Page 45 of Big Island Neighbors
Mitch cleared his throat. “So… what have you been up to?”
“I want a divorce,” she said quietly, speaking the words the moment she thought them.
The solid truth of that statement quelled the sick feeling in her stomach. She took a deep breath of the cool evening air and felt the relief of certainty settle over her.
There were a thousand details to figure out day by day, but she was certain of this one big thing. She didn’t want to be married anymore. Not to him, and probably never again.
Her children were her family, and they would get by just fine on their own.
Mitch was silent for a long time. She was halfway through milking the first goat, wondering if the call head dropped, when he finally spoke.
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do. You were right. Things haven’t been good between us for… What, a decade? I was just too busy with the kids and the farm to stop and think about it. It happened so slowly. But you were right to leave. I’m ready for a divorce.”
“You want to give up on us? Just like that?”
The absurdity of his questions caught her off guard, and she laughed.
“This is funny to you?” His voice rose in indignation.
“You’re the one who left. You’re the one who slept with someone else.” She paused, but he didn’t deny it. “And you know what? I’m glad. It shook me out of my stupor. I don’t need you. I thought I did, but I don’t.”
They were quiet as she ushered one goat off of the stand and began to milk the next.
“I hope that you make time for the kids,” she said after a while. “They miss you.”
“They don’t.” His voice was heavy with self-pity. “They don’t care that I’m gone any more than you do.”
“Paige does, you know she does. Piper and Cody miss you too, they’re just too hurt to show it. It was a shock to them when you didn’t come home.”
“They like you better because you coddle them,” he accused. “I always had to be the bad guy.”
Tara sighed. Quietly, she said, “There never had to be a bad guy.”
He hung up without saying goodbye.
She pulled out the earbud and put it in her shirt pocket. Frustration and grief rolled through her, purely on behalf of her children.
She wished that she could have given them a father who was more accepting and engaged. But you can never really know what kind of parent a person will be until you’re in the trenches beside them.
Mitch had been a good father in the early years.
Good enough, anyway.
And she had been willing to settle for that.
For years she had shouldered the burden of an unhappy marriage without ever stopping to consider that there might be an alternative.
She never would have asked for a divorce if he had stayed, at least not until their girls were grown. And she certainly hadn’t felt glad when he announced that he wasn’t coming home. She had felt shocked and overwhelmed by the prospect of supporting their family without the steady paychecks that he had provided for twenty years.
She was grateful for the foundation they had built together, despite the way in which he’d ended it.
She didn’t regret her marriage; she could never regret the decision that had given her the life she had now with her three beautiful children.
But she was done.
And with that decision came a feeling of relief so strong that it was nearly elation.
