Chapter 12
I found out about the farmers market from the barista at the coffee shop.
She was a chatty young woman named Sage, with purple streaks in her hair and a nose ring that caught the light when she moved.
I'd become a regular over the past few weeks, ordering the same black coffee every morning, sitting at the same corner table by the window.
She'd started recognizing me, making small talk about the weather and the tourists and whatever local gossip she thought might interest a lonely man in a wrinkled shirt.
"You should check out the market on Saturday," she said, sliding my cup across the counter. "It's really cute. Local vendors, live music, the whole deal. Great place to meet people."
I didn't want to meet people. I wanted to meet one specific person. But I thanked her anyway and filed the information away.
It wasn't until I overheard two women talking behind me in line that I understood why the market mattered.
"I love the jam from that booth near the back," one of them said. "The woman who runs it is so sweet. Julianne, I think her name is? She just moved here a few months ago, and she's already volunteering everywhere."
My heart stopped.
Julianne. Volunteering at the farmers market.
I turned around slowly, trying not to look as desperate as I felt. The women didn't notice me, too absorbed in their conversation about preserves and baked goods. But I'd heard enough.
Saturday morning found me standing at the edge of the town square, watching the market come to life around me.
It was charming in that way small coastal towns always managed to be.
White tents lined the perimeter, vendors arranging their wares on tables covered with checkered cloths.
The air smelled like fresh bread and flowers and the salt tang of the ocean breeze.
Families wandered between booths, children running ahead of their parents, dogs on leashes sniffing at everything.
I felt violently out of place. My city clothes marked me as an outsider, and the dark circles under my eyes marked me as a man who hadn't slept properly in weeks.
I'd tried to dress down, jeans and a plain sweater, but I still looked like what I was: a desperate middle-aged man searching for his estranged wife.
I found her near the back of the market, just like the woman in the coffee shop had said.
She was standing behind a table laden with jars of homemade jam, their labels handwritten in neat script. She was laughing at something the vendor next to her had said, her head thrown back, her whole body loose and relaxed in a way I hadn't seen in months. Maybe years.
God, she was beautiful.
She was wearing a soft blue sundress I'd never seen before, with a cardigan thrown over her shoulders against the morning chill.
Her hair was down, catching the sunlight, and her face was flushed with genuine happiness.
Not the forced smile she'd worn at corporate functions.
Not the careful mask she'd put on for dinner parties. Real, unguarded joy.
And I'd almost destroyed her capacity for it.
I stood frozen at the edge of the crowd, watching her interact with customers.
She handed a jar to an elderly woman and refused payment, waving away the money with a laugh.
She crouched down to speak to a little girl at eye level, pointing out the different flavors, letting her smell the samples.
She moved through the space like she belonged there, like she'd always belonged there, in this small town far away from me and my bullshit.
She'd built a life. A real life. Without me.
I should have left. I should have turned around and walked away and respected the boundaries she'd so clearly drawn. The no-contact order was still in effect. My presence here was a violation, even if I didn't approach her.
But I couldn't move.
I watched her for what felt like hours but was probably only minutes, drinking in the sight of her like a man dying of thirst. Every smile she gave someone else was a knife in my chest. Every laugh that wasn't for me hollowed out another piece of my soul.
And then she saw me.
Her gaze swept across the crowd, casual and unfocused, and then stopped. Our eyes met across the crowded market square, and I watched the joy drain from her face like water from a cracked vessel.
Her expression shuttered. Closed off. That calm, empty mask I'd seen at the cottage door sliding back into place, erasing the woman I'd been watching and replacing her with someone I barely recognized.
I should have left.
Instead, I walked toward her.
The crowd parted around me, or maybe I pushed through, I wasn't sure. All I knew was that I was moving, my feet carrying me closer to her booth, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat.
She watched me come. Didn't run. Didn't call for help. Just stood there behind her table of jam jars, waiting with that terrible patience that told me she'd expected this. Expected me to violate her boundaries. Expected me to fail her one more time.
I stopped at the edge of her booth. People were watching now, curious faces turning toward the drama unfolding at the jam table. I could feel their eyes on me, could hear the whispers starting to ripple through the crowd.
"Lewis." Her voice was flat. "What are you doing here?"
"I needed to see you." The words came out rough, scraped raw by weeks of silence. "Jules, please. Just give me five minutes. That's all I'm asking. Five minutes to talk."
"We have nothing to talk about."
"We have twenty-two years to talk about." I stepped closer, my hands gripping the edge of her table so hard my knuckles went white. "Please. I know I don't deserve it. I know I have no right to ask you for anything. But I'm begging you. Five minutes."
She looked at me for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Then she glanced around at the crowd that had gathered, at the curious faces and the whispered conversations, and something flickered in her eyes.
"You're making a scene," she said quietly.
"I don't care." And I didn't. The Lewis Cage who cared about appearances, about reputation, about what people thought, that man was dead.
I'd killed him myself, slowly and deliberately, over weeks of solitude and self-reflection.
"I don't care who's watching. I don't care what anyone thinks. I only care about you."
"That's not true." Her voice was still calm, but I could see the tension in her shoulders, the tightness around her eyes. "If you cared about me, you'd respect my wishes. You'd leave me alone."
"I can't." My voice cracked on the words.
"Jules, I can't leave you alone. I've tried.
God knows I've tried. But every morning I wake up and you're the first thing I think about, and every night I go to bed and you're the last. You're everything.
You've always been everything. And I was too stupid and too vain to see it until I'd already lost you. "
People were definitely staring now. I could feel the weight of their attention, could hear the murmurs spreading through the crowd. The woman next to Julianne's booth was watching with wide eyes, her hand pressed to her mouth.
I didn't care. Let them watch. Let them see the great Lewis Cage brought to his knees by his own arrogance.
Speaking of knees.
Before I could think better of it, before the rational part of my brain could stop me, I dropped.
Right there in the middle of the farmers market. Right there in front of everyone. My knees hit the ground, sinking into the mud that had formed from the morning's light rain, and I looked up at my wife with everything I had left in my eyes.
"Please," I said, and my voice was barely a whisper. "Please, Jules. Just listen to me. I'll do anything. I'll say anything. I'll stay on my knees in this fucking mud for as long as it takes. Just please, please don't give up on us."
The silence that followed was absolute. The entire market seemed to hold its breath, waiting for her response.
Julianne looked down at me. Her face was pale, her lips pressed into a thin line. I searched her eyes desperately for some sign of softening, some crack in that impenetrable mask.
I found nothing.
"Get up, Lewis."
"Not until you talk to me."
"I said get up." Her voice was harder now, edged with something that might have been anger or might have been pain. "You're embarrassing yourself."
"I don't care about embarrassment. I don't care about anything except you."
"That's the problem." She stepped back from the table, putting distance between us.
"You think this is romantic. You think showing up here, making a spectacle, getting on your knees in front of everyone, you think that's going to change something.
But it doesn't. It just proves that you still don't understand. "
"Then help me understand." I was begging now, openly begging, and I didn't give a damn who heard. "Tell me what you need. Tell me what to do."
"I need you to go home." Her voice was quiet but firm. "I need you to leave me alone. I need you to stop showing up and making scenes and trying to force me to forgive you before I'm ready."
"Will you ever be ready?"
She was silent for a long moment. The crowd around us had gone completely still, hanging on her every word.
"I don't know," she finally said. "And you pushing me isn't going to help me figure it out."
She turned and walked away.
Just like that. Without another word. She walked past the other vendors, past the curious onlookers, past the entire market full of people who had just witnessed her husband humiliate himself in the mud.
She didn't look back.
I stayed on my knees, watching her go, feeling the damp seep through my jeans and the cold settle into my bones. People were staring. Whispering. Some of them were probably recording on their phones, capturing my lowest moment for posterity.
I didn't move.
I stayed there until the market coordinator, a kind-faced older woman with gray braids, gently touched my shoulder and asked if I was alright.
I wasn't alright. I would probably never be alright again.
But I let her help me to my feet, let her brush the mud from my knees with maternal concern, let her guide me to the edge of the square.
"Give her time," she said softly. "Whatever happened between you two, give her time."
I nodded, though the words felt hollow.
Time. Everyone kept telling me to give her time. But time was just another word for distance, and distance was just another word for losing her completely.
I walked back to my shitty apartment with mud on my knees and shame in my heart.
But underneath the humiliation, underneath the grief and the desperation and the crushing weight of rejection, something else stirred.
She'd said she didn't know if she'd ever be ready.
She hadn't said no.
It wasn't much. It was barely anything at all. But it was more than I deserved, and I was going to hold onto it with both hands.
I'd knelt in the mud and begged, and she'd walked away.
But she hadn't said never.
And right now, that had to be enough.