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I stare at her. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Why didn’t you sign them, Eli?” Her voice is more breath than words and they touch me deep in my soul.
I might as well tell her the truth. “Honestly, Bess, I don’t know why I haven’t signed them yet. I don’t know why I’ve held on as long as I have.”
“I’ve been so mean to you.”
I bite the inside of my cheek instead of responding.
“Any sane man would have kicked me to the curb already.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “Are you calling me crazy?” I ask, but I’m grinning.
She laughs lightly and rocks her head from side to side. “Maybe a little.”
“Maybe I felt like I deserved what you were giving me. I failed at being a husband.”
“No, Eli,” she rushes to correct me. “You didn’t fail.”
“I made you hate me, Bess. That’s a failure all by itself.” I hold up my hand to stop the tirade of words I know she’s about to spew. “Stop,” I say gently.
“Eli…”
“Stop, Bess,” I say again. “I couldn’t give you anything you needed.”
She stares hard at me. “Exactly what do you think I needed that you couldn’t give me?”
“A family, Bess.” I heave out a breath. “I couldn’t give you a family.”
She reaches up and touches the side of my face, and I lean into her hand because it has been so long since she’s touched me of her own free will and I am so fucking needy right now that I hate myself for it. “It wasn’t you that failed, Eli,” she says quietly. “It was me. It was my body that couldn’t give you a child.” She shakes her head. “It wasn’t you I was really angry at.” She blinks hard. “It was me.” She presses her fist tight to her chest, and says, “I was angry at myself. It was all my fault. Not yours.”
Looking back, I’d assumed that if Bess ever claimed responsibility for our unhappiness, I’d rejoice in it. But there’s no joy at all in this. There’s only resignation.
“Aaron said something to me the other day that really made me think,” she says.
Aaron has been a fount of knowledge lately. “What was it?”
“We were talking about my need for a family and how important that was to me. And he said that you and I are a family, with or without children. And that struck right in the center of me. I don’t know why. I’ve been fighting all these years to have a family, but we already had one.” She shakes her head like she’s swiping cobwebs from her path. “And I was willing to give it all up for some elusive dream that may or may not have been right for us.”
“I can’t imagine that having children would have been wrong for us,” I say, slightly confused.
“I felt like a failure, so I shut down.” She looks around the cabin like she’s seeing it for the first time in a very long time. “And I left you to suffer alone too. Why don’t you hate me, Eli?” she asks. She stares hard at me, like she’s searching for the truth at the very core of me.
“Honestly, Bess,” I say slowly, because I know that what I’m about to say is going to hurt her feelings, “I did hate you at times. I hated you more than a little bit.” God, it hurts me to say that out loud.
“Then why did you stay, Eli? Why did you keep trying?”
I shrug. “I guess I hated myself more.”
She sucks in a surprised breath. “Eli,” she whispers.
“Then Lynda died. You had me served with divorce papers and Lynda had just died. And it really drove home for me all that I would lose if I gave up on us.” I take a step toward her. “After Lynda’s funeral, Aaron told me about his diagnosis. He told me that he’s going to die.”
She looks like I slapped her. “You’ve known that long?”
I nod, feeling guilty all of a sudden.
“Why didn’t he tell me?” she whispers.
