Reconciled for Easter (19 page)

She knew why he wanted to go to bed early. She could feel the tension of arousal start to tighten in his body.

It tightened in hers too, as if her body instinctively responded to his.

It felt right. He was her husband. And he wanted them to be together. She wanted that too.

It felt so
right
.

But it had felt right before too—when she’d given herself to him, trusted him to love and respect and support her, believed he would never hurt her. When he’d believed the same thing about her.

And they had been wrong. They had been broken. They had both felt not-good-enough, over and over again.

“Not yet,” she murmured, trying to talk herself down from the irrational panic.

Things had been going really well. Both of them had grown and changed and were genuinely trying to make this marriage work. Their relationship didn’t have to be the way it was before.

She knew—she
knew
—it was true.

They could keep taking it slow. Nothing to get in a panic about.

He settled her into his arms, both of them leaning against the kitchen counter, and he was stroking her hair as he began, “So I was thinking.”

Something about his careful tone gave her shivers of worry. “About what?”

“What do you think about the idea of you and Mia moving in with me?”

Her blood seemed to freeze in her veins and then slowly drain out of her face. “I thought we were taking it slow.”

“We are,” he said quickly. “I’m not rushing you. Just floating the idea out there, since things are going so well. It’s fine if you’re not ready.”

He was backpedalling quickly, and she could feel the tension tighten in his body, since she was still pressed up against the length of it. She pulled away, the fear and confusion she’d been experiencing all night taking shape and rising up in force. “I’m sorry,” she said, her throat closing around the words. “I’m sorry. It’s too soon. I’m not ready.”

“It’s fine. It’s fine, Abigail. I’m sorry I asked. It was too soon. I’m really sorry.”

He
was
sorry. She could see the emotion twisting on his face. He looked like he’d jumped into full-fledged crisis mode, and she could sense a deep disappointment underlying it, because she hadn’t responded the way he’d been hoping.

And so she felt guilty. Horribly, achingly guilty. Because she’d hurt him, when he’d been trying so hard. Because she couldn’t make him happy after all. Because she couldn’t get over all their old issues as quickly as she should. Because she wasn’t the woman he wanted her to be. She wasn’t the wife he really wanted.

And suddenly all of it was happening again—all of those feelings of being not-good-enough, now and so many times in the past.

She experienced again how it had felt when she’d dressed up all sexy for him in lingerie, only for him to reject her. She experienced again how it had felt when she’d showed him a job she’d found that seemed to be made for her, only to end up feeling selfish for even wanting it. She experienced again how it had felt when he’d walked out on her one morning, despite her pleas for him to stay, because he didn’t really want her to be an equal partner in their marriage.

And maybe she knew now why it had happened, why he’d acted the way he did. And maybe she knew how much of the fault had been hers.

But she was back there again—never being good enough, no matter how hard she tried. The old Abigail. The one she’d thought she’d finally overcome.

She would have to fight the whole battle again—and again and again, through the whole of her life. She could see it spread out before her like a vision, all the years, decades, of being trapped in the same cycle.

It was never, ever going to end.

And then it suddenly felt like it had at their last counseling session. The absolute exhaustion from constantly pouring themselves futilely into something that would never be fixed.

She just couldn’t do it anymore. She was suddenly every bit as tired as she’d been before Christmas, although she’d thought the exhaustion was over too. She was just so incredibly tired.

It had to finally end.

She stepped away from him abruptly, stumbling backwards from the jerky move.

He reached to support her, his face tensing in concern. “What’s the matter? Are you okay? I really am sorry. We can pretend I didn’t say anything.”

She tried to speak but couldn’t.

“Abigail?” Thomas’s expression was changing, like he had a sudden sense of what was about to happen. “Baby?”

She took a shaky breath. “I think you should go home.”

Thomas froze, staring at her blankly.

“I’m sorry,” she continued, gripping the edge of the counter. “I’m really sorry, but I think you should go home.”

“Okay,” he replied, very slowly. “I can go home if you want. But can I please say first that I shouldn’t have put pressure on you like that? We’d agreed to take it slow, so it was my fault that I—”

She shook her head, tears burning in her eyes but not falling. “It’s not your fault, Thomas. It’s not what you said. It just finally all caught up to me. And I don’t think I can do this again.”

She heard his breath hitch with what felt like tightly repressed emotion.

His voice was slow, careful, gentle as he said, “Things seemed to be going pretty well. If it’s not what I just said, then what has happened to make you so scared?”

“Nothing. Not really. It’s just too much. For a while, it felt…different, easy. But it’s not going to be, is it? And I just can’t do all of this again. All the hard stuff never ends, and I’m just too tired.”

“But it’s not going to be like it was before. We’ve talked about this. It’s going to be bet—”

“I don’t know if it will be better or not, but that’s not really the point. It’s
me
. I’m the problem. I just can’t do it again.”

Thomas was still fully composed, although she knew it was only on the surface. He raised a hand to rub his jaw, and for a moment his eyes were anguished. “Abigail, I don’t know what else I can do to show you how much I love you, how sorry I am for the ways I hurt you, how deeply I want to make amends.”

She swallowed over a painful lump in her throat and couldn’t force out any words.

“Baby, I pushed you away because I was afraid you wouldn’t need me anymore, and I’m so sorry for that. I held onto those feelings for way too long. But, since Christmas, I’ve been trying to show you that I love you—exactly as you are—whether you need me or not.”

The room started to shudder in front of her eyes.

Thomas continued, “I don’t know what else I can do to show you all of that, to show you how much I’ve changed, how much I love you.”

She had to turn away from his expression, from the way his voice cracked on the last few words. Her shoulders shook briefly before she was able to say, “It’s not you. I’m not expecting you to prove anything to me. This isn’t a test or something. It’s
me
. I’m the one who’s broken. I’m the one who isn’t strong enough to go through all the hard stuff again. I’m the one who’s too tired to keep fighting for this.”

He reached out to touch her arm, but she jerked away from him. “Abigail, please don’t say that. I know you’re tired. So am I. We’ve been struggling with this for so long. But we’re making progress. And you’re not broken.”

“Yes, I am! You’ve spent all this time trying to show me that you love me and Mia, and all I can think about is how I felt when we were together before. Like I was only half a person. Like I was trapped and ashamed and always wrong. Like I was never good enough. I think I’ve grown and changed since then. God has really been working in my life. And I could feel it just now. Like any moment I might fall back into that old person. And I’ll have to fight so hard not to do it.”

“I don’t want you to be that person either, Abigail. We can work together to make sure neither of us—”

“I know. I know what you’re saying is right. But you eventually get to the point where something is so hard, so endlessly hard, that you have to ask yourself whether it’s worth fighting for at all. And I don’t even know how it happened—why it all caught up to me like this—but it has. I think I’ve finally gotten there. I’m just not strong enough to do it.” Tears were streaming down her face, and she hated herself for them.

Hated herself for the broken expression on Thomas’s face too.

Hated herself for everything she had ever done wrong.

Hated herself for never getting any better.

“No one is strong enough. I’ve really learned this in the last few months too. You’re different now because God made you that way. He’s made me different too. And he can make our marriage different.” Thomas reached out for her. “He can make it new.”

She choked on emotion, stepped back from his outstretched hand, and shook her head, blinded by the tears—which was almost a relief because she could no longer see on his face the way she was hurting him. “In heaven, maybe. Maybe then I’ll be new. But, in this life, it’s just battle after battle, and I can’t do it anymore.”

He started to say something else, but she couldn’t let him. She turned her back on him, still clinging to the edge of the counter. “Please, can you just leave? I’m really sorry. I know it’s not fair. I know it’s hurting you. I know you deserve so much better. But can you please leave now?”

She heard a brief sound—like he was choking, strangled—but he didn’t say anything else. Then she heard him walking out of her kitchen, out of her little house, out to his car in the driveway.

It was a year and a half since she’d left him, but it was only this evening that she really knew their marriage was over for good.

When Abigail glanced in Mia’s bedroom, she was relieved to see that the girl had already fallen asleep with a book on her stomach and her glasses still on. Abigail went in to place the book and glasses on the nightstand and turn out the light, glad that her daughter wouldn’t see how much she’d been crying in the half-hour since Thomas had driven away.

She stood over the bed in the dark room and prayed that Mia wouldn’t be hurt by all of her mistakes, that her little girl wouldn’t suffer for the things that she’d gotten wrong.

Then, she was crying again—so hard she had to leave the room.

She cried and prayed for most of the night, and the morning brought neither comfort nor answers.

***

She was such a wreck the next day that, after spending the morning pretending like nothing was wrong so Mia wouldn’t be upset, she finally called Lydia to ask if it was all right for Mia to come over to play with Ellie for a couple of hours in the middle of the day. She put on a brave face and avoided any awkward questions when she dropped her daughter off, but Lydia was looking concerned when Abigail drove away.

The whole thing was horrible, and it seemed to affect everyone—like Thomas wasn’t the only one whom Abigail had done wrong.

But she just didn’t feel strong enough to do anything else.

She went home and stretched out on the couch and turned on the television, hoping to drown out the torrent of pain and confusion in her brain with mindless entertainment. It didn’t help, though. She lay in a bleak kind of numbness, trying to imagine what it would feel like to be divorced from Thomas completely, for him to no longer be her husband.

She couldn’t even imagine it.

She was in such a stupor that she didn’t hear the knock on the door for a full minute—not until it was paired with the ringing of the doorbell.

She jumped up, startled and disoriented. No one should be at her door right now, and she wasn’t in fit state to see anyone.

But another knock followed, and Abigail had no real choice but to go to the door. Her car was in the driveway. It wasn’t like she’d be able to hide.

She opened the door to Jessica, who was holding a casserole dish and smiling a little uncertainly. “Hi,” she said. “I don’t have to stay. I just wanted to bring you this.”

“Oh.” Abigail stared at the dish wrapped up with the towel. “What is it?”

“It’s my attempt at chicken and rice casserole. I hope it’s okay.”

“But why…” Abigail didn’t finish the question, since it should have been self-evident. Jessica was the pastor’s wife, and Abigail was at home by herself in sweats and a tear-stained face. “Does everyone know already?” she whispered, horrified by the thought.

“No, no. I’m so sorry.” Jessica looked even more worried. “I hope I wasn’t too…too presumptuous. Thomas called Daniel this morning. Daniel doesn’t tell anyone anything. He doesn’t even tell me. But it was a long conversation, and then Daniel seemed…I don’t know. And then I talked to Lydia, who was worried that Thomas wasn’t answering his phone and that you’d dropped Mia off at her place, so I…” Jessica blew out a breath and looked down at her dish. “Just tell me if I’m being obnoxious, and I promise I’ll go. The casserole probably isn’t any good, but I thought maybe you wouldn’t feel like cooking dinner, so I…Oh, I’m so sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have come.”

Abigail had to close her eyes and look away so she wouldn’t burst into tears. “Thank you,” she said, when she could make her voice work. “You can come in. And I really appreciate the casserole.”

Jessica’s face reflected obvious relief, and it was a little easier as they went into the kitchen and did normal things like finding a place in the refrigerator for the casserole dish and talk about how Jessica had messed up her first try and had to give most of it to Bear, her dog.

Abigail heated water in the kettle and offered Jessica a cup of tea. She didn’t really feel like company, but she wasn’t about to return such kindness with a closed door.

“Where’s Nathan?” Abigail asked when they both sat down at the dining room table. She’d just realized that it was the first time she’d seen the other woman without her son in the months since he’d been born.

“Daniel is watching him. He’s really good with him.”

“That’s good.” Abigail thought about Thomas with Mia, how good a father he’d been trying to be, and her face twisted with suppressed emotion.

Jessica didn’t say anything. Didn’t ask a question or try to spill out a simplistic moral. She just sat silently and stirred her tea.

Finally, Abigail said, “I hate that everyone is going to know.”

“Know what?”

“That I gave up on my marriage. That I hurt Thomas and Mia this way.”

There was a long pause before Jessica responded. “I don’t think anyone can say that you gave up on your marriage. It’s been well over a year, and you’re still trying to make it work.”

“Not anymore,” Abigail admitted, feeling a familiar burning in her cheeks. “I gave up last night. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I’m just too…too tired. The break was supposed to help, but the tiredness didn’t go away.”

Jessica took a slow sip of tea. “I can’t pretend to know what you’re going through. Daniel and I have had our issues, but I know it’s not the same. I know it’s tempting to stand at a distance and judge other people, assuming there’s an easy and obvious answer, but I know it’s never that simple. So I’m not likely to have any worthwhile advice, but if you want someone to talk about it to, then you can talk to me.”

Abigail opened her mouth to thank the other woman and say no—since her instinct was to never talk about it, never to let anyone know what a mess she really was.

Her parents had always made it very clear that you showed the world nothing but clean hands and face.

But she knew better than that now—no matter what else had happened, she wasn’t in that place anymore—so instead of a polite thank you, the words that came out were, “It’s not him. It’s me.”

“What’s you?”

“The real problem. I mean, he made mistakes for sure, but he’s really been working on them. I’m the one who can’t seem to change enough. I…I just know I’m going to feel not-good-enough again, even when he tries to show me over and over that he doesn’t want to.”

Jessica was obviously listening, obviously reflecting on what she’d said, but she didn’t jump in with advice or questions.

So Abigail just went on. “I think it’s different with me as a mother. I mean, I can fully love Mia and know she loves me. But, with Thomas, I kept feeling like I couldn’t ever be what he wanted, like he must want something other than me—from the beginning, when I couldn’t even…even get through the wedding night. I know in my mind now that it’s not true, but I can’t seem to not believe it. I thought things were improving and getting easier, but the minute I let my guard down, I start believing it again. I can’t seem to change.”

Jessica nodded, as if she understood—or as if she at least had heard what Abigail had said.

“So, you see, it’s not that I can’t forgive Thomas. Of course, I can forgive him, just like he’s forgiven me. I’m just…so tired. You know, Daniel asked me a while back if I was content to always connect help with shame, and I keep going back to that. Because marriage seems like the most intense version of that feeling. I need Thomas so much—so, so much—and I always feel not-good-enough with him. Even now, I feel not-good-enough because I’m not strong enough to be with him the way I should.”

Neither of them spoke for a couple of minutes, after Abigail had finished. She felt exposed, a little self-conscious, but not the way she normally did when something about her true self was revealed.

“My dad stopped talking to me when I left Thomas,” Abigail said, for no particular reason. “He’d been more and more disapproving of the changes I’d made—cutting my hair, changing my clothes, trying to work outside the home. And the separation was the last straw for him. His daughter wouldn’t do such a thing, so I must not be his daughter.”

“What about your mom?” Jessica asked softly.

Abigail sighed. “She’ll never go against my dad. She never did—not once since the day I was born. So I don’t talk to her either. Her only act of rebellion is to send me and Mia cards at the holidays. I took Mia up there to try to mend fences over Christmas, and I saw my mother a couple of times, but it didn’t fix anything. My father wouldn’t even see me. They’re ashamed of me.” She stared down at the table. “I’m ashamed of myself, but not for the same reasons. It feels like I’m always playing out the same pattern of working so hard to be good enough but never getting there. I just wish I could make myself stop.”

“Yeah,” Jessica murmured. “It’s never that easy.”

Abigail felt heard, understood, and not judged at all—which made her feel a little better. She got up to refill their mugs with hot water, and then Jessica said, “I was talking to Daniel earlier this week as he was thinking through his sermon for Good Friday.”

Having no idea where this was going, Abigail sat down again, dunking a new tea bag.

“And I was thinking about how what we always think about in Jesus’ death is the pain and the blood and the death itself. For good reason, of course, since it was horrible. But, as I was talking to Daniel, I had a new thought.”

“What thought?” The turn of the conversation seemed safe enough, not horribly painful or intimate, so Abigail was genuinely curious.

“He was naked,” Jessica said. “He was
naked
. In front of all those people who hated him. They took his clothes. They utterly humiliated him. He had no dignity or privacy or security left. They took it all. And I kept thinking, that’s our shame. That’s
my
shame. He carried that too.”

She didn’t even seem to be talking to Abigail anymore. She was staring down at her tea, murmuring almost to herself, “To make us new. To make us beautiful.”

Abigail felt frozen, almost numb, as she processed the words, as she understood them as true. She couldn’t say anything, couldn’t react in any appropriate way. She just sat, something inside her shaking helplessly.

“Anyway,” Jessica said, wiping a tear away with an ironic sigh. “I’m not any good at advice or comforting words, but that’s what I was thinking.”

Abigail tried to say something, but couldn’t.

“Are you okay?” Jessica asked, after another minute.

Abigail shook her head. “I don’t think I am.”

“Well, just let me know if you need anything. And if you ever need some time on your own or decide you want to talk to Thomas or anything, you’re welcome to drop Mia off with me. Mia and I had a long conversation on Friday evening about what kinds of books I should get to read to Nathan, so I think we get along pretty well.”

Abigail felt a ripple of amusement, picturing Mia’s grave face during the conversation, and the brief laughter seemed to crack something inside her, a well of feeling that could barely be held back.

Jessica was already on her way out, and she didn’t linger for more conversation. Abigail did her best to thank her, but she was close to sobbing as she finally closed the door.

She leaned against the door, her whole body shaking, sinking down to the floor and hugging her knees as the emotion rocked her, as she saw her whole history of never feeling good enough illuminated by the truth.

It was a long time before she could stand up again.

***

She eventually pulled herself together enough to pick up Mia, and they went out to get ice cream and took it to the duck pond so they could sit on a bench as they ate it.

Mia liked to watch the ducks, and Abigail just wanted to occupy her mind so she wouldn’t start crying again.

After they scraped the last of the ice cream from their cups, Mia stared out at the pond for a long time, finally asking, “Is Daddy coming over tonight?”

With a painful slice through her heart, Abigail said, “I don’t think so, honey.”

“Did you guys have a bad fight?”

“We didn’t have a fight. You know that he doesn’t come over every night.”

“But he’s been coming a lot. And he’s been kissing you and sleeping over. I thought maybe we would all live together again.”

Abigail pulled the girl closer, wrapping her in a hug. “I’m sorry, honey. I don’t know if that will happen.”

“Grown up stuff is complicated,” Mia said with a sigh, repeating words she’d heard many times.

“It is. But we both love you so much. You know that, don’t you?”

Mia nodded, no uncertainty at all on her face. “Yes, I know that. But you don’t love each other?”

“Yes, we love each other. We do. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to live together again.”

“I wanted us to. I wanted us all to move into Daddy’s house with all the trees and the window seat for reading.”

Abigail stroked loose strands of hair from her face. “I know. That does sound nice, doesn’t it? But our home is nice too, isn’t it?”

“Yes. It is.”

Mia didn’t say anything else immediately, but Abigail knew it was because she was thinking things through. She was like Thomas in that—sorting ideas out in her mind before she had them together enough to put into words.

Abigail waited patiently, staring out at the rippling water of the pond. When Mia’s thinking went on for much longer than normal, she started to get worried, though. So she finally asked, “Are you okay, Mia? I know you wanted Daddy around all the time, but I promise it will still be okay.”