Page 23 of Inherited Light
She shrugged. “Maybe it does?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?” I asked, enjoying the banter with her.
“I’m relatively certain I was thinking about life, love and what equals happiness,” she answered smartly.
I tipped my beer up and took a moment to accept her words. “In my life it did, until this morning, anyway. Now, I’m not so sure life, love and the pursuit of happiness go together at all, or is something we can ever achieve.”
“Tell me what happened this morning to change your mind,” she said.
I leaned my elbows on the table and rested my forehead in my palms. “I stopped by to see Cinn this morning. Things ended on a sharp note.”
She chuckled, and the sound reminded me of the way a butterfly floats in the air, up and down, with a soft melody as it flits through the trees. “I see what you did there,” she said, reaching out and rubbing my shoulder. “But this doesn’t have anything to do with music, does it?”
When she touched me, my heart settled in my chest. “No. We were talking about Cinn not being able to let go of the fear Foster will leave her like Josh did.”
“Josh? Who’s Josh?” she asked, and then the light bulb came on. “She was with Josh Abernathy?”
I nodded, leaning back again in my chair. “She married him straight out of high school.”
“Man, I really have been in the dark. I had no idea she married that meathead.”
It was my turn to laugh, and I did. I laughed long and softly, not in a negative kind of way either, more in a relaxing kind of way. Maybe talking about this with her would, in the long run, help me talk to Cinn about it later.
“She agreed to marry him because she was scared of the big world outside of the things she understood like music, and, well, Josh. He proposed and she said yes, but she didn’t even make it all the way through college before their marriage fell apart and he took a hike.”
“What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Cinn got sick again and ended up in the hospital. She lost too much weight and we were sure we were going to lose her. She fought hard, but he didn’t, and by the time she left the hospital he had already packed his things and left.”
“Because he couldn’t deal with her illness? She was already sick by the time she met him,” she said, as she did the math in her head.
“Oh, he was fully aware of the disease and the side effects. I still say Cinn married him out of fear. She didn’t believe she would ever find anyone to love her because of the severity of her Crohn’s disease. She never loved him the way you should love a spouse, but Josh was her safety net, until the disease ripped a hole in him and he took off.”
She sat quietly for several minutes, twirling her beer bottle around on the table. When she glanced up at me, something in her eyes had changed. The feeling of sadness permeated my heart a little bit and I frowned. Whatever she was thinking about was in a dark corner of her soul.
“Now Cinn thinks because she can’t have kids Foster will leave, too?” she asked.
I touched my nose. “You nailed it. The thing is, he married her with his eyes wide open about her disease. He’s a veterinarian, and while he’s not exactly a human doctor, the majority of diseases still apply. Ultimately, he had doubts she would be able to carry a baby, but to keep her happy he entertained the notion.”
“Hmmmm,” she hummed, still playing with the moisture on her bottle. “What you’re saying is, Cinn’s life and love was tied up in something Foster wasn’t pursuing in order to complete his happiness.”
The whole sentence sounded convoluted, but I paused for a minute before I asked her to repeat it. After a few moments, I understood exactly what she meant.
“Yes. Foster is happy to have Cinn, she’s his life and his love, and she’s all he needs to be happy. For some reason, it’s not enough for Cinn.”
She shook her head back and forth several times. “No, you’re wrong here, Lorenzo, because you’re leaving out an important factor.” I leaned forward and waited to hear what she had to share. “She’s a woman.”
I nodded along and waited, but she said nothing more. “Very good, you’re right, Cinn is a woman.”
She rolled her eyes at me and shoved me in the arm, calling me a doofus. “No, what I mean is, Cinn was raised in an environment where women get married and have kids. Their main job in life is to raise a family. All of a sudden, when you take a family out of the picture for Cinn, it’s about failure.”
I thunked myself on the forehead with my palm and left my head in my hand. “You’re right, dammit. All I did by mentioning Josh was make things worse.”
She shrugged. “Or, you called her on something that has been simmering in the background for a while now. Maybe Cinn needed to fail with Josh in order to succeed with Foster. She can’t let her disease control her, she has to control her disease and keep it in its place.”
“Do you keep control of everything so you don’t fail? Does it make it easier to get from day to day?” I asked sincerely.
She slid into her wheelchair and unlocked the wheels. “It’s something we all do, Ren. Women worry about not being able to have kids and if they do have them, they worry about being a bad parent. Men keep tight control of everything in their life because if they fail at a job or a relationship, they think it reflects poorly on them and shows weakness. Whether you like it or not, you can relate to how Cinn is feeling, you’re just choosing not to.”
