mean, no wonder he packs two thousand people into a service three times a day on Sunday, twice on Saturday, and once on Wednesday and Friday nights. He’s got bills to pay, and I bet he wouldn’t even know my name if I walked up to him despite Olivia dragging me here for the past couple of years.
I also hate that my father sometimes still attends this church, although he’s done less of that over recent years. He hates that he has to be driven here, and sometimes is too weak to walk on his own and is forced to use a wheelchair.
I’ve tried talking Olivia into attending a different church but she always whines, among other reasons, that they’re “too liberal.”
Yes, because feeding the poor and taking care of the sick is so controversial. Not like Jesus talked about that—
Oh, wait.
I still remember the first time I attended church with Liam in college. We went to a Methodist church where, for the first time, I felt peaceful during a religious service. We went to probably two dozen different churches of various faiths during college and law school, but that first time always stuck with me.
Olivia didn’t like that the minister of the Methodist church closest to our home is Hispanic, even though he was a very nice man and I loved the service. She claimed she couldn’t understand him.
I didn’t have any trouble understanding him.
Remind me again why I’m married to this woman?
Oh, yeah, right.
Because my father told me to.
I guess I deserve to be stuck in this hell of my own making by going along out of fear of my father.
During today’s sermon I zone out, deeply immersed as I usually am in these times within my memories of Liam. It’s the only thing that keeps me sane and keeps me from blowing up my life. It’s the only truly soothing pasttime I have available to me.
Today, I’ll also be forced to sit through lunch with Olivia’s large extended family at her parents’ house, including, I’m sure, “helpful” advice to hurry up and get her pregnant already.
She hasn’t told anyone besides me that she doesn’t actually want kids. I go along with her “fibs,” as she calls them, that we’re trying but “God just hasn’t blessed us yet.”
Meanwhile, she works, which is fine with me. I prefer she has a career. It means, according to our prenup, I won’t owe her spousal support when I eventually find the balls to divorce her.
If I ever do.
I know the only reason our fathers included that stipulation in the agreement is that her father never imagined divorce would ever be an option—or that I’d really let her work after college—and my father’s just a ruthless bastard who doesn’t like to take chances.
Thank God I never wanted kids. Especially with her.
Her family has money. I know there’s a big trust that has paid out to some of the other siblings when they’ve needed something monumental, and a couple of the eldest have already received payouts from it because—I’m not making this up—they had the required minimum number of children.
Yeah. It’s like that.
Needless to say, I’ve tried to stay out of that discussion, because I don’t want to draw additional scrutiny on us and our childless status. Neither does Olivia.
My father and hers worked out the prenup and I signed off on it after looking it over. Whatever negotiations occurred between them, I know better than to ask my father. He’d probably lie to me anyway. My suspicion is that there’s an age clause in Olivia’s family’s trust to trigger her payout, in case she doesn’t have kids, but again, I’m not asking.
It wouldn’t be my money, anyway.
Just like the money in my father’s trust can’t be touched by her. Between the rules of the trust, and our prenup, she doesn’t get any of it.
Part of me hopes she’ll cheat on me. I wouldn’t even ding her with the clause in the prenup, if she’d just quietly divorce me and cite irreconcilable differences, or something like that. Hell, I’ll even let her tell everyone I can’t have kids and she wants them.
Then again, I could just divorce her now.
Who am I kidding, though? I’ve never stood up to my father.
Especially not after realizing he had a hand in Mom’s death.
As long as I do what he tells me to and he doesn’t hear rumors of me talking badly about him—I don’t—he leaves me alone for the most part. He wants me to have