Chapter 5

Once I had something to compare it against, the difference between being loved and not being loved was impossible to miss.

I lay in bed that night and sleep wouldn't come near me.

Spending the rest of my life next to a man who'd never love me wasn't something I could agree to.

Edward didn't come home that night.

I woke up the next morning and had breakfast with Charlie.

Then I took him with me to see the director and hand in my notice.

The principal looked puzzled. "Why are you leaving?"

I'd spent the whole night on it, and drifting wasn't going to be the rest of my life.

"I told you when I started, I took this job for my son.

"He starts kindergarten in the fall, so I'm going back to the work I trained for."

I gave her the plain truth.

The director didn't try to talk me out of it. "All right. I hope it goes well for you."

"Thank you," I said.

I boxed up what was mine, took Charlie's hand, and started home. "Buddy, I'm going to look for a different job, so I might not be around as much as I've been."

Charlie tipped his head back and looked at me.

"That's okay, Mom. I just want you happy, like you were yesterday," he said.

Something gave way in me. I crouched down and pulled him in.

"Thank you, sweetheart," I said.

Charlie patted my back with one small hand. "I love you, Mom," he whispered.

My eyes stung, and the fact that my husband had never loved me stopped feeling like the end of anything.

At least I had this boy.

"I love you too," I said.

*****

Charlie and I walked home with his hand in mine.

My mother called before we'd gotten our shoes off.

"Susie, what's going on with you? Olivia says you went out there yesterday and refused to cook, and gave them both attitude on top of it."

So she'd been on the phone to my mother before our car was out of the driveway.

My mother kept going. "I raised you to respect your elders and keep a good house. A woman who doesn't gets pushed out of the family. Look at yourself. Call them tonight and apologize."

Listening to her, I remembered hearing the same speech years before I ever met Edward.

It had always sounded like I'd been born to keep house for somebody else's parents.

My hand tightened around the phone until I cut her off.

"Mom, I want a divorce."

She came back at me like I'd lost my mind. "Edward is a top attorney and you teach finger painting. You married up. Divorced with a kid, who's going to want you?"

Disappointment settled over me. "Does a woman have to be married at all?"

I had a son already, and raising him alone struck me as entirely possible.

"And when you're old? You'll be alone, like me, with nobody in the house to talk to," she said.

The person beside me had never wanted to talk to me anyway.

Her mind wasn't going to change. My father died young, and she'd raised me by herself.

So I waited her out, let her finish, and hung up.

The front door opened just then, and Edward came in wearing weekend clothes, filling up the doorway.

The stack of things from my classroom was still sitting in the middle of the living room, and he saw it immediately.

"What's all this?" he asked.

I didn't look up. "I quit."

"Quit?" Edward said, half interested. "What brought that on?"

"I took that job because Charlie was small and there was nobody else to watch him. He's not small anymore, so I'm going back to the work I trained for," I said.

His parents had been sick for years, in and out of the hospital, and that had landed on me too.

So I'd let the career go and kept the child.

With Charlie older, I could finally spend some of that effort on myself.

Edward said nothing for a long while. When he finally looked at me, he spoke carefully.

"Don't let anything Charlotte said take you apart."

The sentence stopped me cold.

The remark made no sense coming from him.

Charlotte had stood at my door the day before and made a point of what I did for a living.

Now he stood in my living room telling me not to let her words get to me.

I sent Charlie to his room before I answered. "How do you know Charlotte and I talked? Did she tell you?"