Page 135 of Doctorshipped
“Yeah. I …”
“Stop. Please.” I sit on the couch, resting my elbows on my knees, running my hands through my hair. “Please, Jayme. You probably should have hurled it at me. The vase was no problem. I’m sorry it broke, but I cleaned it up. It’s fine.”
We look at one another. Jayme wipes a tear from under her eye and I resist the urge to walk over to her, to hold her, to comfort her somehow.
“May I tell you some things? Fill in some blanks?”
“That’s why I’m here. That and you sounded so sad.”
She’s here because I’m sad? Of course she is. I feel the threat of tears behind my own eyes. I clear my throat.
How do I say this next sentence? The words stick like a ball of gum in my throat. I inhale through my nose deeply, and then let the air out. I close my eyes, mustering all my courage. When I open them, Jayme’s soft expression greets me from across the room.
“What I’m going to say isn’t meant to have the shock value it will have, but there’s no way to do this but to say it fully in one shot.”
Jayme nods. Her grip on the armrests tightens causing her knuckles to whiten.
“That woman in the kitchen was Margot.”
“Margot?”
I nod.
“Margot, as in your dead wife?”
Jayme’s brows scrunch in. “Sorry. I mean your wife who had cancer? Who passed away from cancer?”
“She didn’t pass away.”
“But?”
“She left us. When she got her diagnosis … Well, that’s a long story. One I will fully tell you whenever you want. But, for now, I want to fast forward to the important piece. When Margot received the results that she was in complete remission, she had a sort of existential crisis where she decided she hadn’t ever lived her full life. Cancer made her realize she wanted something different. She filed for divorce and left me and Fiona.”
Jayme’s face morphs from confusion, to concern, to possibly outrage, and then she just looks sad again.
“Why was she here? Have you been in touch with her? Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
I scrub my hand through my hair again.
“When Margot left, she made it seem very final. She was going to travel the world. She never intended to return. She wanted to explore, be free of entanglements. That’s what we were to her—even Fiona. She may as well have been dying.
“I offered her time away. I told her she could start taking regular trips. Said we could work all her dreams into our life as it was. She refused. I begged. She was stalwart. I got angrier than I’ve ever been before or since, and I yelled. I’m not proud of that—yelling at my wife.
“Anyway, I never thought we’d see her again. Fiona went to counseling. She and I moved forward. We agreed we’d live our life without Margot. Fiona didn’t even want pictures of Margot all over the house as a reminder, so when we came here, no family photos went up. She’s done so well—Fee has.”
“How did Margot find you? Why? What does she want?”
“I haven’t heard from Margot since the day she announced she was leaving—not until today. Our lawyers handled the divorce. We did everything through them and I hired a legal representative for everything else. I didn’t contest a thing. She didn’t ask anything unreasonable. The only aspect of our separation I would have fought to the death for was Fiona, and Margot relinquished her rights and gave over one hundred percent custody willingly at the time.”
“How could she?”
The words are out of Jayme’s mouth before she seems to realize she’s saying them.
“Sorry.”
“No. You’re right. How could anyone give up Fiona? I’ll never understand that. Even if I do understand why Margot needed to feel unencumbered, I’ll never know how she could walk away from her own daughter. I see what the cancer did to her emotionally. But the direction she took will never make sense to me. Believe me, I wasted sleepless nights trying to reconcile her choice with reality, and I always came up blank.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, Grant?”
