Nights in Rodanthe - Nicholas Sparks [14]
It was around that time that she saw Jack having lunch with Linda Gaston. Linda, she knew, worked with Jack’s firm at their branch office in Greensboro. Though she specialized in estate law while Jack worked in general litigation, Adrienne knew their cases sometimes overlapped and required a collaboration, so it didn’t surprise her to see them dining with each other. Adrienne even smiled at them through the window. Though Linda wasn’t a close friend, she’d been a guest in their home numerous times; they’d always gotten along well, despite the fact that Linda was ten years younger and single. It was only when she went inside the restaurant that she noticed the tender way they were looking at each other. And she knew with certainty they were holding hands under the table.
For a long moment, Adrienne stood frozen in place, but instead of confronting them, she turned around and headed out before they had a chance to see her.
In denial, she cooked Jack’s favorite meal that night and mentioned nothing about what she’d seen. She pretended it hadn’t happened, and in time, she was able to convince herself that she’d been mistaken about what was going on between them. Maybe Linda was going through a hard time and he was comforting her. Jack was like that. Or maybe, she thought, it was a fleeting fantasy that neither of them had acted on, a romance of the mind and nothing else.
But it wasn’t. Their marriage began spiraling downward, and within a few months, Jack asked for a divorce. He was in love with Linda, he said. He hadn’t meant for it to happen, and he hoped she would understand. She didn’t and said so, but when she was forty-two, Jack moved out.
Now, over three years later, Jack had moved on, but Adrienne found it impossible to do. Though they had joint custody, it was joint in name only. Jack lived in Greensboro, and the three-hour drive was just long enough to keep the kids with her most of the time. Mostly she was thankful for that, but the pressures of raising them on her own tested her limits daily. At night, she often collapsed in bed but found it impossible to sleep because she couldn’t stop the questions that rolled through her mind. And though she never told anyone, she sometimes imagined what she would say if Jack showed up at the door and asked her to take him back, knowing that deep down, she would probably say yes.
She hated herself for that, but what could she do?
She didn’t want this life; she’d neither asked for it nor expected it. Nor, she thought, did she deserve it. She’d played by the book, she’d followed the rules. For eighteen years, she’d been faithful. She’d overlooked those times when he drank too much, she brought him coffee when he had to work late, and she never said a word when he went golfing on the weekends instead of spending time with the kids.
Was it just the sex he was after? Sure, Linda was both younger and prettier, but was it really that important to him that he’d throw away everything else in his life? Didn’t the kids mean anything? Didn’t she? Didn’t the eighteen years together? And anyway, it wasn’t as if she’d lost interest—in the last couple of years whenever they’d made love, she’d been the one to initiate it. If the urge was so strong, why hadn’t he done something about it?
Or was it, she wondered, that he found her boring? Granted, because they’d been married so long, there weren’t a lot of new stories to tell. Over the years, most had been recycled in slightly different versions, and both had reached the point where they knew the endings in advance, after only a few words. Instead, they did what she thought most couples did: She’d ask how work had gone, he’d ask about the kids, and they’d talk about the latest antics of one family member or another or what was happening around town. There were times that even she wished there were something more interesting to talk about, but didn’t he understand that in a few years the same thing was going to happen with Linda?
It wasn’t fair. Even her friends had said as much, and she assumed that