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“What’s the matter, Chase? Can’t you stand the truth?”
“Am I supposed to have forgotten that I stopped taking you with me because you made it clear how much you hated going?”
Annie flushed. “Don’t try and twist things. Okay, maybe I didn’t care for those stuffy evenings—”
“Finally, the woman speaks the truth!”
“Why would I have enjoyed them? We were only there so you could grab yourself another headline in the business section of the newspaper!”
Chase’s eyes narrowed. “We were there so I could land myself jobs, Annie. Jobs, remember? The stuff that put bread on the table?”
“Give me a break, Chase! We had plenty of money by then. You were just—just getting your ego stroked.”
A muscle knotted in his cheek.
“Go on,” he said softly. “What else have you saved up, all these years?”
“Only that when I finally said I didn’t want to go anymore, instead of trying to change my mind, which any intelligent man would have done, which you would have done, at one time—”
Chase gave a short, desperate laugh. “Are we both speaking the same language here, or what?”
“Instead of doing that,” Annie said, ignoring the interruption, “you simply shrugged your shoulders and agreed. And that was that.”
“You’re telling me that I should have tried to talk you into doing something you obviously hated?”
“Don’t make it sound as if you don’t understand a word I’m saying, Chase. I won’t buy it.”
“And I won’t buy you making me into some kind of Neanderthal who cheered when my wife signed off and let me go play with the rest of the boys,” Chase said grimly. “No way, babe, because that’s not how it was, no matter what you say!”
“Yeah, well, that’s your story and you’re stuck with it.”
“No!” Chase grabbed her wrist as she started past him. “No, it damn well is not ‘my story.’ It’s fact. Did you expect me to get down on my knees and beg you to spend your evenings with me, instead of with one dumb textbook after another?”
“Right. Lay everything off on me, even my wanting to better myself. That’s typical. Everything was my fault, never yours.”
“Better yourself? Better yourself?” he said, bending toward her, his eyes dark and dangerous. “So that you could do what, huh? Tell me that you knew more about haiku than I knew about building houses?”
“That’s not the way it was and you know it,” Annie said angrily, as she tried to pull her arm from his grasp. “You couldn’t bear to see me turning into a whole person instead of just being Mrs. Chase Cooper.”
“Wasn’t being my wife enough to make you happy?”
“Being the woman who cooked your meals and cleaned your house and raised your child, you mean,” Annie said, her voice trembling. “Who waited up nights while you built your empire. Who got told to buy fancy dresses and jewelry so she could be dragged to Chamber of Commerce meetings as a reflection of her husband’s importance!”
Chase could feel a humming in his ears. He let go of Annie’s wrist and took a step back.
“If that’s what you believe,” he said, his voice so low and dangerous that it made the hair lift on the back of Annie’s neck, “if you really think that’s what you meant to me, my once-upon-a-time-wife, then it’s a damn good thing our marriage ended when it did.”
Annie stared at his white face and pinched lips. “Chase,” she said, and held out her hand, but it was too late. He’d already whirled away from her and disappeared down the hall.
* * *
Unbelievable!
Chase walked along the gravel path that led from the lodge into the trees.
It was more than unbelievable. It was incredible, that Annie should have hated him so. Hated being married to him, and for so many years.
He tucked his hands into his pockets and slowed his pace, scowling at a squirrel that scolded him from beneath the branches of a cedar.
He knew a lot of guys who’d been divorced. They were everywhere: at his health club, at the board meetings he sat in on...it seemed as if you couldn’t throw a stick in New York or San Francisco or any city in the whole U.S.A. without hitting some poor bastard who’d gone from being a family man to being a guy who thought a microwave meal was gourmet dining.
The happy bachelor image, the divorced stud with a little black book full of names and addresses, was the stuff of movies. It wasn’t reality or if it was, then he’d missed something. The divorced men he met were almost invariably just like him, guys who’d once had it all and now had nothing but questions.
