex
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Rex
She sent the SUV back with a sticky note that said No.
Just that one word, written in her handwriting, stuck to the steering wheel when the delivery company returned it to my driveway.
I stood in my garage staring at that sticky note for a long time.
“You’re an idiot,” Jack said from behind me.
I turned to find my best friend leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, looking at me with the expression he usually reserved for business rivals who’d made catastrophically stupid decisions.
“Thanks for the support.”
“You don’t need support. You need someone to tell you you’re screwing this up.” He pushed off the doorframe and walked over to examine the rejected SUV. “Let me guess. You thought if you bought her something expensive enough, she’d realize how much you care and come running back.”
“I thought she needed a safe car.”
“You thought you could solve an emotional problem with money, because that’s how you solve everything.” Jack shook his head. “And now you’re standing here wondering why it didn’t work.”
I followed him into the house, grabbing two glasses and a bottle of whiskey from the bar in the living room. Jack settled into the leather armchair by the fireplace, his usual spot for these conversations, and accepted the drink I handed him.
“So what am I supposed to do?” I dropped onto the couch across from him. “I tried talking to her. I tried apologizing. And I tried showing her I care. Nothing works.”
“Because you’re doing it wrong.” Jack took a sip of his whiskey. “When’s the last time you took her on a date?”
“What?”
“A date. You know, that thing normal people do when they’re trying to build a relationship? Dinner, movie, walks in the park, awkward goodnight kisses at the door?”
I thought about it. “We had our anniversary picnic. I planned the whole thing myself.”
“One picnic. In a whole year of marriage.” Jack laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Rex, you married a woman you never courted. You skipped straight from business arrangement to expecting her to be happy with whatever scraps of attention you threw her way.”
“That’s not…” I started to protest, then stopped. Because he was right. I’d never taken Freya on a real date. Never asked her out, never planned an evening around what she might enjoy, never done any of the things that normal couples did to build intimacy and connection.
I’d just assumed that providing for her was enough. The ranch, the clothes, the security. I’d thought that was the same as giving her love.
It wasn’t even close.
“I bought her stuff because I didn’t know how else to show her,” I admitted. “My dad was the same way. Terrible at saying what he felt, but he’d buy my mom jewelry every time he screwed up.”
“And how did that work out for your parents’ marriage?”
I didn’t answer. We both knew how it had worked out. Thirty years of polite distance. Two people who shared a house but not a life. A relationship built on obligation and maintained through expensive gifts that substituted for actual connection.
I’d become my father. The one thing I’d sworn I’d never do.
“So what do I do?” I asked again.
Jack set his glass down. When he looked up, the humor was gone from his face, and what was left underneath was something I hadn’t seen since we were kids.
“A year ago, I told you your mother was going to run that girl out of your house.”
My stomach dropped. “Jack.”
“You didn’t speak to me for a month. Thanksgiving, my birthday, that whole mess with the deal.
A month, Rex, because I said out loud what everybody at that table could see.
” He shrugged, but it was stiff. “So no. I’m not going to translate this one for you.
She told you. She told you at dinner and in your bedroom and in the garden at your aunt’s house, and you decided not to hear it. ”
The silence sat between us. I deserved every word of it.
“Stop trying to buy her back,” he said, gentler now.
“You never earned her in the first place. She came to you as part of a business deal. You didn’t date her, you didn’t court her, and you never did any of the work that builds a real relationship.
” He paused. “So do the work now. Don’t be lazy about it. Money can only do so much.”
“With what, then?”
“Figure it out. That’s the part you don’t get to outsource.”
I stared into my whiskey, watching the amber liquid swirl in the glass.
“I was going to take her to an island,” I said quietly. “For our anniversary. Not the picnic, that was just part of it. I bought her a whole island. Private beach, villa, the works. I was going to surprise her.”
Jack’s eyebrows shot up. “You bought her an island?”
“I thought she’d love it. She always talked about wanting to travel, to see the ocean, to have adventures. I thought that if I gave her something big enough, she’d know how much I cared.”
“I think I learned something here. You think, the more expensive your gift is, the more thoughtful you are.”
I drained my whiskey and set the glass down. “Yeah, that’s about right.”
“Cancel the island.”
“What?”
“Cancel it. Or postpone it. Whatever. Don’t give her the island until you’ve earned the right to.
” He stood, setting his empty glass on the side table.
“Court your wife, Rex. Actually court her. Learn her favorite restaurant, not the one you think she should like. Find out what makes her laugh, what makes her cry, what she dreams about when she’s not busy trying to survive your family. Become someone worth forgiving.”
He paused at the door. “And for God’s sake, stop letting your mother run your life. Until you deal with that, nothing else is going to work.”
After he left, I sat alone in my living room for a long time.
The house was too quiet. I’d gotten used to Freya’s presence in ways I hadn’t realized until she was gone.
The way she hummed while she cooked. The way she talked to Penny when she thought no one was listening.
How she curled up on this very couch to read, her feet tucked under her, completely absorbed in whatever story had captured her attention.
I missed her so much it felt like a physical wound.
If money was off the table and grand gestures were off the table, then all I had left was time. Hours. Weeks. Showing up and staying quiet and letting her see me do it.
Isabel’s lessons were every Friday at four. There was a row of plastic chairs in the parents’ section, and nobody had ever told me I couldn’t sit in one.
I pulled out my phone and called my assistant.
“Emilia. I need you to clear my calendar.”
“For when?”
“From this day forward. Indefinitely.” I looked around the empty room, at all the expensive things that meant nothing without Freya in them. “I’m going to be in the city for a while. Don’t ask why.”
“Of course, Mr. Waller. Anything else?”
“Yeah.” I thought about Jack’s words. About doing the work. About becoming someone worth forgiving. “Cancel the island reveal for next Friday. I’m not ready for it yet.”
I hung up and sat in the silence, planning my next move.
There will be no more grand gestures or more expensive gifts. Just me, showing up, day after day, proving that I was willing to change.
It might not be enough. She might never forgive me.
But I was going to try anyway.