Page 91 of The Husband Hour
“He campaigned for redeployment. It was the only thing he could do to get over losing his marriage. I have all the letters to prove it.”
She was shocked, but her instinct for self-preservation forced her to defend herself.
“He wouldn’t have been there in the first place if it weren’t for your influence!”
“You know, there’s a reason they give guys dwell time, keep them stateside after a deployment. They need it. But a public figure like Rory jumping right back in? Permission granted. Still, you have to wonder how things would have played out if he’d waited to go back until he was more battle-ready. If he hadn’t been running away from you.”
“It’s all my fault,” she said to Matt.
“Lauren, listen to me: You know better than that. You think you should have stayed in a dangerous, abusive situation to keep your husband around so he wouldn’t go back into a war zone? Think about this rationally. Just take a step back and look at it. I see things in terms of narrative, okay? My work is to understand cause and effect. You are not connecting the dots in a logical way.”
She sobbed. “You really don’t see it how I do?” she said. “It’s so obvious to me.”
“No, Lauren. No one would see it the way you do. Probably not even Emerson in a more rational frame of mind. And you have to stop blaming yourself. Or it’s going to ruin your life. And you deserve to have a life, you know.”
She cried and he moved his chair close enough that he could hug her. She sobbed against his shoulder, and he repeated, “You deserve to have a life.” She heard it again and again, even after he was silent, even after her breathing returned to normal.
“I should go,” she said, pulling back.
“Yeah, God, it’s late. Um, okay. Let me find my car keys.”
“Oh, it’s fine—I can walk.”
“Lauren, don’t be ridiculous.”
Outside, the air was thick with water and salt. Soon, the sun would be up. It was a magical hour, night just about to turn into day. Everything around her seemed to hum and vibrate with life.
She lowered the window on her side, letting the air whip through her hair. Matt turned on the radio and the car filled with a song she remembered from eighth grade, “Drops of Jupiter” by Train, told a story about a man who is too afraid to fly so he never did land.
Matt pulled up in front of the Green Gable and turned off the car. Through the open window, she heard the cicadas humming in the tall grass that framed the stairs to the beach.
“One summer, when we were in high school,” she whispered, “I was driving us around in the rain. Rory opened the sunroof. Something about that moment…it was the most free I ever felt in my life.”
Matt reached for her hand. “You’ll feel like that again someday.” She pulled her hand away.
“I never told anyone what happened between me and Rory.”
“You mean about him hitting you?”
She nodded.
“Didn’t you go talk to anyone after he died? A counselor? Anything?”
“I saw a psychiatrist. But all she did was give me a prescription for Zoloft.”
“Fantastic,” he said sarcastically. “Did you at least tell your mother? A friend?”
“No,” she said. “No one. Until you.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Beth sat up with a start in the early-morning darkness, her mind racing.
During her year in pastry school, she would start her day similarly, except she’d be thinking in French. It was just a few phrases without context or meaning, fragmented evidence that her mind had been churning overnight.
Now, the morning after Nora’s party, it wasn’t mise en forme or le pétrissage, but the words four walls rushing at her pre-coffee. Sometimes you have to sell everything you’ve got. Even the four walls.
She realized, pulling on her yoga pants, that Howard was dealing with the failure of the store all wrong. Or, rather, he was not dealing with it. And selling the Green Gable wasn’t the answer.
