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They all stared at her. Shocked, as she knew they would be.
“You were going to divorce...Mac?” Ruby asked.
“Yes.”
“Our brother, Mac?” Ruby asked, and that question just about gutted Lydia.
“Yeah, well, he was your brother. He was my husband. And I... I wasn’t in love with him anymore.”
“Lydia...” Marianne looked shell-shocked, even with the hints Lydia had dropped earlier.
“I had... I had a plan. The farm would’ve gone to me, because of the way the loan was set up. Everything was in my name because of my credit history versus his. I was going to offer to let him continue to work on it, but I wanted to have a say in how everything went. And what we did. I wanted to do a farm store. The same as I’m doing now. He had been opposed to that in the past. And that’s why it’s taken me so long to do it now. I... I’ve been trapped. Trying to grieve in a way that looked like I was grieving for my husband, who I loved. And I did love him. Ididlove him.”
“I had no idea,” Dahlia said. “You seemed so happy together.”
Lydia laughed, because how could she do anything else. It was so absurd, all this. All of this stuff she’d hidden for so long. “What does that mean? It just meant we weren’t fighting in front of anyone. We didn’t fight that much at home. But it was mostly because we didn’t talk. We didn’t share a life. He and I started building a foundation back when we were kids, and we just didn’t know how to make something better and stronger from there. We carried over all the dumb, immature things that you start out with when you’re experimenting with love. With sex. And we never went further from there. And people can. But they have to talk,” she said to Marianne. “When you marry somebody, it’s forever. And I’ve had so much time to think about that since he died. So much time to have one-sided conversations about the marriage that I wish we would’ve been brave enough to have. But instead I was just tied up in knots and ready to quit. Not ready to make compromises. Not ready to have conversations. And you know what? Now he’s gone and there are no compromises to be made. So now I can just have whatever it is I want. And I want the farm store. But I have to wonder what I would’ve had if it had gone differently. I don’t know. And I can never know. I just feel bound up in all this guilt.”
And resentment. And anger at Chase. And fear over what the kiss meant. And her response.
Because if she was learning one thing about herself, it was that she had a dedicated center inside of her that seemed determined and resolute in keeping her defenses up. Keeping the truth from others, keeping the truth even from herself.
“I was more married to a story than I was to Mac in the end. To the idea that what we had could have been good. That it could be what you all thought it was. But it didn’t help anyone or anything. And it’s not helping me now. It’s just keeping me trapped. And I don’t want to be trapped anymore.”
“You don’t have to be trapped,” Dahlia said. “He’s gone.”
“I don’t mean it that way. He wasn’t terrible. I’m sorry that he’s gone. I didn’t hate him. It’s just... I couldn’t divorce him after he got diagnosed. I couldn’t do that.” She sighed. “He was my friend. Before he was my husband. And I hoped that someday we’d get back there. And you know... In a lot of ways, while he was sick it was better. It was better because...” And then she unknotted the deepest knot inside of her heart, and she just sort of let her shame flow out. “I knew that it would end. That I didn’t have to do it. I was afraid that I would be trapped for a long time. But...”
“Oh, Lydia,” Ruby said, wrapping her arms around her.
Lydia gasped, the unexpected sob expanding in her chest. “I am a terrible person. I was so sorry when he died. I was so sorry.” Tears began to fall down her cheeks, and she hoped that her kids didn’t come in here, because she was having the breakdown that she had never once allowed herself. In front of her sisters. In a public museum. Standing in front of a display about World War II. About people with real problems. Who had engaged in real sacrifice, for their country, for the people around them. And she was just having a breakdown becuase she might be selfish. Because she was selfish. She knew she was. There was nomaybeabout it.
Nomightabout anything. She was flawed. And she had... At her darkest moments seen her husband’s sickness as her way out. As her way to stay innocent in the dissolution of their marriage. And she had gotten to play the part of martyr.
Had gotten to stay and be good.
Even though nothing that was going on inside of her was right or good. And Chase had kissed her. And fundamentally she was bitter and angry at Chase because he was a better, more loyal person than she would ever be. Because he was... He was at least a real friend. A real brother. And who was she?
Whatwas she?
“I’m just not who anyone thinks I am,” Lydia said. “And my marriage wasn’t what anyone thought it was. And I’m not good, and I’m not suffering.”
“You are,” Dahlia said, grabbing hold of her face and holding it steady. “This is grief, Lydia. And it doesn’t matter if it’s grief over a man that you loved like a husband, or just grief over the hole that got torn in your life and the mess that you were left to clean up. It is still grief. And it is still real. And you were not a bad person just because you fell out of love with him. People fall out of love every day. You just had the bad luck of getting caught in an end, in a tragedy that nobody asked for. It doesn’t matter if you were relieved sometimes. It doesn’t matter that in dark moments you tried to find something that you could... Something that you could hang meaning on. You were the one that had to deal with what was left behind.”
“Oh, Dahlia,” Lydia said. “I love you. I love you because you are a little bit dark, and a little bit horrible like me. And, Ruby, I love you because you’re bright and sunny, and I know that nothing I say is going to make you think that I’m a bad person. Marianne, you have a husband, please tell me that I’m awful. And I will love you for that.”
“You’re not awful,” Marianne said. “So if you have to hate me because I won’t play into your self-loathing, then so be it. Everything just sucks about this, Lydia. You couldn’t have stopped it. Nobody could have. Nobody knew that he was going to get ALS. Nobody knew that he was going to get pneumonia and die. Nobody knew that the boy you fell in love with was going to become a man that you didn’t want to live with, least of all you. It is not your fault. I feel terrible that Mac’s life was cut short. And I loved him too. He was family. But you’re the one that’s left to make sense of it. You have his children. You could feel whatever way you want to about it, and you don’t have to put on a show for us. And you don’t have to feel guilty about the ways that you figured out how to cope with it. Yeah, it’s messy. But I guess life is messy and there’s just... Nothing we can do about it no matter how much we wish there was.”
Lydia gasped and tried to catch her breath. Tried to reclaim her balance. But it was gone. It was all gone.
“I don’t know how to cope. Even when I’m not grieving him as a husband, it’s... He was a piece of me. I don’t know what to do with this new shape of my life. I don’t know how to explain that what I wanted was to not be married to him, and I’m still unsure of what to do now that I’m not. I don’t know how to reconcile the tragedy of what happened with the strange things that pop up sometimes. About how I don’t have to share custody. About how we don’t have to worry about dividing things up. Of course I didn’t want him to die. Of course I didn’t. But he did, right?”
“Lydia, it doesn’t matter what you say. It can be ugly, and it can be messed up, there has to be a place for that. There has to be a place for truth with us. Messed up, messy truth.” Marianne grimaced. “And after that speech, I guess I have to deal with truth in my life too.”
“What?” Ruby and Dahlia asked.
“It’s not important,” Marianne said. “Not right now. Let’s just... Let’s focus on Lydia. Who I know hates that. You haven’t let us focus on you at all. You haven’t shared any of this. You’ve just been closing it all down and trying to go on. But of course it’s impossible. This is impossible to hold on to all by yourself.”
“No,” Ruby said. “You shouldn’t have to hold on to it yourself. You’re not a story, Lydia. You’re a person. A whole person. And we don’t need you to be a perfect story—we need you to be you. And in the meantime, we are here to hold on to you.”
