The Ranch

“To New York?” She couldn't imagine her living in California. Tanya was her only friend there, and everything about her was so Eastern. It would have been a brave decision, but Mary Stuart shook her head at the question. Her answer shocked Tanya still further.

“No, to Bill. I don't know. Something happened when he left. It's as though he thinks he can do whatever he likes now. He has the option to do what he wants, to go to London for two months alone, even though I could have been there. The firm would even have paid for it, but he didn't want me. And yet I'm expected to be there for him, to run his home, to take his messages, to cook his dinner. But he no longer has to speak to me, or care for me, or take me anywhere. He's silently blaming me for killing Todd, or at least not stopping him from what he did. But Bill no longer acts married to me now. That's my punishment. I'm married, and he's not. Like a sentence in purgatory, and I've been letting him punish me because I felt so guilty. But a funny thing happened when I put Todd's things away, it freed me. I feel sad, I feel loss, I still feel terrible grief sometimes.” She had cried for him again the night before she left, and for her marriage as well. She had sensed before she left that she might never come back in quite the same way to their apartment. “But I don't feel as guilty. It wasn't my fault. It was terrible. But it was something Todd did. And no matter how terrible it was, or how foolish, even though I'm his mother, I couldn't have stopped him.”

“Do you really believe that?” Tanya asked, looking relieved. It was exactly what she had tried to tell her, but Mary Stuart hadn't been ready to hear it. Or maybe Tanya had started the process for her. She hoped so, as she listened.

“I believe it now,” Mary Stuart said quietly. “But I don't think Bill does. I think he's going to go on punishing me forever.” And then she looked out the window as they drove out of Los Angeles County, thinking of her husband. “We're not married to each other anymore, Tan. It's all over. I don't think he'd admit it if I asked him. But there's nothing left, and I think he knows it too. If there were, I'd be in London with him.”

“Maybe he just can't face you yet,” Tanya tried to say fairly, but she suspected Mary Stuart was right. What she had told her in New York had been a nightmare. The silence, the loneliness, the agony of his rejection. And even to Tanya the fact that he didn't want her in London with him told its own story.

“I don't think there's anything to go back to. It took me a long time to face that. I think it was especially hard for me because I used to think we had such a great marriage. More than twenty years isn't bad. And it was so good when it was good,” Mary Stuart said sadly. “I always thought we were so close and so happy. It seems amazing that a blow like that could end it all. You would think it would bring us closer.”

“I don't think it works like that,” Tanya said honestly. “Most marriages don't survive the death of children. People blame each other, or they just wither up inside. I don't know, but I've read a lot about it. I don't think what happened is surprising.”

“It's as if all those years before don't count at all. I thought it was like money in the bank, you store it up so that when you really need it you have it, and then when the roof fell in I found out our piggy bank was empty.” She smiled wistfully, but she had begun to make her peace with it, oddly enough only in the past few weeks. And she'd had a lot of time to think once he left for London. “I just don't think I could go back to what it was like last year, and I don't think we could ever fix it.”

“Would you try if he asked you to?” Tanya was curious. Like Mary Stuart, she had always thought they had a great marriage.

“I'm not sure,” Mary Stuart said cautiously. “I just don't know now. What we went through was so painful that I don't want to go back, I just want to go forward.” Tanya and she sat silently for a few minutes as they headed into the San Bernardino Mountains, and then Mary Stuart asked her a question. They were both stretched out on the couches by then, and Tanya had taken her hat and boots off. It was a great way to travel. “What's happening with Tony?”

“Not much. He called an attorney. Mine is taking care of it for me. It's all pretty predictable and relatively nasty. He wants the house in Malibu, and I won't give it to him. I bought it and put most of the money into it, and in the end I'll have to give him a bunch of money to keep it. And some other stuff. He took the Rolls, and he wants alimony and a settlement, and he'll probably get it. He says that my lifestyle caused him pain and suffering and he wants to get paid for it.” She shrugged, but it made Mary Stuart livid.