This Place of Wonder (60)

The farm and everything related to it, the cookbooks and merchandise and the website with the blog I wrote, the recipes that we generated, overtook Peaches and Pork in the aughts. Augustus was a more famous face, and his food was highly celebrated, but it was the farm side that became most lucrative.

And it was very lucrative. Mostly, I was working so hard I didn’t think about it a lot, but every so often, Augustus and I would sit by the pool with cocktails and ground ourselves in remembering where we’d come from.

Only he knew what that actually was for me. It wasn’t part of my public story in any way. I made sure of that. If you let people into the secrets of your life, the worst of it will always be at the forefront of their minds. I wasn’t about to let that happen to me.

Augustus knew, but I trusted him to keep it to himself.

One hot summer night, I came back from a long trip to Australia, a place we always said we’d visit together. I’d been invited to give a keynote on organic farming and sustainable restaurant practices. Although I’d spoken many places, going somewhere international was a first, and I was deeply excited about it. Augustus couldn’t get away from the restaurant, but I wasn’t about to miss the opportunity, and I went on my own.

I loved every second of it. Loved being by myself on the long flight, staying in a great hotel by myself, and after the conference, I traveled by myself to Uluru and the Great Barrier Reef. Honestly, I loved the freedom to do whatever I liked, never having to check in with anyone. I missed him, of course, but I didn’t call all that often because I was content and whole in myself, something that came to me very last. One night, I sat on a balcony and listened to a wild mass of birds chattering wildly and I did try to call Augustus to share it, but he didn’t answer.

I’d been gone four weeks, and couldn’t wait to kiss him, tell him my stories, share all that I’d seen and learned and thought. We made love until we were sweaty and slippery, and fell back on the bed side by side to let the breezes dry our skin. We’d feasted on lobster risotto that Augustus prepared and bread I baked, and vegetables fresh off the farm. By then, the girls were both grown and gone—Rory married at twenty-three to her high school sweetheart, Nathan, and Maya exploring the world to learn viticulture.

Augustus rubbed his foot over my arch, his fingers tangled in mine. I gazed toward the starry sky, replete with love and happiness and a sense of accomplishment. “Sometimes I can’t believe how lucky we are,” I said. “How lucky I am.”

“You’ve overcome so much,” he said, admiration in his voice.

“Thank you.” I leaned on my arm, touched his belly, growing slightly softer with time. At fifty-eight, his legs and arms were still strong and muscled, but time showed in ways. That soft belly, the skin on his neck, the white lacing through the hair on his chest and beard. I kissed his shoulder, so grateful.

“Christy quite admires you,” he said, “all you survived.”

“Christy?” I echoed, trying to place her.

“The bartender. You’ve met her.”

“Have I?”

“Blonde, a tattoo of a panther on her chest. You commented about it.”

“Ah.” A hush moved through my body. I knew, in that moment, but I didn’t allow that knowledge to surface for months. “What do you mean? What does she think I survived?”

“Just a bad childhood. I didn’t tell her a lot.”

“What’s a lot?”

Only then did he realize how cold and still I’d gone. He turned, pulling me into his body. “Nothing. Really, nothing.” He kissed me.

“Why were you even talking about me?”

In the silence that greeted this question, I had a vision of the two of them in some crappy one-bedroom apartment, naked, sharing pillow talk the way we did right now. My lungs went tight.

He said, “She had a pretty bad time, too. Like you. I thought it might help her to know that you’d also faced something like that.”

“Why did she tell you her story?”

A shrug. “People tell me things. You know that. Hers is one of the worst I’ve heard. Which is why I talked about you.”

I pulled away, sat up. “What did you tell her? How much?”

“Nothing. Nothing much, I swear. Just that you—”

Everything, I realized. “How could you, Augustus? You know how I feel about that.”

“Meadow, love, it’s nothing.” He captured me with his arms and legs, our skin connecting, enlivening. He kissed me. “I’m sorry, Sweet Pumpkin. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

I wanted her gone after that, feeling the existential threat, the dawning recognition that the walls of our fortress had been truly breached. I tried to get her fired but she stayed on.

He was smitten. He didn’t want to give her up, but he didn’t really want to leave me, either. It dragged out for six months, my spinning in a whirling dervish of fury and betrayal, Augustus falling ever more deeply for a woman he could rescue, not the one who’d learned to stand on her own two feet.

He came to me on an October evening and said he wanted a divorce. It astonished me, infuriated me, all the things a scorned lover feels. But it also seemed impossible. We were the match, we were the soul mates—ask anyone. How could I still feel so completely in love and he didn’t feel it at all?