Ink and Bone(75)

He’d texted Kristi while Merri was getting the kids some ice cream or something.

I’m dying up here without you.

Usually she texted him back instantaneously, as if she were always just waiting for him to reach out to her. This time she made him twist. She didn’t respond for more than an hour. Finally:

who told u to go?

I’m sorry. I miss you.

Kristi had, just a few days earlier, delivered an ultimatum (which was one of the real reasons he was trying to get away from her): tell Merri, or she was going to break it off. End his marriage? Destroy his kids’ lives? For a girl like Kristi? Not going to happen.

So he’d started distancing himself. Before her there had been flings, one-night stands, nothing lasting, nothing emotional. He’d expected her, like the others, to recede from the stage at his cue. But Kristi wasn’t having it. Lately, she’d been texting and calling, once even dared to ring the landline.

Someone named Kristi Blaire? Merri had called that night, reading from the caller ID but not answering. She’s one of your press contacts, right? Merri was the least jealous, least suspicious woman he’d ever met. It was one of the reasons he’d married her. Anyway, the night of that call was when he decided they needed to get away. But up in The Hollows, fully immersed in “family time,” he found that he missed Kristi.

With the kids finally zoning out in front of the television and Merri taking a shower, Wolf called her from the porch.

“I don’t want to be without you,” he’d whispered, listening to the water run in the bathroom.

He’d meant it in that moment. But what was it that he thought he couldn’t live without? It wasn’t about her, not at all. It was about how she made him feel about himself. She wanted him, needed him, admired him. She asked his advice, lapped up his compliments like cream from a bowl. She soothed him when he was angry. There was an expression Merri wore, a kind of tired scowl of disapproval that he’d never seen her direct at anyone else but him. When Kristi looked at him, it was the shiny look of love.

“Maybe this would be a good weekend to tell her,” said Kristi. “I could come up tomorrow. After the kids are asleep.”

It wouldn’t come as any surprise, would it? Merri must know the marriage was over. With the kids asleep in the loft, there would be little opportunity for drama. He’d leave with Kristi, and Merri could bring the kids home the next day. The details would be worked out later. Looking back now, he saw how insane it was, how depraved and utterly narcissistic. But that evening, he was an animal in a trap. Chewing off his arm seemed like a viable alternative. That was the problem, he reasoned. He was a wolf, a ranger, being asked to live the life of a Labradoodle. Domesticity was against his nature. Kristi, unlike Merri and the kids, wanted him to be himself.

They made a plan. He’d tell her after the kids went to sleep the next night. Kristi would drive up to get him, and they’d go back to her place.

“I love you, Wolf,” she said through tears. “I’m going to make you so happy.”

“I love you, too,” he said. But the words felt big and fake in his mouth. He hung up, and Merri was behind him.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“My mom,” he said easily, turning around to meet her embrace.

“The kids are asleep,” she said. “Crashed out in front of the television.”

He smiled. “That’s an argument for letting them have televisions in their bedrooms at home.”

She laughed. The nighttime routine of stories and putting the kids to bed had been the same since Jackson was born, hours of reading, and cajoling, and can I have some water, I need to use the bathroom, promises, threats, and finally silence.

“This was right,” she said. The moon was high and the night was clear, the sky riven with so many stars. “It’s beautiful here and so peaceful. This is just what we needed. Thank you for planning it.”

And just like that, he was back in her thrall. Maybe it was their shared laughter, or her relaxed look of happiness, or just the reality of the call he made and how it would shatter all the years they had together. Whatever it was, he felt that unmistakable tug he always felt to her, even when he didn’t notice it. Merri was a force, a planet with her own gravitational pull. He was her moon and had been since the night he met her. No one and nothing had ever thrilled him, excited him, challenged him, forced him to be a better man than Merri had.

When they were sure the kids were well and truly asleep, they made love that night, and it was everything it had ever been and more. The porn he had with Kristi was theater. He knew she faked it 75 percent of the time. Merri was incapable of faking anything; she was the real deal. They shed it all that night—all the domestic cobwebs, all the million tiny arguments over nothing, all the boredom and the drudgery of running a life. Flesh on flesh, heart to heart. It was still there, that electricity of the first time, grounded in a life built together. How could he have imagined giving that up?

“We can do better than we’ve been doing,” Merri said that night as she drifted off. “I can do better for us.”

“Me, too,” he whispered. And he meant it. “God. Me, too.”

He called Kristi as soon as he was out with the kids on the hike.

“It’s not going to work,” he said. “Not here.”

The silence on the other end of the phone was leaden with her anger and disappointment. Jackson and Abbey were lingering; he waved them up ahead. They both gave him a look, suspiciously confused. They knew he was doing something wrong, but they couldn’t fathom what. What had he been thinking? How could he ever dream of leaving them? It was a midlife crisis, wasn’t it? A sad cliché? That’s what he’d become, the man who couldn’t manage the mundane day-to-day of his life. Cage dive to see the great whites on the Barrier Reef in Australia, trek to see the mountain gorillas in Rwanda, zip line in Costa Rica—all totally doable. Fill out Valentine’s Day cards with his daughter, work with Jackson on his fractions for the millionth time, run out to the store at 9:00 p.m. because there’s no milk for the morning—utterly terrifying. Terrifying to think that really Merri was right: those things were the stuff of real life. Little more.