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I couldn't stand to keep looking at her like that.
I made some excuse and stepped outside.
Rain was coming down hard beyond the hotel doors.
I sat on the bench by the entrance and let the cold wind hit me.
I knew all about Valerie's tangled history with men.
But I didn't care. The moment we married, none of it mattered to me anymore.
As long as the two of us went on loving each other the way we always had.
I believed she'd settle down.
I just never imagined she'd spend three years putting on an act with me, all to prove something to another man.
"What, having regrets?"
I turned. My mother, purse on her arm, sat down beside me with an easy grace.
She tossed a report into my lap.
"Take a look."
Ever since I married Valerie, I'd all but cut ties with my family.
This was the first time my mother had ever come looking for me.
"What is this?"
She said nothing, just touched up her lipstick in a small mirror.
The envelope wouldn't open, and I had no patience for it. I tore it open.
It was the report from the physical exams we'd done together at the hospital, back when the Fox elders started pushing us to have a child.
The doctor had said there was nothing wrong and sent us home.
After that, I took no end of grief over the baby that never came.
The Fox family decided I was a useless live-in husband, a man who couldn't even get his wife pregnant.
Good for nothing.
And I'd had no answer to give them.
But the report in my hands now spelled it out plainly.
The wife's long-term use of birth control had damaged her body, leaving her unable to conceive.
"Is this real, or is it fake?"
My mother let out a scornful little laugh. "Albert, are you a pig? Even the dumbest pig should have sensed something was off the moment Patrick Henson came back home."
My hand shook where it gripped the report. Three years of my life, and all of it absurd.
"You knew what she was doing... why didn't you tell me sooner?"
My mother spread her hands and laughed. "You chose this yourself, Albert. Wasn't it you who threw away your career and insisted on marrying into her family? Open your eyes and look. This is the marriage you picked. A wife you traded a brilliant future for!"
With that she swung her purse at my head. "Stupid as they come!"
"Your father is upstairs entertaining guests, so I don't have time for you. Whenever you come to your senses, come home and find me."
After she left, I sat there alone for a long time, forcing myself calm.
It was as though something had struck me square in the chest, and the ache wouldn't let go.
When I finally carried the report back inside, Valerie and Patrick were in the stairwell.
The stairwell was closed off, but her voice still cut through to me.
"Why? You said I didn't know how to love, so I found someone to love at random. You said I wasn't fit for marriage, so I married someone at random and got through three years just fine. You don't know it, but that piece of trash is thrilled with me. To this day he still thinks I love him. Just tell me what's wrong with me, and I'll change it, I swear I will!"
Valerie pressed in, step by step, and Patrick raised both hands and backed away just as steadily.
He drew a deep breath and said, "Make a good life with my brother."
"I don't want that! Why can you never just give me one chance?"
"It's because I knew the two of you had been stable these three years that I came back at all."
Valerie broke down, screaming. "But all of it was an act!"
My hand, already lifted to push open the stairwell door, sank slowly back down.
I knew then. The marriage I'd spent three years calling mine was over.
