A Special Relationship (2 page)

 
“Don’t you yell at me!” she replied harshly, prompting Ashley, their seventeen-year-old daughter, to giggle.
 
His entire world was crumbling before his very eyes, and his own daughter thought it amusing.

 
He exhaled.
 
“Will you please explain to me what this is about?”
 
Then he frowned.
 
“And why is Paul here?”

 
“You need to settle down, Robert,” Paul suggested, but Robert fumed.

 
“Somebody needs to explain to me what’s going on,” he warned.

 
Gloria threw her head back and blew out an exhausted sigh.
 
She didn’t want it to come to this, she would have preferred to have left long before Robert even showed up and let her lawyers handle him.
 
But his early arrival home gave her no choice.
 
To her surprise, however, his handsome face was petrified, as if it actually mattered to him that he was about to lose his family.
 
“Paul and I are in love,” she said bluntly, to end this once and for all.
 
“Is that a good enough explanation?
 
I loved him before I even met you.
 
The only reason we weren’t together was because he was already married to Eleanor.
 
So I married you.”

 
Robert stared his expressive gray eyes at his wife as if he’d just been slapped.
 
“So you married
me
?” he said in a voice searing with incredulousness.
 
Women fell at his feet daily, women far younger and even more seductive than his wife could ever be, but she was talking as if he was some second-rate consolation prize.
 
“Are you trying to tell me that you didn’t, that you
never
loved me?”

 
“I loved Paul.
 
That’s what I’m telling you, Robert.
 
I have always loved Paul.
 
But he had small children, he couldn’t divorce his wife.
 
So yes, I married you to get Paul out of my system.
 
But I never got over him.”

 
Robert couldn’t do anything but stand there.
 
Paul Hathaway was one of his best friends, an older man Robert had always treated like an older brother, and the idea that this man, this
brother
, would come all the way from Maryland to stab him in the back and take his wife away from him was not something Robert could just accept.
 
This had to be a joke.
 
He just knew this had to be some kind of sick, twisted joke.

 
But nobody was laughing.
 
Not Gloria, who stood there as if she was ready to take on anything
anybody
could throw her way.
 
Not Paul, who seemed to gloat in his friend’s distress.
 
And certainly not Robert.
 
The reality killed the joke for Robert.
 
Packed bags in the foyer, Paul’s arm around Gloria’s waist, and Gloria’s blunt request for a divorce squashed any hope that there could be some lighthearted explanation for this nightmare.
 
And even Ashley seemed to relish her father’s humiliation as if she couldn’t believe he didn’t see it coming.
 
But he didn’t.
 
And that was what was killing him.

 
“What about your relationship with God?” he finally asked his wife, and both she and Ashley let out angry sighs.
 

 
“See what I’m talking about?” Gloria said bitterly.
 
“But that’s just you, isn’t it, Robert?
 
The strong Christian man who never does anything wrong.
 
Heaven forbid your wife should leave you.
 
Not you.
 
Not Mister Perfect.
 
It has to be something wrong with her, something wrong with her faith in God, for her to even think about leaving you.”

 
“That’s not what I’m saying.”

 
“Then why did you even bring it up?
 
This is about us.
 
You and me.
 
Period.
  
My relationship with God has nothing to do with this.”
 

 
“It has everything to do with this, Gloria, what are you talking about?
 
You profess Christ as your Savior, in case you’ve forgotten, yet you’re willing to leave your husband as if it’s okay?
 
You were the one who led me to the Lord.
 
I became a born again Christian because I saw the example of Christ in your life.”

 
“That was ages ago, Robert, will you stop living in the past for once?
 
We’re thirty-seven years old now. We were kids then.
 
We were young and dumb back then.”

 
“Young and dumb?”
Robert said, stunned by his wife’s new boldness.
 
“Because we accepted Christ as Lord of our lives that made us dumb?
 
What in the world is wrong with you, woman?
 
God hasn’t changed.”

 
“I know that.
 
But I have!
 
I changed so long ago and you never even noticed.
 
You never had time for me and Ash.
 
It was always work, work,
work
.
 
And Lord only knows what else.”
 

 
“What’s that supposed to mean?”

 
“We could have walked out of your life ten years ago and it would have probably been another ten years before you even realized we were gone.”

 
Robert shook his head.
 
He could not believe how little his wife really knew him.
 
“And I’m sure that during all of your grief over being with some low-life like me Paul’s understanding shoulder was waiting right there for you to cry on.”

 
“She never loved you, man,” Paul said firmly.
 
“You can’t blame me for that.”

 
“What about Eleanor?” Robert asked Paul, and Paul, a man almost as tall as Robert’s six feet, looked at him angrily.
 
        

 
“What about her?” he asked.

 
“Last I heard she was still your wife.”

 
“That’ll change,” Gloria quickly interjected.
 
“Paul’s divorcing her too.”

 
“I see,” Robert said with a painful smile.
 
“A clean sweep.
 
You divorce me, he divorces Eleanor, and the two of you live happily ever after.”

 
“That’s right.”

 
“You think you’re going to live happily ever after with a man who doesn’t even fear the wrath of God?”

 
Gloria hesitated, upset that Robert would force her hand this way.
 
“Well maybe I don’t fear it either,” she finally said, shocking her own self, and Robert was once again astounded by this new woman standing before him.
 
“Don’t look at me like that,” she added.
 
“What kind of God would have allowed our innocent son to die?”

 
“He didn’t allow—”

 
“He did allow it!
 
Our child didn’t have to die.”

 
“He was born too
premature,
Gloria, too small to survive and you know it.
 
Now who’s living in the past?
 
That was twelve years ago.”

 
“I don’t care!
 
I still feel it like it was yesterday.”
 
Then she exhaled and looked at her husband.
 
He was still so perfect, she
thought,
his big, beautiful body and stunningly gorgeous face getting even better looking as the days go by, but she couldn’t help how she felt.
 
“Just don’t fight this, Robert, all right?” she said.
 
“All these women ‘round here be throwing themselves at you every day of the week.
 
You can easily find you somebody else.
 
But I don’t want this anymore.
 
I want to be with Paul and I will be with Paul no matter what.”

 
Robert’s heart dropped.
 
Her mind was made
up,
he could see it all over her face.
 
She was going to leave him.
 
The love of his life was about to walk out of that door and leave him.
 
“
Gloria
,” he said with a plea in his voice.
 
He’d beg her to stay if he had to.

 
But she wouldn’t allow it.
 
She placed her hand up and halted him before he could say another word.
  
“It’s over, Robert.
 
Just accept it.
 
Please
.”

 
Now she was pleading with him, and he knew better than anybody that nothing was about to change her mind.
 
She was even cocky with her confidence, as if she’d just found the answer to her entire existence and it started with getting rid of him.
 
He thought they were happy.
 
He thought they had a marriage that was strong and secure and rooted and grounded in faith and love.
 
But now she was behaving as if nothing could be farther from the truth.
 
As if it was all a sham to begin with.

 
And he just couldn’t accept that.

 
He looked at Gloria.
 
She was looking at him with
an anger
and, yes, a hatred he didn’t even know she possessed.
 
He thought he was a good husband to her, a man who took care of his business, worshiped his Lord, and gave his family everything their hearts desired.
 
But it wasn’t enough.
 
None of it, apparently, was anywhere near enough.
 

 
He opened his suit coat, placed his hands on his hips, and sighed in anguish.
 
“Where will you live?” he asked her, unable to suppress a sudden and urgent concern for her welfare.
 
The idea of his aging wife running off with some unfaithfully married man like Paul Hathaway was too distressing for him to even think about.
 
She had no idea what she was getting into.
 
She had no idea just how big a mistake she was about to make.

 
Gloria could feel the concern in Robert’s voice, and she could see the painful look in his beautiful gray eyes, but she quickly dismissed his distress as a wake up call that was way too late to make any difference now.
 
“We’re going back to Maryland with Paul,” she said brusquely, as if she couldn’t care less.
 
“He has a lucrative medical practice there and it doesn’t make sense for him to have to give that up.
 
After the divorce, we’ll see.
 
But we definitely won’t be coming back to Jacksonville.”

 
“You want to get away from me that badly?”

 
“You know what, Robert, I’m not going to stand here and argue with you.”
 
She touched Paul’s arm.
 
“Get the luggage, honey, and let’s just go,” she said to him.
 
Then she told Ashley to go to the car too.
 
Robert, however, grabbed hold of his daughter’s arm.

 
“She’s staying with me,” he said.

 
“No, I’m not!” Ashley said, snatching away from his grasp.

 
“As long as she’s still a minor, Gloria, I will not have her following you and your married lover around.”

 
“I’m seventeen years old,” Ashley said, fearful of even the prospect of having to remain behind with somebody as strict as Robert.
 
With her mother she could get away with murder.
 
Anything she wanted, she got.
 
But Robert always had rules and regulations, always made her go to church every Sunday morning and Bible study every Wednesday night and to all of those boring motivational seminars with him as if he was determined to make her conform to his image of some all-American good Christian girl.
 
She couldn’t wait to get away from him.