Season of Sisters (30 page)

Her experiment in dating had offered little relief. In truth, she'd disliked herself during the entire process. Not that she'd done anything of which she should be ashamed, because she hadn't. Mike had written the rules, after all.

But she didn't want to think about that. Not here, not now.

She snuggled against Mike, the heat of him warming a place within her that had been cold for too long. She'd withdrawn, from Mike, from life. She could recognize that now. In hindsight, she found it rather amazing, since she wasn't at all one of those people who thrived on being alone.

Thank God for Grace and Holly. Her new friends had kept her sane and steady in recent weeks. If not for those two, she might never have left the house. Imagine her home shopping network bills in that case.

She shuddered at the thought. Mike gave her arm a sleepy pat and Maggie smiled. Her thoughts continued to drift. She wondered how Holly made out with Justin this morning. Hopefully, Maggie's decision to call him had been a good one. Ben certainly had been happy to receive her call. He'd been worried. She'd heard it in his tone. Then his reaction to learning that his wife was in jail had been priceless. After being reassured that his wife was all right—happy, in fact—he'd laughed. Just let loose a loud, delighted guffaw.

He loves his Gracie,
Maggie thought wistfully. It was clear in everything he did, as was the love Grace felt for him in return. Now there was a marriage that proved adversity could be overcome. They'd walked through the fire and survived.

Maggie could look at them and feel better about her own marriage. She and Mike didn't have infidelity to deal with. He hadn't taken his dating any farther than she had. She was positively certain of that. She knew her husband. He wouldn't be sleeping beside her now if he'd been sleeping with someone else.

No, today had been a turning point for them. Maggie felt more optimistic than she had in months.

Then Mike opened his eyes and his mouth and ruined it. "Whose bright idea was it to paint my boat?"

A pinprick of irritability burst the bubble of her contentment. Reconciliation sex required an "I love you" or two in her book. That, and an "I missed you." An "I'm sorry for being a jerk" wouldn't have been bad. Instead, the first thing out of his mouth was a comment about that stupid boat.

"I bet it wasn't you. Pink hearts aren't your style."

No. She'd have set the blasted thing on fire. "Actually," she drawled, "I knew nothing about the new paint job for your boat until after the fact. If they'd asked me, I'd have told them to use something else because a little acetone will clear the paint right off the gel-coat. They don't know that. The girls haven't any experience with boats."

"Wait a minute." Mike rolled away and sat up. He narrowed his gaze. "You weren't in on this?"

So much for cuddling and tender words of love. "No."

"It wasn't an idea you cooked up to keep me from leaving?"

Unease spidered up her spine. The edge in his voice warned her this was no casual question, so Maggie took a moment to consider her response. She'd learned long ago to choose her words carefully in any disagreement she'd had with Mike. He was easily offended and quick to go on the attack.

"Maggie? Answer me."

She sat up, clutching the sheet to her breast as she met his ice-edged stare. Her irritability cranked up to annoyance. So much for afterglow.

It didn't seem right that Mike didn't carefully consider his words, too. He always said whatever he wanted to say. No tempering to keep peace in the family. No filtering to maintain the balance. Just straight-from-the-gut honesty no matter what.

It made his failure to speak a word of love in the afterglow of their first lovemaking in months all the more hurtful.

Maggie lifted her chin. Maybe it was time to give him a dose of gut honesty right back. If he didn't temper his words, why should she? After all, she needn't worry about keeping peace in her household anymore. Her household had changed. Priorities had changed. She'd changed. Or at least, she was changing.

She opened her mouth and spoke the bald truth. "I wasn't trying to keep you here. I was furious at you for siccing the boys on me. This was all Grace and Holly's idea. While I'm not entirely certain about their motives, I think it was an act of retribution on my behalf. I know it was an act of friendship in support of me."

For a long moment, he didn't move. Didn't twitch, didn't blink, didn't even seem to breathe. Then abruptly, he muttered a curse and threw back the covers. Climbing out of bed, he snarled, "I need a shower. Do you mind?"

She felt like kicking his bare butt. Instead, she cattily gestured toward their bathroom. "Be my
guest."

She waited until she heard him step into the shower to scramble from the bed. Finding underwear, shorts, and a shirt, she fled for another bathroom. Maggie didn't know she was crying until she spied the streak of tears on her cheeks as she passed the mirror in the hallway.

What had just happened? How had they gone from intimacy to estrangement in a few short sentences?

What was going to happen now?

In a torment of self-recrimination, she quickly bathed and dressed. Needing something to do with her hands, she returned to the kitchen and began emptying the dishwasher. She put away the glasses first, then the silverware. She'd taken the first plate from the rack when Mike entered the kitchen.

He'd changed clothes, pulling on jeans and a blue chambray shirt he'd left behind when he moved out. His expression was troubled.

That bothered Maggie worse than anger would have. She didn't judge it to be a good sign at all.

He dragged his hand down across his jaw. "Maggie, I'm sorry. I think it was probably insensitive of me to get up and take a shower like that."

Probably
insensitive. The man was a genius.

"I didn't mean... well... I wanted to think. About the boat."

Maggie set the plate on the counter. Hard. T
hat sorry boat.

"I thought about it, and you must have said something," he continued. "They wouldn't have done their mischief if you hadn't said something that would make them think you would approve of their prank."

She slammed the silverware drawer shut. "I might have said something about taking a hammer to the stern. I truly hate the name you gave it."

"Second Wind?"
he replied in a flabbergasted tone. "What's wrong with
Second Wind?"

She straightened her spine, squared her shoulders, to tell him exactly what she thought. "It feels like a dig at me. When a person needs their second wind, that means their first one has died. I'm not dead, Mike. I'm not old and dried up. I resent the implication that I am."

She pulled a dinner plate from the dishwasher, banged it onto the counter, then reached for a second.

"That's crazy, Maggie," he said, dismissing her point with a wave of his hand. "You're being stupid."

Maggie stared down at the dinner plate she held, one of the set of Franciscan he'd given her for Christmas two years ago. Echoes from twenty-five years of marriage rippled through her mind.
You're being stupid.
Don't
be stupid, Maggie. That's just stupid.

Maggie deliberately opened her hand. The plate crashed to the tile floor and shattered like her control.

"Don't. No more, Mike." Emotion churning, she whirled on him. "You don't live here anymore. I've listened to you talk that way to me for twenty-five years, but never again. You are not going to come into my house and call me stupid!"

"What? I didn't call you stupid." He lifted his shocked gaze from the shards of pottery. "I said what you
said
was stupid. That's different."

"Not to me, it's not." And Maggie hated it. She always had. How many times had he said something like that to her? Too many to count, that's for sure. Little digs. Mean-spirited jokes. Often it was the tone of voice that grated, rather than the words. They were mild insults, veiled put-downs. Never cruel, but always irritating. Her husband, putting his wife in her place.

But in the interest of maintaining the peace and keeping the balance, she'd let him do it. She'd swallowed her protests and learned to ignore the undermining cuts. But she'd always heard them. Each time and every time for twenty-five years.

"It's not different to me," she repeated, feeling herself grow taller, "and since you're speaking to me, I'm the one who matters. Or should matter. I'm not stupid. My opinions and my feelings are just as valid as yours. When you decree that something I say is stupid, you might as well be calling
me
stupid. I won't tolerate that. Not anymore. You don't talk that way to your colleagues. You don't say such things to your children. Why should it be okay to say it to me?"

For a moment, it stopped him cold. "Shit, Maggie. I guess I didn't think I needed to watch my every word with my very own wife!"

"Maybe you should have watched your words closer with me than with anyone else. You should have respected me more than anyone else. I was your wife, your partner. Not your servant, your whipping boy. Not somebody to put down to make yourself feel better."

He looked at her as though she had grown two heads. Instead, Maggie thought, she'd grown a backbone.

Standing in the middle of her kitchen, Maggie experienced a moment of clarity so brilliant it was almost blinding. She didn't have to ignore put-downs anymore. She didn't have to swallow anything she didn't want to.
I'm no longer protecting a nest. It's empty. I don't need him anymore.

He no longer has all the power.

It was the first time the thought had ever occurred to her.

Her anger abruptly disappeared. She looked around for a dish towel because her palms had suddenly started to sweat.

Mike blew out a hard sigh, then walked over to the kitchen table and pulled out a chair. He looked like he'd taken a blow. When he finally spoke, she plainly heard bewilderment in his tone. "Do you really feel that way? That I treated you like a servant?"

Maggie started to automatically answer yes, but then she paused and considered the question. Not, for a change, because she wanted to choose her words carefully in order to keep the peace, but to make certain she answered the question honestly.

"Sometimes, you did. Not all the time, or even most of the time. I don't think I'd have put up with it if you had. At least, I hope I wouldn't have."

"I loved you, Maggie. I always loved you. I always tried to show you. I tried to make you happy."

Maggie's heart broke just a little. He didn't understand, which wasn't surprising since she didn't exactly understand herself. "I know that, Mike. I'm not saying I wasn't happy because for the most part, I was. You know I loved you and I loved being a mom to the boys. I just have all this... I don't know... anger, I guess."

"Anger? Why?"

"Because you had all the power."

Abruptly, he shoved to his feet. "That's bullshit."

"No, it's not." Maggie's pulse sped up and her mouth went dry. "Our entire married life, you have controlled me."

He snorted. "I wish."

"It's true." She was on a roll now, feeling the fire of the righteous. "You controlled the purse strings, you controlled our social lives. You controlled our sex life."

"Now you're pissing me off."

"It's the truth. And I think that deep down inside myself, I'm pissed off and I've been pissed off for a long, long time."

His eyes went round as bottle caps. Maggie never used that word. She thought it was tacky. But now, as never before, it fit. "You had all the power in our family, and I didn't fight it because I knew that while we were creating a home and raising a family, it was better for everyone if I didn't rock the boat. But I harbored resentments about it, Mike. I started out as your equal. My grades were just as good as yours, my professional prospects just as bright. I had dreams."

"Oh, I see where you're headed with this. It's about Steven, isn't it? You had everything going for you and then I got you pregnant."

She shook her head. "We got me pregnant. We were both responsible. I've never thought otherwise."

"But you're still mad because we had Steven and you had to quit school."

"It's not that simple. I've never regretted having Steven. How could I? I've loved him since the day I realized he was growing inside me. But you have to admit, having a child when we did changed my life more than it changed yours. That day out at the farm you talked about envying the time I had with the kids. Did it never occur to you that I might have liked to walk around a bit in your shoes, too? That's part of why I'm angry, Mike. You never thought about that, did you? Except for missing the occasional track meet, you had it pretty good. You had the family, but not the responsibility of the family."

"Not the responsibility! Hell, Maggie. I was the sole financial support of the family, of five other people.
That
is real responsibility."

"As opposed to what? Taking care of sick children? Nurturing them? Seeing that their needs were met? Teaching them to be good, honest, respectful citizens? Oh, but I didn't do a very good job of that, did I? One word from their father, the man who moved out on their mother, aka Uncle Mike, and they suddenly think it's okay to call their mom a whore."

He did that cracking his knuckles thing like he often did when angry and frustrated. "They didn't say that."

"Everything but." At the memory, temper roared through Maggie. "I don't know what exactly you said to them, Mike Prescott, but it was wrong. It was wrong and mean and vicious and cruel. I don't know if I can ever forgive you for it."

"What is this?" he exploded. "Are you having a hot flash?"

It was Mike's good luck she'd already emptied the silverware from the dishwasher or she might have thrown a knife at him. "Get out, Mike. Now."

"Gladly. I got what I came here for. No need to stick around this house or this city or this state. I'm outta here, Maggie. Today. Pink and red hearts and all."