Ink and Bone(10)

“Where did you hear about this place?” Merri had asked.

“You know,” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t even remember. An article in the Times maybe? One of those 36 Hours pieces?”

“Such a weird name for a town, isn’t it?”

“I like it,” he said. “It’s a little creepy-cool.”

“Must be pretty in the fall,” she’d mused.

Then they’d driven up to the place he’d rented on the lake. She had to admit when they got there that he’d been right; it was idyllic. She immediately felt lighter, more relaxed than she had been in a long while. A beautiful log cabin sat nestled among tall oak and pine trees. A wide blue lake glittered at the end of a long dock.

“Wow!” said Jackson, looking up from his iPad (for the first time in three years). As soon as the car came to a stop, Jackson burst out and made a beeline for the tire swing. Abbey hung back with Merri, always the cautious one, the careful one (at first). She clung to Merri’s hips.

“I saw a wasp,” she said.

“It’s okay,” said Merri, pulling her close. “It’s pretty here. We’re going to have fun.”

Wolf spun around, arms open. “So? Did Daddy do good?”

That he was energized by natural places was one of the things she first loved about him. She used to say that Wolf, in the beginning, before the kids, brought her out of the controlled climates and sanitized and quiet environments she preferred and into the air. And he would say that she’d taught him it was okay to have his feet on the ground sometimes. He was the writer; she was the editor. He was the one repelling into the ravine; she was the one making sure the rope was secure. They were proud of how they’d balanced each other, yin and yang. She was disappointed at the cliché they became later, how the things she’d loved at first grew to infuriate her. And visa versa. More than anything else, resentment was the death of love. It killed slowly.

“You did good, Daddy,” Merri conceded. You did well, she said inside. If she’d corrected him out loud, the smile he wore would have faded. He hated when she did that, when she acted the “grammar Nazi.” But language was a precision instrument. Used imprecisely it could level all kinds of damage.

“I know, I know,” he said. His smile faded anyway. “I did well.”

“I didn’t say anything,” she said too quickly.

But they were at that point, even then. The grooves of anger and resentment were dug so deep, words weren’t even necessary to start an argument. Just a glance could do it. Even things unsaid were as loud as a shout.

“Jackson,” she called. “Be careful.”

The swing chain, rusty where it wrapped around the branch, was wearing a deep gash in the wood. It looked as though it could break apart at any moment.

“He’s fine,” said Wolf. Just the shade of annoyance, nothing more, but it evoked all the criticisms he leveled at her. She was too protective, hovering, coddling. You’re turning him into a *, he’d spat at her during one argument. Which managed to be vulgar and misogynistic and unfair to both her and Jackson all at once. He’d apologized for saying it, but she hadn’t forgotten it. Because, according to Wolf, she never forgot anything, and she never forgave.

The house was beautiful, too. A log cabin, with big plush furniture, a fireplace and chef’s kitchen, a sleeping loft for the kids, a beautiful master bedroom for them, with a hot tub outside sliding doors, looking out onto a mountain vista beyond the lake. They swam all afternoon. Jackson and Wolf tried fishing but didn’t catch anything. They’d bought groceries in town, grilled burgers that night.

After the kids fell into an exhausted sleep, Merri and Wolf made love in the big king bed. And it was still there, all the heat they’d had the first time. She loved the look of him, his lean body, his wild tangle of dark curls, the curve of the strong but not huge muscles on his arms. The caramel color of his skin, the stubble on his jaw. Her body always responded to his; he could always make her his. They’d made promises for this trip. They both had skins they wanted to shed and things they wanted to give up. They’d each made big mistakes, done damage to themselves, to each other, to their marriage. But the love was there, something deep and true between them. It was enough to get them through the mire of their problems. Merri believed that then.

She fell asleep that night thinking how funny it was that in a bad (was it bad?) marriage, vitriol and intimacy lay side by side like the stripes on a tiger. As the stripes on a tiger. Maybe, she thought, there was still hope for them. They’d come through their struggles, stronger and better than they were before. She’d actually thought that back then.

That night seemed like a lifetime ago, though it hadn’t even been a year. The navigation computer told her to turn left now and she did so.

“Your destination is on the right in one-tenth of a mile.”

She drifted down the pretty block until she saw the address on a mailbox up ahead. She slowed in front of a gorgeous Victorian house that sat beneath the shade of a big oak tree. Leaves drifted onto the hood of her car in the wind. The day was overcast, neither sunny nor especially gray. She crept closer, heart thumping. This was it; she knew this. It was her last chance. Far worse than that, it was Abbey’s. Desperation clawed at her insides; she was bleeding from it.

It might be time to let go, her shrink had advised.