AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then she smiles sadly. “You wolf shifters. Complete killers. Unhinged when you’re shifted. But when you’re human, you’re so damned honorable, so… calm.” She’s right. She’s absolutely right. We’re straight-up killers. Wolves are killers. We’re romanticized so much by conservationists and others but it’s all bullshit. Wolves are among the only animals other than humans who kill for fun. But she’s also right about us in our human forms. That’s probably not biological. That’s probably cultural. It’s driven home in us from the moment we’re born.
I think it started about thirty-five hundred years ago when the first wolf shifter couldn’t control himself and shifted and attacked a human. Suddenly, there are werewolf and vampire stories. Suddenly there are humans hunting us. Suddenly we’re in hiding. It took until just a decade or two ago for shifters to come out of hiding. Even today, the myths of werewolves, vampires, and other monsters make most humans distrust us. So, we’re raised to control our emotions.
“And you coyotes,” I say with a similar sad smile, “not too keen on thinking about consequences.” She nods. For a human watching us, it might seem like those statements are slights or even bigoted. We’re not politically correct and the truth is, shifters do fit into stereotypes. It’s the nature of things.
“You thought about the kids,” she says, “that’s good.”
“I figured the divorce coming after they were gone makes more sense.”
She nods. “The affair is hard on you, obviously, but you can’t be all that surprised.”
I don’t answer right away. The truth is, it’s devastating and hurts me but she’s right. We’ve been more like roommates than man and wife for a long time.
“We never worked on us,” I say. “We worked on being great parents. I worked on being the best father I could, but never worked on being the husband I should be.”
“And I never worked on being a wife.”
“The humans call this empty nest syndrome. The kids move out and they discover they have no relationship without them,” I say. “I guess it happened a little early for us.”
“So, what now?” she asks.
“We move on,” I say.
“Just like that?” she asks.
“Well, we can wait for the kids to go to school before we file for anything. Nothing actually changes between now and then except you can continue your relationship with your boss without feeling any guilt over it.”
She looks away and I’m not sure if it’s because she actually does feel guilty or if it’s because she doesn’t feel guilty, and her lack of guilt makes her feel guilty. In any case, she nods. “Okay. What about when the kids leave?”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” I say. “You have a good job. I have a good job. Neither of us needs spousal support.”
“No,” she agrees. “I don’t want your money.”
She says it matter-of-factly, not angrily and I move on. “We’ll sell the house and split the money. We can split the joint savings account too. Between that, we should each have enough money to find new living situations and retain substantial savings when it’s all said and done.”
“What about the kids?”
“We’ll talk to them later. I think we should wait to start this process until they’re settled in school and wait to tell them until we’ve ironed out all the details.”
“They’re going to be angry,” she says.
“Yes,” I say, keeping my eyes on hers. “But they’ll be angry at both of us. Like you said, this shouldn’t surprise me. You and your boss only made us stop pretending. I mean, we should have talked about it before you had the affair but we didn’t. It’s what it is. The point is, I’m not going to tell them the marriage is over because you’re a cheating bitch.”
She is silent for a moment, then sighs and nods. “Fair enough. I guess I deserve it.”
I don’t respond. The truth is, she does deserve it. We both suffered in this marriage but she was the only one who cheated. That being said, I’m not angry. In fact, I’m excited. I think of the kiss Klarice and I shared outside of her house and dare to hope that my heart need not be broken for long.
Gwen stands and opens her arms for a hug. I return her embrace and she kisses me on the cheek. “Thank you.” She kisses me again, softly on the lips. “And you’re right. I was a cheating bitch. I should have talked to you first. The guilt got to me today and that’s why I wanted to talk.”
“You’re still the woman I used to love,” I say.
Used to.
It comes so easily.
I shake my head. “I still love you,” I say, “but I guess I haven’t been in love with you for a while.” God, it sounds so cliché.
She pulls away and heads upstairs. She pauses at the foot of the stairs and turns to me. “For what it’s worth, I feel the same and I guess I’ll always love you. I’m sorry, Val.”
