If Rose was right…
“No one can live here as I have and not become deeply involved with your family,” Rose continued. “It hurts to still be on the outside. I don’t think I can stand it any longer.”
“You want to go back to Austin?”
“No!” She spoke softly, but the intensity was unmistakable. “I want to stay here for the rest of my life, but I can’t. Not the way things are. I thought I could, but I can’t. Can you understand how I feel?”
Can you? You’ve never thought about anything from anybody’s point of view but your own.
He was trying, but he’d been so absorbed by his own fears, his concern for his family, he hadn’t learned to see anything from someone else’s point of view.
And much to his shock, he also hadn’t had time to consult his own feelings. He had to now because Rose was on the point of leaving them. Of leaving him. And clearer than anything he’d ever known in his life, he knew he didn’t want her to go.
“I’m beginning to,” George said, “but you’re wrong about not being accepted by the family. There are times I think Zac loves you more than he loves the rest of us.”
“Zac wants to love me, but even though he doesn’t understand what he’s doing, he’s keeping his distance, waiting for you to let him know it’s all right.”
“You think he can understand things like that?”
Rose looked at him as if she thought he was handsome and wonderful but something of an idiot.
“All of them understand. Look at Monty. He used to tease me. When it became clear there was something between us, he backed off. If he thought you loved me, he would start to tease me again, but like a sister this time.”
George had seen what Rose was talking about but had just assumed that Monty was being difficult as usual.
“Even Jeff is waiting. He may decide to leave. He may decide to come back. But until you make up your mind, he’s going to wait.”
George felt worse than before. Not only had he failed Rose. He’d failed his family as well.
“I never meant for this to happen,” he said.
“I know. The last thing you wanted was a woman to complicate your life.”
“After watching my parents, I decided not to risk making their mistakes. Then I met you, and everything started to change. You ask why I married you. I couldn’t do anything else. That may seem a stupid thing for a grown man to say, especially one who’s set himself up to tell everybody else what they ought to do, but it’s the truth. My feelings for you have grown stronger every day, but I can’t tell whether I just like you a lot, whether you’ve made me so comfortable I can’t bear to give you up, or whether I’m drawn to you because you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
“Is that all?”
“No. I keep telling myself I’m crazy to keep doing exactly what I don’t want to do, what I never meant to do. Then I realize I don’t not want it anymore, that I actually like it very much. But when I look inside and see I’m still the same person, I start to wonder about my motives. Am I feeling this way because I want to use you for my own pleasure, or have my feelings really changed enough that I might have grown to love you without knowing it?”
“And what did you decide?” The anxiety in her voice was plain.
“I realized I don’t know what love is. I’ve never seen it. I don’t count Ma’s love for Pa. It made her blind to what he was. I don’t think love blinds you to truth. If it does, I don’t want it. My feelings for you are very strong, but I don’t know if they’re strong enough. Everything else doesn’t cease to matter when I look at you. I couldn’t count the world well lost as long as I could hold you in my arms. No matter how much I want you, I can’t forget my brothers. I just know I can’t let you leave.”
Rose hardly dared let herself hope again. What made her think anything was going to change now? George was married to his brothers and his obsessive fear of being like his father. What chance did she have against such powerful forces?
Yet even as her brain told her that George still hadn’t made a commitment to her, that he still hadn’t been able to decide she was more important than his family, she realized he had made another step forward. Small, but still a step forward. He had decided that in the face of all his difficulties, he didn’t want her to leave.
Maybe he did love her and just didn’t know it.
She wanted to believe that. She wanted it desperately. But could she stand another disappointment? It didn’t help to know that George had never promised her anything, that she had done this to herself. It had happened, it was nobody’s fault, but she was the one who was suffering.