I am fine.
I am happy.
I have moved on.
Dammit.
Looking around my teenage bedroom, complete with the same pearlescent wallpaper with tiny pink roses, white, four-poster canopy bed and plush rose-colored carpeting, I realize maybe that’s not exactly the case. Moving back home after my divorce probably wasn’t the best idea, but there was nowhere else for me to go and nothing else for me to do. I’ve worked at Butler House Inn since we moved to the island when I was a teenager and my parents took over running the family business. Butler House was my grandparents’ legacy and my parents’ nightmare all rolled into one. When both of my grandparents passed away the year I turned sixteen, my parents thought a fresh start in a new place was just the thing our family needed. They uprooted me from my quiet little life in the city right before my sophomore year of high school, moving me out to an island where I knew no one. Little did they know, my grandparents didn’t leave Butler House in the best condition when they died. It took a lot of years and every penny in my parents’ savings just to get it back into the black, and by that point, my parents had had enough. Butler House was situated on a prime piece of island real estate, so there were quite a few investors who came sniffing around at that time, offering to purchase the inn. Even though my parents were exhausted and at an age where they just wanted to retire and relax, they couldn’t imagine handing over our family’s legacy to a stranger.
I gave up my dreams of seeing the world to take online college business courses, and as soon as I turned twenty-one, Butler House Inn became mine. I let the man I gave my heart and soul to travel the world in my stead and I stayed behind to make sure he had someplace to come home to.
Now, I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Well, I could definitely imagine moving out of my teenage bedroom in the inn’s attached living quarters and finding a place of my own, but Butler House barely makes enough money to stay open as it is. Even right now, at the start summer peak season, some weeks I don’t pull in enough money to give myself a paycheck.
Glancing back down at the note in my hand, I hastily fold it up and curse myself for reading it. I was too chicken-shit to send it when I wrote it and who knows why I’ve kept it all this time. I was hurt and angry and my heart felt like it was being ripped out of my chest. After I tore open the envelope that day and found the legal papers inside, I penned this note through the tears, wanting to hurt Fisher as much as he hurt me. In the end, I didn’t enclose my note when I sent the signed divorce papers back. Even though what he did was the equivalent of shoving a knife right through my chest, I couldn’t deliberately hurt him. That has always been my problem where Jefferson Fisher III was concerned. I would do anything for him, even if it meant sacrificing something of myself. I let him go not once, but five times when he had a duty to perform for this country, even though I wanted nothing more than to beg him not to leave. I supported his decision and praised his honor for being so selfless. I wrote to him every day and made sure he never had to worry about the island or the people he loved and promised him we would always be waiting here for him when he came home to us.
When he came back the first time, he was only a little bit different. More serious, more intense, not so quick to laugh like the smart-ass eighteen-year-old I’d first fallen in love with. I knew that war could change a man, and I loved him even more through those changes. He helped me with the inn when he was home and I kept the memories and the love we shared alive for the both of us while he was gone, protecting our country. I showered him with all of it when he returned, doing everything I could to erase the memories of the things he’d seen while he was away from me, away from our island, away from the physical proof of my love.
I naively thought all of that was enough. I never expected more and more of him to be chipped away each time he left me, but after he came home the last time, there was nothing left of the man I’d loved since I was sixteen years old. The boy who’d confidently kissed me for the first time at the base of Fisher’s Lighthouse and asked me to marry him a few years later in the exact same spot by stating all the reasons he loved me no longer existed. In his place was an angry, depressed man who couldn’t break free of his nightmares and blamed me for being stuck here where it seemed his darkness flourished instead of faded away.
We’d been together for fourteen years, but if you add up all of the time we actually spent together through those years, living together, working together, growing together side-by-side…it only equals a little over six years. A handful of months here and there in between basic training and five tours of duty over a fourteen-year span. When things began going downhill after his fifth tour, I started believing all of the hateful, hurtful shit that came out of his mouth. I’d even started to wonder if he’d ever really loved me. If you think about it, how in the hell is it possible to love someone who occupies the tiniest portion of your life? Did he even know me? I thought I knew him, but I also thought nothing could take down the strongest man I’d ever met.
Glancing down at the shoebox where I’d tossed the note, thirteen identical envelopes from Fisher’s Bank and Trust stare back at me. I think about the savings account in my name at the bank that has received an automatic deposit on the last Friday of every month for the last thirteen months. I can still recall receiving the very first statement, which arrived during a time when I was still mourning the loss of my marriage. Looking back, I realize that it was my rage over the fact that the man I loved sought to placate me with money that pulled me out of the grief I was drowning in. Since then, I’ve tossed the unopened monthly statements into this box as soon as they arrive, so I have no idea what the balance is. Based on that initial deposit, however, I’m sure it’s more than enough money to finish all of the repairs that need to be done around this place and probably even construct the addition I’ve been dreaming about for five years that would add two extra bedrooms and a game room for kids.