“It’s good to see them play.”
“He’s been better lately.” And Lydia would be lying if she didn’t admit that deep down somewhere she was missing her partner in seriousness. As much as she wanted him to be liberated from the grief of losing his father, and as much as she knew that would be a lifelong issue, part of her just wished that...
You can’t confide in your kids. You have to be an adult and have real conversations with the grown-ups around you.
That was sobering. And there were adults in her life, it was just that they were going to require details about her marriage—that much was apparent by the conversation she just had with Marianne. And probably eventually she was going to have to deal with Chase. Reckon with him.
She was so desperate to skip ahead a few pages and see where this was all going.
But somehow, she knew that it was uncharted territory, and she just didn’t know if she had the wherewithal to take more new on.
“How are your other displays coming?” Marianne asked.
“Come see. It’s still under construction, but I’m getting there with this section on war in Pear Blossom.”
“How...holiday appropriate,” Marianne said.
“Okay, it’s not overly cheery. But Dahlia went and talked to Walter Berryman the other day. And he had some really interesting insights into how that affected the town. Can you imagine... Just... All those young men leaving? It must’ve been so obvious here. The hole it left must have been so profound. And the losses must’ve felt so personal.”
Perhaps Lydia would find it more interesting if she didn’t feel like she was neck-deep in the particular issues that came with living in a small town. The endless connections that she had to her late husband. And the way that she cared about the people who cared about him. And all right, maybe she never needed to tell his mother that she had been planning on divorcing her son. She genuinely loved her mother-in-law. And she knew that she was lucky to be able to say that. A lot of people didn’t. But she’d known Sylvia for the better part of her life, and as Ruby’s caseworker, the woman had been an instrumental part of bringing Ruby into their family. All of that time was tightly wound with her marriage. With that relationship.
Why was Chase never particularly close to you?
She didn’t know the answer to that. All she knew was that when she thought his name, her lips burned, and she didn’t particularly care for that revelation.
“Are you actually going to do a museum display about you?” Lydia asked. She really wanted to change the subject. Just in her own brain.
Ruby looked appalled. “No. I’m going to go ahead and skip the museum display on the more recent events in town. Honestly, can you imagine? It would be like building a statue of myself.” She made a gagging sound. “I could erect a replica of the bridge, and put a little baby doll on it. Kids could practice rescuing me.”
“Don’t say that,” Lydia said, “because now I’m starting to think it’s a good idea.”
“Oh, it’s so grim,” Ruby said. Her sister lapsed off somewhere, and Lydia didn’t know where.
“What?” Lydia asked Ruby.
“Nothing.” Except she looked like she had something she wanted to say. And Lydia could relate to that, because it was about where she was at too.
“What’s grim?” Dahlia walked in wearing a black beanie, a black hoodie and black skinny jeans, looking every inch the little dark heart she’d been in high school.
“Ruby is talking about making a display of herself abandoned as a baby,” Marianne said. “It is in very poor taste.”
“Extremely poor,” Ruby agreed.
“I like it,” Dahlia said.
“So, Marianne and I were trying this thing earlier,” Lydia said. “Where we were honest with each other about things.”
“That sounds terrible,” Ruby replied, grinning.
“It is,” Marianne agreed, looking angrily at Lydia. It was clear that Marianne didn’t exactly want to get into her marital issues in front of Ruby. Which was fine. She wasn’t going to drag Marianne into it.
And while she stood there at the display with all of her sisters, she realized that it was her fault they were so careful with her. They couldn’t read her because she wouldn’t let them.
Marianne almost hadn’t shared her issues because she hadn’t realized Lydia could relate.
If Lydia felt distant... It was her own fault. And she needed to do something about it.
Eyes still on the display in front of her, she finally spoke the truth. “I was going to divorce him.”