— TEN —
Three years earlier
THE front door opened slowly, followed by the sound of Rafe’s heavy footsteps. One, two, three. Just far enough inside the door to swing it shut, and there he stopped. Waiting. She clattered dishes in the sink, a pathetic, passive-aggressive warning that he might not want to come and find her in the kitchen. Not without armouring up first, anyway. Except it was also a pathetic, passive-aggressive vie for his attention. She hated that she was throwing a tantrum.
At least the kitchen was getting tidied at the same time.
She couldn’t see him but his routine was the same every night. He’d sit on the bench at the door and take off his boots. Thunk. Then he’d go upstairs and wash off the uglier side of humanity he’d spent his day with. Another point of contention that she had no right to be upset over. She wanted to be his first priority when he came home, not taking a minute to decompress. He’d tried to explain it to her and she’d just gotten wound up. Like she was yet another stressor in his life that he needed to mentally brace himself for.
Tonight he didn’t go upstairs. It felt like a hollow victory, because he certainly didn’t come and wrap his arms around her waist, although that might have something to do with the giant butcher knife she was furiously scrubbing.
“I’m sorry, I know you were looking forward to this weekend.” He filled the kitchen doorway. He’d changed at the detachment before driving home, but he still had on “work clothes”. An OPP t-shirt and navy cargo pants, his standard almost-in-uniform uniform.
“It’s not about the weekend, Rafe.”
He looked confused and she didn’t blame him. Her rage didn’t make much sense outside her head. “This course is only offered once a year, and I need it.”
“I know.” She scrubbed harder, as if she could wash away their problems with extra elbow-grease.
“I’ll make it up to you.”
“When?” She shook her head and placed the knife in the dish rack. “I switched three of my days off to make this weekend happen. Two of them I took out of time we had off together. And I’m sure you’re going to get called in—“
“I’ll say no.”
“No, you won’t. And I don’t want you to. It’s not just work, Rafe. I get it, I really do. You’ve got responsibilities that are greater than me.” She waved her hand in front of his face, spraying sudsy dishwater as she cut off his interjection before it even began. “No. I understand. What you need to understand is I’m still pissed. Logic has no place in this conversation. I’m just…sad and hurt and looking at yet another weekend alone. Nothing makes that better.”
That was true, but it didn’t change the fact that she wanted him to try, even if it was in vain. But he had tried. And she’d tried not to care. They were both tried out. So Rafe turned slowly and went upstairs. The shower turned on, then off after a few minutes. He didn’t come back downstairs.
She wiped down the counters. Then the front of the fridge and the windowsill.
Finally she trudged up to their room. He was lying on their bed, reading a book he’d read a dozen times before. She wanted to make a snipping comment about the meaning of life being a happy wife, but knew it would go over like a lead balloon. So she quietly grabbed a tank top and sleeping shorts and got changed. “I might go sleep downstairs.”
He snorted. “That’s a great solution to us not spending enough time together.”
“Quality time, Rafe. Not like this.”
“This is what we make it, Liv.”
“It’s not enough.”
He pushed up, sitting on the edge of the bed. His book sat beside him, open facedown on the bedspread to keep his page. “Come to bed.”
“I don’t think sex is a good idea.”
“Not for sex, woman. Jesus, I certainly don’t feel like it when you’re harping at me.”
Great, so now she was a harpy. “Then it won’t matter if I sleep downstairs.”
“It will matter. It does matter. Let’s just…read together. Watch a movie. We’ve got tonight, anyway.”
And he wanted to spend it watching a movie together. Not talking. Not slowly peeling off the new lingerie she’d bought for the weekend—online, with express shipping, because that was her only option for anything other than Wal-Mart. Forty-five minutes of half-assed cuddles before he’d inevitably fall asleep and she’d lie next to him for hours wondering what had happened to her marriage.
“Fine.” She didn’t mean it, but she didn’t want to sleep on the couch, either. She curled up next to him, fully expecting to be fuming again in short order. He pulled her close and played with her hair, twisting it this way and that, then burrowing his fingers closer to her scalp. His movements slowed but never stopped. And before she could remember she wanted to be mad, she was the one drifting off to sleep.
— —
Rafe had sent Liv no fewer than six loving text messages while he was gone for the weekend. She’d responded to two of them. He didn’t like that response ratio.
But when he got home, she’d made chili for dinner, one of his favourites and something that kept nicely. If she was truly pissed, she’d have made salmon or something that didn’t survive re-heating.
He heated up a bowl and ate it on the couch while they watched a singing competition reality show.
They didn’t talk.
They didn’t fight, but that might have been better, more of a warning of what was to come.
Bedtime that night was quiet. They didn’t make love, but when he pulled Liv into his arms, she folded agreeably into his side. He’d had a long weekend, the course had involved overnight training and it had rained all day, one of those cold late autumn dumps that seeped under the skin and turned him to a prune from the inside out.
“Love you, Liv…” he mumbled as he drifted off, and he wanted to believe she said it back, but it might have been sleepy wishful thinking.
— —
He took a seat at the diner counter and waited for Liv to have a break. He could have sent her a text message, but after the last month of what felt like non-stop fighting since the weekend that wasn’t, he knew that wouldn’t go over well. But doing this at her work didn’t feel great either.
She stopped in front of him and wordlessly held up the glass carafe. He nodded and she poured him a cup. “What is it this time?”
“We’re short-staffed.” He braced himself for the bitching. “I need to go in for a night shift tonight.”
“It’s fine.”
“Maybe you could go with someone else.”
“Nah, I’ll just give the tickets to Deena.”
“Go with her.”
“We work together, Rafe, but we’re not friends. I don’t want to go to a play with her.” She glared at him, her eyes yelling the unspoken next sentence. I wanted to go with you. My husband.
“Isn’t there someone else you could go with?” Why did her social life live or die on his work schedule?
She pursed her lips, then crooked her finger in a follow me gesture. In the office, she smoothed her hand down his arm and gave him a sad smile. “Why’d you come here, Rafe?”
Why did they have to dissect everything? His throat tightened and he struggled against the knee-jerk reaction of a smart-ass remark. “Because you deserve to look me in the eye when I let you down.”
She closed her eyes, brows pinched together, and he drifted his fingers over her forehead. She had a tiny mole just above her left eyebrow. He’d always loved it. She had the sweetest, prettiest face he’d ever seen. And behind it lay such a complicated girl brain that made his head explode.
“Liv…”
She fluttered her eyes open and the sadness there gutted him, but it also pissed him off. “Take someone else to the show.”
She shook her head slowly. “You don’t get it, do you? I don’t have anyone to take. Dani’s at school, Lynn had a baby a few weeks ago. That’s it, the sum total of my friends here. And it’s not like I’m not friendly, Rafe. It’s that there aren’t any other women my age here.”
“Maybe Tom—“
“Your brother isn’t a substitute for you! And don’t suggest Dean or Jake, either. I don’t want to go anymore.”
“But you wanted to see this play.”
Her eyes flared, and too late he realized her not having anyone to go with wasn’t really the problem. “I wanted to go on a date with you, you idiot! Jeez, get a clue.”
She thought he was an idiot? Maybe she shouldn’t be so fucking complicated. He saw red and knew he should walk away, but he just couldn’t. “Maybe you should give me more clues then, Olivia.” She blanched at the use of her full name but he pushed on. Maybe they kept fighting because he let her bitch at him. “Look, I want to go on dates with you, okay? I want to make you happy. But I have a fucking job to do, got it? Two jobs. And I can’t just blow them off because you’re feeling a little needy.”
Her lips pinched together and her face went from pale to stark white. “I’m not needy.”
He let out a hard, ruthless laugh. “Are you kidding me? Rafe, spend time with me. Rafe, I’m lonely. This is life with me, Liv. I’m busy.”
“It’s not always like this—“
“No, but when it is, it just is. And I can’t change that for you.”
“I’m not asking you—“
He exploded, the words spilling out of him before he could pull them back in. Before he could stop himself from tearing a strip off his wife who most definitely didn’t deserve his anger. “Yes, you fucking are. With your silence and your whining and your fucking neediness, Liv. Jesus. Give me some space.”
She stared at him for a minute. Regret cut him in half, but before he could pull her close and apologize, she took a deep breath and nodded. “Space. Got it.”
She left him standing there, and he couldn’t follow her. Everyone probably heard him yelling, which embarrassed him greatly. Embarrassed Liv even more. Damnit. He took a deep breath, then several more, and headed back out front. He didn’t look at anyone else, just Liv. She was behind the counter, her face bright red, and he wanted to re-do the last five minutes in the worst way.
But what was done was done. He stalked around the counter and pulled her into a gentle hug. “I love you, Liv.”
She didn’t say it back, and after a few beats, he gave her another squeeze and let her go.
— —
She gave the tickets to Deena. And before she went to bed, she wrote Rafe a long letter, hoping that he might understand her perspective better if he saw the words on paper instead of having them hurled at him in anger.
He hadn’t returned yet when she woke up the next morning. Instead of waiting for him, she left the letter on his pillow and drove south to visit her sister. They weren’t close, but Mina was happy to meet up with her in Kitchener for some retail therapy. Olivia didn’t tell her what was going on. They didn’t have that type of relationship. If anyone would understand, it was Dani, but that felt too much like a betrayal of Rafe’s trust.
It was close to midnight when she finally parked in front of their little house in Pine Harbour again. Rafe’s truck was in the drive, but the lights were all off except the front foyer. She found him fast asleep in bed, and she curled up next to him. Had he missed her? Had he been grateful for some space, as he’d asked? Would he want to do something together the next day? Sadness filled her as she lay next to him, realizing she doubted the answer to the last question would be yes.
They’d inflicted enough damage on each other that her own husband was wary of her. Tears slipped down her cheeks, soaking her pillow and the back of his shirt where she pressed her face. He didn’t wake up.
— —
He seemed to like his space. It had been three weeks since their fight in the diner and they’d managed to spend all their time apart. They slept beside each other, but she couldn’t remember the last time they went to bed together. There had been two half-assed attempts at middle-of-the-night sex, but neither had been satisfying for either of them. Olivia wasn’t even sure Rafe had been awake either time. He certainly didn’t act like he’d tried to fuck her. Her heart ached for her husband to hold her, but he wasn’t interested anymore.
She finally sent him a text on a Sunday afternoon. I’d rather have dinner at home tonight, just the two of us.
Fine. His response didn’t leave her much room for hope that it would go well.
It didn’t.
As they silently tidied up, she thought about suggesting counselling or a getaway. Both would require time, though, and Rafe legitimately didn’t have any of that. He was heading into four days on, and she wouldn’t see him again until the end of the week.
He put the plates away, then turned and stared at her. When he spoke, the question was the last thing she’d ever expected to hear from him. “Do you want a divorce?”
What? No! But as they stood there, a new thought took root. Rafe was a good Italian boy. He couldn’t leave her. His mother would flay him alive. Maybe he wanted her to leave him. He certainly didn’t want to work on their marriage. And she definitely wasn’t happy. She turned the word over and over in her head. Divorce. It felt like a meat cleaver type of word. She thought they needed something like a vegetable peeler or a paring knife, but maybe she didn’t know her husband as well as she thought she did.
Maybe he didn’t want to be her husband at all.
— —
She stared at him for a long time, so long he thought maybe she hadn’t heard him. When he opened his mouth to take it back, tell her it was a stupid question that should never be uttered in their marriage, she shattered his heart by nodding. “Yeah, I think I do.”