“Oh, my God, Drew, you should have seen how young she was. What was Greg thinking? She was probably barely in her twenties at the time.” We were sitting on opposite ends of the couch, my feet resting on his lap.
He trailed his hand up and down my shin. “Why do you think he broke up with her?”
I’d been thinking the same thing. Had the lies gotten to be too much? Had he missed me? Or was it something specific about Karen? “Maybe the excitement of it was gone. I mean, eventually, people just become regular folks, you know? At some point, high-powered executive Greg Randolf just became Greg, the guy who slept with his black socks on. Maybe Karen just became a regular woman? With her own demands, just like me?”
“You? Demands?”
I playfully kicked his arm with my foot.
When I told Drew about Greg kissing me, however, he flinched. “Are you sure about us, Claire? I don’t want you to resent me twenty years from now for breaking up your family. You have to be sure of what you want. And be honest with yourself and with me. I want more than anything to stay with you and have you in my life. But if I’ve learned one thing, it’s that being dishonest about your own needs never does anyone any good.”
No matter what I said, or how I reassured him, he always seemed to ask the same question a million different ways. “There is no more Claire and Greg. I can’t look at him the same way, not after Karen, not after his lies. If the accident had never happened, I still don’t think we would have made it.”
“I can’t go the rest of my life waiting for the other shoe to drop,” Drew said. “What about who Greg is now?”
“It doesn’t matter, you know? Timing is such a huge part of life. I can’t love him like that anymore. Too much has happened.” I turned the tables on him. “Can you do this? Live this life? With me and the girls, the family you’d always wanted, but with Greg, too?”
“Greg doesn’t matter to me. You matter to me. And if I have to take him to have you, then I take him. I have faith, remember?”
“You say that now, but what about a year from now or more, when you and I go through a rough spot? There will be those, you know. No marriage is all up all the time.”
“What do you think this has been?” He smiled wryly. “I’m here because I want to be. Just let it go, okay?”
The changes in our lives affected the girls, too. Hannah started doing poorly in school and became belligerent with the teachers, refusing to do homework. She also wanted to quit dance class. Leah, as usual, fared better, but I noticed a significant jump in temper tantrums.
They would fight in the evening, screaming hateful words at each other, words I didn’t even know they knew, and it scared me. I began taking Hannah back to the child psychologist once a week, then arranged for Leah to go, too. The psychologist assured me that both responses were natural and gave me ideas on how to navigate my new waters. At her instruction, I tried to keep all developments with Greg transparent, telling them in detail about my trips to Toronto and taking them whenever I could.
When the doctors decided on the date Greg would transfer to New Jersey, I had to tell the girls that Greg wouldn’t be living with us. I used his therapy as an out, though it conflicted with my self-imposed honesty rule. Some things are mine, I justified. They reacted as expected: scared, frustrated, but still happy he would be coming home and they’d see him more.
“You’ll see him all the time,” I promised. For better or worse, Greg was a permanent fixture in our lives.
Greg reacted with mixed emotions when I told him about the group home I’d found. “I think it’s a good thing,” he said, but it sounded forced.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I am, Claire. I will be. I miss us as a family, I guess. I don’t know what I thought would happen when it came time for me to come back. It’s not realistic for us to live together. But still…” He gave me a sad smile. “I miss it. That’s all. I wish things were different. I’ll miss them so much. And you, I’ll miss you.”
I nodded because I, too, wished things were different. “You’ll see more of me now than you have for the last few months. You’ll get sick of me, you’ll see.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think that could ever happen.” He pulled me into an unexpected hug. Since the day I had told him of our divorce, he’d been distant, careful to not cross any lines.
I hugged him back, resting my cheek on his shoulder. He was filling out some, although nowhere near his old stature. His arms felt reassuring around my waist, and we stayed locked in a hug. For a brief moment, I wished he had been this man years ago. Would I have loved him differently? I didn’t know. I pulled away, not wanting to mislead him. Was I doing the right thing? Could I love him again? Maybe. But logically, was I willing to walk away from what I’d found with Drew?