Read Online Wildflowers by Robin Jones Gunn - Free Book Online Page B

I’ve paid my dues for your resentment of my career. We moved to Glenbrooke, like youwanted. We took another risk with the rest of the inheritance money and bought the café, like you wanted. What more do you want, Genevieve? Tell me, because I really would like to know.”
    The waiter stepped up to the table at that moment, clearing their soup bowls and serving their salads. Genevieve had lost her appetite. She stared at one of the mandarin orange slices and tried to breathe slowly.
    In a small voice she said, “I don’t want anything from you.”
    “You know what?” Steven said. “There’s something I want from you.”
    Genevieve looked up. She hadn’t expected his statement.
    “I know you didn’t ask me what I wanted from you, but I’ll tell you anyway. I want you to forgive me.”
    “Forgive you for what?”
    Steven sat back. He pressed his thumb to his cheek and rested his fingers across his mouth as if deep in thought. “Only you can answer that, Genevieve. You say all these mistakes of mine are in the past, and yet I feel as if every single mistake I’ve ever made hangs around my neck like an invisible weight.”
    “I don’t hold anything against you, Steven,” she said quickly. “And I don’t think it has anything to do with my father. Both he and Mom loved you like a son before they died. They knew you were a good husband and father. And you are. I don’t hold anything against you. I’m sorry I brought up the money. It doesn’t matter. It’s in the past. I don’t want to ever discuss it again.”
    “I wish I could believe that,” Steven said.
    They remained silent for a solid three minutes while they ate their salads. Genevieve hated the way she felt right now. Something needed to change. The darkness inside her spirit was smothering her. She had lost all sense of what was true and what was a deception.
    Steven cleared his throat and held out a verbal olive branch before Genevieve’s barricaded heart. “We have a whole weekend ahead of us. I don’t want to argue with you. I want both of us to enjoy the time we have together.”
    Genevieve forced a weak smile, as she had so many other times when their battle reached this point. “I don’t want to argue with you, either.”
    Steven reached across the table and squeezed her hand. Genevieve knew that she would now do what she had done often before. She would retreat deep inside herself and leave only a shadow of the true Genevieve holding Steven’s hand and accompanying him through the rest of the weekend.
    Little had changed inside Genevieve, despite their truce. The heaviness of her deepening sadness hung on her spirit like an overgrown vine blocking the light and air. There was no way on this green earth that she could get this darkness off her. She had tried before and nothing worked.
    The only thing that helped was when she immersed herself so deeply in a project that no room was left for vine chopping. She survived by doing, not by brooding.
    With renewed determination, Genevieve focused on all the good things she could find in Steven and in their marriage. This would be her project during the weekend. Shewould think about only positive aspects or their life together and do all she could to make her time with Steven wonderful. Brooding would not be allowed this weekend.
    When the sun came out Saturday, the two of them took an afternoon drive down the coast. Genevieve tied a turquoise scarf around her neck and let the wind tie her hair in tangles. She drank in the fresh sea air as if it were an elixir. They drove for miles without speaking. The space and air and time gave Genevieve a chance to downshift.
    After a decadently delicious crème brûlee at a French restaurant, Genevieve slipped her hand into her husband’s as they walked out the door to the parking lot. Steven opened the car door for her. Before she got in, she kissed him generously. Her decision to focus on the positive was having a good effect on her.
    On the way home