CHAPTER 7
Darby
I hear the crunch of gravel outside and peek through the lacy curtains covering the kitchen window above the sink. As expected, Mitch’s rental car is coming up the long gravel driveway to Farrington Farms. Even though I’ve escaped what had become an intolerable situation with Mitch over the last few years, my skin still crawls with the prospect of having to deal with him. It was an extremely difficult decision to leave him, and a brutal experience breaking the news to him that I wanted out of the marriage.
Mitch has been nothing but combative, manipulative, and determined not to let me get away. When he showed up at the farm on Friday night without even bothering to give me a head’s-up he was coming to North Carolina, there was a part of me that was a little fearful. Almost as if I were being stalked, but I told myself it was ridiculous. Mitch was here for Linnie.
Or so he said.
As it turns out, Mitch—if he can be believed—had a meeting at his company’s office in Raleigh. It was not unusual for him to travel at least once a quarter to North Carolina, so I can’t say for sure whether this was a legitimate trip. I don’t think for a moment his main goal in coming out to the farm was to see Linnie as he suggested, but rather to put himself in my presence and make yet another appeal for us to come back home.
I’m proud I shut him down fairly quickly on Friday, and I had absolutely no problem bundling up Linnie with a small bag of essentials for her to stay with him for two nights at a hotel in Raleigh. While her sulking had diminished somewhat, I was still getting plenty of attitude from her. I’d hoped spending two days with her father might remind her I was actually the fun, loving, and genuinely caring parent out of the two of us.
Mitch pulls the car parallel with the sprawling porch that runs along the front of the house and continues in an L-shape around the eastern side of the structure. There’s nothing on the porch, but I imagine it would look beautiful with some rocking chairs and potted ferns hanging from above.
I dry my hands on a dish towel and make my way out onto the front porch, resting my hands on my hips as Mitch and Linnie get out of the car. He pulls her backpack out of the backseat and hands it to her.
“Why don’t you take this inside?” he instructs her.
Linnie stares at him a moment, probably not sure if this is where she should hug him goodbye or not. Mitch doesn’t help her out at all, only adding, “I need to talk to your mother.”
He reaches out and ruffles her hair, and I can see this confuses her even more. Knowing Mitch, this is his goodbye to his daughter. I’m not sure he would even think to bend over to give her something as parental as a hug or tell her how much he’s going to miss her.
Linnie takes the backpack and without a word to her father, she heads up the porch steps. I give her an encouraging smile, but she won’t meet my eyes, so I reach out and stop her with my arm across her chest. She actually lets me pull her into my side and, amazingly, also lets me kiss the top of her head. “Missed you, kiddo.”
“Missed you too,” she mumbles before walking into the house. I watch her until the swinging screen door claps shut and then brace myself as I turn to face Mitch.
He doesn’t come up the porch steps, but casually tucks his hands into a pair of pressed khaki pants he paired with a white golf shirt. He looks at me expectantly, as if I’m the one who wants to talk to him rather than the other way around.
I merely cross my arms over my chest and wait him out.
“Have you given any more thought to coming home?” he asks me in a brittle voice.
I study my husband critically, not moved in the slightest by his charming good looks that have only gotten better as he’s aged. I met Mitch when I was twenty-one and fresh out of college. I had decided to work for John Deere to get some experience on the business of farming and to help pay my way through my master’s and PhD programs. Mitch was thirty-three and already a young executive with the company at their main headquarters in Moline, Illinois. The eleven-year age difference didn’t bother me in the slightest and in hindsight, I think Mitch liked the idea I was so much younger than he was. At first, I thought maybe it was just for bragging rights, having a young pretty wife, but I came to realize soon enough he used my age and perhaps my immaturity to manipulate me into doing things the way he wanted. Let’s face it. I had stars in my eyes and loved him so much he didn’t have to do much manipulating at first.
I give a silent sigh, refusing to let Mitch know his words bother me. “I’m not going to change my mind, Mitch. This is permanent.”
He lets out a bark of disbelief and throws his hands out wide. His voice is scathing when he asks, “You’re seriously going to live here in the middle of nowhere? And work on a farm? You’re seriously okay with giving up the lifestyle I gave you, along with our circle of friends?”
My eyes narrow as I look down from the porch at my husband. “Yes, Mitch. I’m completely fine with giving all that up. It’s not what I ever wanted in life to begin with.”
His disbelieving snort matches the roll of his eyes. “Yes, I know. Your degree is more important than your family.”
This infuriates me because it’s not true in the slightest, and he’s absolutely mischaracterizing why I’m here in North Carolina to begin with.
I stomp down the porch steps until I come toe to toe with him. “Your concept of family and my concept of family are two totally different things. Everything I’m doing now is for Linnie, not myself. I’m getting a degree, so I can support my daughter and myself without needing to rely on anyone else. And Mitch… You and I as a couple stopped being a part of the family component years ago. If you need any further reminder of why that’s true, it’s because you’ve been paying for a mistress for two years behind my back. So get off your high and mighty soapbox and get it through your head that I am done with this marriage.”
This takes Mitch aback because I rarely fight with him. He pulls his chin in and blinks in surprise. His slightly reddened cheeks are the only indication the mistress thing bothers him. “I told you I would get rid of her.”
I try not to laugh. Try really hard. But I find it comical Mitch still hasn’t ended the affair with that woman. He’s holding her in reserve in case he can’t talk me into coming back.
When my laugh does come out, it’s bitter and my voice is sad for everything I’ve lost over the years. “Mitch… hear me out. Our marriage didn’t crumble because you had a mistress. Me finding out about her was merely the catalyst that gave me the strength to end this. But I wanted out for a lot longer. I wanted out for years and it’s because you kept me so under your thumb and wouldn’t let me pursue my dreams. Now that I want to do that, it’s unfathomable to you that I could want something other than the things you’ve given me or the things you’ve told me to do. What I really need you to hear is that I’m doing this for Linnie and not to hurt you. I’m doing it so she grows up to be the type of woman who goes for what she wants. If she watches me continue to give up my life day in and day out to please you, I’m not teaching her right.”
I suck in a deep breath and let it out slowly. That was the first time I’ve been so brutally honest with Mitch. It’s the first time I’ve been able to get out the words I hope will make him understand he and I are just never going to work. I had hoped he might actually listen to me. That he might put himself in my shoes and try to see things from my point of view.
But this is Mitch McCulhane. A man whose ego is so overinflated, he can’t seem to understand that other people may have valid opinions, wants, or desires from his own.
He doesn’t look at me with the understanding I had so foolishly hoped for, and not even a bit of sadness for what we’ve lost. Flames leap in his eyes and his jaw locks tight. He grits through his teeth, “You are making a serious mistake. I am gravely concerned about the welfare of our daughter. I might just have to go back and get my attorney to start working on custody of Linnie.”
A small jolt of fear punches through me. Linnie is my weakness and if there is any possibility he could get full custody of her, I’d prostrate myself in front of him in deference.
But the one thing I have to keep my mind focused on is I know my husband. Mitch would never want full custody of his daughter. Hell, I don’t think he wants partial custody of her. From the day we brought her home from the hospital, he treated Linnie like a pretty object to show off to other people. He never fed her, diapered her, or sang her lullabies before bed. In Mitch’s mind, that was my role as her mother. I did them, of course, because I loved doing them. Loved every minute I spent with my daughter.
Mitch didn’t do anything because he was always working. He justified his absence in her life as a necessity to give her the finer things. In other words, he tried to buy her love the way he tried to buy mine. He never went to spelling bees or to watch her show her horse. He never asked her how school was going or sat down to read her a book. He was the provider. He worked hard to give us a good life. In Mitch’s mind, that should have been enough.
It was never enough for me, and I know damn well it’s not enough for Linnie.
I shore up my spine and lift my chin with resolve.
“You do that if you need to, Mitch,” I say in a soft voice that is no less diminished with surety in what I’m saying. “But you and I both know you’re not going to do it. You don’t have it in you to be a single father. You would never want a child to cramp your lifestyle.”
Mitch’s face turns redder, and I notice him clenching his fists tightly. While Mitch has been a manipulative and verbally abusive husband over the years, he has never once raised his hands to me. But for a moment, I see something within his eyes that tells me he may have the capacity for violence. It turns my blood ice cold, and it takes everything within me not to run away in fear. I can’t show him that because Mitch would pounce.
“This isn’t over, Darby,” Mitch says in a low, menacing voice.
I don’t reply because any words that would come out of my mouth would be shaky and warbled because his last words really rattled me. He’s making it clear I am still very much considered his property and nothing I say matters to him.
I stand silently as Mitch spins on his heel and stomps around to the driver’s side door. I don’t move from my spot until he has turned out of the driveway onto the highway and disappeared.
After letting out a long breath of relief, I take note of a low-level headache that is now throbbing behind my eyes. With the promise of a few Excedrin on the horizon, I turn back toward the porch, but immediately come to a stop again.
Linnie is standing there and I have no clue how long she had been listening to her father and me. She’s got a funny look on her face I could not begin in a million years to decipher. She’s seven going on fifteen, and she has been through great emotional upheaval the last few months. Linnie is as apt to yell at me as she would be to hug me.
So I wait—standing absolutely still—to see what she’s going to do.
“Am I going to have to go live with Dad if he gets custody of me?” she asks timidly, as if the fear in her voice discounts all the crap she’s given me for taking her away from him over the last week.
“I don’t know, honey,” I tell her honestly. “Do you want to go live with him?”
Linnie shakes her head, which causes the braided pigtails she had over each shoulder to fly back. She pushes her glasses up her nose. “No. He really didn’t want to spend time with me this weekend. All he did was work in the hotel room. I just watched TV.”
What a jerk, but totally not surprising.
“I know you’re having a hard time adjusting, Linnie. All I can tell you is it will get better over time.”
Linnie doesn’t answer me, but she also doesn’t glare at me. This is a good sign.
It’s a miracle when I get a small smile before she asks, “What’s for dinner?”
I was going to make a pork roast, but I make a spur-of-the-moment change. “You’re favorite—spaghetti.”
Her smile gets bigger, and I’m pretty sure everything is going to be fine between us.