She looked up at him. “You love Mom, too, right?”
He said yes—the right answer—but he could tell by the sadness in her eyes that he had waited too long, that the silence convinced her of more than his words had.
Leaving her, he went back downstairs, steeling himself to face Jolene, but she wasn’t down there, waiting. She’d picked up the room and turned off the lights.
That was Jolene, cleaning up even while life was falling apart.
*
Jolene made it up the stairs and into her bedroom without coming apart, although how she did it, she wasn’t quite sure. Somehow, her heart was still beating and her brain was still sending signals of the most rudimentary kind—breathe, lift your foot, step forward.
She closed the door quietly behind her, wondering for a split second why she didn’t slam it shut. Maybe a sound like that, a crack, would make her feel better.
Through her window, she saw a block of night and the Big Dipper, slanted on its side.
She meant to sit on her bed, but she missed, was off by inches, and so she slid down to the floor.
She sat there, her knees drawn into her chest, staring into the darkness.
I don’t love you anymore.
It hurt so much she thought her heart might stop.
She leaned back against the bed she shared with her husband.
She didn’t want to think about that, or him, but how could she help herself now?
He had changed her, completed her. Or so she’d thought.
In the army, she’d found herself; in the air, she’d found her passion. But it wasn’t until she met Michael that the missing part of her began slowly, cautiously to fill back in.
Tami had encouraged her to go in search of the young lawyer who’d helped her, and flight school had given her confidence to do it. He’d been easy to find at Zarkades, Antham, and Zarkades.
You came back, he said when he saw her standing in the lobby. Those were the very first words he spoke. He said it, smiling, as if the six years in between had passed in a breath. She knew then that he’d been waiting, too, in his way. I came back, she answered, not even surprised when he reached for her hand. It had been more than a start; love was a deep blue sea and they dove in. She hadn’t known how to believe in love, but he’d swept her away; it was as simple as that. With their first kiss, she’d forgotten the love that had been her birthright and begun to believe in him and forever.
Somewhere along the way, she’d forgotten that love had a dark underside. Too many years in its sunlight had blinded her. She’d handed Michael her heart, wrapped it up and placed it in his hands, and she’d never bothered to worry that he might be careless with it. Even as he’d pulled away from her in the last few years and spent more hours at the office, she’d believed in the durability of their vows and made excuses for him. Like Pollyanna, always believing …
Downstairs, she heard a door slam shut, then a car engine start. She stumbled over to her window and stood there, watching him drive away, wondering if he would come back.
*
He didn’t.
Jolene spent the restless, unbearable hours of the night cleaning and doing laundry. She vacuumed, dusted, polished silver, and scrubbed toilets—anything to keep her mind off his I don’t love you anymore.
Not that it worked. The words had changed her perception of her life, if not herself.
Five words to change a world, to dissolve the ground beneath a woman’s feet. It was a tidal wave, that sentence, whooshing in without warning, undermining foundations, leaving homes crumbled in the aftermath.
By morning, she was so exhausted she could barely stand and so wired she didn’t bother making coffee. More than anything, she wanted to escape this too-quiet house and get in her helicopter and fly away. Instead, in the pink and lavender light of a rising dawn, she went for an eight-mile run, but it didn’t help.
When she got back, she took a long shower, dressed in worn jeans and a gray army sweatshirt, and then went to wake up Betsy. She knocked on the door and went inside. “Hey, Betsy,” she said, forcing a smile. She should have spoken to her daughter last night—that was what a good mother would have done, a stronger mother, but Jolene had been afraid of breaking down in front of her child, of crying, of scaring Betsy even more.
“Don’t say anything,” Betsy said dully.
“I know Daddy talked to you. I thought—”
“I do NOT want to talk about it.”
Jolene stopped, unsure of what to say anyway. How did you talk to a child about such adult things? She’d never been good at knowing when to push with Betsy and when to back off. Invariably, she pushed when she should have let go. It was one of Jolene’s flaws: she was good at holding on. Letting go, not so much.