divorced. But at least if we do, we’ll be sure.” She wondered if one was ever sure. There were always the things you loved about a person, and the things you hated and couldn’t live with, and in this case, couldn’t forgive. That was the crux of it. Could she forgive him or not? She didn’t know. She didn’t think so, but she wasn’t sure.
“Could we go out to dinner sometime, or have lunch?” he asked her hopefully. She didn’t answer, but her eyes said no. He realized as he looked at her now how far away from him she’d gone. He wished that he’d called her more often over the summer instead of only a few times. He had wanted to but thought she needed space. Maybe she didn’t. And ending it with Veronica had been messy. He’d had a rotten summer, and missed Caroline and the kids fiercely.
He asked for the check then, and while they waited for it, he asked her about the ranch. “What are you doing about that? Are you asking Kate to buy out your share? You never go and you hate it there. It doesn’t make much sense. And there are better investments to make than a ten-thousand-acre ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley, although the land is valuable.” She didn’t tell him that Thad had just bought Gemma’s share. It was none of his business.
“It’s better without my father. That was always the problem for me. It was nice being with my sisters this summer, and it was good for the kids. They loved it, and so did I.” They had told him as much when he saw them. And he was surprised to hear she’d loved it too. He hadn’t gone to see his parents in Maine at the end of August, as they always did. He didn’t want them to know they were having trouble.
He paid the check then, and they left the restaurant together. “Thank you for lunch,” she said politely, but she looked less nervous than she had when she arrived. In spite of everything, it was nice to see him.
“Thank you for talking to me,” he said with a small wintry smile. He wasn’t sure if it was the beginning or the end, and neither was she. He leaned toward her and kissed her cheek, and she smiled. “I’ll email you a schedule that works for me to see the kids, let me know how it works for you. I’d like to try to keep this informal for now.” She nodded. She agreed. Her car was in the opposite direction from his office, so they left each other outside the restaurant.
He had his head down as he walked away. It hadn’t gone as well as he’d hoped, and hadn’t been as bad as she’d feared. She had wanted to be more decisive and ask for a divorce, but she realized at lunch that she wasn’t ready to do it. Once she was across the table from him and she looked him in the eyes, he wasn’t as easy to walk away from as she thought he would be. The good memories were still in her mind too with the bad ones. They had a lot invested in their marriage, and it was hard to throw the good away with the bad. As she hurried toward her car, she remembered the idea that she’d had at lunch, and was determined to start on it as soon as she got home.
She drove to Marin as fast as she could within the speed limit and with the traffic. She didn’t want to be late for Billy’s carpool, and he had soccer practice in San Rafael that afternoon. She was left with what she’d had in their marriage, all the chores and errands and responsibilities. The only difference now was that he wouldn’t come home at night. She didn’t have to cook dinner for him, talk to him, or care about his problems. She didn’t have to have sex with him, and clearly she must have bored him, if he wanted the kind of stuff she had seen in the photographs of Veronica. She was thirty-nine, almost forty, not twenty-three, and her ass was never going to look like Veronica’s again no matter how many Pilates classes she went to or even if she had an ass and boob lift like the people Gemma knew in Hollywood.
She had a new book to work on now that she had started