Best Kept Secret: A Novel

I wasn’t looking for a husband the night I met Martin, I was looking for a story. Two years after a summer internship morphed into a lifestyle section beat at the Seattle Herald, I was twenty-six and anxious to prove to my editor-in-chief that I was capable of writing more than fluff pieces on the newest trends in weight-loss programs or the yearly sand castle-building contest at Alki Beach. One of my sources—a woman I’d gotten to know during an article I did on a state workers’ successful holiday food drive—gave me the heads-up regarding a conflict between the pay increase percentage the governor had promised teachers and what the state could actually afford, so on a Friday night I showed up at a benefit dinner intended to raise money for creative arts in public schools. I figured I could chat up the teachers in attendance and see what kind of feature might evolve.

As it turned out, after two unsuccessful hours of trying to track down an educator who was incensed enough with the governor to speak to me without the presence of their union rep, I stood alone by the appetizer buffet table with a glass of wine in hand, nibbling on a cracker spread with goat cheese and caramelized onion. Discouraged, I wondered not for the first time if I actually had the determined nature it took to be a successful journalist. I was weighing the option of making an early exit when a handsome man with bright blue eyes and short, spiked black hair suddenly appeared by my side.

“Do you like sausages?” he inquired.

I laughed out loud, hand over my mouth, trying not to spit out my last bite.

He smiled at me, tilting his head in a disarmingly adorable manner. “A server sent me over to ask if you prefer sausage or chicken for dinner since he didn’t have your preference on the list. Why is that funny?”

I touched the back of my hand to the side of my mouth, making sure I wasn’t covered in chewed-up appetizer before responding. I was suddenly conscious of my hair, happy I’d chosen to wear the flattering black dress that showed off the best thing about being an hourglass girl in a push-up bra.

“It’s a rather presumptuous question, don’t you think?” I said.

“Presumptuous, how? I didn’t ask if you like my sausage in particular.” His eyes flashed a wicked sparkle.

I couldn’t help myself; I took a sip of my wine and looked up at him over the edge of the glass. “Sorry, I make it a strict policy not to reveal my meat-eating preferences to a man until at least the second date.”

“Oh, really?” He raised his eyebrows in a way that convinced me he was definitely interested in learning more about my particular appetites. “And when do we go on our first?”

“As soon as you call me.” I set my glass on the table, took out my business card from my purse, and handed it to him. My response to Martin was completely out of character—most of my relationships with men grew out of casual friendship, gradually evolving into something more intimate. My reaction to him was physical from the get-go, his pheromones unabashedly speaking to mine. We were seated at separate tables for dinner, but at the end of the night he offered to walk me to my car. The article was forgotten and I went to bed that night with a wide, stupid grin plastered across my face.

We went out for dinner the following week at a cozy Italian cafe. After racing through the usual niceties about the weather and how our day was at work, we dove right into our family histories.

“It was horrible,” Martin told me about his mother’s pregnancy with him. “I made her very, very sick. But she instructed me that I would be a strong, healthy boy.”

“She ‘instructed’ you?” I said, twirling my hair in what I hoped was an appealing, playful manner. Being near him made my stomach feel as though it was full of a thousand fluttering butterflies.

He nodded with mock gravity. “I learned in utero it was best to do what my mother expected. I mean, look at me!” He swept his hand from his chin down toward his waist. “Aren’t I a strong, healthy German boy?”

I laughed and nodded. He wasn’t especially tall—five foot eight, maybe? Only a few inches taller than me. But he had the kind of arms I knew were strong enough to beat the begeezus out of any type of assailant. I was a sucker for a man with excellent arms.

“You are absolutely strong and healthy,” I agreed. “But what about your father? Didn’t he have any say about how you turned out?”

A brief shadow fell over his face. “He died when I was two. A construction site accident.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said. “Do you remember much about him?”

He shook his head. “Not really. Nothing more than the feeling of him.” His mouth shifted into a wistful bend. “Does that make sense?”

“Of course it does.” I gave him a tender smile and reached across the table to squeeze his thick fingers. They felt warm and sturdy. We fit. “Did your mother remarry?”

He squeezed my hand in return and made no move to pull away. “No. It’s always been just the two of us.” He paused. “What about you?”

“My family?”

He nodded. “Brothers? Sisters? Pets? Crazy old aunts locked in the attic?”

I laughed. “One younger sister, Jessica. And my mother. No pets. Or crazy aunts—that I know of.” My mind flashed briefly on the possibility of telling him about my grandmother, but I decided against it. Not good fodder for a first date.

“And your father?”

“I think I’d call him more of a sperm donor than a father.”

Martin cringed. “Ouch.”

I shrugged, pulling my hand back from his. “I was too young when he left for it to affect me very much.” I recited this line out of habit; my mother had said it to me often when I bemoaned the fact that I didn’t have a father like most of my friends.

“How old were you?”

“Not quite six months. My mom was about eight weeks pregnant with my sister.”

“Nice guy.”

“I don’t know. According to my mom, he just wasn’t cut out for the whole family gig, you know? He was an artist. Sort of the free-spirit, one-with-the-earth type. She was a registered voter and dental hygienist. An upstanding citizen.” Total opposites, I thought. Not like you and me. We already have more in common than the two of them ever did.

“Still,” Martin said. “I just couldn’t imagine taking off like that. As a father. Or a husband.”

I smiled. “They never actually got married. But that’s good to know about you.” Having witnessed the demise of her own parents’ disastrous union, my mother insisted she would never venture down the aisle. I was not quite so averse to the idea.

“Is she still a hygienist? Your mom?”

“A dentist, actually. After Jess was born, she worked about sixty hours a week at a couple of different offices to keep us afloat, then went back to school to get her degree. She’s had her own practice for over ten years now.”

“Do you get along?”

I picked up my fork, toying with the cold remains of my fettuccine. “For the most part. But Jess and I spent a lot of time with babysitters when we were growing up. And she’s so busy with her practice now I barely see her. I’m not sure how well I really know her.” It surprised me to feel the muscles in my throat tighten as I spoke that last sentence. I feigned a cough.

Martin didn’t seem to notice the change in my voice. “Babysitters, huh? She didn’t have family around to help her out?”

I shook my head. “Her parents divorced when she was twelve and her mom died not too long after that. She was pretty much on her own. It’s what she knows how to do.”

He nodded. “Sounds like my mom, too. Both my parents’ families are back in Germany. I’ve never even met them.”

“How did she support you after your dad passed away?” I paused, then added, “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“It’s fine. She actually bought the bakery where she’d been working. My dad was a planner like that. He knew his job was risky, so he made sure to have good accidental death coverage.”

“You had babysitters, too, then, I take it? With her owning a business?”

“Sort of. I just went to the shop with her. A gaggle of German bakerwomen took care of me. Fed me bits of cake to keep me from crying.”

“Hmm . . . a whole gaggle, huh?”

He lifted one shoulder up and forward a bit. “What can I say? My mother ran the place. It was in their job description.”

“Of course it was. Does she still work?”

“Nope. Sold it a few months ago. She’s retired now, and focused on finding me a wife.”

I attempted to appear nonplussed as the butterflies in my stomach went nuts. “Uh-huh. So, do you bake? That might work in your favor.”

“No, no baking.” One corner of his mouth bent upward. “But I could calculate a couple logarithmic functions that would make your toes curl.”

“Ew. Math. Do you have any other annoying habits I should know about?” I winked at him and smiled.

He sat forward, crossed his forearms, and leaned on the table. “Hmm . . . let’s see. I keep track of pretty much everything in my life on a spreadsheet. Does organization qualify as a bad habit?”

“Only if you expect the same kind of freakish compulsion from me.”

To my relief, he threw his head back and laughed.

For a first date, I thought, this is going extremely well.

I called my sister the minute I got home. “I really, really like him,” I said. “He’s smart, he’s funny, and I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m smart and funny, too. He took my smart-ass commentary like a pro.”

“Did he kiss you?”

“Oh yeah.”

“And . . . ?”

“And everything south of the border pretty much melted.”

It didn’t take long for Martin and me to begin spending almost every evening together. His linear brain served our lovemaking well. He possessed a scientist’s determination to understand what pleasured me most.

“Hmm,” he’d murmur, running his fingertips up and down the curve of my waist to the generous swell of my hips. “What happens when I do this?”

My eyes would close and I’d shudder as goose bumps popped up across my skin.

He’d smile, then move his fingers a little lower. “What about this?”

Afterward, he didn’t want to sleep. He wanted to talk. Our conversations went on for hours. He thought my burgeoning career as a journalist was fascinating; I admired how he spent his days teaching young minds how to navigate complex mathematical theory. Though he struggled with how little money he was making as a teacher, he said that seeing students suddenly grasp a concept that had previously eluded them more than made up for the lack of financial reward.

A few weeks into dating, things felt solid enough between us that Martin invited me to meet his mother. We had lunch at Alice’s favorite German eatery down in Pioneer Square. At her insistence, I agreed to let her order for all of us: feather-light potato dumplings served with a creamy bacon sauce.

“Holy butter, Batman,” I remarked after I’d practically licked my plate clean. “That was amazing. Is there a way I can become an honorary German?”

Martin leaned over and whispered in my ear, “German by injection, perhaps? I have just the tool . . .”

I punched him playfully and he pulled away, grinning.

“Tell me, Cadence,” Alice said, ignoring our antics. “Do you want children?” She didn’t speak with much of an accent, but the edges of her words were noticeably clipped, as though she were forcibly restraining herself from giving you a piece of her mind.

“Mama . . .” Martin began, but I set my hand on his forearm and squeezed.

“No, it’s okay,” I said. Our conversation had been fairly tame up to this point; part of me welcomed a more challenging subject. “I’m only twenty-six, Mrs. Sutter. I’ve been pretty focused on my work at the paper. I haven’t given babies much thought, to tell you the truth.”

“But you want them,” she said. “You aren’t one of those girls who think they’re not cut out to be a mother, are you? A career girl.” She said “career” the same way she might have said “hooker.”

I tilted my head and gave her a closed-lipped, tight smile before responding. I had to be careful here. I wanted to make a good impression. “Well. My career is definitely important to me. And actually, I think it’s a good thing that women can decide for themselves whether or not they want kids. There’s no law that says it’s some kind of requirement of womanhood.”

“Perhaps there should be,” Alice said.

“Mama, please,” Martin said. “Leave poor Cadence alone.”

“Martin,” Alice said. The word was sewn through with warning.

Martin sat back in his chair and pressed his lips into a thin line. His acquiescence was surprising, but I assumed he did it to avoid a knock-down, drag-out with his mother in front of me. I imagined him chewing her out later, after he dropped me off at home. I imagined him standing up for the woman he loved.

“Don’t you consider owning your bakery a career?” I said, unable to keep myself from making this point.

Her eyes narrowed the slightest bit, though the rest of her face remained impassive. “Yes. I do. But I would have given it up immediately if having my bakery meant I wouldn’t have had Martin. He was the most important thing. Always. No question. He still is.”

Martin nudged the edge of his foot against mine beneath the table. I nudged his back and took a deep breath before speaking again.

“Like I said, I haven’t thought about it a lot, but if I found the right man, then yes. I’d want to have a baby with him.” I looked at Martin. “Someday.”

Two months after that luncheon, Martin asked me to move into his Capitol Hill apartment. My mother approved of this living arrangement; his mother did not. The fact that Martin didn’t let Alice’s opinion sway him reassured me. For a while, we enjoyed that honeymoon stage of nesting, when I still found it adorable that he needed all the canned food labels facing in the same direction and he didn’t complain that the contents of my closet were strewn across the bedroom floor.

That blissful period of time came to an end on a crisp December evening. I was curled up on the couch with a book when he stepped in from our bedroom, holding a white sheet of paper.

“A note from my mom,” he said, waving it at me.

“Let me guess,” I joked. “Thanking me for all my help at Thanksgiving?” I had not been allowed in the kitchen to help with the food preparation during my first holiday spent at Martin’s childhood home. “Oh, no,” Alice said. “Don’t bother. Really. I’ll take care of it. You just sit. Relax.” So I lounged in the living room with Martin while she whirled around like a madwoman between the dining room and kitchen. The conversation over the dinner table began with her dramatic lamentation: “I can’t believe I did this whole meal all by myself! I swear I’ll have to hire help next year.” I had enough social graces to keep my mouth shut, though Martin and I laughed about it in the car on the way home.

Standing there in our apartment a couple of weeks later, Martin looked uncomfortable, clutching the e-mail. “No, no thank-you note,” he said. “Actually, she made a list of what you ate. With calorie count.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing visibly up and down beneath the thin skin of his neck.

My mouth dropped open. “Are you kidding me?”

He took a step toward me. “Now, don’t get upset . . .”

“Unbelievable.” I threw my book to the floor with a loud thump. Martin stopped in his tracks. “You’re going to defend her?”

“She read an article, honey,” he began. “With a list of the calories people typically consume . . .”

“Stop.” I held up my hand, just in case he was tempted to believe I wasn’t serious. “Just stop it right there.” Pursing my lips together, I pushed a couple of breaths out through my nose. “Why are you telling me this? Maybe you’re concerned about my weight?” I was not a gym bunny. I had a belly. When not safely ensconced in the proper combination of wire and spandex, my breasts bordered on cartoonish.

“No,” he sighed. “You know I love your body. She just asked me to tell you about it. I really think she meant well. She says she’s concerned about your health.”

I snorted at this. “Please. My health is just fine. You’re the one with the high blood pressure. Did she make a list for the food you ate?”

“No, but—” he attempted, but I cut him off.

“You know what? She can go fuck herself. You both can.”

It was our first official fight. The next day, I found the e-mail in the recycle bin and experienced great pleasure in pushing it through the paper shredder at work. Martin brought home flowers that night and apologized profusely for his misstep.

“It’s just the way she is,” he said. “Maybe you could talk with her. Tell her how you feel.”

“I’d feel a little strange doing that,” I said. “Couldn’t you do it?”

“And say what?”

“That her e-mail was totally offensive. That she hurt my feelings.”

He sighed. “She won’t get it. She’s a very factual person.”

“What would you do if it was you? If she hurt your feelings like this?”

“I don’t let her hurt my feelings. And even if she did, whining about it is not who she raised me to be. I told you she’s old-fashioned. She’s also a very strong woman. It’s not worth the energy trying to get her to change. She won’t.”

I forgave him, of course. Nobody is perfect, I reasoned. He just made an error in judgment. Mother-child relationships are complicated. Since my relationship with my own mother was fairly distant, I attempted to find it sweet that Martin shared a close relationship with his. I understood it, to an extent. Martin was an only child. After his father’s death, Martin and Alice became partners in life just as much as they were mother and son. I rationalized her blunt insertion in our relationship as a result of her heritage. Germanic women just said what they thought—no sugar-coating necessary. That was just who she was. Over time, though, this logic wore thin. Martin didn’t see it, calling me paranoid. I called him a mama’s boy and an idiot. Yes indeed, it does take two people to end a marriage. I’m not so delusional as to think I played no part in our downfall. However, I am still child enough to proclaim that my husband is the one who started it.

We lived together about a year before I found out I was pregnant. Not a minute after I stepped out of our bathroom with the positive test in hand, he smiled and said, “Marry me.” I said yes immediately—he was smart, funny, and sweet; all the good things I thought a husband should be. I loved him. I also didn’t want to be like my mother, resigned to survive my life alone. I was certain having a husband would make motherhood that much easier to navigate. And besides, Martin was delighted to become a father. I could still be a journalist. I could still live the life I’d planned. I’d just have Martin and a baby living it right along with me.

Alice, of course, was thrilled to learn she would be a grandmother. We told her about the baby a few weeks after the impromptu wedding. At her urging, with the sudden knowledge he was about to become a father, Martin surprised me by leaving the public school system, parlaying his technical savvy into a cushy, well-paying programming position with Microsoft.

“But you love teaching,” I said when Martin informed me he was switching careers. Martin’s intense fondness for his students was one of the things that made me believe he would be the kind of father neither of us had ever known. “What about becoming a principal someday? Isn’t that what you’ve wanted?” We were driving during this conversation, on our way out to dinner. My hand rested on the curve of my stomach, a first attempt at cradling our child.

Martin shrugged. “The benefits at Microsoft are amazing, Cadee. They’ll pay for everything . . . your pregnancy, the birth, insurance for all of us. Plus, there’s the opportunity to move up in the company.” He threw a brief glance out the window. “I’d never get that with teaching. Not really.”

“But—” I began, and he cut me off.

“I want this, honey. I do. I want to be the kind of father my dad would have been proud of. I want our child to have everything we didn’t.”

I hadn’t argued with him further. I tried to be supportive the way I assumed a good wife would. Not that I had any firsthand knowledge of what a good wife actually looked like. But since life presented me with the opportunity to have everything my mother never did—husband, kids, and a career—I wasn’t going to screw it up. I was going to have it all.

For a while, it felt like I did. Toward the end of my pregnancy, with the security of Martin’s new job, I left the Herald and started freelancing. My first few articles sold quickly, so I assumed I’d have no problem picking it back up a few months after Charlie’s arrival. Aided by a perfectly timed spinal block, giving birth was easier than I expected it to be, though learning to take care of an infant was much harder. Charlie was colicky, and no matter how many times we tried, he refused to take a pacifier or a bottle. The first six months of his life, if he wasn’t sleeping, he was nursing. Sleep became a rare luxury, and even with breastfeeding, my body didn’t bounce back the way all the books I’d read promised that it would. Instead, it clung to fifteen of the thirty-five pounds I’d gained while pregnant. I was puffy and exhausted. I also discovered that I really didn’t want sex anymore; that overwhelming physical desire simply ceased rising up beneath my skin. This startled me and had a profound, immediate effect on my marriage. The one place Martin and I always connected was in bed.

At first, Martin was patient. He said he understood. We’d climb under our covers at night and he’d just hold me. After a couple of months passed, though, that wasn’t enough. He’d hold me, but then start to kiss my neck. His hands moved over my hips, urging me to him. I knew what he wanted. I felt guilty, so I forced my body to mimic the correct motions, despite my mind silently screaming to be left alone. This was a new sensation for me. I was used to wanting him, too. At that point, the only craving I felt for physical connection was cradling my child in my arms.

“Mmm, you feel so good,” Martin whispered in my ear. My body felt stiff and unresponsive, but I murmured a loving sentiment in return. I crossed my fingers that because it had been so long since we’d last made love, it would be over quickly. If it wasn’t, I barely managed to hide my relief when Charlie interrupted us, crying out from his crib in the other room. I extricated my body from my husband’s and slipped into my bathrobe.

Each time this would happen, Martin rolled over onto his back, arm thrown over his forehead. “He’s fine!” he insisted.

“He is not fine,” I said. “He’s crying.”

“You need to let him cry it out,” he said, propping himself up on his elbows. “He needs to learn to comfort himself back to sleep.”

The fleshy kickstand of his erection stuck out at an odd angle from his body. It was a sight that used to arouse. Since having Charlie, it simply made me tired; yet another task I needed to check off my to-do list.

“According to who?” I asked, heading toward the door. “Your mother?”

Even in the dark, I felt the leaden weight of his eyes on my back as I walked out of the room. When I returned to bed after nursing our son and settling him back to sleep in his crib, Martin was most always already asleep. Or at least, he was good at pretending.

During the day, when Martin was at work and Charlie still slept better than he did at night, I tried to get back in the habit of writing. It took longer than I thought it would, but when Charlie was eight months old, I sold an article to a local consumer parenting magazine. I recounted what it was like trying to figure out what my baby’s cries meant, and how frustrating it was that my breasts were the only pacifier he’d use. It was more of an essay than the fact-driven, journalistic style I was used to at the paper, but I enjoyed writing it, and felt enormous satisfaction signing the back of the nominal check the magazine sent upon publication. I set a goal to finish at least five articles a month, which often meant working feverishly a few hours late at night after Charlie was asleep.

“We don’t need the money,” Martin said. “I don’t know why you think you have to work so hard.”

“It’s not about needing the money,” I told him. “It’s about retaining my sense of self.”

Luckily, my experience at the Herald translated easily into my attempts at freelancing. I knew my queries to editors needed to be specific and attention-grabbing; several years spent penning headlines came in handy for that. It wasn’t “The Best Way to Potty Training Your Child,” but “Potty Train Your Child in Two Days!” Not “An Interview with the Chef at the Space Needle,” but “Local Chef Spills All!” I kept a notebook of topics that interested me, ranging from child rearing to profile pieces on local celebrities. I didn’t want to put myself in a niche, the way I had at the paper, where I only covered lifestyle subjects, so I kept my eye on the news for controversial issues and tried to jot down ideas for story angles that I might be able to sell. I ended up in a niche anyway, focusing for the most part on parenting and relationships, with a few interviews and how-to career articles thrown in. I wasn’t making enough money to support myself the way I had at the paper, but I sold enough work to avoid feeling that I had been completely swallowed by motherhood.

Then came the sweltering August evening when Charlie was about a year old. It was nearly eight o’clock and Martin was just making it home. I was so busy that day taking care of Charlie and furiously writing during his naps, I hadn’t managed to shower. Martin strode through the front door, brushed his lips against my cheek, and handed me a brochure for a gun-metal gray, two-seater BMW.

“Is this where you’ve been?” I asked, looking at the picture of the sleek vehicle. We sat at the table in our kitchen. Charlie was next to us in his high chair, up to his elbows in a before-bedtime snack of cottage cheese and diced peaches. I attempted to convince my child to use a spoon, but he much preferred the hand-to-mouth shovel method. I’d be picking bits of cottage cheese out of his ears for days.

“Yes,” he said, lifting his chin almost imperceptibly.

“You told me you were working late.”

“I did work late. And then I stopped by the dealership.”

“Um-hmm.” I pressed my lips into a thin line to keep from saying more.

“So, what do you think?”

I gave him a slightly confused look. “What do I think about what?”

“The car.”

I placed the brochure on the table. “It’s not exactly child-friendly,” I said. “And not very practical for us. At least, not right now.”

“Well, it’s kind of too late,” Martin said. He picked the brochure up and gave it a little wave in the air. “I bought it.”

I looked at Martin, my mouth open in a soft O. “What?”

He sighed and dropped back against his chair. “Don’t look at me like that. We have the money, Cadence. And my mom pointed out you have your Explorer for carting Charlie around. I needed a better car for commuting.” There it was—my husband’s linear brain. A plus B equals C.

“You talked to your mother about this?”

“BMWs are German cars. I wanted her opinion.”

“But not mine.”

“Please don’t start,” Martin said.

“Whatever, Martin.” I didn’t know what else to say to him. That he made such a big purchase on his own was unsettling, but I swallowed my concerns. His money, his decision, I thought. Who was I to tell him no? He works so hard—he’s entitled.

The year after Charlie turned one, Martin’s working late stopped being the exception and became the rule. He rarely called to let me know when to expect him home, and when I’d try to reach him, he claimed he had turned his cell phone off so he could concentrate on whatever code he was writing.

“I was worried about you,” I said one morning after Charlie’s second birthday in August. He had come home after I was already asleep. “Do you really need to work late every night?”

“I’m doing it for us,” he said. “For Charlie. I want to get into management, and the only way that’s going to happen is if I show them I’m willing to put in the hours.” He paused. “I’m playing golf with a couple guys from the office today, too.”

I rolled over in bed to look at him. “You are? Is it a work thing?” Microsoft often held employee engagement events—basketball tournaments or picnics on Lake Sammamish—but Martin usually told me about them beforehand.

“No, I took a vacation day,” he said. He sat up and patted me on the hip, the same way he might have petted a dog. “I need some time with the guys.”

“Oh,” I said. I paused. “What time do you think you’ll be back? I could make us ribs.” My recipe for smoky, oven-baked ribs was almost always a guaranteed lure to bring him home.

He stood up and walked toward the bathroom. “I think I’ll be late, honey. Jeff wants to do drive practice and walk all eighteen holes. We’ll probably grab dinner out, too.”

“Okay,” I said, and on the surface, it was. I wasn’t bothered that Martin wanted to play golf with his friends. It was that he made plans without letting me know. I also hoped he would want to spend at least part of his day off with his wife and son. Still, I didn’t push the issue.

Instead, I tried to up the romance in our relationship. I put sweet notes in his lunches and made sure to kiss him passionately before he left for work. I cooked the food he adored, and despite my insecurities about my post-pregnancy body, I donned the skimpy lingerie he was so fond of in an effort to reignite our sex life. One night, I arranged for my sister to babysit Charlie and planned an elaborate dinner, being sure to text Martin a reminder that we had the entire evening to ourselves. As the candles burned low, I sat in the kitchen wearing a scant red dress, crying. He strolled through the door at midnight, claiming he’d been busy at work and simply forgot about our date.

“Sorry,” he said. “Why are you so upset? It’s just dinner.”

I stared at him through swollen eyes. “No, Martin. It’s not. Charlie is with Jess until tomorrow morning and I went to a lot of trouble to make this a special night for us. You know we don’t get enough time alone together and you totally blew me off.”

He stepped over to the table, picked up the glass of wine I’d poured for him earlier, and took a sip before speaking. “I think you’re overreacting. I’m here, now, aren’t I? You look great, by the way. But I think you’d look better out of that dress.” He winked at me, and I shook my head in disbelief. Was he kidding?

“Good night,” I said, pushing back from the table. I strode down the hall and slammed our bedroom door behind me, making it clear I didn’t want him to follow. I lost sleep that night and several more after that, wondering if I had enough strength to pull my marriage out of the rut it was in without the help of my husband.

A month later, he volunteered to head up a project that would require twelve-hour days and working weekends, too.

“Weekends? Really?” I said, struggling to keep the petulance out of my voice. Martin typically took Charlie to the park for at least a few hours on both Saturday and Sunday so I could have uninterrupted time to work.

“Leading this project is huge, Cadee,” he said. “Opportunities like this don’t come along very often. It gives me a chance to move up.”

“How long will the project take?” I asked. I didn’t recognize this man standing before me. What had happened to the Martin I fell in love with? In his determination to provide for his family, he appeared to have lost track of something infinitely more important—spending time with us.

“Six, maybe eight months.”

I sighed. “God, Martin.”

His jaw tensed; the muscles worked like tiny gears beneath his skin. “It’s my job. I can’t help it.”

I nodded tightly, telling myself I’d find a way to make it work. I continued to write, though with days filled with carting Charlie to the park and the play area at the mall to help wear out his raging toddler energy, I rarely met my goal of completing five articles a month. I did some short online pieces, trying to build a more varied customer base with quicker turnover when it came to getting paid, but for the most part, writing evolved into more of a hobby than a career—something I slipped into the cracks around my real job of being Charlie’s mom.

That first project came and went, and Martin was promoted to a management position and was asked to start speaking at regional technical conferences. He’d let me know maybe a day or two before he had to travel, though there were a couple of times I had no clue he was leaving until he pulled out his suitcase from our closet.

“I’m sorry I forgot to tell you,” he said, blaming his busy schedule for this new habit of forgetfulness. I blamed his new obsession with making more and more money, which demanded he have such a busy schedule. He bought a custom golf club set and almost every week brought home a different useless gadget from the Sharper Image. He filled our garage with elaborate tools he rarely used and upgraded the stereo system in his new car. He brought home gifts for Charlie and me, too, like a set of high-end pots and pans I’d drooled over at Macy’s and a video gaming system Charlie was too young to use. But having these things didn’t make up for having a husband who was rarely home.

I tried to talk with him. I told him I was afraid our marriage was disintegrating. He told me I was imagining things. He said he was only doing what any good father should. He had it set in his mind that how we were living was fine. Nothing I said, no matter how I said it, seemed to get through.

The summer of Charlie’s third birthday, an important deadline approached on a profile piece I was writing about a local Native American artist for Sunset magazine. It was a pretty huge deal for me to land a contract with Sunset, especially at the time, since I hadn’t sold anything for a couple of months. I was anxious to make a great impression and hopefully build a solid relationship with the publication’s managing editor.

I was able to do a lot of my background research online, but needed to visit the artist’s home to conduct the interview. When I called her, I quickly discovered she was a grandmother and she was nice enough to encourage me to bring Charlie along. Finding a time that worked for her was a challenge, and as it turned out, our meeting ended up being scheduled precariously close to the day the finished article was due. The day before I was supposed to make the trip to La Conner, a quaint town about an hour north of Seattle where the artist lived, Charlie spiked a temperature of one hundred and three. I took him to the doctor.

“Is he okay?” I asked. Heavy with worry, the muscles of my face pulled downward. I held Charlie in my lap as the doctor examined him.

“It looks viral,” his pediatrician said. She peeked in Charlie’s ears and up his nose. My son was too exhausted to protest.

“Are you sure? His fever is so high.”

She gave my forearm a reassuring squeeze. “As long as he’s fussing and giving you a hard time, I wouldn’t worry. If his fever hits one-oh-four or he gets too listless and unresponsive, I want you to take him to the ER.”

Panic swelled in my chest. “What’s ‘too listless’?”

“Not eating, not drinking, not crying, not responding when you say his name.” She squeezed my arm again. “It’s only a cold, Cadence. We’ll keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t turn into an ear or sinus infection, but it’s nothing serious. Just keep him hydrated and as cool and comfortable as possible over the next few days.”

As usual, Martin was late that night getting home from the office, and even after I’d called his cell phone twice and left messages asking him to pick up Charlie’s cough medicine at the pharmacy, he’d forgotten.

“I have to go do my interview tomorrow,” I told him. I stood in the living room, holding my son, swaying back and forth. If I set him down, he cried. If I put him in a lukewarm bath, he screamed. My arms were the only place he was calm. “Can you stay home with Charlie?”

“I can’t,” Martin said. “I have a huge presentation in front of the executive team. I can’t miss it.”

“And I can’t miss this interview,” I said. “I’m on deadline. I haven’t asked you to skip one day of work since Charlie was born, Martin. Have I?”

“If it were any other day, I’d say yes,” he said, avoiding eye contact and my question. He fiddled with the remote control, trying to figure out how to get the screen off the Rolie Polie Olie DVD I’d put in to entertain Charlie.

“So your job is more important than mine?” Charlie’s skin was sweltering, his breath hot and slow against my neck. I was fairly certain he’d fallen asleep again.

He set the remote down hard on the coffee table and finally looked at me. “My job pays the bills.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” I said, seething. “Because I make less money, my work isn’t as significant as yours?”

He didn’t blink. “You can’t live off what you earn. So yes, in the grand scheme of things, I’d say it’s less significant.”

It was everything I could do not to tell him to fuck off, but I didn’t want to swear in Charlie’s ear and wake him up.

Martin saw the look on my face and held his hands up in front of his chest, palms toward me, in a gesture of mock surrender. “You’re the one who wanted to do the freelance thing, Cadee. You know you don’t have to work.”

“I know I don’t have to. I want to. Is that so hard to understand?”

“It is, actually,” he said. His blue eyes flashed. “From the minute you had Charlie you were adamant about not letting other people raise him. You swore you wouldn’t be like your mom.”

“I’m not like her,” I said, incensed that he would hit so far below the belt.

“I wouldn’t be so sure. At least she had a good reason to be away from you so much. She had bills to pay. You need someone to take care of Charlie tomorrow just so you can go find fulfillment.”

I glared at him, fury rising like a wave inside me. “What I need is for his father to help take care of him when he’s sick.” I adjusted Charlie in my arms and he whined, rubbing his snotty nose against my bare shoulder.

He gave me a glowering look. “I do take care of him. I bust my ass to make enough money so my wife can stay home with him. Like we agreed she would.”

“Don’t talk about me in the third person,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’m not just your wife.”

“No, you’re a mother, too,” he shot back. “Shouldn’t your child be more important than some stupid interview?”

“Shouldn’t your child be more important than some stupid presentation?”

He fell silent after this, visibly fuming to the point that his body shook. I didn’t know how he could discount my work like this. I felt torn enough already, needing to leave Charlie when he was ill. His father was the logical choice to take care of him. I didn’t think it was too much to ask.

After a few minutes of silence, Martin spoke with an exasperated sigh. “Can’t you reschedule your interview?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Can’t you reschedule your presentation?”

Round and round we went. In the end, I gave in and asked Alice to watch Charlie for me, enduring her reproachful stare while I explained why it was so important I make it to the interview. Charlie and I both sobbed when I left him, and while I managed to finish the article, I had a hard time forgiving my husband for the things he’d said.

Still, I told myself, this was a normal way to live—that every family was busy, that most couples struggled with spending enough time together and finding balance between work and family life. All mothers had to make sacrifices. When Jess or my mother asked how we were doing, I smiled brightly and said, “We’re great. Busy, but really great.” I repeated this line enough times in my own mind to believe it was true. But my husband seemed to drift further and further away. Only a temporary side effect of young parenthood, I reasoned. He’d come back around and everything would be fine.

Of course, it wasn’t fine. We fought frequently over his long hours at the office and how much he was missing out on at home. “Charlie doesn’t care about how much money you make,” I told him as gently as I could. “He cares about how often you’re there to tuck him in at night.” Martin loved his son, I knew, but he simply brushed off any input I gave him about how his behavior was affecting us. He, however, felt free to dish out criticism about me. As the months passed, his belittling of my career grew worse.

“It’s not like you’re a hard-hitting journalist,” he said one night after Charlie had gone to bed. We were sitting on opposite ends of the couch, once again discussing my need for more time to work. “You spit out cute little essays about what it’s like being a mother or how to get a job. The world’s not going to end if you don’t write anymore.”

Tears filled my eyes and the air stopped short in my lungs at his words. I had to remind myself to breathe before responding. “I can’t believe you would say something like that to me,” I whispered, my chin trembling.

He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Do you have to take everything so personally? I’m only making an observation.”

It struck me in that moment just how much like his mother he’d become. “Martin, if you think that wasn’t personal, then you’ve got bigger issues than we can deal with on our own.” I swiped my eyes with the bend of my wrist. “I think we need to see a marriage counselor. We need someone to help us learn how to work through this stuff. We keep going round and round on the same issues.”

He gave me a cold stare. “No, you keep going round and round on them. You nitpick everything. If anyone needs a therapist, it’s you.”

Did he really not see we had problems? Could he be that self-absorbed? My eyes went dry and a cold sensation crept into my chest. I suddenly realized that not only was I unsure if I still loved Martin, I was pretty certain that I didn’t like him anymore. I met his stare with one of my own. “Are you saying you won’t even try to fix this with me?”

“There’s nothing for me to fix. I’m being the provider we agreed I would be. You and Charlie want for nothing. If you think we have issues, they’ve got nothing to do with me.”

I did go see a therapist briefly, who agreed that if Martin was unwilling to work on our marriage, it was most likely doomed. I also asked her about Charlie, since I worried about how a divorce might affect him. “Happy kids have happy parents,” she said, peering at me over her bifocals with kind gray eyes. “Witnessing the two of you constantly at each other’s throats could inflict much worse damage on his development.”

Armed with this knowledge, and after a few more months of Martin’s continued denial of our problems, I gathered up the courage to contact a lawyer and tell my husband I wanted a divorce. He was shocked and angry, but surprisingly didn’t put up much of a fight when I asked him to leave. I decided my son and I would be fine. My mother had been a single parent. So had Alice. I had no doubt I could do it, too. Martin was gone all the time anyway. I’d been on my own all along.

The day Martin moved out for good, he stood in front of me in our living room, bags packed. He searched my eyes with his. The fury in his face was so pronounced it almost looked like he was wearing a mask. He inhaled deeply and released the breath with a hiss, like a punctured tire. My gaze traveled the sharp planes of his cheekbones, the high, smooth forehead, the full curve of his lips. I thought how Mother Nature took the best of both of us and put it all into our son.

He took a step toward me and I immediately stiffened, anticipating his touch. He saw this and stopped just short of me. There was barely an inch between us. I could smell him, the woodsy warmth of his favorite soap, the cinnamon spice of his skin.

“Are you sure?” he whispered.

I nodded, a sharp, quick movement, my lips pressed together in a straight, hard line. A new coldness resided in me after his final refusal to even consider counseling; a chunk of ice moved over my heart and froze any feeling I had left for him. I felt distant, detached. It’s not something I chose, just something that was.

“Okay, then,” he said, turning around to grab the last of his bags. “I guess that’s it.” The door closed behind him and a moment later, though he’d only just left, it was almost as if he’d never lived there at all.