My Way Home (St.Gabriel Series Book 1) (St. Gabriel Series)
Read My Way Home (St.Gabriel Series Book 1) (St. Gabriel Series) Online
Authors: Cynthia Lee Cartier
A NOVEL
1st Kindle Edition
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STORY CREEK BOOKS
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Copyright © 2008 Cynthia Lee Cartier
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Chapter 6 — Lighter and Lighter
Chapter 8 — I Rounded the Corner
Chapter 9 — One of Those Dreams
Chapter 10 — The Acceptance Stage
Chapter 11 — Living on an Island
Chapter 14 — The Last Twenty-Five Years
Chapter 19 — Welcome to St. Gabriel
Chapter 20 — Our First Two Weeks
Chapter 38 — A Basket of Rhubarb
Where we love is home,
Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Homesick in Heaven
Wake Up
It was a Friday when the walls came tumbling down. I remember because we were expecting our daughter, a junior in college, to be home at dinnertime to start her spring break. My husband Race took me by the hand and sat me down on the loveseat at the end of our bed. With tears in his eyes, he slowly, carefully and articulately spoke for what would be the most painful and devastating thirty-five minutes of my life. Up to that point in my life, that is.
Thirty-five minutes, I know because I was timing wild rice and cherry stuffed Cornish Hens. The timer interrupted Race as he was stroking my hair and telling me I would always be one of the most important people in his life, but he had to move in a new direction. He apologized, “I’m sorry, Cammy. I’m sorry.”
I was in such shock I think I was nodding as the tears rolled down my cheeks. Then I got up, without a word, and followed the beeping of the timer to the kitchen.
It wasn’t until we were all sitting at the dining table that I looked across at my husband and over at our daughter and realized he wanted a divorce. That’s when the fog really rolled in. It might have been more real, less numbing if there had been shouting or coarse words. But we never really did that. And that, I had thought, was because we were so right for each other—soul mates.
Chewing seemed to be a chore and the rice felt as if it was sticking in my throat. Eventually, I stopped eating and I just watched and listened with a plastic smile on my face. You hear about out-of-body experiences. It wasn’t quite that. It was more out-of-mind. I could feel my butt in the chair, the fork in my hand, I could see and hear, but I didn’t comprehend anything that was said at dinner that night.
Race has this scrumptious laugh. I always loved his laugh. Especially as it rolled out because of something Paul, Janie, or I were saying or doing. Janie was in fine storytelling form, I think. She must have been. Race was leaning forward, huge grin, punctuated by huge laughter. I’m sorry I missed that conversation. If I had been present of mind, I would remember it fondly, I’m sure.
Dark hair, green eyes, fair skin, Janie looks like me. People say we look like sisters. It’s an inflated compliment, I know, but I like when I hear it. It’s a confirmation, a reminder that she’s part of me. She really does look like me, minus ten pounds and wrinkles, but her mind, her personality are her father’s.
Like Race, Janie’s a great storyteller. And like Race, she was born loving words and she uses them carefully. When either of them speaks, it’s going to be good. I envy that. Our son Paul and I, on the other hand, shoot from the lips as Race would say. If we think it, you’re probably going to hear about it.
Race looked at our daughter with the devotion that he had for his children from the moment they were born. Devotion that I once saw in his face when he looked at me. When did he stop looking at me that way?
The two of them went back and forth with such intense engagement that my fogged state went unnoticed, as did my retreat into the kitchen where I spent over two hours cleaning. Or, so I thought it went unnoticed.
When Janie came in to say goodnight, I hugged her too long. Then she held my face in her hands, the way she had done since she was a toddler and had something serious on her mind. “Mom, what’s wrong?”
“I’m so happy you’re home, honey.” I hugged Janie again, briefly that time. Then I spun her around, patted her bottom, and pretended to boot her out of the room with my foot, the way I had done since she was a toddler, shooing her off to bed. She threw her head back as she disappeared out the door and flashed her famous smile, her father’s smile, on my face.
By then the fog had lifted enough for questions to line up in my mind, pushing and shoving to be first. With my baby girl off to bed, I went looking for answers.
I found Race in his study, sitting in his old leather reading chair. I sat on the ottoman in front of him, which I always did but knew instantly was a big mistake. I felt like a little girl, looking up at him. Race refused to talk anymore about the “situation” while Janie was home.
“Why did you tell me an hour before she walked in the door, then?” The tears were pooling in my eyes, blurring my vision, but I didn’t wipe them.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have. But I knew there would be a list of plans for the summer by the end of the week, and I didn’t want Janie looking forward to things that aren’t going to happen. I thought it best that we didn’t go down that road, being…”
I waited for him to finish, and then held out my hands as though I wanted him to give me something. And I did want him to give me something, anything. “Being what, Race?”
Race stared at my hands as if something was going to magically appear in my palms or light beams might shoot out from my fingertips, then he said, “It will be different this summer.”
“How, how will it be different?”
“Cammy, you asked for a reason why, and I told you. That’s the reason. I’m sorry.”
It was a reason, a horrible, awful reason.
“I have questions. We need to talk,” I insisted.
Race reached over to take my hand, and I pulled away. He got a hurt look on his face. Did he not know what he was doing to me?
Why is he trying to be kind while he is doing this cruel, cruel thing? So confusing.
And then Race said, “Cammy, I’m sorry, it may not have been the best timing, but we need to keep this from Janie until the end of the semester. We can’t expect her to finish her courses with something like this hanging over her head.”
Something like what? Why didn’t he just say it?
Divorce
. But I couldn’t say it either. He’d gone nuts. He’d gone completely mad, or maybe he had always been and I hadn’t noticed. Or, maybe I was nuts.
“Well, Race, maybe you should have kept it to yourself until the end of the semester. Do you really think she’s not going to find out?” Word, words, so many words, and my questions weren’t getting their turn.
I could see by the look on Race’s face he hadn’t thought it through very well. And he always thought everything through—through and through. Race sat there looking like a lost little boy, but a boy who was determined to do what he was going to do. He’d find a way.
It reminded me of Paul’s face when he was seven and he came home with a stray puppy that Race told him he couldn’t keep. Our son’s eyes filled with yearning, hurt, and determination as he pled his case to keep the little mutt.
“I couldn’t wait, Cam. I’m sorry. Promise me we’ll wait to talk until Janie leaves for school on Sunday, please.”
Again, Race reached out for my hands. I stood up and fell backwards over the ottoman. He was immediately on his feet and tried to help me up, but I rocked to my knees and pushed him away.
When I was back on my feet, I left the room and went up to our bedroom. Race slept in his study, rising early to go for his run in the morning. Janie was never the wiser.
I made my way through the next week, a shell, cooking all of Janie’s favorites and feeling relieved when I came down the stairs or entered a room, and Race wasn’t there. When he was, I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t look at him.
At the same time my mind was numb and frantic and was filling up with questions, which I listed obsessively behind the
Journal
tab of my day planner that I call Einstein. How long have you been planning this? Are you having an affair? Who are you, and what have you done with my husband?
I lay in bed at night thinking mostly about Race having an affair. Was there someone else? Of course there was. Isn’t that what a new direction means, a new direction with someone else? Men don’t leave to be alone.
We had been happy, hadn’t we? We had a good life, great kids, family, friends, a nice home, regular sex.
Where is this coming from?
I was a good wife. Well, there were times when I was over committed, the house got messy, cluttered, and meals were hit and miss. And the sex was regular but not always great. But what did he expect after twenty-five years of marriage?
This is reality, life.
It had to be a woman, a tramp. Yes, some home-wrecking, blankety-blank bimbo.