Unbreakable (Cloverleigh Farms, #4)(18)

Intrigued, I tilted my head. “What made you change your mind about medical school?”

“I took a viticulture class at Cornell and fell in love with it, much to my mother’s dismay. I think she’d quite looked forward to bragging about her doctor son.”

I grinned. “Any regrets?”

“None. What I do still involves a lot of science, and I much prefer wine to people. Well, most people.”

“Me too. Sometimes I wonder if I was more tolerant of jerks when I was younger, or if there are simply more jerks around now.” I sighed. “Or maybe I just attract them.”

Henry smiled kindly. “I don’t know about that.”

“I’m telling you, Henry, I can’t name one single person in my life—that I’m not related to—who supported me like I’d have supported a friend in my situation. And I trusted them. I thought they cared about me. I must be the world’s worst judge of character.” I shook my head. “Well, duh. Look who I married.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Henry said quietly, the logs on the fire snapping softly. “You see the good in people. That’s a nice quality.”

“I guess. I feel so stupid, though.” I set my mug on the end table and wrapped my arms around my knees. “Everyone knew Brett was cheating on me—even I knew it. But we all pretended we didn’t.”

“Why?”

“My so-called friends claim they didn’t want to upset me. And why did I pretend?” I felt my throat catch and hoped I wouldn’t embarrass myself by crying in front of Henry. I didn’t even know why I was telling him this stuff, but something about the warmth of the fire, the late hour, and the silent house seemed to invite confession. “I guess I was scared. I didn’t want him to leave me. I didn’t want to be single with two kids at thirty-seven. I didn’t want my kids to grow up in a broken home. So I pretended to be happy.”

“That had to be really hard.”

“It was.” I hesitated before asking the next question, but some gut instinct told me to ask it. Maybe he wanted to confess too. “Did you pretend to be happy?”

Henry stared into his cup without saying anything. For a second, I was scared my gut had been off and it was too personal a question for him to answer. He’d told me last night he was a private person, hadn’t he?

I backtracked. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry into—”

“I’m not good at pretending,” he said, interrupting me. “With me, what you see is what you get, and I won’t lie. Maybe that was my problem.”

I rested my chin on my knees. “How so?”

He tilted his coffee this way and that. “We couldn’t have kids, and she wouldn’t adopt. I wasn’t going to tell her that was okay with me. I was angry at her for that. I wanted a family. We argued, and I’m sure I said things I shouldn’t have.”

“I’m sorry.” I thought about telling him I understood because I’d faced infertility too, but decided against it. This wasn’t about me.

He shrugged. “There were other issues too.”

“Of course. Any marriage has its problems.”

“But not being able to have kids really changed us, and it fractured the relationship beyond repair.”

“Did you try counseling?” I asked.

He nodded slowly. “We did. But I think it was too late by then.”

“Brett refused to try counseling, although I’m not sure it would have helped us either. His girlfriend was already pregnant—not that I knew it then.”

Henry’s jaw dropped, then he pressed his lips together and shook his head. “You deserve a lot better, Sylvia.”

We were both silent for a moment.

“How long were you married?” I asked.

“Ten years.”

“Do you miss her?”

Exhaling, he sat back, staring into the fireplace. “I don’t know. I don’t miss the fights or the tension. I guess I miss some things about being married, but I sure as hell wouldn’t go back to the marriage I had, not the one I had in the end, anyway.”

“Same,” I said. “There are things I miss too, but I don’t miss him. It’s more like I miss the life I thought I had, if that makes any sense. Or the life I thought I would have. But can you miss something you never had in the first place?”

“I think you can.” He looked down at his coffee again. “I know I do.”

My throat tightened up. What was the right thing to say here? I didn’t like it when people said, Oh, you’re still young and beautiful, you’ll meet someone else, because to me it was dismissive and insensitive, so I didn’t want to say it to Henry. But I didn’t want him to give up on his dreams of fatherhood either. He’d be such a great dad. “Have you thought about adopting a child on your own?”

“No. I don’t even know if a single man can adopt, and I don’t really want to be a single parent anyway.” He looked up, his expression contrite. “Sorry—I know you’re in that position right now.”

“Not by choice, believe me. So I understand.” I took a breath. “Sometimes I want to kick myself for feeling so complacent. I thought I had everything figured out, you know? I mean, by the time you get to this age, aren’t you supposed to? And now . . . here I am starting over again.”