Chase tried knocking on the door of the main house again, though he’d already knocked twice, and had noticed that Polly’s car wasn’t in the driveway. Just as he was getting ready to peer through the window of the bedroom, he heard a female voice call his name. Whirling around, he saw Mae striding towards him, her tool belt slung low across her hips.
“Hey, Mae,” he said with a friendly smile. “How’s it going? Have you seen Polly today?”
Mae shifted to her other foot, looking vaguely uncomfortable. “She’s not here, Chase.”
“She go into town for groceries?” he asked, thinking fondly of Polly’s Pringle addiction.
“No, I mean, she’s not here,” Mae repeated gently. “She went back to California for a while. She wanted me to say good bye to you, and to tell you that she’ll be in touch soon. She wasn’t sure how to say good bye, so she wanted me to say it for her, instead of leaving a chintzy note or something.”
“Are they getting back together?” Chase asked, his voice tight.
Mae shook her head. “I don’t know that – no one knows that. But she had to at least go back home to talk to him. You know that as well as I do. What will be, will be. If she doesn’t figure it out now, it will gnaw away at her, and it will eventually come between you two. Whatever there is to come between, that is.”
“I really like her, Mae,” Chase said, almost under his breath.
“I know. So let her figure things out – if you love something, set it free, right?”
“I always thought that was a shitty expression,” Chase said, sounding resigned, and Mae chuckled softly.
“She’ll be back,” Mae said gently. “I’m sure of it. I really am. You just have to give her some time and some space to figure things out. Maybe it will give you time to figure out a few things of your own.”
“Like what?”
“Like what if she wants you and leaves her husband, but wants to live in California permanently? Her whole practice and her whole life is there.” Mae asked. “Ever think of that?”
Chase had to admit as he walked back down the forest trail with Jack at his side, the thought had never even crossed his mind.
Maybe he had more to figure out than he thought.
**
Polly had to admit, she was having some serious culture shock.
She’d gotten used to shopping at the local IGA, to not being connected to a Blackberry twenty four hours a day, to knowing what silence sounded like.
Being back in California was like being on sensory overload – so many people, so much noise, and everything moving so quickly, and all of his driven by technology and who you know in the world.
She was glad to see her house again, true, but it suddenly seemed more austere than she remembered, after the coziness of the family home up north. And she’d forgotten how tense she always felt around Matthew – afraid to disappoint him, afraid to rock the boat.
The minute she’d walked in and seen him, the tense feeling had crept up her neck and locked there, reminding her that while she loved him, in so many ways she feared him – and feared disappointing him.
As she rolled her neck from side to side to loosen the knots, it occurred to her she hadn’t once missed her chiropractor while up north.
Matthew had been as warm as he could under the circumstances, greeting her at the house with a chaste kiss to the cheek after his car service had dropped her off from the airport. He’d asked about her plane trip, about the weather up north, all the sorts of mundane things people who didn’t know each other very well talked about after spending time apart.
It was downright painful.
Polly had pled her way to bed with a headache, and was quietly surprised to find that Matthew put up no argument, and also automatically went and slept in one of their many guest rooms.
As she lay in bed looking at the ceiling, she wondered why they had built so many guest rooms – they rarely had guests, and never for more than a night.
Keeping up appearances, she supposed.
How sad, she mused, as she tried in vain to go to sleep.
Breakfast had been strained, but eventually Polly thawed enough to tell Matthew about the beauty of the north woods, of Lake Superior when her waves started kicking up a fuss. He paid an inordinate amount of attention to her – enough to almost make her uncomfortable. She’d always felt she was more of a second fiddle to whatever else was occupying his mind at the time. To be the center of his attention felt… strange.
They had gone to the office together and sat down with Donald, their office manager to review all the firm’s finances, so that Polly could see first hand that Matthew had indeed paid back what he’d stolen to fund his hooker habit, and then Matthew had the car service take them to his therapist’s office so Polly could meet him. Matthew being so solicitous was honestly freaking her out a bit, she mused as she’d looked out the window as the world rushed by.
Being up north, being with Chase had been so… easy. No therapists, no car service, no high heels. She knew the time up there was time spent in a bubble, but life shouldn’t be this constricting…
“And how did that make you feel, Polly?”
Polly snapped back to the present and focused her attention on the kindly looking man seated across from her and Matthew, asking them probing questions about their marriage as though they were old friends.
She blinked, and he repeated the question. “When you found Matthew with another woman, how did it make you feel?”
Polly doubted that ‘relieved’ was the right answer.
“Betrayed, naturally. Sad and ashamed,” she added after a moment.
“Not surprised?”
Polly shook her head no after a long moment. “No. For some reason, not surprised.”
Matthew’s face had fallen at that, and Polly felt badly for doubting him, but that seed had been planted long ago; if he was willing to cheat once…
They had sat in that leather clad office for an hour, and Polly gulped air as they finally made their way to the curb to hail their car, desperately needing quiet and solitude to think.
This trip home wasn’t what she had been expecting at all.
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