An Old-Fashioned Education by Fiona Wilde Page A

salvage your own.”
    Walt raised the ax and sunk it into the chopping block. “Go inside,” he said to his son without looking. Aidan hesitated for a moment but then did as his father said. Walt and Polly were alone.
    “There’s going to be some changes around here,” she said. “If there aren’t, I’m going to make good on my threat, and what’s more you’ll be without a teacher and I’ll tell everyone here it’s because you won’t listen to me any more than you listened to the last teacher you drove away.”
    He closed the distance between them in a flash, grabbing her arm. His gaze was angry, his blue eyes hard in his handsome face. But Polly did not flinch.
    “Don’t even try to tell me I’m wrong,” she said. “And I know you think I’m judging you, but I’m not. I’m not judging Melissa, either. Sometimes we take people for granted, but sometimes when we do it too much they snap. I think Melissa snapped, Walt. It’s cold up here, and lonely–”
    “She had the community!”
    “Yes, a community made up mostly of couples,” she said. “Couples in love building a life. That’s what she wanted, but it seems that you pushed that priority aside. You took a mistress.”
    “What the hell are you talking about?” He stepped back, livid.
    “I’m not talking about a literal one. I’m talking about the community itself. It got the love and the attention and the support that Melissa needed. You made her feel like the outsider, and she left.” She paused. “Am I right?”
    Walt turned away. His hands were on his hips and he was looking up at the graying sky. She wasn’t sure he was going to speak, and when he did his voice was shaky.
    “I tried to get her to stay,” he said finally. “When she left anyway, I was so angry. I suppose I still am, but it’s easier for me to be angry with her than it is to be angry with myself.” He turned back to her. “I’m the leader here. These people depend on me. Despite what you may think, not everyone here started out as homesteaders. They’ve come to Pepper’s Hollow from suburban and even urban areas. Everyone has skills useful to the community—a community that I started, a community that was my idea.
    “I told Melissa it would be hard, and I told her that she’d have to be generous with me. I knew what demands I’d face. But I don’t think she was prepared to share me with everyone, especially not after Kerry came along.”
    “I’m sure getting spanked didn’t help matters,” Polly said.
    He laughed bitterly. “That’s where you’re wrong. We built our relationship on the principles of domestic discipline. Melissa wanted a strong leader as her husband, a man she could submit to. She was a smart, beautiful, brave. Her submission to me was an incredible gift. But I threw it back in her face. She was hungry for guidance, for direction, for the comfort that the limits I imposed had always given her. And there I was, giving them to everyone else in the community. I moderated disputes and the community let me be judge and jury. I counseled other men who lived the way we lived, but Melissa told me when they came to her for guidance she felt like she couldn’t give it because we were—as she put it—living a lie. She said we were frauds.”
    “Because everyone else was living the life you were supposed to be living by example?” Polly asked.
    He nodded. “Yeah, exactly. And me … well, rather than admit I was failing with my own wife I scolded her for being selfish. It was the dumbest thing I’d ever done in my life. She all but pleaded with me to make things right, to do what you suggested and hand over control of the community. But I wouldn’t do it.”
    “Why not?”
    He sighed. “It’s not an easy thing for me, Polly.”
    “You mean handing over control?”
    He nodded.
    “But if you lose control of something that matters in the process, like your relationship or your kids, then is it worth it?”
    “I have responsibilities,”