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She didn’t want to—she hadn’t wanted to give an inch—but something about the way Cobb responded to her accusation had left her undone. She went to him and took his hand, waiting.
“Susan Smyth-Rounder,” he said, looking up at Marigold pleadingly. “Is a drug treatment specialist. A psychotherapist. I’ve been seeing her for about six months.”
Marigold blinked. And then blinked again. A psychotherapist? He was dating a psychotherapist and wanted to rub it in to his wife, who’d only graduated high school before becoming a fashion model, that he’d landed a better deal? She tried to yank her hand away but he didn’t let her.
“Dr. Smyth-Rounder has been working with me on something that I’m finding very difficult. It’s called ‘cognitive behavioral therapy,’ and it’s meant to retrain a person with an addiction. We’re looking at the way that I frequently find myself in situations where drugs are available. I need to find out what causes me to give in to them, and then retrain my brain to take a different path.”
“What?” Marigold was lost. At that point, she truly felt lost. She’d been unable to let the train switch tracks in her mind, and she still had visions of Cobb Hartley squiring the young, gorgeous, insanely brilliant Susan Smyth-Rounder around London. “She’s…your doctor?” she asked, finally comprehending.
“Yes,” Cobb said, tugging on her hand. Gratitude that she was finally getting it washed over his face. “Yes. And she’s been helping me, but…Goldie, it’s hard. The drugs have a hold on me. It’s part of my life and my lifestyle, and I keep falling off the wagon.”
Marigold let him tug her toward him, pulling her down into his lap. He put his face against her and she wrapped both arms around him as he began to sob again. Her husband. Her strong, talented, creative, funny husband sat there crying in her arms because he felt a weakness and had no way to cure it. Marigold hugged him even tighter to her, bending forward so that her lips were pressed to the top of his head.
“Cobby,” she whispered, planting a series of kisses on his hair that she hoped felt like an apology for her madness. She’d had no idea. How could she have known? Would hereallyhave sent an email to a lover from the account they shared openly? How could she have thought such a thing? In their entire relationship, she’d never seen Cobb so much as flirt innocently with another woman, and he’d disapproved loudly on several occasions about the way his bandmates hooked up willy-nilly with the women who showed up at every concert. “I’m so sorry, baby,” Marigold said softly, rocking him back and forth in her arms as he cried. “I want to help you, not hurt you.”
“I couldn’t do it without you, Goldie—any of it. I don’t want this life if you’re not in it, I just want to fix myself—for you, and for buddy,” he said, using Marigold’s nickname for their son. “I want to be the best version of me that I can be, and I can’t do that if I’m not able to stay sober.”
A pang tightened up in Marigold’s chest then, a memory of Cobb lying unconscious in the hospital, nearly defeated by drugs when he was still young and able to bounce back. But now…with every passing year, with every year of creative output, travel, performing, touring, and giving himself to the world, Marigold knew that Cobb was depleting himself and making his ability to recover from a major illness less likely. She needed him to be better. Elijah needed him to be better.
She kissed his head again as they rocked together slowly by candlelight, Elijah’s happy playing noises audible from the next room. Dinner had been all but forgotten. “I told you I’d be by your side, Cobb, that I wouldn’t leave you, and I’m right here,” she said that night in the dining room of their country house. She meant every word of it. “I’ll help you, okay? I’m right here.”
Marigold rolls over in bed now on Shipwreck Key, sighing as she stares up at the ceiling on Christmas Eve morning. That life in England with Cobb and young Elijah sometimes feels like a million years ago, and there’s a fissure in her heart from her divorce that no amount of sunshine, relaxation, or joy can repair. It’s simply there, and she lives with her feelings of failure every single day. She’d promised to always be there for Cobb, and in the end, she hadn’t. She’d left him. She’d abandoned him and left him to fix himself, and she hasn’t entirely forgiven herself for that.
The clock says seven, and this seems like a reasonable time to get up and make coffee. Marigold pulls a white robe from the end of the bed and wraps it around herself. She winds her long hair into a bun and holds it in place with a clip as she yawns and pads out to the kitchen.
To her surprise, Cobb is sitting there at the table with a steaming mug of tea in front of him next to a pad and pencil.
“Oh,” Marigold says, flipping on a light. “Good morning. Can you see in the dark?”
Cobb chuckles. “It’s never dark when I’m close to you, Goldie.” He lifts his mug of tea. “I hope the kettle didn’t wake you. Happy Christmas.”
Marigold pulls the French press from the cabinet and pours some beans into the grinder. “I didn’t even hear the kettle. I was actually waiting to come out and start it myself so that I didn’t wake you two.”
Cobb smiles at her. “I told you, this is my best time of day. I wake up early, feel strong, and then sort of lose that as the day goes on.” He picks up his pencil and taps it against the paper. “I’ve been noodling about here with some song lyrics that have been running through my mind. Remember when I used to play you everything as soon as I wrote it?”
Marigold smiles with her back to him. She nods. “I do. I loved the way I felt like I had a front row seat to genius at work.” She presses the button and the coffee beans grind loudly. “And Happy Christmas to you too,” she adds when the grinder stops whirring.
“So are we having pizza and beer for Christmas Eve, or does our resident chef have something fancier planned?” Cobb teases, calling up an inside joke between them. Their first Christmas Eve together had been in New York back when Marigold was twenty. They’d missed the sit-down dinner at her aunt’s house in New Jersey, so instead they’d picked up a pizza and a six-pack in Manhattan and eaten their holiday dinner on a bench in Central Park as flakes of snow fell all around them. It had been bracingly cold, but somehow perfect.
“No pizza or beer,” she says with a smile, pouring the hot water from the kettle into her French press and setting it aside. “I think Elijah is planning a feast, and I’ve been instructed to procure a few things today and basically be his sous chef. I’m told the entire meal will be ‘heart healthy for Dad.’”
One side of Cobb’s mouth hitches up in a smile and he sets the pencil back down. “Goldie, if I haven’t properly thanked you yet for taking me in, then thank you. It’s not every woman who’d bring her ex-husband home for the holidays and take care of him after surgery.”
Marigold leans against the edge of her counter, placing her hands on it as she looks at Cobb in the full light of morning. “You’re right,” she says, nodding. “Not every woman would. But we’ve got history, Cobb Hartley, and I will never leave you to twist in the wind.” Marigold pauses, looking down at her painted red toes against the Mexican tiles she’d chosen for her kitchen floor. “Again,” she adds. “I’ll never leave you in your time of needagain.”
“Hey,” Cobb says, looking at her seriously. “You did what you had to do, Gold. I know that now and I knew that then.”
Marigold nods to show that she’s heard him and then turns abruptly to the coffee, pressing the plunger in and pouring it into a mug. “I’m just gonna breathe in a little morning air,” she says by way of explanation, carrying her coffee across the kitchen and letting herself out the side door to the garden.
It’s Christmas Eve and Marigold wants to sit amongst the hibiscus and bougainvillea in peace while she sips her coffee. She pulls her robe tighter around her and sits on an iron chair, placing her mug on the small round table where she likes to watch the sun come up. This island is her paradise, her home. It’s also been the place that’s allowed her to put so many parts of her past behind her and to leave them there…until now. Having Cobb in her house has unwound some of the knots that she’s tied around her memories, and even though it hurts to confront some of the things she’s kept tucked away, she knows it’s time.
From inside the kitchen comes the soft strumming of a guitar, and although she can’t quite make out the words, she can hear Cobb humming and working out the lyrics as he plays.
A bird lands in the garden, and Marigold smiles.
Marigold
Marigold posted a photo of her coffee mug held aloft with her flowers in the background that morning on Instagram, wishing all of her followers and friends a very merry Christmas Eve, and when she opens the app later that day, she’s surprised to find that the comments are a mixed bag. Word of Cobb’s surgery is widespread and common knowledge by this point, so at least half of the comments are from people asking how he is, with some inquiring genuinely, and others reaming Marigold for not being a caring enough ex-wife to post detailed updates about him and his recovery.
