Rosewood Lane (Cedar Cove #2)(64)
Zach didn’t want this separation, but Rosie had taken the choice away from him. His soon-to-be ex-wife was the unreasonable one. He’d been shocked and hurt when she’d had him served with divorce papers. Basically he had twenty-four hours to vacate the family home. He was stunned that she’d resort to seeing an attorney and setting everything in motion. Yes, they’d talked about it, but that had been in the heat of an argument. He certainly hadn’t expected her to kick him out of his own home.
Since she was obviously determined to go through with the divorce, Zach hoped they could at least handle the whole process in a civilized manner. Nothing he said or did would convince Rosie that he wasn’t involved with Janice. He’d given up reasoning with her. If his wife had so little faith in him, he was better off without her.
Finding an apartment within a reasonable distance of the house, however, had proved to be a challenge. Luckily Janice had been able to help him look; otherwise, he wasn’t sure what he would’ve done. Rosie knew his work schedule better than anyone, and he’d hoped she would appreciate that with quarterly taxes due and the rush of year-end figures he needed to complete for his business clients, his free time was limited. In that hope, he’d been mistaken. Rosie didn’t seem to care.
Zach was trying hard to maintain a positive attitude for the sake of his children. His relationship with Allison and Eddie was the most important thing to him. He intended to remain a large part of their lives, no matter what the terms of the divorce.
“Do you have to leave?” Eddie asked, looking forlorn. His son sat on the end of the bed in the master bedroom while Zach packed up his half of the closet.
“For now that would be best.” Zach refused to drag his children into his problems with Rosie. They were innocent. Rosie was the one he blamed. She’d been acting like a jealous shrew for weeks, although he figured that was just a symptom of her insecurity—an insecurity he’d done nothing to cause.
“I want you and Allison to come over to my apartment with me, okay?”
“To stay?”
This was difficult. “Your mother and I need to work that out. Right now I just want you to see where I live.”
“Okay.” Eddie sounded like he was trying not to cry. “Can I come anytime I want?”
“Of course! My apartment is your home, too.”
Eddie shifted on the mattress and sat on his hands. “Do you still love Mom?”
“Of course I do.” Zach set a work shirt on the stack already in the middle of the bed, then sat down beside his son. He placed his arm around Eddie’s shoulders and struggled for the right words. “Sometime two people who love each other can’t agree on certain things anymore. When that happens, it’s better if they live apart.”
Eddie lowered his head. “Mom said the same thing.”
Funny that they could agree on the rationale for divorce more than they could agree on anything to do with their marriage. They hadn’t spoken much in the last few weeks. All communication had been through their attorneys, which was ridiculous as far as Zach was concerned, since he’d continued to live at home.
“Allison says this whole divorce is bogus.”
Zach noted that bogus was currently a favorite word of his daughter’s. He didn’t bother to respond.
“Will you talk to Mom?”
Not if he could avoid it, Zach mused. They no longer argued, and for that he was grateful. If anything, Rosie went out of her way to be polite. It was almost as though they were strangers. His wife, however, had plenty to say to her attorney. His sins were outlined in legal documents that went on for pages. Knowing it would anger him to read anything more than the title page, Zach left everything to his attorney. He’d known Otto Benson for years and had frequently worked with him, and he trusted Otto to represent him fairly.
“You ready to help me load everything into the car?” he asked his son.
“Okay.” Eddie didn’t reveal a lot of enthusiasm. He slid off the edge of the bed and paraded behind Zach with an armload of clothes. Zach arranged the starched dress shirts on the back seat of his car and took the stack Eddie had brought out with him.
“Do you want to see my apartment?” he asked Allison when he returned to the kitchen.
His daughter removed her earphones and turned off the portable CD player. She stared at him a moment as though she hadn’t heard. Finally she muttered, “Are you really going to leave, Dad?”
“I’m afraid so, sweetheart.”
“But you vowed to always love Mom.”
“I know, and this is hard, but you can see that your mother and I do nothing but argue. That’s not good. We’re going through this divorce for you kids, to save you from—”
“You’re doing this for me and Eddie? I don’t think so, Dad. It seems to me you and Mom are doing this for yourselves. Eddie and I just happen to be stuck in the middle, and I hate it. I really, really hate it.” She was shouting by the time she finished. Before Zach could reply, Allison slipped the headphones back over her ears, blocking him out.
Zach saw the tears in his daughter’s eyes and they twisted his gut. He wanted to tell her that the difficulties between him and Rosie had nothing to do with her or Eddie. This wasn’t their fault.
Maybe he and Rosie had outgrown each other. That was something he’d read in an article on marriage breakdown that Janice had given him. She’d photocopied it from some women’s magazine. Maybe he and Rosie had stopped having anything, other than the kids and the house, in common, as the article suggested. Perhaps because he made a good living and they were now financially comfortable they’d lost that sense of being partners, facing the world together, creating dreams together. Lately their marriage had been filled with bitterness and resentment. All they did was make each other miserable, and that was no way to live and certainly not a healthy environment in which to raise their children.