Page 30 of Sins of Arrogance

Heck, she’s pretty good at draw­ing blood in the com­pany of oth­ers too.

A mem­ory that starts off in­nocu­ous and quickly de­volves into, “But you don’t want to hear about that do you? If I were you, I wouldn’t want to hear about how close my hus­band was with the lover he had to give up to marry me.”

A com­ment that should be a com­pli­ment, but is any­thing but. “You’re so good with chil­dren. I guess that’s the ben­e­fit of Micky mar­ry­ing some­one so much younger than him.”

One of my fa­vorites? “Women in al­liance mar­riages are so lucky they don’t have to keep up their fig­ure. It’s not as if you have to worry about your hus­band mov­ing onto some­one else…per­ma­nently.”

It’s my fa­vorite be­cause it’s the one zinger that never hits its tar­get. My hus­band is way too ad­dicted to my curves for me to think he wants me to change them.

Here she comes again, her high heels tap­ping a de­ter­mined rhythm across the mar­ble floor of the foyer. Will she turn off to visit Mick in his of­fice? Again.

She sees more of my hus­band than I do. When I brought that up last night af­ter he came to bed, he did the whole, you don’t have any­thing to be jeal­ous of, you’re my wife thing be­fore mak­ing me in­sen­sate with plea­sure.

Which is his an­swer to pretty much any con­flict be­tween us. Sex so good, my body hums from it the next day.

But it’s the words that stick with me long af­ter he goes to sleep. They’re code for, “You’re be­ing un­rea­son­able, just like be­fore.”

The just like be­fore might be some­thing my brain tacks on. De­spite weekly ther­apy, I’ve never man­aged to for­give my­self for try­ing to aban­don my son. If I had died that day, my sweet lit­tle guy would have grown up with­out his mom just like I did.

So, I’m hy­per­sen­si­tive to any emo­tion that re­sem­bles the chaotic, pain-filled thoughts that plagued me the first six months of Fitz’s life.

Well, damn. Dier­dre is def­i­nitely head­ing in this di­rec­tion. And too quickly for me to va­cate the sun­room be­fore she reaches it.

There goes my peace­ful respite.

If I hadn’t taken off my shoes and started read­ing a book, maybe.

But it took too long for the click-clack of her heels to in­fil­trate my con­scious mind.

Af­ter a more ex­haust­ing ses­sion than usual with my ther­a­pist, I needed to get out of my own head. And I do that best while read­ing a book where I can im­merse my­self in some­one else’s thoughts and ex­pe­ri­ences.

I re­ally needed that af­ter I signed off with a bruised heart and mind filled with con­fu­sion.

“What is it you want from your mar­riage, Kara?”

I know what I want, but isn’t the more achiev­able and there­fore im­por­tant ques­tion, what can I have?

My ther­a­pist doesn’t think so. She asked if my mar­riage is the type of fu­ture I want for Fitz? Af­ter that gut punch, she gave me the name of a child psy­chol­o­gist to reach out to for Fitz and told me my home­work was to write down the three most im­por­tant things I want from my mar­riage.

Not three things I be­lieve I can have. Three things I want. My emo­tions started spi­ral­ing, and not in a good way, af­ter one.

I want Mick to love me like I love him and that is never go­ing to hap­pen.

Dier­dre ap­pears in the door­way to the sun­room look­ing too sexy for eleven in the morn­ing. Her dark red, back­less sun­dress leaves most of the flaw­less skin of her up­per body on dis­play. The tightly fit­ted bodice pushes her mod­est breasts into promi­nence and the swirling skirt em­pha­sizes her tiny waist.

“Good morn­ing, Miss Kelly. Did you need some­thing?”

Her mouth twists in a moue of dis­plea­sure. “I told you to call me Dier­dre.”

I in­cline my head, like I do ev­ery time she makes the de­mand. Nei­ther agree­ing with nor deny­ing her re­quest, but my ac­tions speak for me.

I don’t use her first name and I don’t plan on ever us­ing it. Petty? No. It’s a bound­ary I set, some­thing I’ve given my­self per­mis­sion to do.

I will not pre­tend friend­ship with some­one who so clearly sees me as a ri­val. It’s a big de­par­ture for me and not one my fam­ily is used to.

Fi loves it though. Ev­ery time I call Dier­dre Miss Kelly, my lit­tle sis­ter gives me a dis­creet thumbs up. Since moma also con­tin­ues to use the more for­mal ad­dress, I’m not wor­ried I’m dis­ap­point­ing her.

Hope also calls Dier­dre Miss Kelly, when she speaks to her at all. Which is not of­ten. All three of the kids avoid Dier­dre too. Even my usu­ally gre­gar­i­ous lit­tle boy gives mono­syl­labic an­swers when she tries to talk to him.