I’d been gone four weeks, and couldn’t wait to kiss him, tell him my stories, share all that I’d seen and learned and thought. We made love until we were sweaty and slippery, and fell back on the bed side by side to let the breezes dry our skin. We’d feasted on lobster risotto that Augustus prepared and bread I baked, and vegetables fresh off the farm. By then, the girls were both grown and gone—Rory married at twenty-three to her high school sweetheart, Nathan, and Maya exploring the world to learn viticulture.
Augustus rubbed his foot over my arch, his fingers tangled in mine. I gazed toward the starry sky, replete with love and happiness and a sense of accomplishment. “Sometimes I can’t believe how lucky we are,” I said. “How lucky I am.”
“You’ve overcome so much,” he said, admiration in his voice.
“Thank you.” I leaned on my arm, touched his belly, growing slightly softer with time. At fifty-eight, his legs and arms were still strong and muscled, but time showed in ways. That soft belly, the skin on his neck, the white lacing through the hair on his chest and beard. I kissed his shoulder, so grateful.
“Christy quite admires you,” he said, “all you survived.”
“Christy?” I echoed, trying to place her.
“The bartender. You’ve met her.”
“Have I?”
“Blonde, a tattoo of a panther on her chest. You commented about it.”
“Ah.” A hush moved through my body. I knew, in that moment, but I didn’t allow that knowledge to surface for months. “What do you mean? What does she think I survived?”
“Just a bad childhood. I didn’t tell her a lot.”
“What’s a lot?”
Only then did he realize how cold and still I’d gone. He turned, pulling me into his body. “Nothing. Really, nothing.” He kissed me.
“Why were you even talking about me?”
In the silence that greeted this question, I had a vision of the two of them in some crappy one-bedroom apartment, naked, sharing pillow talk the way we did right now. My lungs went tight.
He said, “She had a pretty bad time, too. Like you. I thought it might help her to know that you’d also faced something like that.”
“Why did she tell you her story?”
A shrug. “People tell me things. You know that. Hers is one of the worst I’ve heard. Which is why I talked about you.”
I pulled away, sat up. “What did you tell her? How much?”
“Nothing. Nothing much, I swear. Just that you—”
Everything, I realized. “How could you, Augustus? You know how I feel about that.”
“Meadow, love, it’s nothing.” He captured me with his arms and legs, our skin connecting, enlivening. He kissed me. “I’m sorry, Sweet Pumpkin. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
I wanted her gone after that, feeling the existential threat, the dawning recognition that the walls of our fortress had been truly breached. I tried to get her fired but she stayed on.
He was smitten. He didn’t want to give her up, but he didn’t really want to leave me, either. It dragged out for six months, my spinning in a whirling dervish of fury and betrayal, Augustus falling ever more deeply for a woman he could rescue, not the one who’d learned to stand on her own two feet.
He came to me on an October evening and said he wanted a divorce. It astonished me, infuriated me, all the things a scorned lover feels. But it also seemed impossible. We were the match, we were the soul mates—ask anyone. How could I still feel so completely in love and he didn’t feel it at all?
How could I go on without him? What would my life even look like?
So I refused. I told him he was being an ass. “Sleep with her,” I said. “Get it out of your system. We are not dismantling this empire. It would be ridiculous.”
I went to bed, and in the morning, his clothes and most treasured things were gone.
It was almost the worst moment of my life.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Norah
I hang up after talking to Meadow and tuck the phone in my pocket. The sun is hot and I can smell smoke as I walk down the hill into town. For once, my belly is full and I’m clean as I make the trip. I was fully prepared to be kicked out last night when I went upstairs to make sure Maya was all right, and instead, we connected immediately. That she has invited me to stay feels like a hand from the other side, as if Augustus is still present, helping me.
Also helping his daughter. She tried to put a stoic face on, but her agony was plain. I was glad to be able to help her get a little more comfortable. And I was not at all surprised to discover I connected with her. She’s a lot like Augustus, but I recognized something of myself, too. A tough woman used to doing things herself.