Fierce Love by Susan Scott

Author:Susan Scott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2021-11-03T00:00:00+00:00

SHE NEVER SAW IT COMING

On a beautiful Friday morning in July, my neighbor left his wife of thirty-nine years while she was out of town. A moving van loaded furniture from the guest bedroom, his home office, and the family room, plus assorted dishes, pots and pans, and three small potted plants. He called to tell me he was leaving and broke down.

“She’ll be mad about the plants,” he said as we stood in their garage minutes later. “She’ll say they were her favorites, but I just want something alive in my apartment.”

When his wife came home to glaring gaps in her décor and a note on the stairs, she didn’t notice three missing plants. She noticed the empty spot where her husband had been and knew that if he wouldn’t return, her life would never be the same.

A week later he confessed the affair to me, describing his lover as fat, frumpy, and frugal. He wasn’t even sure they’d stay together. He was sure only that he wanted a different life, a different wife. Frankly, he confessed, almost anyone new would have done. He just wanted to start over.

His wife, one of the more intelligent and insightful people I know, said, “I didn’t see it coming. We didn’t fight about anything.” When her husband’s face would turn blank, she attributed it to the demands of his job. Yet for several months she had been waking in the night, a feeling in her gut, a heaviness on her chest, that something was not right.

Lillian Hellman wrote, “People change10 and forget to tell each other.” The idea of “me,” of “you,” is not static. We are all changing all the time, and though the “I am changing” conversation may be frightening to contemplate, it is essential. My neighbor hadn’t had the courage to tell his wife that he was thinking of leaving, that he wanted a different life.

The prospect of that conversation was too daunting.

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