Page 91 of Luck Be Mine
Cait bought them. He had a wife who bought him clothes.
Wonder ripped through him, defying comprehension. Five years and he never realized. Disgusted with himself, he found a belt and grabbed some socks.
After their talk last night on the porch, he’d lain awake, trying to figure out what she needed. She wasn’t wrong. They were drifting, and that was on him. He still hadn’t found the balance between a job that took too much and a wife who askedfor almost nothing. Except she wanted the one thing he’d have to break old habits to deliver.
Maybe she’d never been inside his walls.
He sat on the bed, considering the possibility he was lying to himself.
Or he had so many walls she’d broken through a few, but never reached the ones guarding what mattered most.
Self-sabotage.
This was the way to tear apart everything he wanted. He fitted the socks to his feet and put on a pair of black tennis shoes.
He couldn’t make himself move.
Time to ask some hard questions.
Did he use Cait to make himself feel better?
Did he never give back to her the way she needed? He’d stood by her when she was hurt, but since then she navigated her future without him.
He gazed around the room at furniture he’d had no hand in picking. She’d built this space for comfort, for intimacy with him, for her nights alone. Had she ever asked him to contribute? He couldn’t remember. Consumed with classified secrets and dangerous missions, would he have cared if she had? Everything he knew about himself was locked tight. He never said what he liked to eat, what his favorite color was, whether he liked a show or not. He participated and kept true picks to himself.
Childhood trauma. Raised by people who did not care what he wanted or what he liked. But Cait cared, and she adjusted her choices to fit him. But he never asked her to, never commented on any of it, never thanked her.
This was why she felt disconnected from him. How could he fight himself? Once upon a time, the Navy shrink had advised that all his hard experiences would rebound on him, and he would reach a point where he needed to talk about those difficulties. But he’d balked and left.
She already figured out his foods. She’d been relentless. Still was. She would not let him eat things he didn’t like. He’d shut off caring about eating because food was food when he was hungry. With Cait in the kitchen and her culinary talents, there was no getting away with that attitude. He didn’t even have to say one way or the other. She figured it out. The recipe would appear on the fridge as a keeper or would be in the wastebasket later.
His workroom was another example. The most comfortable of all the home spaces, the room had been Cait’s idea. She had put it together for him with an eye to closet space, gun storage, and equipment maintenance with a solid worktable, desk area, and full-size bed for those times when their sleep schedules didn’t agree.
No doubt about it. She could read him much better than he could her. It wasn’t a man/woman difference thing. She made it a point to find out.
He picked the light blue, short-sleeve shirt with the thin stripes from the closet, guessing this was Cait’s favorite. He shrugged into it and again marveled at the fit. She paid so much attention to what would be useful to him. It was time he did the same thing.
He needed to start by doing for her.
Pick up her uniforms at the dry cleaners.
Understand why she worked hard at two demanding jobs.
Work on her chore list instead of letting it sit.
She promised she’d stay, and he did believe her, but it didn’t mean he could be neglectful. She mattered.
He toyed with his phone and made a call to Doogie.
“Yo, bro.”
“Hey, how’s your mom?”
“Back to health, and I believe her this time. Discontinued her in-home nursing. She’s gone back to work at the salon. A little soon if you ask me, but she didn’t.”
“Sounds like her. She’s the caregiver and needs work to feel useful.”
“It’s frustrating as hell, though. Always appreciated her independence, but I worry about her.”
