Distant Shores

He offered her the envelope. Her fingers were trembling as she took it, opened it. Inside was an official-looking document. The word lease jumped out at her. It was unsigned, but still. "Oh, Jack . . . "

He barely looked at her. "Read it. "

She closed her eyes briefly, summoning the courage shed so recently lost. It returned in quarter measure, almost useless to her. She unfolded a color flyer of a beautiful Federal-style house in East Hampton.

"Theres a view of the water from the master bedroom. The realtor is holding it for me. I was going to surprise you for Valentines Day. I guess this is your present to me. "

She looked up at him through a blur of tears. She knew he wanted her to take it back, to be his wife again, but she couldnt do it. It took every ounce of strength she possessed to remain silent. But she knew if she backed down now, shed be lost. Maybe forever this time.

"I love you, Birdie. " His voice broke, and for a second, she saw how deeply shed hurt him.

She wondered how long shed carry this moment in her heart, how long shed live with this sad and terrible ache. "I love you, too. "

"Is that supposed to help?" He stared at her for a minute, then walked out of the house and slammed the door behind him.

SIXTEEN

What in the hell had made him say divorce?

Jack slammed on the brakes. His rental car fishtailed on the muddy road and skidded to a stop. His headlights pointed out toward the rippling, black ocean.

He hadnt been this shaken since his mothers death, more than thirty years ago. Then, as now, his emotions had been a tangled mass with no clear beginning and no end.

If asked a week ago, he would have sworn that he and Birdie were in one of those rough patches that sometimes befell a long-term marriage. He would have said that it would pass, that nothing fundamental would change between them.

Hed thought--when hed read her letter--that it was her way of getting his attention. The proverbial two-by-four between the asss eyes. It had worked. Hed talked to that snooty East Hampton rental agent, then called in sick to work and driven to the airport.

It had never occurred to him that she meant it.

Not his Birdie, who couldnt make a decision to save her soul. How could she suddenly have found the guts to leave him? Her fathers death must have really shaken her. Hed known she was unhappy, of course, but this . . . this he hadnt expected.

Hed spent more time thinking about his wife in the past twenty-four hours than in the past twenty-four years. Hed relied on his knowledge of her in planning what to say. Hed distilled it down to a script, which hed practiced on the flight across the country.

But the woman hed just spoken to wasnt his Birdie.

We arent happy. We havent been happy in a long time.

Those two sentences had ruined all of his plans. Hed been scared by them, terrified, even. That was when hed known she was serious. Fear had immediately put him on the defensive, made him say what hed never intended to say, never even thought about.

He slumped over the steering wheel, listening to the rain. Always the rain in this godforsaken place.

He almost turned the car around. The urge to go to her, to take her in his arms and beg for forgiveness was so strong he felt choked by it. Desperate.

But what then?

She was right. That was the utter hell of it. He might have reacted impulsively--saying divorce, for Gods sake, what an idiot--but that didnt change the truth.

If he turned around now, shed take him back (he couldnt imagine that she wouldnt), and theyd slide back into that boring, half-love rut theyd developed.

Here, alone in the car, he could admit that she was right. They both deserved better.

After all these years, shed taken the decision out of his hands.

He closed his eyes, then slowly opened them. Rain patterned the windshield, thumped hard on the roof of the car.

"I loved you, Birdie," he whispered aloud.

It didnt escape his notice that even when he spoke to himself, in this cheap little car where no one could hear, he used the past tense.