She reread the cover letter more carefully. In it, her lawyer apologized for the delay in getting the documentation to her. Apparently a changeover in staff had meant it was overlooked. Just like that, her life could have been so drastically different. She and Xander could already be divorced, rather than still very much married.
Bile rose in her throat, and she swallowed hard against the bitterness. She had to put a stop to the divorce proceedings somehow, but how? She couldn’t instruct Xander’s lawyers for him. How on earth was she going to get around this? Not signing the papers was a start. She shoved them roughly back into the envelope and folded it in half as if making it smaller would diminish the importance of its contents, too.
She’d have to hide it somewhere where Xander would never think to look. She opened the drawer on the bathroom vanity where she kept her sanitary items and slid it into the bottom. There they’d be safe and he certainly wouldn’t accidentally come across them.
She quickly shed her clothing and dipped under the spray of the shower before snapping the faucet off and drying and dressing to go downstairs.
“Good shower?” Xander asked as she came into the kitchen. “I started scrubbing the potatoes, by the way. Earning my keep.”
“Thanks,” she answered as breezily as she could manage given how she’d rushed through everything. “Good to see you have your uses.”
And so it began anew, the teasing. The easy banter that had been one of the threads that had bound them together through the days before they’d become parents. Before everything had become so serious. Before they’d been driven apart.
A light spring rain meant they couldn’t eat outside tonight, so Olivia laid the table in the dining room, setting it with their best cutlery and the crystal candleholders they’d received as a wedding gift from her father. Her fingers lingered on them, remembering how they’d originally been a gift to her parents for their wedding and, in particular, remembering the words her father had shared with her when he given them.
“I know your mum would have wanted you to have these, and I hope you and Xander can be as happy together as your mother and I were. We didn’t have as long as we should have had, and I regret not telling her every single day that I loved her, but you can’t turn back time. Don’t leave love unsaid between you and Xander, Olivia. Tell him, every single day.”
Recalling his words brought tears to her eyes as she leaned forward and lit the candles. She’d gotten out of the habit of telling Xander she’d loved him, long before Parker had died. She’d been so absorbed in her work at the high school and their renovations on the house. Then her pregnancy and subsequently their new baby. Loving Xander had never stopped, but telling him had.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” she whispered as she blew out the match she’d been using. “I let us all down, but I’m not going to do that again. This time I will make it work. I promise.”
And, later that night, when they went to bed, she curled up against Xander’s back and whispered to him in the darkness.
“I love you.”
His response was blurred with weariness as he mumbled the same words in return, but it was enough—for now.
* * *
The rain had cleared by morning. After breakfast, Olivia suggested they go for a walk on the beach. With Xander’s balance and strength improving daily and his coordination almost back to normal, she was sure they’d be able to tackle the softer sand areas. If it proved too much, at least they were only a block away from home. Worst-case scenario, she’d leave him on a bench seat, get the car and pick him up. Not that he’d admit defeat or even let her consider doing something like that, she thought to herself as she finished stacking the dishwasher.
“Ready?” she asked as she straightened from her task. Olivia looked at Xander, who was leaning up against the counter, watching her.
“Never more so,” he said. “It’ll be good to get out. Home is great, but I think I’m beginning to suffer a bit of cabin fever.”
She’d expected as much, and dreaded it. Living as they had, cocooned together on their property, had been remarkably simple. Her brief weekly updates to Xander’s boss, and her reiteration that he wasn’t up to visitors or calls just yet, had meant his colleagues hadn’t called to talk to him. And with Xander not being cleared to drive yet, his independence had been severely curtailed. Making it all the easier to keep up the pretense that their marriage was in healthy working order.
But was it a pretense? It didn’t feel like it. Not when they spent their nights wrapped in each other’s arms, their days either in the cottage together or with her painting while he did his physical therapy. She knew this was an idyll that couldn’t last forever. Real life would have to intrude eventually, even more quickly if, or when, he began to recall the years he’d lost. She’d have to talk to him soon. She’d have to find a way to present the truth without all the ugliness or the pain or the accusations.