He gave her a curious look. ?
?I don’t think Melissa ever understood that. Or maybe at the end she did.’
‘What happened?’
He paused briefly. ‘The night she died we’d been out for dinner.’ His voice was flat and totally devoid of emotion. ‘We both knew we needed to rethink our life together. I asked her to take a break from her job so that we could spend some time together...’ He paused, his gaze fixed on the dying flame of the fire. ‘She told me she’d met someone else and asked me for a divorce.’
Louisa felt something twist inside her. ‘Oh, Mac...’
‘Don’t feel sorry for me.’ He gave a harsh laugh. ‘I felt nothing but relief. Relief that our farce of a marriage was finally to be over, and with the minimum fuss and bother. I sat there thinking that it was a good job that we’d never found the time to have children. It made everything so much simpler. Or it should have done. We would have told people straight away that weekend and that would have been the end of it, but she hit ice on her way back to London.’
Louisa swallowed. What had Melissa been thinking that night? Had she been upset that she’d finally ended the marriage? Not concentrating on the road? Or had she been driving too fast, eager to return to the arms of her lover?
‘Afterwards her parents were distraught. They blamed me,’ he said heavily, ‘for expecting her to travel to me every weekend, for not putting enough effort into the marriage.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Louisa said hotly. ‘You had responsibilities at the hospital. You couldn’t get away that easily.’
‘Couldn’t I?’ His eyes glittered hard in the darkness. ‘Or maybe I just didn’t want to. Melissa always told me that I was terrible at relationships. She was right. I wasn’t prepared to do what it took to make it work.’
‘But maybe that was because you married the wrong person.’
He looked at her with a half-smile. ‘You don’t see bad in people, do you? I’m a selfish workaholic, Louisa. And you should stay away from me.’
She didn’t want to stay away from him.
‘You’re a brilliant doctor,’ she corrected him softly, ‘and it’s lucky for your patients you’re a workaholic. And I don’t think you’re selfish. I think you just know what you want. Unfortunately it wasn’t the same thing that Melissa wanted. Did you tell her parents she was having an affair? That she wanted a divorce?’
‘No.’ His voice was hollow. ‘It would have made things even worse. I didn’t want their memory of her to be tainted.’
‘I can understand that, I suppose.’ Louisa frowned. ‘But surely you must have told someone.’
‘Just Josh. For everyone else it seemed kinder just to leave things as they were.’
‘But not kinder for you.’
‘What difference did it make to me? She was gone.’
‘But you must have had so many feelings that you couldn’t express,’ Louisa said, her expression troubled. ‘That night she died she also told you that she was having an affair and that she wanted a divorce. You must have felt totally betrayed.’
‘What I really felt was that I didn’t deserve the sympathy I was getting from everyone. I was a lousy husband.’
‘So is that why you pushed everyone away? Because you felt you didn’t deserve what they were offering?’ She bit her lip. ‘You’re not to blame for her death, Mac.’
He closed his eyes. ‘It certainly feels like it.’
‘No wonder you shut people out,’ Louisa said quietly. ‘It must have been awful because no one truly understood what you were going through.’
‘I’m not looking for sympathy, Louisa,’ he said heavily. ‘What happened, happened. We should have ended our relationship a long time before we did. Melissa was right, I wasn’t any good at marriage.’
‘She said that? And you believed her?’ Louisa was horrified. ‘She’s the one who had the affair, Mac.’
‘Because I was too busy to pay her any attention.’ He stared into the dying embers of the fire. ‘I hardly ever came home.’
‘She wasn’t here, Mac. She was up in London, building her career. What was there for you to come home to?’
‘I could have moved to London.’
‘You’ve got the sea in your soul, Mac Sullivan. You could never live in any city and Melissa must have known that. I expect she thought she could change you,’ Louisa said sagely. ‘People often think that about other people. Weird really.’