Disclaimer: I don't own anything, neither the characters nor the song (Cold Shoulder by Adele).
Cold Shoulder
1997
She stood at the upper landing of the stairs leading down to her husband's basement. She didn't know what made this evening different from all the others, from those hours when she had simply let him shut her out.
"Leroy?" she called, hesitantly. "Are you alright? Where have you been all day?" she trailed off at the look he sent her way. How did he always manage to make her feel so small, so unimportant? (So guilty of something, of being.) Diane Gibbs was successful, already higher up the ladder than most women ever got in the testosterone-dominated government environment she worked in, and she was beautiful, she didn't lack male attention. And she was his wife, above all she was his wife. She knew she deserved more respect from him than that but her sense of self-worth, so strong in earlier years, seemed to grow weaker by the day.
She needed to get this out, however, if she didn't ask now, she knew she never would. "Leroy," she said again, closing her eyes against the glare she felt from the man below her, "Leroy, are you having an affair?"
For the briefest moment Diane thought she saw something in his eyes, or maybe she just wanted to see something, anything, because then he set his jaw and without deeming her worthy of a response, he turned back to his boat. She knew that there was something, though, from the way he would sometimes stare into space and there was tenderness in his features and love in his eyes and he wasn't looking at her – never when he was looking at her.
He turned his head to her again as if silently asking why she was still there (on the steps to the basement, in his life) and she felt the stab in her heart as that expression settled on his face when he looked away again.
Diane couldn't tell if he was home. It didn't matter anymore either way. Whereas formerly they had argued – she had screamed and her temper had flared and what he had lacked in volume, he had made up by the sheer acidity of his accusations – when there had been passion and hate and maybe – maybe – a hint of caring, there was nothing now. He hadn't looked at her, really looked at her, since she found out about his family, about the ghosts that had haunted her every second since she had stepped foot into his life. (Sometimes she wondered if she got it wrong, if she was the ghost, if it was her presence that kept him from ever being happy again.)
She hadn't wanted to be the one to give up. She had spent her evenings on the first step down to the basement until her red her seemed dull because of all the sawdust between the silky strands and hadn't moved till he reluctantly went upstairs with her, if only to get her out of his sanctuary. She had taken the day off on Kelly's birthday and silently watched over him as he drank himself into a stupor, there to catch him, to support him, to love him, if he'd just ask for it. And finally, she had stood five paces behind him as he had knelt in front of their graves for hours on his birthday, having spurned even the coffee she had pushed in his direction as a silent peace offering that morning. When she had sat down next to him, her fingers touching the cool grass, afraid to touch his, he had turned around and left, his eyes so hollow that for once she didn't doubt that he truly hadn't see her.
That didn't excuse him, though, that didn't make anything better. Not for her.
"What do you want from me?" She could remember asking that question when they'd bumped into each at her regular coffee shop for the third time in two weeks. He'd given her a smile then that had made her knees weak.
She had asked again, not even a week ago. This time he had only shrugged. "If you don't want me here, why don't you file for a divorce?" she'd wanted to know. He'd exhaled, slowly, before he had looked at her. "Diane," was the only thing he'd said. He had looked her in the eye then, but he hadn't said anything else.
Diane didn't need him to explain anymore, she understood. He would be the ghost in her life, the love she had lost (would have lost, if she had ever had a chance of having it at all). She had the papers in her bag, along with her lawyer's card for him to call.
But she wanted to tell him in person, she just couldn't bear the thought of walking out of his life so silently as if she'd never been there at all.
She stepped out of the elevator and went over to her still-husband's section of the bullpen, thinking of happier times, when she had brought him coffee or he let her accompany him back to work after lunch, these first few weeks when they had just gotten to know each other. Had it really only been two years?
Diane heard the laughter before she saw the woman to whom it belonged, the tinkling sound almost foreign to her ears. She had gorgeous red hair – the other woman – that tumbled freely down her back like flames licking at her petite form. She stood next to her husband, a look of unabashed admiration in her striking green eyes that she couldn't quite conceal, a flush coloring her cheeks.
He leaned down and whispered something in her ear, and the woman gasped in mock outrage, playfully hitting his forearm. It was the look on his face, though, that made Diane wish she had never come here at all, a look that wasn't quite the one he reserved for Shannon's memory but closer to that than anything she'd ever seen from him before.
She wondered if that would be enough for this other woman. Of if not, if she would feel pity or satisfaction when she saw her again.
She cleared her throat, using the silence to push the envelope in his unsuspecting hands.
"Goodbye, Leroy," she said, and then she was gone.
She saw Jennifer Shepard again two years later, a hollow look in her formerly so vibrant emerald eyes. And without having to ask, she knew what had happened because she knew that look, saw it every morning when she looked in the mirror.
It seemed it was pity, then.
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