Page 44 of Say Something
My heart sunk for her. “I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t know what changed with Daniel,” she continued. “He must have been as stubborn an embryo as he is a man, because he stuck, and we had a healthy baby boy. Six long years after we’d started trying to have a family. Dean and Darcy came easily, too. It was like a switch had flipped, I guess. I’m not telling you this as one of those ‘never give up’ stories, I know how annoying they are, and I heard my share of them all those years ago. I’m just sharing this with you, woman to woman, a mother to a daughter. I would have loved to have been there for you when you were struggling. I’d love to be here for you now.”
A tear dripped down my cheek. For her loss, her pain, and her love. After all this time, after my history with her son, she still considered me a daughter.
“I broke Danny’s heart. How can you still…”
She smiled sadly, placing her hand over mine. “Honey, you didn’t break his heart. My son is still so in love with you. You can both be as stubborn as you need to be right now, but you’ll find your way back to each other eventually.”
Why did everyone keep saying that?
“We got divorced,” I said, as if that explained everything. It was the end of our story, was it not? The period at the end of our sentence. The final nail in the coffin. People didn’t come back from divorce...did they? Could they?
She shook her head, thatI know something you don’t knowlook in her eyes. “You two never fought as kids. Never had an argument. Your relationship was easy in high school and college. It was picture perfect. The stuff people write romance books about. You created a perfect world for yourselves where all your dreams came true. You loved and loved and loved, but it was all you knew how to do.”
I frowned, unsure I liked the picture she was painting. Danny and I hadn’t been completely naive to the world around us, had we?
“There’s nothing wrong with the way things were. It’s wonderful that you two were able to enjoy each other for so long without arguing about this, that and the other thing. Your struggles with infertility were the first big, grown-up problem you had. Your first conflict. Neither one of you knew how to handle it. Now, I see that look on your face,” she said, calling me out on my furrowed brows. “I’m not trying to patronize you. It’s just a fact. No one knows what to do in situations like that, they just get by. Neither you nor Daniel are guilty for what happened, but you never resolved your issues. Don’t let your first real fight be what separates you forever.”
She patted my hand, then stood from the table and went to where a pie rested on the kitchen counter. She busied herself with cutting the dessert, but I knew what she was really doing. She was giving me time to process what she’d just said.
Was it true that Danny and I had never really fought before we started trying to conceive? Was that the root of all our problems? We just didn’t know how to deal?
