“When I confronted my husband about it, his behavior changed completely. It was like he’d tried his best to hide it but, now that I knew everything, why bother? He told me he would run the company while I did all the social things that a rich housewife of a corporate CEO was supposed to do, and have a baby or two along the way.
“After that, things got really cold between us, as you might suspect. When he wasn’t spending more hours at the office, he was either yelling at me about everything he could think of or demanding I get pregnant. I had planned to have children with him, but now there were so many unanswered questions I wouldn’t consider it. We stopped having sex altogether.
“When I told my dad I was going to get a divorce, he outright forbade it. He said it would hurt the family business and cause a lot of problems and asked me how I could be so selfish. ‘Just enjoy life and let us do the work and run things.’ When I argued with him, he made it clear he would ruin me financially and socially if I chose to proceed.”
She shook her head ruefully. “Well, he’s a man of his word. He made me persona non grata in the company. I was, and still am, a shareholder and still on the board – there were some things even Daddy couldn’t get around – but he made it clear no one was to work with me and, with a few words to the right ears, ensured I couldn’t get any kind of job anywhere. He and Brendan spread rumors about me, saying I was unfaithful, saying I was greedy, saying I was ruining the family. He turned the company against me. He turned a whole state against me.
“I got tired of all the crap. I’d stashed some money – I drew a salary like everyone else when I worked there – so I bought my own car, rented a U-Haul, crammed it full of my stuff, and just drove south until I stopped in a place I liked. That place was glorious Laurel, Delaware, and so here I am. I changed my name legally and I’m doing all the work through a lawyer who has been sworn to secrecy. I don’t trust Brendan one bit. My dad, I can’t imagine he’d hurt me, but I figure it wasn’t a good idea to give him a chance to find me anyway. Our relationship is wrecked beyond repair. And I’m still trying to get my divorce, but they’re both fighting me every step of the way.”
Carson just stared at her, somewhat overwhelmed. “That’s quite a story,” he said.
“Not as bad as yours, maybe, but not terribly uplifting.”
“I don’t know. You were betrayed. Pam was the victim of terrible circumstances, but no one tried to use or hurt us.” His next question came out almost of its own accord – plaintively, like a child’s. “What did either of us do to deserve this kind of misery?”
It could have been a fairly intrusive questions but, to Carson’s relief, Katie laughed. It was something he’d asked himself dozens of times in the last few years, wondering if karma had decided the lives he’d taken as a SEAL marked him as deserving of such anguish. But he couldn’t imagine Katie doing anything bad enough to be in the same boat as him, and that’s why her laughter was so encouraging. She didn’t take the question seriously. Maybe he shouldn’t either.
“You know, maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way,” Katie responded. “I don’t know too many people who haven’t been knocked down in life. Everyone gets their time in the barrel. Maybe it’s random, something that just happened and can’t really be explained. My problem, your problem, they don’t make sense and they never should have happened, but they did. We didn’t deserve it. I doubt Pam deserved to die. But that’s what happened, and it’s up to us to make it work or not.”
Carson sat up fully and looked at the water, watching it long after Katie stopped speaking. I’ve been waiting for four years to hear someone tell me that. He wasn’t a believer in fate and mentally raged at the people who said, “everything happens for a reason,” like that would be comforting. Even so, he’d blamed himself for Pam’s death. Could it be as simple as random chance? Could the old adage shit happens actually apply here? When he turned back to her, his face was serene.
“Thank you.”
She gave him a soft, comforting smile. “No thanks needed. I’ve thought the same thing about myself and, while I’m not perfect, I’m just not that bad. I don’t see either of us as people who ‘deserve’ to suffer. Well,” she paused, her grin turning mischievous, “maybe you should suffer, but only at my hands.”
He nodded. “That works. Maybe we ought to remind each other of that once in a while.”
“It’s like therapy, but a lot cheaper,” she agreed.
Carson paused.
