“I have nothing to say to you. You're free to go whenever you want. I'll find a lawyer, and he can call Burford.” She was beginning to convince herself that Maisie Abernathie was not only for real, but for good.
“It's that simple, is it?” He grabbed her arm as she swept by, avoiding his eyes. But now she looked him full in the face and it almost frightened him. He had never seen such contempt, let alone felt it, and it almost broke his heart as he realized what he'd done. “Faye, listen to me … it was all a stupid mistake. I just had to get out of here … the children screaming all the time … you gone … this depressing house … it was more than I could take.”
“Good. Then you're out of it permanently. You can move back to Beverly Hills with Maisie. I'm sure she'll be happy to take you in.”
“As what?” He looked at his wife bitterly. “Her chauffeur? For chrissake dammit. I can't even get a job, and you're at work all the time, what the hell do you know about what I feel? I can't stand this life. I wasn't brought up for this … I don't know …” He let go of Faye's arm and she stared unsympathetically at him. This time he had gone too far. The drinking, the self-pity, the inability to work, the lies as he wasted the last of his money before she found out, she could forgive him all of it, but not this. This was it. But he looked pitifully at her anyway. “I can't help it. You're stronger than I am. You have something inside you that I don't. I don't know what it is.”
“It's called guts. And you've got them too, if you'd just give yourself a chance, and stay sober long enough to get on your feet.”
“Maybe I can't. Has that occurred to you yet? It has to me. Every day, in fact, until I went away. And maybe that's something I should do for good.”
“What?” She looked blank, but she felt terror crawl up her spine again.
He looked strangely calmer now, as though he knew what he had to do. “I mean get out of your life, Faye.”
“Now? That's a stinking thing to do.” She was horrified, she didn't want to lose this man. She still loved him. He and the children were all that mattered to her. “How can you do a thing like that to us?” There were tears in her eyes and he forced himself to look away, just as he had forced himself not to think of her in the last few weeks. He couldn't stand the guilt anymore. What had happened was all his fault, and there was nothing he could do to help. He had nothing to offer her and she seemed to be doing fine on her own. At least that was what he told himself, and what he was telling himself now, without looking at her. Had he looked, he'd have seen the agony in her eyes as she stared back at him. “Ward, what's happening to us?” Her voice was husky and hoarse, and he sighed deeply and walked across the room to look out the window at the nonexistent view of their neighbor's unpainted house, and the trash in his yard.
“I think it's time for me to get out of here, find a job on my own, and let you forget we ever met.”
“With five kids?” She would have laughed except that she wanted to cry. “Are you planning to forget them too?” She stared at the back of his head in disbelief. This couldn't be happening to them, except it was. It was like a nightmare or a very bad script.
“I'll send you everything I can.” He turned slowly to face her from across the room.
“Is it Maisie? Are you serious about her?” It was hard to believe, but anything was possible now. Maybe he was that desperate for their old life, and Maisie was certainly part of it. But Ward shook his head.
“It's not that. I think I just need to get out of here for a while.” He looked almost bitter as he said it. “I feel as though I ought to leave you alone to build a new life for yourself. You could probably wind up married to some successful movie star.”
“If I'd wanted that, I could have had it years ago. But I didn't want that. I wanted you.”
“And now?” He felt the first surge of courage he had felt in years. It was all out now. There was no place left to go but up. He had nothing left to lose, if in fact he had lost her.
She stared at him with sad, empty eyes. “I don't know who you are anymore, Ward. I don't understand how you could go to Mexico with her. Maybe you'd better go back to her.” They were words of false bravado, but he snapped at the bait.
“Maybe I will.” He stalked upstairs then in a rage, and a moment later, she could hear him crashing around their bedroom, packing his things. She sat in the kitchen, staring blindly into a coffee cup, thinking of the last seven years and crying bitterly, until it was time to pick the children up at school again.
