The phone rang while she was still lying there in the dark, and she reached out a hand to answer it, without turning the light on. It was Bill, and he sounded stressed. He didn’t sound any better than he had when he left. In fact, he sounded slightly worse, but he said there was something he had to tell her.
“What’s that?” she asked, with her eyes closed, still missing Jack, and feeling terrible about what had happened. She still felt as though she had Everest to climb, and she had been climbing for eleven months now.
“I’m sorry, Liz. I can’t do this. I’ve thought about it, and I don’t know what happened to me. I think I went kind of crazy for a while. I met you and fell in love with you, and your family looks so wholesome from the outside, and you were so vulnerable, I just fell into it like a trap. But it’s not me, and I want out now.” Her eyes opened brusquely and she stared into the darkness as she listened.
“What are you saying to me?” But she knew. He had already made it clear, she just didn’t want to hear it.
“I’m saying that I made a mistake, and it’s over. I love you, and your kids are great. But I just can’t do it. Megan did us all a big favor today. It could have taken us months or even years to see it this clearly. I had blinding clarity after I left. I went running, and it all came clear to me. I was insane for a while, but now I’m not … Liz … I’m sorry … but it’s over.” She couldn’t even find words to say to him. She lay there feeling as though someone had hit her in the chest and knocked the wind out of her. She was speechless. And all she could think of were the waves of panic that had engulfed her when Jack died. And now she was losing Bill. She had barely had time to get used to him, to let him into her heart, but he was lodged there in spite of it, and now he was prying himself out. It was over. In one fell swoop, she had lost him. Thank you, Megan.
“Don’t you want to think about this for a while?” She tried to reason with him, as she would have one of her children. “You’re panicking, and your feelings are hurt. They’ll get used to you, you know. All they need is time.”
“There’s no point, Liz. This isn’t what I want. I see that clearly now. We should both be grateful.” But she wasn’t grateful. She was devastated. “I’ll call in a few days to see how you are. I’m sorry, I really am, but this is the way it was meant to be. I know it.” How did he know? And what did he know? Two of her daughters had been rude to him, but they were just children, and they missed their father.
“Why don’t you just calm down, and we’ll talk about it later.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.” He sounded panicked.
“I’m out, Liz. I told you, it’s over. You have to understand that.” Why? Why did she have to understand everyone else’s bad behavior? Why did she have to make excuses for him and her children? Why did she have to be the one who lost every time? They had lost too, but she had lost even more than they had.
“I love you,” she said clearly, as tears began to choke her.
“You’ll get over it. So will I. I don’t need another divorce, and you don’t need another headache. You have enough without me. Just tell the kids to relax, the moron is out of their lives. They can celebrate now.” He sounded bitter and angry and like a petulant child, but she couldn’t reach him.
“Jamie loves you, and so does Peter. What am I supposed to tell them?”
“That we made a mistake, and we realized it before it was too late. It’ll be a relief to them, and to us too one day. I’m going to hang up now, Liz. There’s nothing left to say. Good-bye.” He said it with such finality that it took her breath away, and he hung up before she could even answer.
She lay holding the receiver in the dark, and she was crying when she set it down. She couldn’t believe what had just happened. Just like that. He’d had “blinding” clarity and it was over. “Blinding” seemed to be the operative word here. And she wanted to shake him. But she wasn’t even angry at him, she was just devastated. And this time, when she cried herself to sleep that night, it was for Bill, and not her husband.
The House On Hope Street
Chapter 11
Liz dragged herself through the next few days, after the Thanksgiving fiasco, and she didn’t say anything to anyone about Bill walking out on her after Thanksgiving, not even to Victoria when they spoke on the phone, and least of all to her mother, who would have had a lot to say about it. Her mother had told her beforehand that it was a mistake to invite him to Thanksgiving. And Liz had just thought she was jealous, because she hadn’t invited her to come out, although they had talked about her coming for Christmas.
But after Thanksgiving, Liz hadn’t looked as bad in months. She was sad and tired, and irritable with the children. At first, both Carole and Jean thought it was the agony of the upcoming holidays, and the memories they evoked. But it was Jean who finally understood what had happened. Bill had stopped calling.
“Did you two have a fight?” she asked gingerly, when Liz came back from court the week after Thanksgiving.
Liz looked up at her with a grim expression, and there were dark circles under her eyes. She had lost weight in the past few days, and she was sleeping even less than she had been. “He walked out on me. The kids treated him like shit at Thanksgiving, or at least Megan and Annie did. And it was too much for him. They were incredibly rude actually, but apparently that was all he needed to convince him that it was all a big mistake, and our romance was the result of temporary insanity. Two weeks ago, he asked me to marry him on Valentine’s Day. But we never made it through Thanksgiving.”
“Maybe he’s just panicked,” Jean said cautiously. She hadn’t seen Liz look that bad in months and it worried her. She seemed desperately unhappy, and it hadn’t gone well for her in court that day. She had lost the motion, which just seemed to add to her depression. But the real issue was Bill and not the motion. “He’ll be back, Liz. Let him calm down for a few days.”
“I don’t think so. I think he meant it.” And she was sure of it when she called him at the end of the week, and he didn’t return her call. And hating herself for it, she paged him. He called her back finally, after a few hours, and said he’d been tied up with an emergency, but his voice was distant and very chilly.
“I just wanted to see if you were okay,” she said, trying to sound lighthearted, but he clearly had no interest in pursuing a conversation.
“I’m fine, Liz. Thanks for the call. Look, I’m sorry, but I’m busy.”
