The Runaway Wife by Rowan Coleman

Author:Rowan Coleman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2013-11-11T22:00:00+00:00

“When we will see Daddy again,” Maddie asked her now, quietly unable to make eye contact, “will he still be angry?”

“Not with you,” Rose said. “Only me.”

“He wasn’t angry with me before. I still got this,” Maddie pointed out, gingerly reaching over her shoulder to touch the bruise.

“I know,” Rose said wearily. She was so tired, so desperate just to be able to close her eyes and sleep, but there was one more thing she had to say to Maddie while she had the chance. “I . . . Maddie, I don’t think I can be married to Daddy anymore.”

“I know.” Maddie nodded as if she’d already worked that out for herself. “That’s OK. We can stay here. I will become an artist with John.”

“Wouldn’t you miss home, school, Daddy?” Rose asked her as she escorted her into the bedroom, pulling her pajama top over her head. Maddie might feel this way about Richard now, but how long would it last? The last thing Rose wanted to do was impose an estrangement between daughter and father, even if she knew Richard was by no means the best of fathers. The damage done by ripping him completely out of her life could be worse even than the bruise he’d given her, which would heal, at least.

“No,” Maddie said with certainty. “I don’t like school there, and I like you better here. You are much more interesting to look at and listen to. You are kinder and funnier and . . . you smile more. Here is better for you, this is where you are happy. And you like me better here too.”

“What do you mean?” Rose asked her, horrified at what Maddie thought she knew.

“I mean,” Maddie said, with some emphasis, speaking slowly and carefully, “that you like me better here than you do at home. Because you aren’t frightened or sad.”

“I think not being at school, not being in the middle of all the worries that me and Daddy had, even though we tried our best to keep them from you, has helped you not to be so uncomfortable and anxious,” Rose said, trying to work out what Maddie was feeling herself, and if being away from Richard gave the child the same sense of relief and being able to breathe that it gave her. “And so I am less worried about you, less worried about how you will fit in. But it’s not that I like you better; I can’t like you better than I do. I love you, Maddie, more than anything.”

Maddie looked at her for a long moment, studying her face as if she were trying to decipher exactly what it was that Rose was saying, and then out of the blue she launched herself into Rose’s arms, nestling her head into the curve of her neck, a rare gesture of affection that Rose embraced happily.

“I don’t want to see Daddy,” Maddie said after a while in her mother’s arms. “And I don’t want to go to school ever again.

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