A Marriage Worth Fighting For. Lilian Darcy

      It would. And also a nightmare. Faking having fun with your kids was harder than faking an orgasm, and, yes, Alicia had done both.

      Like a good wife and mother, she felt guilty about both, also.

      But, oh, yesterday had been so hard!

      All she’d wanted to do was curl up into a tight ball of misery and sleep for about six months, in the hope that when she woke up again, the pain would have gone away and the rest of her life would miraculously make sense.

      But you couldn’t do that. Children didn’t let you.

      She loved Abby and Tyler so much, and since leaving MJ she’d been feeling it in her heart and her stomach and her bones to an almost feverish extent. She wanted to hug them against her body fifty times a day. She wanted to gaze and gaze at them. Her marriage to MJ had been worthwhile a hundred times over, no matter how ugly their divorce might be, because of these two.

      She’d been saying “I love you” so often that at one point yesterday Abby had sighed theatrically, put her hands on her hips and told her, “We know that, Mommy.”

      She loved them, but they were exhausting, and the little guilt monitor in the back of her brain kept telling her that she’d taken the easy way out, until now.

      Taken the trophy wife way out, by leaving the kids with Maura or, before her, Kate and Robyn and Sveta, for hours and hours at a stretch, paying for endless mommy-and-me classes and toddler gym classes and toddler swim classes, so that—whether it was mommy and me, which it was sometimes, or Nanny and me, which it was too often—the kids were packaged into organized activities that left most of the real work to someone else.

      Since leaving MJ was so much about not wanting to be a trophy wife anymore, she couldn’t take the easy way out now.

      Oh, she wasn’t such an idealistic fool as to be attempting this without MJ’s money behind her. She’d married him in the first place as an escape from the grinding poverty trap, and she had no intention of taking a step backward into the trap’s evil jaws. But she was going to be as honorable about it as she could, taking only enough from him to ensure that his children were raised in the comfort and security he would want for them. Would insist on, in fact.

      She wasn’t awarding herself very many points for this attitude, right now, but, still, it was something. It was better than she’d seen from some of the other women in her circle—like Anna, for example, who’d openly spoken of taking her ex to the cleaners, whether to anyone else’s eye the man deserved it or not.

      The day went by.

      Slow.

      Boring.

      Exhausting.

      Punctuated by tiny diamond moments of rightness that she tried to lock into her memory to treasure later on. Abby singing a cheesy pop song to Tyler in the backseat of the car on the way to the store, her little four-year-old vocal cords valiantly attempting to mimic the electronic yodeling sound. Both of them with dabs of cookie dough on their noses when she let them lick the spoon and the bowl. The short-lived interlude of peace when they sat down at the table and ate the cookies, with milk for the children and a mug of steaming coffee for herself.

      When Tyler went down for a nap, her first thought was simply “Thank heaven!” but when she turned to look back at him in the twin single bed that seemed so big for him and found his eyes already drifting shut, she had to pause and just watch him for a few moments because he was so precious and beautiful. His taffy-brown hair was so silky and fine on the pillow. His cheeks were so plump and pink.

      They were so easy to love when they were asleep. Tyler would be giving up the daytime nap soon, because it had begun to push his bedtime at night later and later. For now, the time was precious. He was adorable … and thank goodness she had a break from him.

      At six in the evening, just as she’d managed to get a home-cooked meal of spaghetti with meat sauce onto the table, there was a text from MJ. Coming tonight. Away early. Get to you nine-ish.

       Tonight?

      “There are bits in this,” Abby said. She was frowning and indignant about it, and her blond ponytail needed refastening or she would end up with dinner in her hair.

      “Sorry, sweetheart,” Alicia said as she jumped up to rewind the bright pink elastic.

      “Bits,” Abby repeated, as she submitted to the procedure. “Of stuff. In the sauce.”

      So much for Alicia’s attempt to insert stealth vegetables by chopping them up small. The weird thing was, Abby and Tyler both liked raw vegetable sticks with store-bought dips.

      “It’s just carrot and celery,” she said, sitting down again. “I don’t like sara-lee.”

      “Yes, you do.”

      “Not cooked.”

      “Well, how about I put a blindfold on you, and then you won’t know it’s there.” She jumped up again—even though her legs didn’t want to move for a second time, with MJ’s text still echoing through her mind and draining her strength—and pretended to get a dish towel to tie over Abby’s face.