It's Better This Way(62)
“I love you all the more for trying, Julia. In time, I have to believe my sons will come around.”
“Carrie mentioned that you went to dinner with Hillary and Marie?” This was a big encouragement.
“Hillary and I had a couple conversations while I was in the hospital. It was a rough start, but she recognized how important you are to me and was willing to listen. She reminds me a lot of you. She might be stubborn like her father, but she was willing to listen and willing to fill me in on a few details I didn’t know. Your daughters have your back, Julia. Once they understood how precious you are to me, they were both willing to give me the benefit of the doubt.”
The fact that her daughters were supportive of Heath being a part of her life meant the world to Julia.
Heath’s eyes grew sad and weary. “I can only pray that one day Michael and Adam will realize all you mean to me and accept that nothing is ever going to change the way I feel about you.”
Julia bowed her head, fearing that might now be impossible.
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but, Julia, you aren’t one of them.”
“We all made mistakes, Heath, you can’t beat yourself up over the past. We have to let go of the things we cannot change and move forward.”
“I’ve been thinking about when Lee decided she no longer wanted to be married to me.” He paused and looked past her, as if he found it difficult to continue. “I let Lee have her way,” he continued. “We’d grown apart and had different interests. When she decided she wanted to learn to play golf and signed up for lessons with Edward, I didn’t give it a second thought. She wanted me to join her, and I refused. In fact, I encouraged her, so she could go out on the course with her friends. I had no interest in playing myself. She didn’t want to sail with me, so why should I make the effort to take golf lessons with her? How different our lives would be if I’d agreed.”
“Eddie gave lessons to countless women through the years. I don’t see what you did that was so wrong.”
“Don’t you see?” he asked. “I figured, fine, she wanted out, then I wasn’t about to fight her. If we split, I didn’t feel it would have a negative effect on the boys, who were on their own by that time.”
Julia knew what he was saying, as she felt the same thing when it came to Hillary and Marie. Their daughters had been in college, about to start their own lives. While she didn’t want the divorce, and fought to save her marriage, deep down she felt her daughters would adjust without serious emotional consequences. Little did she understand what the divorce would do to their relationship with their father.
“Michael and Adam also, to some extent, needed someone to blame,” Heath continued.
Julia had never thought of it in those terms. She realized Hillary and Marie had probably felt the same way.
“Michael had no idea Lee had sent you those distasteful text messages. If he did, he conveniently forgot about them. All he could see was the loss of his family as he knew it, and he found it easy to blame you for the ones you sent Lee. That gave him all the incentive he needed to focus his anger on you.”
“And Hillary and Marie…” She had never thought of her daughters’ anger toward their father in those terms. It embarrassed her that Heath knew about her part in this fiasco. But still better that he recognized her own role in this mess.
“Yes? What about them?” he prompted, when she didn’t finish.
“They were hurt and angry at their father. He became the focus of their resentment. They saw my pain and were helpless to ease it. Deep down, I think they even might have believed their anger would somehow manipulate him to leave Laura and come back to me. Even as young adults, they wanted their family to remain intact.”
“That sounds logical.”
While Julia had been at the beach, her thoughts had drifted toward Hillary and the wedding. For weeks she’d held on to the hope that their daughter’s marriage would be the bridge to bring her girls and their father back together. She’d done all she could to facilitate that happening, to no avail.
Instead, Hillary’s engagement had lit off a series of pipe bombs. Her ex-husband’s refusal to work toward reconciliation with small steps had led to one emotional explosion after another. Instead of easing them toward forgiveness, his attempts at manipulation had stoked the fires of their discontent and bitterness.
Julia no longer believed Eddie was capable of understanding their daughters’ sense of pain and loss. She didn’t blame him completely, because she hadn’t truly accepted it herself until now, when she could see that their anger was as deep as Michael’s was toward her.
Gently squeezing Heath’s hand, Julia asked, “Do you think there’s any way Michael and Adam will ever accept me?”
Heath shook his head. “I don’t know. I wish I could look into the future and reassure you that sometime down the road our families will come together without all this anger and resentment. Unfortunately, I don’t have a crystal ball.”
“I know.”
“I will tell you that no matter how my children feel, I am not losing you.”
She closed her eyes, letting the love she felt for this man fall over her like a protective shield.
“Please tell me that while you were at the ocean, thinking over everything, you reached the same conclusion, because, Julia, I’m telling you right now, I will fight for you. When my marriage fell apart, I let it, but I won’t make that mistake with us.”