Karl’s jaw ticked. With uncharacteristic patience, though, he waited for her to say more.
“But I...” Her chest hurt, and she forced herself to inhale slowly and blow out the breath to the count of four. “I didn’t tell you the very last thing he said. I didn’t tell anyone.”
Still no verbal response from Karl. But he stretched out his legs until they bracketed hers, his face hard as flint.
“He stood there in the kitchen of the home we shared, the home I’d offered him freely for over a decade, and informed me he wanted children. That much you know. Then he told me...” She fumbled for the bottle of water Karl had packed. Took a swig to moisten a throat as parched as a sun-baked desert. “Even if I were willing to get pregnant, it didn’t matter, because he didn’t want kids fromme. He wanted them from someone younger. Someone more likely to bear him healthy children. Someone who’d make a warmer, better mom.”
Karl was literally vibrating with anger. “That’s bullshit, Molly. He—”
“I thought about it, you know,” she interrupted, because if she didn’t say it now, it would never get said. “When he told me he needed”—her fingers crooked—“‘a real family,’ I honestly considered tossing aside everything I’d always planned for myself, thefuture I’d always wanted, to give him whathewanted. To keep him with me.”
The impulse probably wouldn’t have survived the hour, but she’d never know for sure. In that moment, she’d been frantic. Desperate to save her marriage at any and all costs, despite her surface calm.
“Then...” Her laughter knifed upward from her chest, drawing blood the whole way. “Then I found out he wouldn’t evenacceptthat kind of sacrifice. Not from me, anyway. Problem solved, right?”
He took her hand. Squeezed it tight. “I’m so sorry, Molly. So goddamn sorry.”
“All of it hurt way more than I could’ve imagined. His leaving. Everything he said. The eventual divorce.” Her eyes were wet again. Not from yawning this time. “And now, the way he keeps endlesslyhasslingme to give him more, give him my own grandparents’ freakinghome, when I’ve already given him far too much—that hurts too.”
His notebook pressed against one thigh, Karl jotted something to himself with his free hand, using large, slashing letters. Two particular words stood out clearly: FUCKING DICK.
“Every time he calls or texts or emails, it’s a reminder of how stupid I was. For trusting him. For not seeing the red flags.” She blotted away unshed tears with her shirt’s wrist cuff. “I knew better, Karl. I truly did. I should’ve seen who and what he was before we even got married. And the fact that I married him anyway, that I didn’t leave him after getting a cake in the face, that I didn’t divorce him long, long before he left me? It doesn’t say good things about my judgment or my instincts.”
Karl’s fingers tightened around hers, and his note-taking halted.
Enough. Time to bring this sad story of her own foolishness to a close. “I know my lack of faith bothers you. Here’s the thing, though: I may not trust other people very much these days, but I trust myself even less. Hopefully that’s some consolation for you, Karl.”
She exhaled shakily, then clamped her mouth shut.
Karl scrawled one last note, then tossed aside his pen. “All done?”
Her chin dipped in silent agreement.
“Then it’s my turn. I’ll retell that story.” He looked up from his notepad at last. And to her shock, he glared at her. “With better goddamn accuracy, Dearborn.”
His aggressive tone startled her so much, the urge to cry entirely vanished.
Then Karl “Never Met a Sentence Fragment He Didn’t Love” Dean gave an actual speech. It was short, but it featured actual complete sentences, which included—in a stunning turn of events—actual verbsandpronouns.
“Based on my notes and what you told me last week...” After one final, fulminating scowl in Molly’s direction, Karl’s attention returned to his paper. “You had doubts about that asshole from the beginning. You were together a long time before he convinced you to get hitched. You almost left him before your reception even finished.” He shook his head, looking disgusted. “Your instincts are fine, Dearborn. You just need to listen to them. All your divorce proves? Your ex is a dick, and you should trust yourselfmore, not less. End of fucking story.”
And that, it seemed, was that. His entire response to the revelations she’d dredged from the murky depths of her repressed psyche, contained in a single aggrieved tirade aimed ather.
What the hell kind of exercisewasthis?
Flabbergasted, she flung her hands wide. “Why are you so angry atme?”
“Because you’re being an asshole to yourself for no damn reason, and it makes me fuckingfurious.” He flung the notepad down on the quilt, brows beetled, cheekbones streaked with livid color. “What your husband did to you was some fucked-up bullshit, but what you just told me is bullshit too, Dearborn. Howdareyou blame yourself for trusting your damn husband? For loving a man you met when you were basically still a kid? For wanting to believe the best of him? For being loyal and not giving up on your fuckingmarriage?”
The genuine outrage and absolute disbelief in Karl’s every overly loud syllable landed like a punch. His accusing words rang in her ears, echoed in her brain, and somehow—once she fully comprehended everything he’d semi-bellowed—cracked the defensive shell she’d kept around herself for longer than she could remember.
Maybe his sheer volume had rattled something loose inside her. Maybe she’d created an opening for him by telling him the full story of her divorce, with all the ugliest bits intact. Or maybe no one had believed in her so completely since she and her mom moved to California, and having that kind of unstinting, stout support back again—if only for a gut-wrenchingly brief time—popped her protective bubble.
Either way, his words seemed to enter her bloodstream in a heartbeat, spreading warmth through her veins. Like the world’s best, angriest, most profane drug, they immediately salved the rawest edges of her hurt and neutralized some of the corrosiveshame that dissolved her confidence every time she thought about Rob and her marriage.
She replayed Karl’s speech in her head, and her spine straightened.
He was right. Of course he was right.
