Mom Over Miami - By Annie Jones Page 0,47
a children’s picture book.
It made it all the more difficult to hang on to her reservations about the man. Until he opened his mouth.
“Tell you what, Bartlett, you got yourself a real jewel there. If my second wife had understood the demands of a doctor’s life the way Hannah does, maybe she’d still be my wife.” He gave Dottie, the office manager, a wink as he pushed past her toward the door.
“If his wife had understood any more about that man’s demands, she’d be his widow.” Dottie raised both hands and made a choking motion in midair, then rolled her eyes.
Payt bent at the knees to put his face low enough to look up into Hannah’s eyes. “You really okay with this?” he asked.
She heard: Do you really want to still be my wife?
“I…I understand, Payt.” Dr. Briggs had made it clear she had no choice.
Listen to yourself! You’re taking someone else’s words and putting them in Payt’s mouth. Don’t turn every innocent comment into a club to beat yourself up with. You always assume the worst.
“That’s not really an answer.” Her husband stroked her cheek. His eyes searched hers, and for a moment she thought maybe he wanted her to tell him not to go.
That only made it harder for her. If she knew what he wanted her to say, she’d say it.
“Just tell me how you feel about this, okay?”
“I feel…silly. It’s silly. Go.” Don’t go.
“Yeah?”
“Have fun.” But not too much fun.
“But I feel so guilty leaving you here to do the cleaning.”
“Why? I said I’d do it until you get the—” she glanced around to make sure no one else could hear “—the scapegoat issue settled. And seeing as how it’s Heather’s birthday—well, how could I object to you going to dinner to show your support?”
Really. How? She wished he would stand right there and tell her word for word how to object, what to say to not sound petty and small, to maintain her dignity and keep her husband at her side.
He slipped his name tag off his shirt pocket and tossed it onto Heather’s desk with the clutter of birthday cards and icing-smeared napkins. “We would have done it at lunch, but these sales reps had something planned for her, and we couldn’t just close up and take off.”
“I know.” She pulled a smile up from someplace in her being. “The demands of a doctor’s life.”
“Thanks for being so—”
Wishy-washy, she wanted to say. Instead she finished for him, “Understanding.”
“I won’t be too late.” He kissed her temple.
“Maybe you already are,” she murmured as she watched him breeze out the door to some restaurant where energetic waiters wrote their names on the tablecloth and peppered the snappy recitation of the specials with their own hyperhappy recommendations. “I could live on the double-stuffed crab cakes with mango salsa!”
Ugh.
Payt went off to double-stuff himself, while she had to stay and clean the staff restroom.
Classic Cinderella syndrome. She’d had it all her life.
But it wasn’t supposed to be like this. Not a Christian marriage. Not her marriage. She wasn’t supposed to feel neglected, as if she would always come in second place.
Not that it was a new sensation. Second-place sister. She’d felt it all her life whenever someone gushed over the accomplishments of Sadie or April. Hannah, the runner-up. The one they only went to when their first choice had other plans.
She’d felt that way in school, in matters dealing with their daddy and almost every minute of the years she spent working and living in Wileyville while Payt put in his time at the clinic there.
In those places she expected it. But not in her own marriage.
She set the rocker moving again. Eyes open in the dimly lit baby’s room, she let her gaze flit from one familiar object to another, thinking of what it all represented.
All the years of planning and hoping.
All the time invested in creating a home, a relationship, a future.
Everything they had gone through to become a family, and where had she ended up?
Alone.
Excluded. Only for an evening, but still…Her own husband had abandoned her to go celebrate another woman’s birthday, while Hannah stayed to clean up the partygoers’ trash.
In her marriage she expected…
“Honesty,” she whispered. She’d always thought that no matter what else, she and Payt had that. Honesty.
Had she learned differently today?
She hadn’t meant to snoop. No. No one could call it snooping.
She hadn’t gone there on some kind of wifely fact-finding mission, after all. Payt had roped her into cleaning his