Page 75 of The Husband I Left

“I asked him that question last week. He just kind of stuttered about needing a change and didn’t really elaborate.” I don’t tell them about the note that came with my dinner the following Monday. The one that read:

It cost me everything that mattered

I can feel the heat creeping up my neck and into my cheeks as everyone stares at me. Liz suddenly laughs. “He wants you back, doesn’t he?”

“He always was crazy,” Dad mutters, but there’s no real heat in it.

Mom reaches across the table and puts her hand on mine. Her skin is warm and slightly rough from years of housework. “And what do you think of all this, Genny?”

“I don’t know,” I say, too quickly. “I’m not…I’m not thinking about taking him back. He’s probably going to get bored soon and give up anyway.”

But I can see the skepticism on my family’s faces, even as I shake my head for emphasis.

“If you say so,” Liz says. Landon starts to fuss, and she turns him so she can make funny faces at him.

“I’d just hate to see you hurt again, Genny,” Mom says, looking at me with concern. “Don’t forget how badly he treated you before just because he’s doing a few nice things now. People can change, but make sure it’s real change and not just him putting on a show.”

“I want to meet this new Oliver,” Dad announces, breaking the tension with the subtlety of a wrecking ball. “Me and the boys.” He gestures at Collin and Liz’s husband, Allen, who has been quietly eating his meatloaf through this entire conversation. “We’ll take him fishing. You can tell everything you need to know about a man by how he acts with the guys while fishing. By the end of the day, we’ll know if he’s changed or not.”

I can’t help but laugh at the mental image of Oliver in my dad’s battered fishing boat surrounded by Palmer men armed with nothing but beer and inappropriate questions.

“Dad, I’m not getting back together with him,” I say, but no one is listening. Instead, Dad and Collin are debating where they’ll take Oliver and how much they think he can handle. Liz has realized that Jake, taking advantage of the entire table’s distraction, is sitting under the table feeding the dogs directly from his plate and is yelling at him to get out. Summer is wiping her children’s hands and faces.

I catch my mother looking at me across the table, and her expression is still concerned. More quietly, I say to her, “I’m not taking him back, Mom. Really.”

She smiles. “I know, sweetheart.” She picks up her own fork again, but before she starts to eat, she takes a breath and looks at me. “But if ‘I’m not taking him back’ ever becomes ‘I might want to give him another chance,’ you two need to make peace with your past first. You can’t build anything new until you’ve come to terms with what caused your marriage to fail the first time.”

“I’m not—” I start.

“I know,” Mom says again, and reaching out, she squeezes my hand. “I know. I just… I remember when you brought Oliver home the first time. It was such a shock for us, you know. We knew you were dating someone, but it had been such a short time and we hadn’t even met him, and suddenly we were getting a call in the middle of the night that the two of you were rushing off to Vegas to get married.”

“Mom…” I start, but she shushes me with a wave of her hand.

“Yes, I would have preferred more time for you to get to know him and for the two of you to get married with family present. But you were so obviously in love that I couldn’t complain. You had a sparkle in your eyes. And over the next few years, I had to watch that sparkle slowly die. But just now, when you told us it was Oliver cooking you dinner, you had that same sparkle in your eye again. And I don’t want to see it go out again.”

“Mom…” I start, but she just squeezes my hand and lets go with a smile.

“Just think about what I said, sweetheart.”

Appetite gone, I pick at my meatloaf and spend the rest of the night thinking about little else.

Chapter 27

Genny

My mother’s words have been living rent free in my head all week.

You can’t build anything new until you’ve come to terms with what caused your marriage to fail the first time.

You have that same sparkle in your eyes again.

I think about them every time Oliver tells me he hopes I have a good morning, every time I come home to find a container of home cooked food with a folded note taped to the bottom waiting for me. I think about them every time I read the notes.

You were right. I sucked.

I dream about your eyes

I did lie about liking your mother’s lasagna