The View from Alameda Island - Robyn Carr Page 0,35

getting anything from the marriage or turn the girls against me. He loves to tell me I can’t get by without him when actually, I think the opposite is true. He texts me all day, giving me chores to do for him, lists of things to buy for him, settle for him. It is said most doctors can’t make it without a good nurse and a good wife. Brad has a great sense of entitlement. I don’t know for sure but I suspect he was born with it. He was the only child of wealthy parents.”

He just shook his head.

“He’s mean and spiteful. I need to remember that.”

“I’ll come over tomorrow and install some good locks for you,” he said. “I’ll get one of those camera doorbells that you can access with your cell phone.”

“You don’t have to do that...”

“But it will help,” he said.

“So you’ve had a bad week?” she asked, only to take the focus off her for a moment.

“Predictable, but not fun. I didn’t expect Michael, my twenty-year-old, to come to me in tears practically begging me to let his mom come home. I hated looking like such a beast. I changed the locks on the house. I told them their mother isn’t forbidden to enter by any means but to please be sure someone is there. When she’s done acting hurt and begging for another chance, she’s going to get angry. And when she gets angry, she can be malicious.”

“What are you afraid of?” Lauren asked.

“I’m not sure what to be afraid of. She could take lots of stuff she doesn’t need. She’s living in a furnished flat in the city and all she needed was her clothes and she took almost all of them, leaving very little behind. She thought she was never coming back, that’s my guess. I suspect another man. A man that didn’t last. That’s been our pattern. She leaves because the marriage is troubled, she says, but I think she gets bored. A few months later she regrets it and wants to come home. Quite suddenly, every time. All I’m lacking are the facts.”

“And you were expecting that?”

“I was. I told her the last time she left I wasn’t going to be welcoming her home after her vacation. I told her if she left, it would be the last time. Apparently she thought she could turn that decision around. At Michael’s insistence, we tried marriage counseling. And not for the first time.”

Lauren actually laughed. “We’ve had marriage counseling at least six times.”

“I guess it didn’t work for you, either.”

“It will never work,” Lauren said. “Brad sees himself as smarter than the counselor. He manages to control the session. He educates the therapist, diagnosing me as a chronic liar who is frequently delusional, imagining him having affairs, exaggerating things he said, picking fights over nothing.”

“All untrue?” he asked.

“My sister calls it gaslighting. He says, ‘You’re imagining that,’ or ‘That’s just another gross exaggeration,’ or ‘You’re dreaming again, Lauren.’ And, ‘Sometimes I genuinely fear for your sanity.’ And my favorite, ‘My wife is suffering from depression and anxiety and she’s in denial and won’t get help.’ He’s called me bipolar, manic depressive, a borderline personality and malicious.”

“Did you imagine him having affairs?”

“No,” she said. “Not affairs, I don’t think. I think I might’ve guessed if he was really invested in another woman. Flings, I think. And no it wasn’t my imagination. He had me almost convinced I was paranoid. Then there was proof.”

“That’ll do it,” Beau said. “Ever ask yourself, how did I get to this place?”

“I’m pretty sure I know how and it doesn’t reflect well on me,” she said. “You?”

He nodded. “I know exactly how. I loved Pam and her kids.”

“Well, I was very young and hopeful. And Lacey came along right away. The kids were still very little when I realized it was hopeless. I didn’t think my heart could break any more. Until my daughter said she’d never forgive me if I divorced her father, even though she knows how difficult he is to live with. Then I knew real heartache.”

“And your other daughter?”

That was almost as painful to think about. “Very supportive...because she remembers his abusive nature and meanness way better than I want her to. It tears me up to think she grew up with that knowledge.”

He leaned toward her. “There are some things you’re going to have to understand, Lauren. Even though you did your best and no more could be expected of you, you’ll feel