“It was always easier that way.”
I stare into the darkness, getting comfort from my wife’s fingers twined in mine.
A drop of liquid lands on my arm and I realize Lila is crying.
“Baby,” I say, voice husky, “what’s wrong?”
“I’m so sorry you lost her. I’m so sorry it hurt you so badly.” She hugs me tightly.
I stroke her hair. Feel her soft body pressed to mine, inhale her familiar scent. “Time heals all wounds.”
“I’m not so sure you’re healed.” She sniffles and takes a breath. “I get it now. This marriage. It was an easy yes because it was fake from the start. An ending already built in. No real attachment by design. Not built to last.”
“That’s not what I want,” I tell her fiercely. “Maybe that’s what I convinced myself of when we met, but I think I was lying to myself even then. Trying to give myself the excuse to do what I really wanted to do, which is be with you.”
The words come easily to my lips even though I’ve never said them before.
“I want to make this work,” I say. “I want this for real. If you can’t come to Denver, we can do long distance. Please.” I hear the desperation in my own voice and don’t try to hide it. “I’ll come home every chance I get.”
There’s a long pause.
At last, she says, “What will that be? A few days every couple of months? For an indeterminate amount of years?”
My silence is answer enough.
“When will you retire?”
“I… I don’t know.”
She exhales, deflated. “Slade, I care for you. So deeply. But that’s not the kind of marriage I want. I don’t want to settle for crumbs. I want all of you. “
Her words hit me directly in the chest.
“You would have it,” I whisper. “I would give you everything.”
She kisses me softly in response. I can taste the salt of her tears on her lips.
“Have you ever heard this saying?” she asks. “It goes, ‘children spell love as t-i-m-e.’ You know I was raised by a succession of nannies. My parents never gave me their time. I learned what that meant eventually. It’s not a relationship dynamic I want to repeat.” Her cool fingertips stroke along my cheek. “I just want to be with you. I just want time. It’s the most precious resource any of us have. Can you promise me that?”
My throat feels tight. “You have all my time right now.”
“Until you go to Denver.”
“Yes.”
She takes a deep, shuddering breath. At last, she says, “Then that’s what we’ll share. And when you go back to your normal life, you’ll be free of attachments. No suffering.”
My fist clenches where it’s balled into the sheet. “So that’s it? I have to hold you and care for you and be with you, all the while knowing someday it will end?”
“That’s life.” She kisses me softly. “But I promise it will hurt so much less if we end it six months from now instead of sixty years from now.”
I hold her tight and think,I don’t want to let you go. I can’t let you go.
The words are right there.
I love you.
I’ve loved before. My mother, my family, this land. Buteven the deep love I had for my mother was the love of a child, pure and dependent and devastating in its loss.
