Chapter Thirty
Maddie sipped the now cold coffee out of the paper cup she’d grabbed at Java on her way to the park to meet Jen. Maddie hadn’t let on to her friend what was happening when she’d called. She just said she needed to talk and Jen didn’t hesitate to suggest they meet. Maddie was a few minutes early, but she needed this time to quiet the whirlwind of thoughts swirling through her mind.
Ever since her blowup with Justin on Saturday, she hadn’t been able to focus on anything. She’d coasted through the rest of the day with Aiden and Sofia on auto-pilot. After promising the girl she could come over, Maddie wasn’t about to withdraw the offer. Sofia had had enough disappointments in her life—Maddie didn’t want to cause another, even though she may have jeopardized Sophia’s future with their family because of her failure to talk to Justin.
Sunday had been reminiscent of the worst of her days when she was trying to get pregnant. She’d barely climbed out of bed, letting Aiden indulge in his favorite videos for part of the day. Even when he had dragged her into the backyard, the sun and blue sky had only been a slight comfort.
And all day long, her fingers had been wrapped around her cell phone, hoping, no praying, for Justin to call or text. Just something. After the way things had ended, she needed him to make the first move. If she knew Justin, he’d have spent the weekend stewing over their argument as well. They were alike that way. But clearly having that in common wasn’t enough to build a future on, not if his reaction on Saturday was any indication.
She dropped her coffee cup into the trashcan beside the bench and caught sight of a little boy, his short legs pumping beneath him as he ran toward the playset, giggling the entire way. And behind the boy, a man and woman followed at a slower pace, their fingers linked, their arms swaying between them. They reminded her of her relationship with Justin when Aiden was that age. She’d loved her little family of three, but even then, her need to have another baby, to fill a hole deep inside her, had lingered just below the surface. If she could go back and talk to that Maddie, what would she tell herself to keep from ending up where she was now?
Jen slid onto the bench beside Maddie before she could answer that question. At this point, she wasn’t ready for the answer she expected to give. Not by a long shot.
“What’s up?” Jen’s caring gaze took in Maddie with her puffy, red eyes from the tears that had fallen continuously over the past forty-eight hours. “Oh, honey.”
Maddie hadn’t shared the details of her argument with Justin over the phone, worried her tears would keep the words from coming. But now that her friend was in front of her, everything spilled out. Maddie shared how she and Justin had been working together as a team and how they were closer than they had been in a long time.
Jen took a sip of her own coffee. “Everyone in town is talking about how successful the event was, and how they hoped this wouldn’t be the last one.”
Hearing that should make Maddie happy. And on one level it did. The feeling of accomplishment she’d had on Saturday morning, witnessing her idea come together for her friends and neighbors, had made the long hours worth it. And it didn’t hurt that many of those hours had been spent with Justin. But that feeling had been short-lived. “Maybe. If Justin wants anything to do with me after Saturday.”
“What happened?”
Maddie told Jen about Sofia joining Aiden’s T-Ball team and how she was coming over for dinner. And how Justin had blown up about it all. She relived every angry word, every disappointed look in Justin’s eye as she detailed how the day had gone sideways in a matter of minutes. “Justin accused me of being as obsessed about Sofia as I had been about getting pregnant.”
Jen’s slightly raised eyebrows were the only reaction her friend had.
Fine, Maddie would say what Jen wouldn’t. “Okay, I can see how I went a little off the rails about Sofia. I guess, considering what we’d been through, it makes sense that Justin would draw parallels. I don’t know what to do. I think I’ve screwed everything up.”
Jen crossed her arms in that way that Maddie knew signified her frustration. “I’m not going to argue with you. You did screw up.”
A strangled laugh escaped Maddie’s lips. “Thanks for the support.”
“Honey, if you wanted someone to tell you what you want to hear, you called the wrong friend. You called me because you want me to tell you what you’re unable, or unwilling, to admit to yourself.” Jen brushed her hands toward Maddie. “But you’re doing fine all by yourself. You were saying you screwed up. What are you going to do to fix it?”
Maddie huffed out a breath. If she knew that, she wouldn’t have had to call Jen.
The little boy’s squeals of joy drew Maddie’s attention. A huge smile lit his father’s face as he threw his son in the air, catching the boy in the safety of his arms again. But beside him, the woman rested her hand on her husband’s arm each time the boy flew into the air. “I feel like I’m that woman, holding my breath, hoping for everything to fall into place.”
Jen shook her head. “But you’re not. You’ve just lost your way and we’re going to find it again.”
“It seems so hopeless. You didn’t see Justin. He was so angry at me for trying to include Sofia. I mean, he’s not even living at home. I just don’t see how to fix this.”
“Has he actually said he wants a divorce?”
Maddie had to think back. When he first moved out, she was in such a fog she barely heard his words. But in all the time they’d been together since then, Justin had never spoken the word divorce. She certainly hadn’t. She didn’t want that. She wanted to fix what she’d messed up. “He’s never asked for a divorce, but he left, didn’t he? And he hasn’t moved back, even after I practically begged him last week.”
“Maddie, I swear, sometimes you’re so busy thinking about the next words to come out of your mouth that you don’t hear what other people are saying. Have you really listened to Justin? Have you thought about this from his perspective and not how it impacted you?”
Maddie sucked in a breath. Of course she hadn’t. And all the time she’d been so focused on getting pregnant, then on repairing her marriage and most recently building a relationship with Sofia, Justin had only been asking to be heard. To have a say in the decisions that affected him. And she’d constantly ignored his feelings.
Her hands flew to her mouth as Oh God escaped on a whisper.
Jen’s kept going, her voice softer now that she had Maddie’s full attention. “Has he ever said he stopped loving you?”
Maddie shook her head, afraid to say the words.
“Have you?”
“Of course not.”
“Then what are you going to do about this situation you’ve created?”
Maddie bit her lip. “I don’t know. The thought of backing away from Sofia breaks my heart, but I don’t know what else I can do.”
Jen shook her head. “You’re losing sight of the bigger picture. This is not about Sofia. It’s not about you trying to get pregnant. It never has been. Let me ask you a question… what do you want?”
Wasn’t that the question of the hour? When she’d been younger, it had been easy to say what she wanted, so she fell back to her early dreams. “I want a big family, people around me that I love, to grow up with.”
“Okay. That’s good. Is what you have been doing helping you achieve that goal?”
Maddie was quick to nod but the slow shake of Jen’s head had Maddie reconsidering. Justin wasn’t living at home, Aiden was unhappy, and Maddie didn’t have a baby or Sofia in her life. “I guess not. I think I’ve been holding onto Sofia because I was afraid of losing Justin and instead that’s exactly what I caused to happen.”
“So, I’ll go back to my original question… what are you going to do about it?”
Maddie dropped her chin to her chest. What was she going to do? Did she have the strength to fix this situation?
As Maddie watched the couple with their son pack up and head out of the park, memories of her own family flooded her. It wasn’t so long ago that Aiden was a newborn, nestled on her breast as Justin cuddled beside them on the couch, just the three of them against the world. She could picture Aiden as he was learning to walk, his chubby legs not moving as fast as his body, the way her heart lurched when he would tumble onto the floor. But he always got up and kept going toward his destination. Had she done the same? No. She’d let herself get sidetracked and bogged down in pregnancy and Sofia and had lost sight of where she was headed.
In the past few weeks, Justin had expended a significant effort to remind her of how they were as a couple before she’d derailed their lives. A smile forced its way onto her lips when she remembered him standing on their front porch, as nervous as he had been on their first date. He’d done everything he could to remind her of the Maddie she’d been before she let things bog her down and, at the same time, coax her to fall in love with him all over again.
And she had. Her love for him now was stronger than it had been since, well, probably their entire marriage. The one thing she’d learned was that every experience, good and bad, wrote on the slate of their relationship, and they could either use that experience to pull together or grow apart. Was she going to let this most recent challenge separate or unite them, working side by side to achieve what they both wanted?
As she made her way out of the park, the answer was simple. She just had to put a plan in place.