Chapter Ten Caroline #4
“It’s a fine day for sailing, Mrs. Crane. Shall we grab the soup tureen?”
“We should take a trip together this spring,” said Caroline, suddenly overcome with the idea. “We’ve been dating almost a year, we could do something special, like go to Portugal or Montenegro.”
“I’ve never been to Portugal or Montenegro.”
“I’ve only been to Portugal with my parents. We would have so much more fun. I’ll drag you to Lisbon and the Algarve, then I bet they even have cool Portuguese birds for you to watch.” Caroline bumped her shoulder against him happily.
“Yeah.” Van laughed weakly. “I can’t go to Europe, though. I don’t have that kind of money. And I couldn’t leave Dylan for that long.”
“I’d pay for it,” Caroline offered. “It wouldn’t be fancy, just flights and low-key hotels. We could go for a week, or five days.” Since her cottage was paid for by the fellowship, Caroline had hardly any expenses. She could easily swing a few thousand dollars to cover Van’s half.
“I can’t just let you pay for stuff, Caroline.” Van turned to her, his eyes were sad and serious. “I need to be ready to pay for preschool, for summer childcare.”
“Okay.” Caroline tried, “We could just go to Nashville or Memphis, stay in an Airbnb. Whatever. It doesn’t have to be international.”
“That’s the thing, though.” Van looked pained. “I can’t go off traveling with you. I need to be here for Dylan.”
Van was a college freshman while she was a high school senior. She had started repeating this to herself like a private mantra. “I get it, Van. He’s little. Soon you won’t need to be here all the time. But we can start to plan ahead for when he’s sleep trained.”
“Caroline.” The expression on his face was so weird that she felt a pit in her stomach. “I want to be with him all the time.”
“But that’s right now, Van, while he’s a baby. He’s not going to be a baby forever.”
“No, but I’m going to be his dad forever.”
“Obviously. I know that. I’m not saying don’t be his dad. I don’t even know what that means…” Caroline trailed off.
“This isn’t fair to you,” Van said quietly.
“It’s temporary, Van. We knew it would be weird and awkward. We knew we’d have to muddle through a tricky time when he was a baby. Remember? We talked about this. You asked me to try. This is me. Trying.”
“But I didn’t get it back then. I thought having a baby was just that—having a baby. But it’s having a baby that becomes a child that becomes a person. And there’s no end date on that. I’m never going to be done. This is how it’s always going to be.”
How it’s always going to be. “So, what does that mean for me?” Caroline asked.
“I love you so much. I think you’re wonderful. But I can’t be a good boyfriend to you. I can’t go on vacation. I can’t go out to dinner. I can’t even spend an hour having brunch with your best friend. Do you know how shitty I feel about that?”
“Yeah,” Caroline said quietly. “That was shitty.”
“I want to be a good partner to you, but more than that, I want to be a good father.”
“And you feel like I’m getting in the way? Of you being a father?”
“I can’t do both,” Van said, and he looked so sad Caroline felt broken for him. She wanted to put her arms around him, but suddenly she didn’t know if she was allowed to touch him anymore.
“So this is it? We’re breaking up?” Everything was happening so fast.
“I’m sorry, Caroline.”
She wanted to ask for a time-out. She wanted to go back ten minutes to when she was talking about Portugal and Montenegro and undo the entire thing.
Control, alt, delete, don’t save document.
Could she make him take it back? But, no, she realized.
He was breaking up with her. He was telling her it was over.
Caroline felt her nose and eyes stinging, the tears about to come, so she turned around and walked away as quickly as she could before Van could see.
She stumbled down the path to the beach, the wind freezing on her wet face.
In the parking lot she realized they had both come in her car, that Van would have to find his own way home, maybe borrow a truck from work, but she couldn’t stand to sit next to him, to have him watch her snot and sob and fall apart.
It would be humiliating for her, and also unkind to him, to make him watch her suffer when he was hurting so much too.
She got in her car and drove, leaving him behind.
This wasn’t something that he had just blurted out.
She now understood he had been thinking about it.
Understood he had rehearsed some of this speech.
She felt so stupid that while she’d been waiting for him at her cottage, eating her sad little dinners, thinking about the trips they would take, the children they would have, he had been planning his goodbye.
She’d been delusional, pitiable, a fool.
This whole time she had been so worried about the other woman in their relationship, so sure that Bailey would be the thing to tear them apart, but she’d been wrong. It had been Dylan the whole time.