The Good Wife(142)
“It means that Jude isn’t a mechanic. He’s not a grease monkey. Or a drug dealer.” Kit took a breath, chewed her lip. “Not really supposed to talk about it yet, but since we’re married, you should know. He’s a police officer . . . just an undercover one.”
“A what?” Meg choked.
Brianna grinned. “A narc,” she said, hugely amused. “Our Kit’s married a narc. And they’ve made a little undercover baby. What could be more perfect than that?”
* * *
They all slept in the next morning and then walked to Mr. Toots for coffee, where they sat on the saggy sofas in the window nook talking about their plans for the day.
Cass and Meg were going to take a walk. Brianna wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. Maybe read, maybe see a movie. Kit had grading to do, behind on reading her students’ journals, and Sarah just wanted to go back to bed and sleep.
They all pretty much did what they wanted, with the exception of Brianna, who found herself roped into Cass and Meg’s walk.
Sarah went back to her upper bunk bed and napped the rest of the morning away. It felt good to be lazy. Felt good to not think.
Far better to not think. Or feel. Or look ahead.
But after a couple of hours of dozing, she headed downstairs, poured a glass of iced tea from the pitcher in the fridge, and stepped outside onto the front porch, where Kit sat in an old wicker armchair with a pile of notebooks on her lap. “Still grading journals?” Sarah said, appalled. “You’ve been at it for hours.”
“I have one hundred and eighty-two students, which means I have one hundred and eighty-two journals to read,” Kit answered, glancing up with a smile. But she placed the stack of notebooks on the wicker coffee table, freeing up her lap, and then patted the chair next to her. “Sit. Let’s talk. We need to talk.”
“Why?”
“Because something’s obviously wrong. You’ve apparently come unglued.”
Sarah didn’t sit, just leaned against one of the columns and chewed her thumbnail. “I have,” she agreed. “Completely unglued. I kept warning Boone, but he didn’t listen.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That I wasn’t happy. That I wasn’t doing well.”
“And what did he say?”
Sarah shrugged. “That I was tough and strong and would soon get my mojo back.”
“He was giving you pep talks.”
“Yeah. But I’m not on his team. So it didn’t help.”
“You’re not on his team?”
“Not anymore. It used to be Team Walker, but it’s changed. I’ve changed.” She opened her mouth, gulped in air, filling her lungs. “Boone and I are divorcing.”
Boom. She’d said it.
Sarah held her breath, waiting for her Kit to jump on her. Waiting for Kit to protest and defend Boone, because of course, Kit loved Boone. All her sisters loved Boone. But loving Boone wasn’t the problem.
She loved Boone.
But she didn’t respect him. And a woman had to respect her man. She had to have confidence in him. And faith, too.
Sarah had tried to have faith, but it wasn’t there, the trust wasn’t there, and without it, it was like the biblical story of building your house on sand instead of rock. The sand washed away, fell away, destroying the house. Her house was the same.
“You haven’t been happy for a long time,” Kit said, her cautious expression matching her tone.
“But I want to be happy,” Sarah said.
“You deserve to be happy,” Kit agreed carefully, because as their parents had frequently lectured to them over the years, divorce didn’t solve everything. In their eyes, it was just the start of a whole new set of problems. Maybe even bigger problems.
“It’s not that I don’t love him,” Sarah added.
Kit nodded. “I know.”
Suddenly Meg and Cass and Brianna were there as well, walking up the front steps, having returned from the beach.
“Are we interrupting something?” Meg asked, glancing from Sarah to Kit, seeing somber faces.
“Boone and I have separated,” Sarah said wearily. She was worn out from months of worrying and resenting, never mind all that bottled-up self-loathing. “It’s not working anymore, and I don’t know that it’s his fault. It may be mine. But regardless, I need to learn to love myself again. Because I don’t. I don’t even like myself. I don’t even know who I am. Or what I am. Besides a failure.”
“A failure?” Meg dropped into a faded wicker chair. “How are you a failure? I don’t understand.”
Sarah’s shoulders twisted. “I spend my days obsessed with Boone and whether he is or isn’t faithful. I think of him out on the road, playing ball, living the good life while I’m at home, holding down the fort, and I hate it. I hate him. I hate me. Mostly I hate me.”