A Marriage Worth Fighting For. Lilian Darcy

going to end with an arid little note from Alicia and divorce lawyers blazing their legal guns at fifty paces. He needed to confront her face-to-face, find out what was behind this, make her see.

      See what?

      His gut churned as he gunned the car in Reverse and squealed the tires on the echoing concrete.

      See that this was impossible. Wrong. Just … impossible.

      He seemed to have no other words for it than those two. Impossible and wrong. After almost five hours driving, with clenched hands aching on the wheel and jaw wired tight, he pulled into one of the twin driveways of his brother Andy’s elegant and cleverly subdivided Victorian house in Radford, Vermont, with no more idea of what he wanted to say to his wife than he’d had when he started.

      The hammering on the door wrenched Alicia out of her restless, unhappy sleep. For about ten seconds, her heart thumped so hard in her chest that it interfered with her breathing and her skin prickled and stung with fear, but then she knew what was happening.

      MJ.

      Of course.

      Why hadn’t she thought that he would race up here for a confrontation the moment he read her note? He had a highly developed need to win in any situation he encountered, and the prospect of a divorce was no exception.

      She looked at the clock. Five minutes to midnight. It seemed appropriate. He must have gotten home from the hospital early tonight. Either that or he’d driven up here way too fast.

      Probably both.

      She felt sick at the thought of the imminent clash between them, and was only glad that Andy and Claudia were in New York City for a few days and weren’t around to hear anything through the walls.

      She had called them to ask if she and the children could use the rental apartment, “just to get away for a short break and see the fall colors,” and they’d said of course she could, given her some practical instructions and told her where she could find the key. She dreaded their return four days from now, when she would have to tell them the truth.

      She dreaded the next few minutes far more.

      MJ hammered at the door again. Much more of it and he would wake the children, and that was the last thing she wanted. She rolled out of bed, grabbed a robe from where she’d left it on a chair in the corner of the room and hurried down, her bare feet chilling quickly on the wooden stairs and her whole body aching with reluctance and dread.

      She snatched the door open just as he was about to batter his fist against it once more, so she caught him with it raised in the air, then saw the strong surgeon’s fingers slowly uncurl and drop back to his side.

      He hadn’t showered or changed after his day’s work. He was still wearing the dark suit pants and one of the crisp white business shirts he favored whenever he wasn’t wearing scrubs. There was a bright moon in the sky and it picked out the white of the shirt and made it glow against the darker matte of his skin.

      He’d taken off his tie and opened the shirt at the top for comfort, and his hair was windblown from driving with the car window cracked open. He liked to drive that way in all weather except the dead of winter, said it was bracing. His shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbow and the shirttail had come untucked at one side, so for once—unusually—there was something rakish about him.

      His breathing was heavier than usual and ragged at the edges. His high, square brow was pleated in a tight frown, and there was an odd, numb look to his mouth, even in the low light spilling onto his face from inside the house.

      He looked a mess.

      He opened his mouth to speak, but then nothing came out and Alicia didn’t have the words for this situation, either, so they just stared at each other, helpless and hostile and so painfully far apart.

      In the end, they both spoke in the same moment.

      “I’m not inviting you in.”

      “You can’t do this, Alicia.”

      They went silent again. Despite what she’d just said, she almost moved aside to let him across the threshold. The patterns of seven years were hard to kick. She expected him to force the issue, simply barge past her with or without her consent, but he didn’t.

      He actually stepped back, spread his hands a little and conceded her victory. “All right, if you don’t want me in the house, then that’s your right and your choice.”

      “Thank you. Yes.”

      “But I hate that you’re doing this. That you left a note.”

      “You wanted us to talk about it in front of Abby and Tyler?”

      “You’ve taken them from their home.”

      “I— What was the alternative?”

      “Kick me out,” he said, harsh and bitter. “That’s what Anna did to James.”

      It shocked her that he could make this reference. Anna and James had been part of their wider circle of friends until they’d divorced, after one of the most poisonous marriages Alicia had ever seen. They were still fighting mercilessly over custody of their five-year-old daughter, who was caught in the cross fire and would bear the scars.

      Before Alicia could find words to protest any comparison with such a couple, MJ asked her, “Does Andy know why you’re here?”

      “No, not yet. He’ll have to, of course, and Claudia, and everyone else.”

      “If you go through with the whole stupid—” he began, but he must have seen something in her face. Whatever this was on her part, it wasn’t stupid. He didn’t finish. He just stood there, a look of loss and uncertainty carved painfully deep into his even, good-looking features. When had she ever seen MJ look like that?

      “I’d better go to a motel,” he said.

      “Why?”

      “Because I’m not sleeping on my brother’s front lawn. If you want me to make an appointment to talk to you in the morning, Alicia, I’ll do that. Just tell me where and what time. But I’m not going back to the city until we have talked, and I think you owe me that, at least. When I saw your note—” He swallowed hard, lifted his clenched hand to his throat for a moment and didn’t finish.

      She saw goose bumps on his forearms. Vermont nights were getting chilly at this time of year and he wasn’t dressed for it. Neither was she, with her feet bare on the hardwood of the front hall.

      The idea of an “appointment” in the morning seemed worse than having him here right now. She knew she wouldn’t sleep all night, and the prospect of facing down her husband at some kind of formal meeting across a café table—but who would look after the children?—made her stomach drop.

      “No,” she said. “Let’s talk now.”

      “Here?” He gestured at the front porch and the yard and almost seemed willing, despite the chill and dark.

      This time, she did step back. “Inside, of course.”

      He came across the porch and through the door, and his shirtsleeve would have brushed the front of her robe if she hadn’t leaned a crucial inch closer to the hallway wall. “Where’s Maura? I don’t want her—”

      “She left.”

      “Left?”

      “Quit. She didn’t want to be in Vermont. Too rural. I gave her money for a cab and a bus ticket back to the city. You probably crossed paths with her somewhere near Albany.”

      She closed the heavy wooden door and followed him toward the front living room, but he turned suddenly while they were still in the hall and pulled her into his arms, with a disturbing mix of authority and hesitation. “Don’t—don’t do this.”

      “What?”

      His muscles were hard around her, all knotted