Marriage Seasons 01 - It Happens Every Spring (9 page)

Brenda sat cross-legged on the floor of the basement and looked
around her as the cat curled up in her lap. It might be okay. Fixing
up this room-banishing memories and starting afresh-could be
the start of those dreams she had envisioned would fill her empty
nest. Discouragement and confusion had waylaid her in the fall,
but it was almost spring now, and maybe this remodeling project
was the answer to her prayers. For weeks, maybe even months, she
had been asking God to give her some kind of direction in life.

Brenda missed the kids so much. She had taken great satisfaction in guiding them from infancy to adulthood. Ballet, cheerleading, soccer, football, school plays, the church youth groupBrenda had participated in everything that had interested her children. She had worked on homecoming floats, sewed costumes,
dried tears, bandaged cuts, baked well over fifty birthday cakes,
and endured endless sleepovers. If not driving the kids from one
event to another, she had stayed busy behind the scenes or cheering from the sidelines. After they left last fall-the last of them off
to college at last-she had hardly been able to go down into the
quiet, echoing basement.

But as desperately as she missed the kids, as much as she grieved
over her quiet, empty house, she knew she could have borne it if
only Steve were here to go through the transition with her. Surely
he must miss their children too. And yet just when Brenda needed him the most, just when she thought they could rediscover who
they were as husband and wife, Steve had deserted her too.

Ever since he bought the new office building and hired a staff,
her husband had turned into a walking zombie. Wearing a blank
expression, he left the house every morning just after seven. Pale,
frowning, tense all the time, he usually appeared at some late hour
of the evening. He rarely called home and then it was to ask if
Brenda had heard from the kids or to tell her he would be late
again. If she didn't know how focused he was on his work, she
might have thought her husband was having an affair.

Then Cody had magically appeared at the house, and somehow
he began to fill the hole in her heart. Since he had fled, she worried
about him constantly, but no one in Deepwater Cove had seen him
again. With her children and Cody gone, what did Brenda have
left? Who was she?

And then today, Nick LeClair had showed up. With his cheerful
smile and warm blue eyes, Brenda liked the man immediately. It
was one thing to build houses based on an architect's plan. Or to
sell houses that someone else had built, as Steve did. But Nick had
vision. He could see past the sagging sectional sofa, the popcornembedded area rug, the TV set, the shelves lined with sports
trophies, the bulletin boards covered with blue ribbons and prom
photographs. And what he saw was Brenda.

Why couldn't Steve be that way? They'd been married forever,
yet he treated her as though she didn't exist. Even tonight, when
he'd come home early for once, all he could think about was racing
to the lake to fish. Brenda had considered strolling down to the
dock and sitting with him, but she decided against it. Why should
she give up time to be with him when he couldn't bother to spend
even five minutes with her? He treated her like an old dishcloth,
used up and dirty and fit for nothing. He never asked about her day
or bothered to find out how she was feeling. Her hopes of the two
of them going out to dinner, seeing movies, and boating together had come to naught. In fact, she couldn't remember the last time
the two of them had spent any special time together.

"Brenda?"

His voice carried down the stairs into the basement. She glanced
at the sliding glass door, remembering the night Cody had stood
out there and thinking of the way he had run screaming into the
woods. The sound of Steve's shoes on the steps made her want to
do the same thing. Run. Just run.

He held a stringer of crappie in one hand as he stepped into the
basement. Holding it up, he gave her a warm smile. "Six! Big ones
too. Charlie was right-fishing's great."

"I don't know when you think we'll ever eat those," she said,
instantly regretting the harsh tone in her voice. But she couldn't
keep back the words. "I guess you'll expect me to fry them up some
weekend when Justin and Jessica come home."

His smile faded. "We could eat them. You and I."

"When? You're never home." She stood and brushed the dust off
her black slacks. "Maybe you should give them to Charlie Moore.
He and Esther eat a lot of fish. I'm sure they'd appreciate it."

Steve looked at his stringer. Brenda knew he had come home
feeling like the hunter in from the range, the warrior back from the
battlefield. Usually he cleaned the fish before he returned to the
house, but tonight he had brought his catch to show off. His trophy. She was supposed to ooh and ahh over the stringer of dead fish
as though he'd just rescued his family from the brink of starvation.

"I'll come home early tomorrow."

"No, you won't. You already have a dinner scheduled, remember? Ashley Hanes told me you keep a table reserved at the country
club six nights a week, and you only cancel it once or twice a
month."

"Ashley? The redhead?"

"Brad Hanes's wife, yes. Jessica's friend. They live directly across
the cove from us on Shadyside Lane, in case you've forgotten. You
sold them their first house."

"I know who they are. I've seen Ashley at the country club. She's
a waitress in the evenings. Red hair."

"Yes, red hair! It's obvious you've spent more time looking at
her lately than you've spent with me." For some reason it infuriated Brenda that her husband had noticed a waitress's hair.

Steve took a step toward her. "Why would you say such a thing,
Brenda? You know I love you."

"How am I supposed to know that? Because you bring in all this
money? Because you go to church with me on Sundays?"

"Church hardly makes a difference in our marriage these days.
You sit through Sunday school with your mouth practically sewn
shut. Don't you have any ideas or opinions?"

"Of course I do. You know my faith is important to me. I've
always been loyal to God, and I've tried to follow the Bible's teachings. But what's the point in commenting on something I've heard
a thousand times? All they do in church is play the same tape over
and over. I could recite that stuff by heart."

"If you had a heart," he snapped back. "You're as cold as ice
toward me, Brenda. Why are you treating me this way? How can
you think I don't love you? I'm your husband. We had three children together."

"The kids! Having babies together is supposed to show that you
love me? I had your babies a long time ago, Steve. If you think I'm
supposed to count on that ... when they're not even around ...
and don't call ..." She suddenly fought tears.

Steve reached out to her. "Honey, is that what's wrong? You're
missing the kids?"

"Don't touch me!" she shouted, backing away. "You have no
idea who I am or what I need. You know nothing about me, so
don't claim you love me!"

"But I do love you, sweetheart." He crossed his arms over his
chest and stared at her. "Maybe you stopped loving me. Ever consider that? You wouldn't touch me with a ten-foot pole. You never
let me kiss you anymore. And forget about bed!"

"Bed! I've served your needs long enough, Steve. I'm not here
just to indulge your every whim." She took a step toward the staircase. "You're selfish-that's what you are. The whole world
revolves around you, and you wouldn't need me at all if it wasn't
for that bedroom up there."

"But I do need you!" he cried out, moving toward her again. "I
feel like if I could just hold you and touch you, we could overcome
all this frustration inside you."

"Inside me? I don't care if you never touch me again. That won't
resolve the problem."

"Well, what is the problem, for pete's sake?"

"It's you! You and your self-centered focus on selling houses.
You just want to make more money, hire more secretaries and
agents, build a bigger office building, and become the greatest and
most amazingly wonderful real-estate agent at Lake of the Ozarks.
What are you trying to prove?"

She set one foot on the bottom step, and Steve caught her arm.
"The problem is you!" he barked back at her. "You drag around
this house in your bathrobe. You give me the cold shoulder. You
do everything in your power to make me miserable. And I haven't
done a thing but take care of you and the kids better than just
about any husband I know. A lot of good it's done me!"

"Let go of my arm," she snarled.

"You'd better snap out of it, Brenda!" he shouted.

"Snap out of what? You haven't even taken the time to find out
what's going on with me. You want to do your precious real-estate
thing, come back to the house after dark and sleep with me, and
then go out the door at sunrise and chase after more money. And if
you think I'm going to respond to someone who yells at me-"

"Okay, honey, I'm sorry," he said, trying to pull her off the step
toward him. "That was totally wrong of me. I shouldn't have
shouted. It's just that I hate the way things have been going
between us. I'm sorry I've been so focused on my job. I guess I figured you'd be proud of me."

"I am." She kept one hand on the banister as he moved closer to
her. "I'm thrilled that you're doing well. But what about me? What
about us?"

"Well, I'm home tonight. Let's turn the lights out, get into bed,
and see what happens."

"Let me go. I have to spend some time looking over the paint
samples Nick brought with him today."

"Paint? No you don't." He jerked her toward him. "We're married, remember? The least we can do is sleep together."

"Here, sleep with these!" she cried, grabbing the stringer of
crappie and giving a mighty swing. The fish hit Steve's arm with a
resounding smack. He let go of Brenda and stumbled backward.

Bursting into tears, she dropped the fish on the floor and ran up
the stairs.

"Men!" Patsy Pringle said as she clamped a hot curling iron around
a strand of Esther Moore's fine white hair.

"Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em," Esther finished. "I
remember a few times when I thought I'd be happy if I never saw
Charlie again. Now I can't imagine what I'd do without him. It's
not that he changed his ways or that I gave up my dreams. We just
got comfortable with each other. Satisfied, you know?"

"I know I'd be satisfied if Pete Roberts sold every last minnow
and fishing rod out of that store next door and moved away from
Tranquility forever," Patsy said. "He started up a weed whacker the
other day, and I nearly gave Steve Hansen a Mohawk."

Esther chuckled. "I think he messes around with those loud
engines just to get your goat."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Charlie was in Rods-n-Ends the other day to buy some minnows, and he brought up the chain-saw incident to Pete. Charlie
mentioned how your antique teacups fell off the shelf, and Kim's twins started screaming, and Brenda Hansen's hobo ran out of the
salon hollering like he'd seen a ghost. Pete just laughed. Said he
gets a kick out of watching you storm into his store and give him
what for."

Patsy slid the curling iron into its slot and glared at the wall
dividing Just As I Am from Rods-n-Ends. "Pete thinks it's funny to
scare my customers?"

"According to Charlie, it's all about you. Pete likes irritating
you, because then you rush over there and stir things up. He says
he never knows whether you'll be a redhead or a blonde when you
come in. Pete thinks you're as cute as a bug's ear when you get all
riled up."

"Cute?" Patsy snatched the curling iron again and began clipping stray tendrils of Esther's hair onto the heated barrel. As steam
rose from the gelled and sprayed white curls, she fumed. "I am not
cute when I get mad. My cheeks get pink and my nose starts to drip
and my eyebrows take on a life of their own. I don't see why that
man would want to upset me when all I've done is be nice to him
from the moment he moved in next door. I sent him over a mug of
coffee and two doughnuts the day he opened for business the first
time. I even wrote out a little card that said, `Welcome to the Tranquility Strip Mall. May you be blessed with lots of gas and many
bait buyers. Love in Christ, Patsy Pringle.' Now how much friendlier can you get?"

"Ouch!" Esther gasped as the curling iron singed her scalp.

"Oh, I'm sorry, honey." Patsy released the clump of hair and
began fanning Esther's head. "It makes me furious to think that
Pete would set up his machine-repair area right next to my tearoom. After he started up the weed whacker and scared the living
daylights out of me, I had to work nearly half an hour to fix what
I'd done to Steve Hansen's hair. I thought I'd never get both sides
even. I cannot have that kind of racket going on while my ladies are
trying to drink their tea. I was here first, and if that man runs me
out of business, I don't know what I'll do."