LITMIR.BIZ

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Cathryn felt a sharp echo of the shock and grief she’d felt upon first learning this. She pressed her fingertips over her lips and waited for the pain to subside, but it didn’t. She was in the van again, sitting beside her husband on the edge of hysteria, while the world as she knew it shifted and slid. She kept hearing Dylan apologize. “I’m sorry, Cath. I’m so sorry.” And then the crucial phrase, “I didn’t mean for you to find out this way.”

      Unthinkingly she’d snapped, “Oh? How did you want me to find out?”

      “Not…this way. I thought we might go away for a few days. Just the two of us.”

      She’d stared at him a long incredulous moment. What was Dylan saying? That he did want her to find out? Then, as understanding dawned, her already shifting, sliding world utterly shattered.

      “Why?” she’d implored. “What went wrong? I thought we were happy.”

      “And did he give you an answer?” Tucker asked.

      Cathryn was jolted out of her daze by his voice. Had she been talking all this time?

      “He said it just…happened.”

      “It just happened?”

      “Yes.” Cathryn reached for the brandy bottle and poured another dose into her glass. “That’s what he said, at first anyway. But I guess I kept after him, and eventually he got so angry he began to admit things he’d never intended to.” She had to pause until the anguish gripping her released some of its hold. “Apparently Dylan’s been unhappy with me for some time.”

      “With you?” Wide-eyed, Tucker looked ready to go ten rounds with her statement.

      She nodded. “He said I ignore his needs. I spend all my time tending to the house and the kids.”

      Tucker laughed sarcastically. “Aw, poor baby.”

      Cathryn raised a hand. “No, he’s right. I have become too absorbed with homemaking and the kids’ activities. I have become complacent about us, Dylan and me.” Complacent was Dylan’s word, though. She’d always thought in terms of contentment, and it hurt more than she could express that he didn’t feel similarly contented.

      Cathryn blinked her burning eyes, battling tears, as she recalled the myriad complaints Dylan had registered with her that afternoon, each one an arrow straight to the heart.

      “The son of a bitch,” Tucker rasped. “He’s caught having an affair and he turns on you? You should be outraged.”

      Cathryn swallowed, trying to loosen the knot in her throat. “I would be, except that much of what he said is true, and I’m not surprised he turned to another woman.”

      “Would you explain that to me, please?”

      “Well, you know…” She cast about for something she could say that wouldn’t lead to a discussion of sex. “The way I’ve let myself go, for instance.”

      “Did he accuse you of that, too?”

      “Well, look at me, Tucker. I’m not exactly the girl Dylan married twelve years ago.”

      “That’s right. You’ve improved.”

      “Ha! I’m a big, worthless hunk of fat.”

      Tucker sat forward, scowling with the fierceness of a lion. “Okay. So you’ve put on some weight, but you’re hardly fat. To be honest, I kinda like you this way. Holding you, a guy knows he has a woman in his arms.”

      “Oh, please.” She dragged her gaze away from Tucker. “On top of being fat, I’m stupid, too. Stupid for not realizing Dylan was so bored and unhappy.”

      “All right. That’s enough of that,” Tucker snapped. “You’re not stupid, Shortcake—except for calling yourself stupid.”

      “Oh, yeah? What do you call a woman who doesn’t know her husband’s having an affair—for a whole year?”

      “Maligned,” Tucker shot back angrily.

      Cathryn bit her lip to keep it from trembling. Yes, she did feel maligned. Maligned and betrayed. When she thought about all the things she and Dylan had done and shared over the past year—the hundreds of meals and chores, the socializing with friends, the lovemaking—oh, especially that…

      Tucker got up and set his empty beer bottle in the sink, his scowl still in place. “Is he coming back tonight?” he asked, staring out the darkened window. Not a glimmer of daylight remained.

      Cathryn needed a moment before she could answer. “No.”

      Tucker turned in hopeful surprise. “Did you toss him out?”

      “No! Of course not. Dylan simply thought it would be better if he left. Otherwise, he said, the house would be too tense, the possibility of our arguing in front of the kids too great.”

      Tucker’s narrowed eyes met hers. “Do you have any idea when he will be back?”

      “To live?” She swallowed more brandy, welcoming its numbing bite. “No. I asked, but all he said was, he needs time to sort things out.”

      “Things?”

      “How he feels, I guess. If he wants to stay in the marriage.”

      “Is he going to continue seeing the Anderson woman?”

      “I don’t know that, either.” She’d been afraid to ask. Afraid, also, to inquire where he’d be sleeping tonight.

      Tucker folded his arms and rested his hip against the counter. “What are you going to do about the kids?”

      “Oh, God. My kids.” Cathryn braced her forehead on one hand and closed her eyes. “They’re going to fall apart when they hear about this.” Out of the blue she burst into tears. She didn’t want to cry. Crying was weak and dumb and humiliatingly messy. But thinking of her kids broke down every defense she had.

      She felt something nudge her elbow—a box of tissues Tucker was pushing at her. She helped herself to several, and after a lengthy mop-up said, “Dylan’s coming by tomorrow afternoon to help me tell them. He promised he’d be here when they got off the school bus. I’m not quite sure what we’ll say or how we’ll say it…” She’d never in her life felt so lost, so vulnerable. “Do you have any suggestions, Tuck?”

      “Me?” He stood up straight. “Hell, I’m so out of my element here.” He sighed heavily, shook his head and contemplated the problem. “I probably wouldn’t say anything about the affair. You’ll have to tell them eventually—assuming your separation continues; in such a tight community, they’re bound to hear something. Better from you than some kid at school. But not tomorrow. They’ll have enough to cope with as it is.”

      Cathryn plucked another tissue from the box and pressed it to her eyes, fighting back a renewed surge of tears. She nodded. “Yes. Better to take small steps, move the kids through this in stages.”

      “Also, whatever you do, make sure you and Dylan tell them you love them.”

      “Of course.”

      “And that you’ll always love them, no matter what.”

      “Okay.”

      “And you’ll always be there for them.”

      “Okay.”

      “And your problems are not their fault.”

      She kept nodding, filing away his advice.

      “Other than that,” he shrugged, “I don’t know what to say. Sorry.”

      Cathryn gazed up at Tucker, standing at the table with his large, suntanned hands resting on the bowed back of a chair. She studied his hair, caught back in a low ponytail, his beard, his garnet earring, his belt buckle with its carving of an eagle in flight, gripping a rattlesnake in its talons. She saw a man who, in giving advice

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