It's Still Love

By: Sparkle731

Maggie Blaine's private thoughts about her husband's secret life.

I sighed as I opened the door to my empty house and went inside. The funeral had been harder to get through than I had expected. Despite the secrets that had been revealed by John's murder, the entire department had shown their support for one of their own.

I had just buried a man that I had been married to for almost twenty-five years, a man I had once loved with all of my heart, a man that I still loved in spite of his faults. You don't stop loving someone just because they disappoint you or hurt you, even if they don't love you the way that you thought they did.

I don't remember when I first realized that John wasn't able to be the kind of husband that he wanted to be. Maybe I had always known deep down that John had a secret that he was desperately trying to hide. From me, from our families and friends, even from himself.

Every marriage has its problems, every couple has their regrets. John and I were no different in that respect. One of our biggest regrets was that we were never blessed with children. We had been married for three years when the doctors discovered that a medical condition prevented me from ever conceiving a child. We were devastated. We had both wanted a large family but that was not in our future. We talked about adoption but decided against it.

John was always worried that his being a cop would leave me a young widow and he didn't want to leave an innocent child without a father to look up to. John would have made a good father. He loved kids and was terrific when it came to relating to them.

David was a perfect example of John's compassion and caring. David was only thirteen when he came into our lives. An angry and rebellious teenager who had been uprooted and sent to live with relatives three thousand miles away from home. At that time, we lived next to David's aunt and uncle so it seemed natural for his Uncle Al to turn to John when it came to needing someone to help rein in his self-destructive nephew.

I think it helped that John was a cop. David's own father had been a cop back in New York and he had idolized him. He had been shot in front of his eldest son and had died in David's arms. At that age, David was cocky and headstrong but underneath the rough exterior, it wasn't hard to see a frightened young man that didn't know how to deal with his emotions and his grief.

Soon, David became a fixture at our house and, in some ways; he became the son that John had never had. Being with David and teaching him the things that a father usually passes on to his son filled a need in John and a need in David that neither one of them was even aware of.

When David graduated from high school and then got drafted, John was devastated. He missed the time that they had spent together. That was when John began to drink more than he had in the past. Lots of cops drink, it goes with the job. It helps relief the stress of the terrible things they see every day. I can't say for sure but looking back on it now, I believe that is when John began seeing other men.

Don't get me wrong. John and I had a good relationship and a good life. And, in my mind, we had a good sexual relationship. John may not have been a passionate, romantic lover but he was gentle and kind. He always made sure that I was satisfied and content. But, a woman knows when her man is playing house away from home.

I can't say for certain when I realized it was another man in John's life instead of another woman. I was hurt. I was angry. And I was humiliated. But, I still loved him and didn't want to lose him. We had a good life together, a good marriage, and I didn't want to give that up. So, like so many other wives just like me, I looked the other way when John strayed. John was a good man, a decent man. He never rubbed his indiscretions in my face or made me feel unloved.

For a long time, I blamed myself. I thought that I had done something wrong. That I hadn't been enough of a woman to satisfy him. I know now that I was wrong to blame myself. John couldn't help how he felt about other men and his affairs didn't mean that he didn't love me in his own way.

Over the past few years, our lives had fallen into a comfortable routine. The only time I ever felt threatened by any of John's affairs was when he met Peter Whitelaw. Somehow, I realized that what he felt for Peter was different from the others. John was in love with another man for the first time in his life. Oh, I knew that he would never leave me for Peter but that didn't stop me from being afraid of losing my husband. And in a way, I did lose him, at least emotionally.

I never knew what happened to end their relationship but I knew when it ended. John was so sad and so unhappy. I gave him all the love and support that I could but he was never the same afterwards. We still slept in the same bed. We still hugged and kissed, still said I love you every day. But, we no longer made love. I tried to fool myself into believing that it was because we were both getting older and losing our interest in sex. But, I knew the real reason. I wasn't Peter. I wasn't the one John really wanted. He had given his heart to someone else and I was left with the pieces of the man he left behind.

It's hard to realize what you can learn to live with if you have to. To save my home and my marriage, I learned to live with a husband who was emotionally absent. When Harold Dobey called me that morning to tell me that John had been murdered, I almost felt relieved and then I felt ashamed. And then I cried for the man I had loved, the man who had died a long time ago. I let myself feel the grief of a widowed wife, the pain of facing the future alone.

When David and Ken came to the house to talk to me and David told me about John being found in a room at the Saint Vincent Hotel, I could see the pain and sorrow in his eyes. I knew that he was devastated; not only by John's death, but by the secret that John had kept from him. I found myself admitting everything to him and trying to make him understand that no matter what John had done, he was still a good man and he deserved David's respect.

Ken and David worked hard and finally discovered who had murdered John. It turned out to be another police officer. John had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had seen something that he wasn't supposed to see. And he had paid for it with his life.

Today, I buried my husband. Today I said good-bye to the man I shared my life with for over twenty-five years. I know in my heart that John is finally at peace. After all those years, after everything that happened between us, there was still love there and respect. I don't expect anyone to understand unless they have walked in my shoes and loved a man like John. Because, after all, it's still love.

Bottom of Form