“The widower with the broken heart,” she supplied. “That image?”
“Yeah,” he said, with the shame that the title brought surely evident in his features. “That image.”
“That’s not true,” she said in a calm, comforting voice. He suspected it was her work voice, and that she’d segued into it. He only hoped she didn’t start viewing him as a project, as someone who needed fixing. He didn’t want to be that person with her. He wanted to be so much more, but he hardly knew how.
“I cared about Aubrey deeply. I loved her as a friend. But I didn’t love her as a man loves a woman,” he said in a low voice, one he barely recognized as his own. Because he’d only said these words out loud to his sister, and to Nate. “I wasn’t in love with her.”
“Oh,” she said on a long, loud sigh of understanding. It was all out in the open. She could see him for who he truly was. “But everyone believes you’re the person the media portrays you as. The grieving widower.” She crossed her arms, protecting herself from the man before her.
A calloused jerk.
He nodded. “Yes. Because that was the least I could do for her.”
She tilted her head to the side. “How so?”
“She died,” he said, practically shouting as the guilt charged back up through him, rearing its ugly head. “She fucking died, and it was my fault because I didn’t love her. I couldn’t be anything publicly but the grieving widower. I couldn’t go tell the world I didn’t love her. I couldn’t do that to a dead woman.”
“I get that part,” she said, nodding several times, taking in what he was saying. Then she was quiet as she stood up, walked over to her purse and rooted around in it until she found a band for her hair. She twisted her wet hair up on her head and moved over to the couch near to him. A dangerous thing called hope dared to make an appearance. Maybe she’d forgive him. “But you think it was your fault she died?” she asked, continuing her questions. He couldn’t read her.
“Well, yeah. I told her how I felt. She went for a run down the mountain. She was always incredibly safe, and that was the one time she was out of control. How could it be anything but my fault?”
She didn’t speak at first. She steepled her hands together, and there was something about this side of Michelle that scared him. She’d retreated into her work mode, and she was excellent at it, but it wasn’t how he knew her and experienced her. She was methodical; she was assessing him. Even though he knew she didn’t judge her clients, he felt judged. He felt small. He felt stupid. He was all of those things and more. He deserved to feel this way.
“Jack,” she began, her voice distant. “Why did you stay with her for so long if you didn’t love her?”
Her question surprised him. He hadn’t expected that. He hadn’t asked himself that question. Ever. He’d only beaten himself up for not loving her. But he’d never delved into why he’d stayed with her so long.
He parted his lips to speak, but no words came.
She spoke for him. “You were together for a few years, and engaged for nearly a year? Why, if you didn’t love her?”
He nodded, the hot shame rolling over him again. “I think I just felt as if we were supposed to be together. Everyone expected it. We were high school sweethearts, and then we got back together years later. It just seemed like it should have worked.”
“But you knew you didn’t love her? How long did you know that?”
“Several months,” he admitted, swallowing down a lump. That was the real rub.
“What made you think you should marry someone you didn’t love? Why would you stay? That’s what I most want to understand,” she said gently.
He answered her honestly, feeling completely exposed and naked as he bared the truth to her. That he was a man who was so disconnected from love that he stayed with someone he didn’t. “I really don’t know.”
“Were your parents like that? Like you and Aubrey?” she asked, probing, as if she were on a fearless hunt for his truth.
Her question echoed through the quiet room. It rattled through his head, like a top spinning wildly, then finally settling down. The light bulb went off. The buzzer dinged. And there it was. Something that made sense about his choices. An answer, maybe. A truth he could grasp. Was it that simple?
“They weren’t in love either. They stayed together until Casey left for college,” he said, then shared more details of his parents’ marriage.
“They weren’t in love at all?”
“Nope.”
“And that just seemed normal to you then,” she said, as if she were presenting him with the answer to two plus two. Gently. Holding out her hand and offering him four.
Could he take it from her? Could he accept such a simple answer? One that had been under his nose his whole life? That he’d simply done all he knew? “I suppose,” he said, trying it on for size.
“That was the model you had before you. Even if your relationship was different, the marriage you saw was one not based on love, but on obligation,” she said, and he was surely being counseled by her now. He was the patient. She was the shrink. And the shrink understood all that the patient didn’t. The shrink guided him through that dark forest to the clearing on the other side. He could see a small sliver of light, and he wanted to grab it, hold onto it. He didn’t want to slide back into the darkness. Because maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t broken. He just hadn’t known anything else.