Right now, I need to get used to the idea of a life with out children, a life without the love I always imagined. Maybe there’s something better than holding a child in my arms for the first time.
I just don’t know what it is yet.
CHAPTER TWO
Sometimes this house feels like it’s the loneliest place on earth. And I reckon it might be, set out here so far away from everything else, from civilization.
It’s even far from the town of Ruidoso, the only town around here. I guess that’s what I wanted when I built this place, but I had thought that there’d be a woman with me. And for a long time, it did seem like there would be. They know me in town, but it’s a good twenty minute drive, and my brothers and friends are spread across the country. I’d wanted horses, a working farm, a field for cattle and sheep, like I’d grown up with. And maybe she hadn’t wanted that. Or me.
Just the fucking money, like every woman before her.
That’s some bullshit that I don’t need to think about right now. But it’s hard when I’m sitting in my office alone, swirling a glass of fine whiskey and watching the night sky as the cool, crisp night starts to bring the stars out from their hiding places. A memory hits me from a long way away—my brothers and I sitting at home with Mama and Daddy on Christmas Eve, listening for Santa Claus while Mama sang “Silent Night” in the kitchen and Daddy brought us all hot chocolate and got drunk off eggnog. I smile and swill more of the whiskey, trying to dull the roar of my thoughts, to numb the bittersweet taste of that memory.
Whiskey works, but it’s is a poor fucking substitute for happiness if you ask me.
“Oh but the whiskey is fine. Yes it is. Tastes damn good sometimes.” I lean back in my chair and put my legs up on the antique wooden desk that I got from the charity auction for the Coming Home foundation last year. Like everything in this damn house, I paid a pretty penny for the thing, and I barely use it. Instead, I usually take my laptop to bed or to one of the leather recliners in my theater. That damn computer is practically glued to my hip at all times. It’s the only thing that’s kept me sane since she left, but I hate sitting in the damn office with it. It makes me feel like a depressing work drone, and I hate that feeling. Even though that’s exactly what I am, what I’ve turned into.
Insulted by the prenup, she’d said. And she was insulted by how much I was working, how little attention I paid to her. Goddamn that woman. The thought hits me like a knife to the gut, twisting hard.
For a second, I think about Joanna, but I quickly push her from my mind. Some things aren’t worth dwelling on, especially not the week after the most depressing Thanksgiving I’ve ever had in my life.
“Lay off us, Mom,” Nick had said when our mother started asking about Joanna and Nick’s ex-wife. Mom isn’t so subtle anymore about dropping hints, and since we were the only two who came home for the holiday, we got the brunt of her heckling. “Grandchildren aren’t coming any time soon, not to us. Isn’t that right, Rowan?” Nick had meant to be funny, but the joke fell flat with Mom. Right about now, I bet she wished she had some daughters. If she did, they might not have fucked up their previous relationships as bad as we had. Either way, I bet she wishes she had some nice daughters to love on. Girls aren’t quite as dense as us men, anyway.
“I’m probably not even cut out for a regular relationship,” I say aloud, to no one at all. For the millionth time, I curse the money that’s taken me so far. If I were normal—a plumber or a high school history teacher—maybe I could find a woman who didn’t care only about my money. And I wouldn’t have gone through the regrettable womanizing phase I went through in my twenties. And maybe I wouldn’t be staring down into a glass of whiskey by my damn self on the first of December.
I finish the whiskey and close my laptop. This month is slow for oil, and the nonprofit is just getting off the ground. I can go to bed before ten, just this once. There’s no one to stop me, no one to tell me that I’m going to bed and ignoring her. It’s just me, and maybe this Christmas, that won’t be half bad. I push the laptop to the back edge of the desk and head down the hall, the reclaimed wood floors creaking under my slippers. There’s a certain satisfaction in walking through a beautiful house, leather and wood all around, beautiful art hanging on the walls.
But the house is abominably big, and it’s empty. The only creatures who stay around here are the horses and the dog, sleeping the night away upstairs and not even tending to me like she should. We never got to the cattle and sheep part of things, and in retrospect, Joanna didn’t give a shit about any of those things I wanted. Or maybe I didn’t give a shit about what she wanted. In the end, all the things we were fighting about got all mixed up, and it became clear that she was only staying because I was an avenue for the things she wanted. Maybe it hadn’t started that way, but it had ended that way. I gave her the Aston, and she kept the ring and the house in St. Thomas she’d bought with my oil earnings. I could buy ten more if I wanted, a thought that is still a little bit disconcerting to me, but it all made a difference to her. And that worked, as long as she didn’t come knocking on my door again.