Page 60 of The Wife
Then I couldn’t delay it any longer.
“Your freedom,” I said and tried to smile. I probably looked really lame.
“What does that mean?”
He was giving me his full attention. He turned the music off and put a lid on the stew.
“Okay, remember when I said that I could fix our problem? Well, I found a way and I did it.”
“What problem? Ellie, what are you talking about?”
“The only reason we stayed married was because of the money. I couldn’t give you what you needed to buy the land, and we needed to take the loan from the bank to save the ranch. I found a way around all that. We have the money now. We can get divorced. Whenever we want.”
I choked a little on the worddivorce, but other than that I think it all came out as well as it could have.
He crossed his arms over his chest and glared at me. “Ellie, what’s this about?”
“It’s about what I said. Getting a divorce, giving you your life back. It’s what you wanted.”
“What I wanted?” he asked quietly.
“When we had that fight and you said you were trapped and you hated me…”
“Damn it, is that what this is about? You said you accepted my apology,” he snapped at me.
“I did. I do. That’s not what matters, Jake. What you said was the truth. You are trapped and it would be really easy to resent me for that. I couldn’t have that. I couldn’t have you stay in a situation where you would even be able to think the wordhate, much less actually feel that about me.”
“Ellie, I was pissed. Frustrated. I blew up. You said you were okay, but this whole time you weren’t? Talk about holding a grudge.”
Okay now I was starting to get pissed off. I was making this huge sacrifice for him and he was angry with me?
Immediately, I realized I needed to calm down. I was dropping what was a pretty big bombshell on him and it was going to take him time to process it. Eventually, he would see that I was right.
“This is not a grudge, Jake. Listen to me. We can’t do this for another two and a half years. I can’t not be jealous the next time there is another Carol…”
“There won’t be another Carol. That was a mistake.”
“Then what? You’re going to live like a monk for the next two and a half years? You were right. I can’t get into bed with you every night, have sex with you every night, and then watch you walk away. But I also can’t bear the thought of you being with anyone else. Or me, for that matter. That does make us trapped.”
“Why does this constantly have to be about sex, Ellie?”
“It’s not sex, Jake it’s us! We don’t know what we are. We’re not lovers. We’re not a couple. But we’re not just friends anymore. We’re in this weird limbo and it’s not sustainable. You are the most important person in my life. I’m the most important person in yours. I don’t want you to end up hating me.”
“I would never hate you,” he growled. “I was pissed. I said something I shouldn’t have. I thought it was over.”
I took a deep breath. I had to hit him with the hard punch. If only to get him to really hear what I was saying.
“Do you want to stay married to me? Forever?”
His mouth opened and then he snapped it closed.
I nodded. “You told me before when you married me, you thought it was temporary. You said sex would complicate everything between us and you were right. We’re at this place where if we don’t walk away, I think we’ll drive each other crazy with everything we’re not.”
“Walk away? Where the hell am I going to go? I don’t have a house, remember?”
This was the second part of the plan. I called it Phase II, a.k.a. Save My Sanity.
“I’ve been thinking and I decided I want to give college a try. I always knew that ranching would be my life, but I never expected for it to happen so soon. I’ve never gotten a chance to even think about wanting something else. Now that I have the money, I can do that. I can go to school, branch out a little, and you can live here until you have a chance to get your house fixed. I’ll hire someone to replace me in terms of what I was contributing work-wise, so you’re not stuck with it all. I can handle the books from school, but you’ll still need another pair of hands full time. Howard’s already put an ad in most of the ranching magazines for me.”
