“My husband left me for another woman.”
“I know.”
“And you know what that does to a woman? How worthless that makes you feel?”
“Yes.”
Martha didn’t know a lot about Phyllis’s past before coming to Shelter Valley, but she’d assumed she’d never married. Phyllis never spoke about anyone she’d been involved with in Boston.
“My husband left me, too.” Phyllis’s words were soft, and filled with a pain that had apparently never gone completely away. “I was too fat, too this, too that. In reality, I was too smart. He was jealous. Intimidated.”
“But it still hurts.”
“Rejection always does.”
“Todd’s having another baby.”
“I heard.”
“My four kids aren’t good enough for him….”
“That’s about him, not about you. Or them.”
David Marks had said the same thing.
But it sure felt like it was about her.
A soft spring breeze stole through the commons, cooling Martha’s overheated skin. She hated this. Hated being out of control.
She’d kissed the preacher and he’d hardly spoken to her since.
“That last day, when Todd was leaving—” She broke off, remembering, even though she tried to push the memories away. “I was going crazy trying to make sense of it all. He’d been saying things like…like how he’d missed out on the magic most people had. He said we’d only loved each other, not been truly in love. And that we’d married more out of convenience than any burning need to spend the rest of our lives together. And while that might’ve been true, none of it seemed a good reason to throw away the entire life we’d built, to rip apart the home we’d given our children….”
Uncomfortable with how much she’d said, with her uncharacteristic rambling, Martha stopped.
“Go on.”
She stared at her friend, hoping Phyllis would know how to help her.
“I followed him around the house that last day. The kids were gone with Pastor Edwards and the church youth group on a day-long boating expedition at Canyon Lake. Todd was gathering up the last of his things and with each item he placed in the box, I got crazier. Before it was over, I was screaming. He could go, I told him. I didn’t want him there anymore. And I really didn’t. I couldn’t trust him….”
Martha closed her own salad container. Testing her feelings again, four years later, she was finding them the same. She didn’t want Todd back.
What she wanted, if anything, was the illusions she’d lived with for so many years.
“He asked me what I did want. And I told him I wanted the truth. I wanted to know what had really prompted him to walk away from comfort and security, from financial freedom and four children who adored him. I told him all I wanted from him was peace of mind. I had to understand. I told him he owed me that.”
Throat constricted, Martha looked down.
“What did he tell you?” While Phyllis’s voice was quiet, the love and support it conveyed was unmistakable.
“That I’m sexless.” Martha lifted her head, meeting her friend’s gaze head-on as she admitted the truth.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“THAT’S BULLSHIT!”
Such intense and spontaneous emotion was uncharacteristic for Phyllis. But while Martha appreciated her friend’s immediate defense, she shook her head.