During the three years of their marriage, Stride and Andrea had carved out Saturday mornings for themselves. They had remained faithful to that except for the few weekends a year when Andrea visited her sister, Denise, in Miami. Even when he was in the middle of an investigation, Stride tried to keep Saturday morning free. Usually, they drove to Canal Park for breakfast overlooking the lake and brought along the paper to read over coffee. Or they jogged a few times around the high school track and rewarded themselves with pastries at the Scandinavian bakery. Those times, more than any other, he felt like they were husband and wife.
But here he was, on Saturday morning, packing for a flight to Minneapolis and then on to Las Vegas. It was like broadcasting an alarm. Andrea got the message. She stood in a corner of the bedroom, her arms folded, her jaw set in a pinched, unhappy line. Much of the anger she had first sent his way, upon learning of his trip, had dissolved already into bitterness and hurt. She didn’t want to hear his explanations, and he had few to offer.
“Don’t do this,” she murmured, not for the first time. “Don’t walk away from me, Jon.”
Stride shoved a few pairs of socks into the end pocket of his duffel bag. “I have to do this.”
“Oh, come on,” she snapped. “This isn’t your problem anymore. Why can’t you just let it go?”
What could he say? He owed it to Rachel to uncover the truth. She had haunted him for years, and he wanted to unravel her mystery once and for all. But there was no denying to himself that he had another motive left unspoken. He also needed to know where his relationship with Serena was going. Because his marriage was over.
She seemed to read his mind. “You’re leaving me. I’ve been there before. I know what it looks like.”
He stopped packing. “Okay. Maybe I am.”
“That’s how you deal with this?” Andrea demanded. “By running away? For months, we’ve been like strangers. For days, you’ve hardly come home, never called. Where the hell were you last night?”
“Don’t go there,” he said.
“Why not? You think I don’t know about you and Maggie?”
“There’s nothing between me and Maggie. I’ve told you that before. I’m not talking about this.”
“If we talked, we could work it out,” Andrea insisted. “Goddamn it, all you can do is shut me out. I’m telling you not to go. I need you to stay here.”
In his mind, he could hear Maggie warning him years ago. “I know. But you don’t love me. You never did.”
“That’s a lie!”
“Don’t pretend,” he told her. “I’m done with pretending.”
Andrea was defiant. “I’m asking you to stay here and work this out.”
He heard the implicit message: You’re my husband. Do this for me. He wanted to make her happy, but he had been trying and failing for years.
“I’m sorry. This is something I have to do.”
Andrea gasped, putting a hand over her mouth. “You want a divorce, don’t you?”
He closed his eyes. “Don’t you?”
“No!” she insisted. “No, I don’t want that. I would never want that!”
“But you’re not happy,” Stride said. “I’m not happy. There’s only one answer here.”
“We can fix this if you’ll just stay and work with me, but all you can talk about is going away.”
He took her hands in his and shook his head. “We can’t fix this, Andrea. It’s going to be better for both of us if we make new lives. And I think you feel that way, too.”
She whirled away from him in anger, her blonde hair falling across her face. She squeezed her hands against her head, her eyes wild. From her dresser, she grabbed a bottle of perfume and threw it against the wall, where it shattered, filling the room with a sickly sweet scent. Andrea stared at the glass sprinkling the floor. It seemed to transport her. She seemed to be somewhere else entirely.
Stride put an arm around her shoulder. She shrugged it off.
“Just go,” she told him.
“I’m sorry.”
Her eyes were fierce. “No, you’re not. You’ve already decided what’s important to you. If it matters so much to you, then just get the hell out, and go. I hope you get what you want. And when you find it, I hope you ask yourself why you wanted it so damn bad.”