Hard as he tried, though, he couldn’t easily dismiss what had happened. Those words had come from somewhere and he’d darned well better figure out where before he went back to face Lacey again. If their marriage hadn’t always been so perfect, after all, he’d better be able to explain what had been lacking from his point of view. She knew what she thought of as his failings as clearly as if she’d carried an itemized list of his sins around in her head.
But no matter how desperately Kevin tried to find a precise, clear-cut answer, he couldn’t. So, he thought with a sigh filled with regrets, it wasn’t going to be so easy for them, after all. They were going to have to struggle for answers.
He supposed they were among the lucky ones. They still had the will to fight for their marriage. They had their love. They had this new-found honesty, as painful as it was. He hadn’t a doubt in his head that they would make it, as long as they didn’t shy away from the truth.
He walked until the sky dimmed and the wind picked up. The biting chill cut through his jacket, but worse was the chill he felt deep inside.
For years now he had not taken the time to be terribly introspective, but suddenly he had the sense that something very precious was on the line. He had to figure out exactly why there had been that vague anger behind his words, that hint of something too long repressed. Theories weren’t the answer. He needed facts. He needed to pinpoint the cause, narrow it down to a specific moment or an evolution. He had to understand what was in his heart as clearly as what was in his head.
Kevin thought back to the early days of his marriage, days crammed with too much to do and so much tenderness and love. He and Lacey had both worked like demons at demanding, and often thankless, jobs. Then they had spent long hours side by side volunteering for causes they both believed in. Each night they had tumbled into bed, exhausted, but filled with exhilaration.
That period of their lives had been incredibly special. There was absolutely no doubt in his mind about that. Thinking about those days brought smiles, even laughter. Never pain.
But that time had been far too short, now that he thought about it. When Jason was born barely a year after the wedding, things began to change. Lacey took her maternity leave and seemed to blossom before his eyes as she took care of their son. She turned their cramped apartment into a real home, and there were tempting, creative dinners on the table.
Soon any thoughts of her returning to work, any time for volunteering vanished in a sea of household demands. They moved into the house Jason now owned. Nothing ever quite went back to the way it had been.
And he’d resented it, he realized with a sense of shock that actually brought him to a standstill. All these years he had resented the way things had changed, and yet he’d never said a word, hadn’t even identified the cause of his mild dissatisfaction.
If he had changed as she had accused him of so often, then so had she. They had never once dealt with that.
He thought he understood why. Unlike Lacey, he had kept the resentment so deeply buried that only now could he recognize the subtle way it had affected everything between them.
If Lacey was going to conform to a more traditional pattern, if she was going to content herself with a home and motherhood, then why shouldn’t he do the male equivalent of caving in? At least that must have been the subliminal message at work on him when he’d finally made the decision to go to work at Halloran Industries. How many decisions after that had been affected in the same way?
To top it off, he’d then had to deal with Lacey’s unspoken disapproval, along with his own burden of guilt about becoming more and more like his father with each day that passed. He’d called it growing up, but obviously deep inside he’d never truly believed it.
Explaining all of this to her after all this time wasn’t going to be easy. He needed some time to sort through it all himself, time to be sure that the answers he’d come up with were valid. Time, in fact, to discover if his marriage was something he really wanted to succeed.
The last seemed like blasphemy. Of course he wanted it to succeed. That was the one given in all this, the one thing he’d never questioned.
Until now, he reminded himself. Lord knows, he had questions now. Unfortunately he didn’t have the luxury of time to find the answers, time to examine and come to terms with these raw new discoveries about himself. Lacey was waiting for him.
Kevin’s pace picked up, almost in spite of all the doubts tumbling through his poor, pitiful, aching head. That alone should have told him something. He needed to get back to her, to share his thoughts and hear her reaction to them. Lacey had always had a knack for cutting through his self-delusion.
Until now, he reminded himself ruefully. Now when it probably meant more than anything.
When he got back to the house, he found her sitting in the living room, almost lost in the shadowy darkness. He flipped on a light and felt his heart wrench at the tears tracking down her cheeks. He wanted to go to her. He wanted to hold her, comfort her.
Instinctively he started toward her, then stopped himself. They needed to air these raw emotions, not soothe them away with meaningless promises.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Sure. Terrific,” she said with a defiant lift of her chin. She couldn’t hide the way
