“And you couldn’t bother to tell me that?” I cut her off. “Don’t you think that’s something we should have discussed first?”
Now Moira’s face gets red, not from embarrassment or guilt, but from anger. It’s a true Irish red, and it makes her eyes also go darker as her rage builds. “Just when was I supposed to talk to you about it, Zach? In the five minutes it takes you to get ready for bed when you come home late at night, or perhaps the next morning when you’re rushing out the door? Oh, wait… I know… maybe while you’re taking your morning fucking constitutional, I could schedule some time to sit down and talk to you about my life’s ambitions and the ways in which I’m totally fucking dissatisfied.”
I ignore her sarcasm and attempts to deflect. In a low voice, I tell her, “With something that important, you know I would have made time to talk. Do you realize how stupid that makes me look that I heard about this from Randall rather than my wife?”
Hurt flashes deep in Moira’s eyes, and she takes a deep breath before slowly letting it out. Always the voice of reason when we fight, she says quietly, “I’m sorry, Zach. It was just conversation, nothing more. It’s what I do… I talk. I talk to those who are there for me and around me, and I’m really, really sorry to say that it happened to be Randall at that moment.”
Crushing pain stabs straight through me. “Are you saying I’m not there for you?”
She quickly shakes her head. “No, of course not. That’s not what I’m saying. It’s just… I’ve been thinking about it but not very seriously, and then this colleague said they were hiring, and I got excited about it and called—”
“Randall,” I supply bitterly. “You called Randall.”
“You were working… in another state,” she points out to me, anger again flashing in her eyes.
Guilt stabs at me, so I do what comes naturally.
I deflect, just as she did.
“Let’s forget about that for a minute,” I tell her with no small level of disdain. “How about we focus in on the part where you’re just moving forward with changing plans that we made as a couple, without even having the decency to care how I feel about that. We agreed, Moira… you were going to stay home with the kids until they started school. We both agreed that was important.”
“I know,” she says, and I can see she’s ready to launch into all the reasons why she’s reconsidering, but I don’t want to hear it.
At least not right now because I’m on a roll.
“You say all you want, Moira, that I’m working too hard and I’m too busy to even discuss these things with you, and you keep saying it if it makes you feel better, but we both know that’s not true. I may have been gone these last few days, but don’t pretend this is just something that came up and you couldn’t reach me. You’ve clearly been thinking about this for a while, and rather than address it, you used Randall as a sounding board rather than your husband.
“All you had to do was ask… ask for time for us to sit down and talk about something that was important, and I would have given it to you. But the truth is, you get just as busy as I do and caught up with your own things, and you really just didn’t want to put the effort into the hard discussion we both know this would be. Instead, I’m guessing you went to Randall because you knew he’d support you if you wanted to go back to work. Just as he’d support any endeavor I wanted to take. It was easy. It made you feel good. It gave you what you needed because you clearly didn’t think I could provide it for you. Now, I don’t know if you really want to go back to work full time as a teacher, or if you’re just chasing windmills, but the next time you want to make major upheavals to our life, I suggest you discuss it with me before anyone else.”
And before she has a chance to even tear into me, as I can see she wants to do, I grab my keys that hang from the hook on the wall beside the laundry room and walk out. I intend to take a nice, long drive until I cool down.
The way I’m feeling right now, I expect I’ll return home sometime next week.
Chapter 11
Christmas morning…
Moira
Curling my feet up underneath me on the couch, I blow air across the steaming cup of coffee in my hand. I let my gaze fall on the Christmas tree lights and enjoy this moment of utter silence and alone time. I love the warm glow casting ambient light over the darkened, pre-dawn living room, filling me with peace and serenity, which is not something I tend to feel a lot of these days
Things have just been… off.