More Than a Marriage Read online

  * * *

  Tess loved the feel of Jacob’s arms around her. She loved being close to him. His embrace was warm and comforting. He took a step back, plucking his shirt away from his skin. “I need to take a shower.”

  She smiled. “Supper will be ready in about twenty minutes.”

  He nodded. “Then I’ve got plenty of time.” He seemed not to want to take his eyes from her. He backed from the room, finally turning and heading up the stairs.

  Tess turned back to the stove. It felt good to be home. She had left what clothes she had at Obie and Clara Rose’s. She could pick up her bag later. The most important thing was coming back home and being here when Jacob got off work. He missed her. He might not have said the words, but she could tell. Actions always spoke louder. He hadn’t sold her goats, and somehow she knew everything was going to be just fine.

  Jacob came back downstairs as Tess was setting the table. They sat down and prayed, tears stinging the back of her eyes with the beautiful familiarity of it all. As they ate, Jacob told her about his day at work and his frustrations with some of the customers. She listened, so grateful to be able to share his day with him once again.

  They got up from the table, and Jacob headed for the living room while Tess cleaned up. Half an hour later, she joined Jacob in the living room to find him immersed in his phone.

  She sat down across from him. She wasn’t going to get upset. This wasn’t about getting upset. She would give him a few minutes to notice her, then he would realize that he was placing the phone over their relationship and he would put it away for the night. They would play a game together and everything would be just as it should be.

  But after five full minutes of staring at him, he hadn’t taken his attention from the phone even once.

  “Jacob.” She tempered her voice so it didn’t sound chastising. But she wanted his attention.

  “Huh?” He didn’t even bother to look up, though he smiled at something he had seen.

  “Jacob,” she said, louder this time.

  “Jah?” he responded with his attention still centered on the tiny little phone.

  “Jacob.” Somehow she managed to keep her tone below an out-and-out yell.

  Exasperated, he set his phone in his lap and met her gaze. “What is it?”

  “You’re doing it again.”

  He frowned. “Doing what again?” His gaze went straight back to the phone though he didn’t lift it from his lap. It was obvious he wanted to.

  “Playing on your phone all night and ignoring me.”

  Some strange light flashed across his face, but it was gone so quickly she wasn’t able to discern what it was. “I’m ignoring you?” She couldn’t read anything into his tone, though the words were dark and heavy with warning.

  “Jah, that is what I said. You are playing on your phone and you’re ignoring me. I’m not going to have it anymore.”

  “You’re not going to have it?” Just the fact that he repeated her own words was enough to make Tess realize he wasn’t happy with her demands. But she wasn’t happy with a lot of things. All the elation she had felt over the fact that he had taken care of her goats while she was at Clara Rose and Obie’s vanished in an instant. In its wake it left regrets and sadness.

  Tess stood. What was it Verna Yutzy was always saying? In for a penny, in for a pound. She had started this and she would see it through. She’d given in to a moment of weakness this afternoon, but it seemed as if things weren’t nearly as different as she had thought.

  “That’s right. I won’t have it.”

  Jacob was on his feet in a heartbeat. “You can’t make demands like that. I don’t make demands on you.”

  “Of course you do. You make demands all the time. It doesn’t feel like demands to you because you’re the one making them. You don’t like my goats. You don’t want me to go to the quilting meeting. You don’t want me to do anything except go visit your parents. I’ve had enough of that. We’re living your life, Jacob, not our life, and I don’t want to do this anymore.” The words fell between them like a stink bomb in a one-room schoolhouse. He stood there, stock-still, as if trying to assimilate everything she had just said.

  “Fine then.” His words were like cast iron, dark and heavy. “If this is the way you want it, it’s the way you can have it.” He exhaled through his nose like a bull snorting out a challenge. “In fact, why don’t you just take your things and go back over to Clara Rose and Obie’s. Isn’t that what you want?”

  Was that what she wanted? She didn’t know. Well, that wasn’t true. That was not what she wanted at all. She wanted her Jacob back. But it seemed as if she wasn’t going to find him. That Jacob was gone, and instead she had the man before her. And though this man looked like her Jacob, he didn’t act like him. He didn’t want the same things, and he sure didn’t seem to love her. Wasn’t that what love was about?

  Heart breaking, she stared at him for only a moment and started back for the door. She was leaving tomorrow. She would get a driver and she would go back so quick that everything else would just have to wait.

  * * *

  Jacob watched as if viewing two other people. He watched as Tess ran from the room. The door slammed behind her and then she was gone. Wasn’t that what she wanted? Why else would she question everything he said? Everything he did? It seemed he couldn’t be the man she wanted. The only thing left to do was to let her go.

  * * *

  It had been just a day since she had walked from her house to Clara Rose and Obie’s and yet here she was again. This time she had no tears. This time she couldn’t blame anyone but herself. There weren’t many couples who ended up living apart even though they were married, but she knew it wasn’t unheard of. She just never thought she would be one of those mentioned in the conversations of couples who didn’t make it. And only after three years. She would just have to accept that this was what God had planned for her.

  Eyes dry, she made her way back to the Brennemans’.

  “Tess!” Clara Rose’s call was one of complete surprise. “What are you doing here?”

  Once again Tess was overcome with the need to tell someone, and yet the embarrassment of telling someone was almost more than she could take. Especially someone like Clara Rose, whose marriage was so utterly perfect.

  “I just need to stay tonight.”

  Clara Rose and Obie shared a look that once again sent tentacles of jealousy reaching through Tess. It was as if the two of them shared a common language that no one else on earth knew. How badly she had wanted that with Jacob. They had had it once upon a time, and then everything had fallen apart. Well, no more.

  She would be the one that everyone talked about, the crazy lady who was married but didn’t live with her husband, who lived at the end of the lane. She could take in excess sewing, maybe make pickles, can blueberries for people, and a variety of other things to make ends meet. Maybe her mother and father would even let her move into the dawdi house. Whatever was her fate, she knew it did not lie in Wells Landing, and it was not with Jacob Smiley.

  “Tess,” Clara Rose started, her voice soothing in both tone and manner, “come sit down. We can talk about this.”

  Tess shook her head, barely registering the fact that Obie disappeared through the kitchen as she and Clara Rose talked.

  “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “Then why do you need to stay here?”

  Tess studied her friend’s face. There was no malice there, only concern. And she knew that if she gave Clara Rose a valid reason for needing to stay, then she would be welcome for sure.

  “It’s Jacob. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t stay with him. I can’t live there.”

  Clara Rose took Tess’s hand into her own and led her over to the living area. She eased Tess down into the wooden rocker that sat off to one side, then perched on the edge of the sofa nearest her. “This is going to be hard for me. But I think we need to talk about this.”

  Tess nodded,
unsure of what Clara Rose was getting at, but willing to share what she needed to with her friend.

  “I’ve noticed lately that you’ve been very unhappy, and it has me really concerned.”

  “Jah,” she said. “I’ve not been happy, and that makes it so hard.”

  Clara Rose nodded reassuringly. “I know it’s not enough to be worried about you and now . . .” She shook her head. “Now that he’s come here twice, it makes me wonder.”

  Tess frowned. “Wonder about what?”

  Clara Rose squeezed Tess’s fingers. “This is not an easy question to ask, but did Jacob hurt you?”

  Tess drew back.

  Clara Rose stumbled over herself to qualify the question. “I mean, you come here twice and you seem distraught. Yet you love him and you go back. I just don’t know how to help you if I don’t know what the problem is.”

  Tess jumped to her feet and wrapped her arms around herself. “And so you would automatically assume that he would hurt me?”

  “Oh dear, I’m making a mess out of this.” Clara Rose shook her head. “I don’t want to think that he would hurt you. I don’t want to think anything like that could happen in a marriage, but I have to have some place to start to help you.”

  Tess nodded and bit back the bile that had risen into the back of her throat. “Jacob would never hurt me,” she said. “Never.”

  Clara Rose nodded. “Is he drinking?”

  Tess shook her head incredulously. “No. Of course not.”

  “Gambling?”

  “No.” Why was she asking all these questions?

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand, then,” Clara Rose said. “What has he done that makes you want to leave?”

  “He doesn’t spend any time with me. Not like Obie does with you.” Even as she said the words, they sounded petty and small. But inside her head they had seemed enormous.

  Clara Rose grabbed her fingers and pulled Tess back into the rocking chair. “Maybe you’d better start at the beginning.”

  Tess nodded and that was what she did, outlining for Clara Rose all the times Jacob had played on his cell phone and ignored her, all the times he worked late, everything and every infraction he made since they moved to Wells Landing, topping it off with the fact that he didn’t ever want to go see her family and yet she had to see his on a regular basis. When she was finished she felt lighter than she had in years, but still a small nagging thought dug at the corners of her mind. Was that all he had done? Were all those little things worth her marriage?

  “And that’s it?” Clara Rose asked.

  “Isn’t that enough?” Tess jumped to her feet and threw her hands in the air. Her earlier frustration rose to the surface once again. “I don’t understand. I look around me and I see how happy everyone is, and I want that happiness. Then I go home to Jacob and the happiness is not there. Why is the happiness not there?”

  Clara Rose stood and took her hands into her own. “Honey, you have to make your own happiness.”

  Tess stopped as still as the eye of the storm. Make her own happiness? Was that even possible?

  “You can’t compare your relationship with Jacob to other people’s relationships with their husbands. It’s not healthy.”

  Tess shook her head. “But I want that. I want what everyone else has. I want a husband who does things for me, who wants to be with me, wants to spend time with me, and doesn’t spend all his time playing on Facebook. Is that too much to ask?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “See? Even you admit it. Obie doesn’t spend all his time on his cell phone.”

  He picked that moment to walk back in through the kitchen door. He had a cell phone pressed to his ear. He walked with it as if he’d been born to talk on that phone. Tess somehow managed to keep her jaw from hitting the floor.

  “But he has—”

  “A cell phone,” Clara Rose said. “Yes, and a Facebook page. Three, actually. One personal page and then one for his business with his puppies and one that he shares with Gabe Allen Lambert.”

  Tess frowned. “Titus’s brother?”

  “Jah.”

  “But—but . . .” Tess faltered. It wasn’t just about owning a cell phone. It was about more than that. It was about completely ignoring her. It was about the relationships that other people had. She wanted that happiness. Why couldn’t she have that happiness?

  * * *

  She would have to pack if she was leaving. But there was a part of her that hoped maybe some of what Clara Rose said was true. Could she make her own happiness? Were her comparisons unhealthy for her relationship with her husband, or were those thoughts of a person who had no idea? She just didn’t know.

  Her heart gave a quick thump as her house came into view. Not her house, but Jacob’s.

  He came out onto the porch the minute he saw her walking up the drive. “Tess? What are you doing here?”

  “I came to get a few things. I think I’m going back to Clarita.”

  “You think?” Jacob asked.

  “Well, I don’t know for sure.” Why couldn’t she come up with a coherent response?

  “Why don’t you know for sure?”

  Tess shook her head. “I am. I am going back.” But her heart clenched in her chest as she said the words. She didn’t want to go back. Jah, she wished she lived closer to her family, closer to her mamm and dat, but she really wanted to spend her time with Jacob. Just not the way they had been spending time together lately.

  Tell him, the voice inside her said. They couldn’t work anything out if she didn’t tell him.

  “I’m not happy, Jacob.”

  She watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard. “Okay. Why aren’t you happy?”

  Tess outlined all the reasons why, beginning with the fact that he never seemed to be available to her anymore and ending with his Facebook page. But even as she said the words they sounded petty. No matter how many times she said them, it seemed as if she was a small child stomping her foot in order to get what she wanted. And all she wanted was a good marriage. That child in her rose up again. Why couldn’t she have that? “I look around me,” she continued. “Everyone around us has things. They have fancy tractors, big houses, faster horses. They have everything. And the people who maybe don’t have everything financially”—she shook her head—“they have each other, and that’s a lot, as it’s more than we have.”

  Jacob frowned. “How can you say that?”

  “I say it because I don’t have my face glued to a cell phone every waking moment I have off.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’ve not liked my phone since day one that I got it.”

  “Why should I like it? It does nothing but bring me pain. Once you get on there you don’t want to do anything else.”

  “Once you stick your head in a seed catalog I never see you again,” he countered.

  “The seed catalog is a far cry from the cell phone.”

  Jacob gave a quick nod. “That very well may be, but the end result is the same. You sit in your chair and ignore me and so I get out my phone for my own entertainment.”

  She shook her head. “No, you get on the phone first. Then I get out the seed catalog.” Or the goat books or even a romantic library book. Suddenly it became a little clearer to her. Could she have been ignoring her husband as much as she was accusing him of ignoring her? The thought was unsettling.

  “Everyone’s happy. I want that happiness,” she said, once again feeling like a small child stomping her feet in order to get her way.

  Jacob took a step toward her. “Are you saying you’re unhappy?”

  “Yes, I am. I mean, sometimes.”

  “What are you unhappy with?” Jacob asked.

  She was unhappy with a lot of things. “Like how you come in and tell me you’re going to sell my goats.” There. She’d said it.

  “They’re so much work for you. Why should
you do that much extra work?”

  “Because I want to. Because I enjoy them. Because I want to contribute to our house.”

  “But I’ve told you time and time again that it’s not necessary.”

  “Just like you tell me time and time again that we can move, but only if we have enough money.”

  “It’s more than that. We have to have property to buy as well. And until something comes available, we have to stay right where we are.”

  “I think I should leave now.” It was the only way she could imagine stopping this argument. They were going around in circles with no end in sight.

  Jacob opened his mouth as if to protest, then shut it again. “Fine,” He turned on his heel and stormed back into the house.

  * * *

  One day passed and then another. Sunday came and it was time for church. Tess could feel the pitying gazes as she walked through the throng of people, but she kept her chin high. Not even once did Jacob try to talk to her. That was when she knew it was well and truly over.

  Clara Rose had talked Tess into staying through to the next quilting meeting. She even promised to pay the driver herself if only Tess would stay.

  So Tess stayed. It wasn’t about the money. She wanted to stay, see her friends one more time before she left.

  She felt like a shell of herself going through the motions. She had nothing to offer. She did what she had to do. But at least she would be home for her sister’s wedding. The thought should have been a happy one, but it wasn’t.

  “I tell you, this is the hottest summer I ever remember.” Verna Yutzy shook her head, then turned her attention back to her plate of treats. They had quilted for a while, then switched their attention to food since this was a sort of going-away party for Tess. She only wished that Mariana could be there too.

  “The heat makes people do all sorts of crazy things,” Clara Rose added.

  “We need some rain,” Eileen said.

  They did, but rain would mean Jacob would have to take a day off from work. Not that it mattered to her any longer. She had a driver all lined up. This afternoon she was heading back to Clarita. Back to her family.