The Ranch by Danielle Steel Page B

happiness anymore, it doesn't seem fair to give you the work and the grief, and not much else. At least I can stay out of your hair and make things easy.” It was the first time he had even acknowledged their situation, and she stared at him in amazement. When she had even tried to say something to him a few days before, she had met a wall, and he had completely ignored her. She wondered now if he had actually heard her.
    “I don't expect you to stay out of my hair,” she said, as she sat down across from him, and her eyes looked like pools of dark chocolate. He had always loved looking at her, loved her looks, and her style, and the expressiveness of her eyes, but the pain he had seen there for the last year had been too much to bear, and it was easier to avoid her. “Marriage isn't about keeping your distance. It's about sharing.” And they had. They had shared joy for nearly twenty-one years, and endless grief for the last year. The trouble was that they hadn't really shared it. They had each grieved silently in their separate corners.
    “We haven't shared much of anything lately, have we?” he said sadly. “I guess I've been too busy at the office.” But it wasn't that, and they both knew it. She said nothing as she watched him, and he reached out slowly and touched her hand. It was the first gesture of its kind in months, and there were tears in her eyes as she felt his fingers.
    “I've missed you,” she said in a whisper, but all he did was nod. He had felt it too, but he couldn't bring himself to say it to her.
    “I'm going to miss you while you're away,” she said quietly. It was the first time in their marriage they would be apart for that long. But he had been so adamant about her not going with him. “It's such a long time.”
    “It'll go quickly. You'll come over next month with Alyssa, and I hope to be home by the end of August.”
    “We'll be together two days in two months,” she said, looking at him in despair, and slowly pulling her hand away from his. “That's not exactly the stuff of which marriages are usually made, at least not good ones. I could stay at the hotel and fend for myself during the day.” They had enough friends in London to keep her busy night and day for months, and he knew that. And it felt awkward suddenly to be begging him to let her be there.
    “It will be just too distracting,” he said unhappily, they had been over it before and he had been definite about it with her. He did not want her coming to London, other than for a brief weekend with their daughter.
    “I've never distracted you before,” she said, feeling like the supplicant again, and hating both herself and him for it. “Anyway… it's a long time… that's all. I think we both know that.” His eyes suddenly bore into hers, and there was a question in his eyes as he watched her.
    “What do you mean by that?” For the first time, he actually looked worried. He was an attractive man, and she was sure that there would be plenty of women running after him in London. But she couldn't imagine that he was worrying about her. She had always been the perfect wife, but he had also never left her for an entire summer, after a year like this one.
    “I mean that two months is a long time, especially after the year we've just had. You're leaving for two months, maybe more… I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed to think about it, Bill.” She looked worried as she watched him, and then he startled her even further.
    “Neither am I. I just thought… maybe… we could use some time apart, to get a grip on things again, to figure out what we do now, and how we put back all the pieces.” She was amazed to hear him say it. She hadn't even been sure he would have been willing to acknowledge how totally they'd come apart in the last year, let alone the fact that they needed to put the pieces back together.
    “I don't see how being apart for two months is going to bring us any closer,” she said