I went for a run, my first one in quite some time.
It wasn’t pretty.
Running at forty-four was quite different from running at twenty-four or even thirty-four. My right heel throbbed. My left knee, too. I got winded at the drop of a hat and had to walk for a while. Then there was the inexplicable ache in my right elbow. What did that even have to do with running?
I didn’t want to contemplate my need for a better sports bra.
As I ran and walked and ran and walked and hobbled, I’d managed to clear out the cobwebs a bit. First, I contemplated whether I would take Mitch back if he did come to his senses. I didn’t think so. It would be so hard to trust him. If he came back that very afternoon and I took him back, I’d live the rest of my life with my breath held, always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
But never say never.
Because it would all be so much easier if he would just come home and apologize profusely. I wouldn’t have to worry about Dylan’s college or Mitch’s worksheets or getting a job or—
I stopped dead on the sidewalk.
Mitch wanted to sell the house.
An older man jogged past me with ease, a metaphor for both my life and how the patriarchy had overtaken me.
Somehow in all that had happened, I had forgotten about seeing the sheet where Mitch wanted to divvy up the proceeds from selling the house.
No.
Hell no.
One didn’t live with a real estate agent mother without having heard stories about divorcing couples selling their house. Inevitably one or the other—usually the wife—would desperately want to keep the house but have no way of buying the other person out.
Oh, I would find a way.
The sum my father had left me would almost cover me—thanks to the interest it had been earning. Only, I might need that money to round out Dylan’s education. Or it might not be enough after a new appraisal.
A headache bloomed behind my eyes, but I started running again in an attempt to get home sooner.
Why did Mitch have to be such an ass? Why did he have to disrupt my life like this? What the heck made him think he deserved happiness more than I did?
But, Vivian, have you been happy?
I slowed to a walk, giving in to age and gravity and my former indolence.
I hadn’t been happy per se, but I’d been ... content.
Yes, I’d been content.
But in the twenty-four, almost twenty-five years we’d been married, had Mitch ever once asked me what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go? Heck, he couldn’t even remember my favorite color was red. Anytime he bought me clothing—and he insisted on doing so no matter how many times I asked him not to—he bought blue.
Because blue washisfavorite color.
When I told him that I might like a Mustang since Dylan was off to college, he came home with a minivan. An aqua minivan! Mind you, I’d since made peace with the van and lovingly called it my Mystery Machine, but that was beside the point. Would it have hurt him to have consulted me on the purchase of my own vehicle?
I hadn’t made roasted brussels sprouts in twenty years—not since he informed me that they were disgusting and he couldn’t possibly eat them. Maybe I wouldn’t have gained that extra fifteen pounds after my hysterectomy if I’d been able to eat brussels sprouts. Had he ever considered that?
I kept more rum in the house than bourbon because he liked rum.
That tattoo I wanted to get? I hadn’t because he thought tattoos were “tacky.”
I used Gain instead of Tide because he liked Gain.
And he was the one who wanted to go to Florida, so he’d dangled the idea of being able to build my “dream house” in front of me. Well, I didn’t want to go to Florida. They had gators and snakes and that awful “Florida Man” who kept making the news for doing stupid stuff.
