Page 109 of A Better World

“I don’t know what’s between us. I don’t know how we work. I’m a sham doctor and you’re a cancer shill. We’re not heroes.”

“I love you. I love our kids,” he said. “That’s real.”

“But what does that even mean?”

He sat hard on the bed, his hand on her suitcase, holding it closed. “Wait.”

“Why?”

“I’m sorry. I should have told you as soon as I found out.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I kept thinking I had it wrong. I was never sure.”

“No. That’s not why. I want to hear you say it, Russell.”

He played with the latch on the case. “I knew you’d want to leave or blow a whistle.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“I didn’t do it for me. I did it for you and the kids.”

“That’s a lie,” she said. “You might believe what you’re saying, but it’s still a lie.”

He shook his head. “It’s bad out there, Linnie. It’s only getting worse.”

“I know that.”

“Survival isn’t worth anything if you’re not with me. It’s more than love, the thing I feel. I don’t have words for it,” he said, his voice cracking. “There’s never been anyone in my life except you. I don’t care what happens to me. I want this for you.”

Words likelovebecome meaningless when you’ve been with someone for long enough. Love is beside the point. You’ve built something. You’re not going to tear it down. Possibly, you could love someone else just as much. Possibly, your union was based on timing, and this person you’re with is not your soul mate. This is irrelevant. There are no soul mates. You think this. And you go on thinking it. And then you hear a speech like this, and realize that in fact, you are loved not because of the things you do, but for who you are, the specificity of you.

Russell loved her. More than anything, he did. And it occurred to her then, as it had not since their early, messy barroom years, that she loved him in the same way.

But this love, she was beginning to think, had become a cage. “I can’t stay in this, Russell.” She didn’t know whether she meant their marriage, or this town, or both.

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay?”

“Yeah. I understand. Can you do one thing for me?” he asked, as if it were the only thing of her that he’d ever asked, and perhaps that was close to true, because historically, he hadn’t asked. He’d just done. “Can you wait until after the Winter Festival? Because I think nothing’s going to happen. I think even if they have those kids, everything you’re scared about isn’t coming to pass. We’re safe here. They need me. I’m doing good work. The company’s about to go clean. I’ll be doingresearch on totally different products. There’s still time to repair. We haven’t even been here the full year. It’s too soon to decide.”

“What if I want to leave right now?”

He made no expression, no move, and she understood he’d already thought this out. “I’ll stay here so you have something to come back to if you change your mind, or a bomb drops, or one of you gets sick.”

“And the kids? Are you going to fight me?”

“No,” he said, that awful, gritty smile returning to his face, and then tears welled in his eyes and his voice got very soft. She’d expected a fight. That he’d use them as bargaining chips. But in her anger, she’d underestimated him. “Please don’t take my kids away from me.”

They stood there, at an impasse, in the mansion that for a little while had felt like home.

Friday

With the Winter Festival starting Saturday, Linda tried to sneak out of the house early that Friday morning, but Josie caught her.

“I can’t go to school today,” she said. “Dad keeps making me. Don’t make me.”

---