“How many divorces are ever actually, truly amicable?” he asks. “No, it wasn’t amicable at all. It was slow, and painful. We separated, sold our house, split most of our belongings fairly evenly, but it just…she was just…” He sighs, shakes his head. “It was insanely hard, and I’ll leave it at that.”
“So…if you don’t mind me asking, how long have you been actually divorced?”
“A year and a half.”
“What were you doing in the time between the divorce finalizing and moving out here?”
He shrugs. “Teaching, and trying to prepare myself for being a principal as best I could. Living with my best friend out there, Marc. He’s one of those childhood friends I was telling you about. We text a lot, and exchange these long, rambling emails. He’s been threatening to come visit me for a while now, but his workload hasn’t allowed it yet.” He waves. “So, that’s the gist of my story.”
“Well, I’m sorry you went through that.”
“Yeah, thanks. I mean, it brought me here, though, and I’m really coming to love this little town.” His eyes fix on mine, and I hear what he’s not saying—that it’s not the town, it’s the people. Me. Aiden.
He swirls his wine—we’re barely even drinking our wine. Sipping for appearances now and then, but not really drinking. “So. I showed you mine.”
I blush, and then realize he means his divorce story. “Oh. Um.” I inhale, hold it, and let it out slowly. “Well…Daniel and I were high school sweethearts. We grew up here together, flirted a lot in middle school, started hanging out freshman year, started dating sophomore year…went to the same college in Baltimore, moved back here afterward, got married, had Aiden.” I hesitate again. “Um. Things were…well, pretty good. Not great, but not bad. Just…average. I was—and still am—a guidance counselor at the high school, and he was the gym teacher. We had the house with the fenced-in yard, decent jobs, a baby…I wasn’t unhappy. I always wanted to be a wife and a mother. Cora and I used to play house as little girls, and I was always the mom, and she was either the dad or the kid, depending on what we were pretending. Daniel…god, I really don’t want to go too deep into it. Um. The salient points of the story are that I got pregnant again. I was happy. I loved being a mom, and even though I knew another baby would definitely make things even harder as we weren’t exactly raking in the money, as I’m sure you know…I was happy about being pregnant again.”
“He wasn’t?” Jamie guesses.
“He was worried about money, about me needing time off, about how we were going to take care of two when it was all we could do to keep up with Aiden as twenty-somethings just starting out in life and marriage and careers.” I’m struggling. I don’t want to talk about this. Not with him, especially.
He listens sympathetically, his eyes radiating warmth and compassion and interest. “He couldn’t hack it?”
I shake my head. “I wish it was that simple, honestly.” I swallow hard, several times. “I…I lost it—I lost the baby. Fourteen weeks. A late miscarriage. It was…well, it was a nightmare. There’s no other way to put it.”
“God, Elyse. I’m so sorry.”
I shrug. “Yeah. Um. So, really, that was it. I didn’t…I didn’t handle it well. I went into a really bad depression, and Daniel didn’t know how to help, how to handle me like that. We stopped…um…connecting, I guess you could say, if you know what I mean. I just couldn’t cope, and he was clueless. In retrospect, I really needed to get help. And, I mean, I talked to my parents and I talked to my doctor, and I even tried some various medications. So it’s not like I pretended I was fine or refused to get help, but…the medication really only made me worse, what with the various side effects and all. So, I thinkweneeded help. He needed someone to…” I shake my head. “I’m not going to make this about him or try to put it all on him. It was a big tangled nasty mess, and neither of us coped well, and he ended up leaving.”
“He just…left?” Jamie seems puzzled.
“Yep.”
“You had a miscarriage and suffered a depression, you two have a son together, and he just…left?”
“Yep. He came back a few times to see Aiden, and then it was just phone calls and cards and gifts for Aiden, and then that trickled off, and then I got papers giving me pretty much everything—legal and physical custody, the house and the car, and in return leaving him free of alimony or child support. I signed and that was that.” I shrug. “That was three years ago, and we haven’t heard from him beyond a random birthday card for Aiden last year.”
“I don’t understand thatat all.”
I laugh bitterly. “That makes two of us.”
“He just left you, his wife, and Aiden, his…what? Five-year-old son? Where did he go? What is he doing? Do you even know?”
I shake my head. “Not really. Cora did some online stalking a few months ago, and he’s living in Branson, Missouri, dating somebody named Anne, and is, somewhat enigmatically, self-employed.” I shrug. “But that’s about all I know, and I don’t really care to know anymore.”
“I wonder if he’s pretending he doesn’t have an ex-wife and eight-year-old son,” Jamie muses.
“Probably. I guess he’s going by ‘Dan’ these days. All growing up, our whole lives, he was always Daniel. He was adamant about it.” I rotate my wineglass, staring at the ruby liquid I’m not drinking. “If he’s going by Dan and is self-employed, my best guess is he’s ‘reinvented’ himself.” I use air quotes around the word. “Whatever. Not my business anymore.”
Jamie shakes his head. “I guess I just can’t comprehend walking out on Aiden. He’s such a great kid. He’s funny, he’s athletic, he’s smart. His teacher, Mrs. Crenshaw, told me just yesterday that he’s the sweetest and most helpful student she’s ever had.” Jamie shakes his head again, frowning. “How do you just walk away from your own kid?”
I fight tears. “I wish I knew, Jamie.”
He winces. “I’m sorry. I’m bringing up a lot of painful stuff, aren’t I?”
I laugh, a bitter, mournful huff. “It is what it is, right? We all have our stuff.”
His eyes bore into mine. “I can see more clearly why you don’t want to get involved in anything.”
