After a moment, she regained control of herself. “He accused me of marrying him for his money. I told him to keep it. I’d already gotten everything I wanted from him.”
Martin didn’t let that stand.
His voice was as soft as her silk comforter. “Not everything.”
“No, I suppose not.” She swallowed back the thickness in her throat. “I wanted him to love me.”
“I know,” Martin said. “I know you did.”
Seventeen
The morning sunstreamed through her bay window, bathing them both in warmth as she let her emotions settle once more.
“What happened after the divorce?” Martin finally asked.
“I haven’t heard from Barton since, except concerning necessary legal matters.” That wasn’t the painful bit, really. Rose had never missed her actual ex, just the possibility of what she’d once thought him to be. “I tried to keep in touch with the few people I considered my friends. But maintaining relationships with a teacher’s schedule is tough during the school year. You know that.”
He spoke quietly. “I do.”
“Besides, our lives were so different suddenly. I couldn’t go on vacations to Europe or Bermuda. I couldn’t pay thousands of dollars for a table at a charity dinner. I didn’t have time, I didn’t have money, and I didn’t have the same interests. So those friendships faded. And others…” After so many years, it still stung. “Most of them weren’t really my friends at all. When Barton and I split, they spread rumors about me. Said I was a gold-digger and Barton had found me fucking the gardener. Someone of my own class, as they put it.”
She’d known almost from the start that they’d use her childhood poverty as a weapon against her at some point. But knowing that hadn’t stopped their malice from hurting.
“They watched everything I did and judged me for it.” She lifted a shoulder in a carefully nonchalant shrug. “At that point, I stopped trying to fit into those circles. The only people still in my life from that time are Annette and Alfred, because they refused to let go.”
Not that she hadn’t tried to discard them, her grief and anger blinding her to their sincere sympathy. To the love they’d always, always shown her.
Time to wrap up story time and return to her initial point. “I’m not rich. At all. I have nice clothes because I take good care of the wardrobe I acquired during my marriage. I have a nice but aging car that Barton deemed too old to be of any interest to him in the divorce. I eat nice food because I enjoy it, and I don’t spend much money on anything else. I don’t have a child, unlike you, so I don’t have to save for a college fund.”
She waved a hand at her sparsely decorated living room. “Even decorating the house doesn’t cost much, because I’m only willing to buy good-quality pieces I absolutely love and can afford without too much scrimping.”
As usual, he waited until he was sure she’d finished before speaking.
“A lot of things make much more sense now.” He raised her hand and pressed a kiss on her palm. “Thank you for telling me all that.”
This morning-after could use a bit of levity.
“I can’t be your sugar mama.” She flicked his earlobe. Leaned forward to lick it, then whispered in his ear, “I hope you’re not disappointed.”
For once, he didn’t respond to the overture.
Instead, he drew back but kept her hand in his. “My story is a lot less dramatic than yours.”
Apparently, they were covering all their combined rough ground today. At long last, she’d discover whether she needed to locate Sabrina Krause and make that woman regret ever laying eyes on Martin. Because if Sabrina had hurt him like his family hurt him, a supernova’s explosion would seem quaint in comparison to Rose’s fury.
“Sabrina and I met in college. She was my first girlfriend, and my last.” He squeezed her hand. “Until you, that is. We were never a particularly passionate couple, but I loved her. I thought she loved me. We liked and respected one another.”
Rose braced herself for the inevitablebut.
“But at some point, that changed. For her, not me. She hated the long hours I spent at school. Hated how often I brought home grading. Found any discussion of my teaching boring.” His throat worked, and he looked down. “She foundmeboring. Full stop. And all the little comments about how serious I always looked, how I cared about my students more than her, how I had no sense of humor, didn’t feel affectionate anymore. They weren’t jokes. They were jabs. But I didn’t see that until this past year.”
From her conversations with Bea, Rose suspected his daughter had recently experienced a similar revelation. And others, too—about her parents’ marriage, about the kind of father she truly had, about the sort of respect he deserved.
All long-overdue insights, in Rose’s firm opinion.
Her anger, however, she reserved for Martin’s ex, the adult in the situation. The woman who’d vowed to love and honor her husband, and then proceeded to rip him to shreds for being the sort of man he’d always been. The man she’d chosen to marry.
Martin was still talking. Still offering up a ragged wound, one that clearly continued to pain him, for Rose’s inspection.
