Chapter Twelve
Spoilers: Fallout
Marie's POV
Love. What a strong word. I don't think that you ever really can tell when you have actually have fallen in love. It is just a feeling. You know it's right, everything is how it is meant to be. But then there are also those times that you can't predict what is going to happen. You can't tell what is going to be around that turn. I guess that is what love is really like. It's like a never ending roller coaster. Except that this time, this ride, is sort of like a permanent high. Something that sneaks up on you, and you aren't really sure of what you are feeling until it's over.
I don't think that there was one certain time that Jack and I fell out of love. It was just something that gradually happened. It wasn't something that we could help, but it was something that just happened. His job, my job, constant fighting, never seeing each other. That was our relationship. It was not the healthiest thing for Katie and Hannah, but it was how it was. It was how we "communicated" with one another.
He loved his job, and I loved mine. We were both workaholic who were married, married to our jobs, and had two beautiful daughters. We couldn't figure out how to work around our never ending confusing work schedules, and that is when we both, I guess, began to withdraw. That is when he started to stay late, and that is when I guess the affair started.
When it first started he was better at hiding it. "Marie, I am gonna sleep in the office, I just got a hot lead on the case. Sorry. Kiss the girls good-night for me." Each and every time that I heard that I thought that maybe there was a chance that he had someone on the side. But I believed that it would pass. Some mid-life crisis that every middle aged man goes through. Every night when the phone would ring, late at night, and it was Jack telling me some sort of excuse about why he wasn't coming home, I found it a little bit harder to believe him each time. Wondering wether or not he was telling the truth, wether or not if he was really with someone else.
Love isn't something that you can just turn on and off. It is something that is there from the beginning. Hidden in a touch, in a look, in a sentence. Sometimes people can be truly blind to what they don't want to see. And I guess when I first started to notice that there was someone else. That those looks, touches, were going to someone else, I just blocked it out of my mind. Tried to forget, tried to understand where we got so far apart, where we became total strangers to one another.
One night when Jack called to tell me that he would be coming home late, I stayed up to "welcome" him home. He got in around 2 o'clock in the morning, and I was sitting there on the couch waiting. He came down and sat next to me. I asked him who she was, and instead of asking me what I was talking about he told me that it was someone that he was worked with. That is when I lost it. I had always known that there was someone else. But I was just expecting that he was picking up some girl on the street, getting God knows what sickness'. But never once did I think that he would be sleeping with someone he worked with. I asked him if he was in love with her, and he looked me in the eye, and I just knew. Without him saying anything, I just knew that he was in love with this little office whore.
That was the last straw. I would be able to forgive him for keeping a mistress, but falling in love with her. That was just to much, that was something that I would not allow. The man I married, to fall in love with his mistress, some woman that probably slept around. I told him to get out, and that I didn't want him coming back. He could see the girls when he wanted to, but he would not be staying in this house. Our "families" house while he was in love with that little hooch.
We were apart for about four or five months before he came home that day. I had seen it on the news. There was a hostage situation going on down town, and Jack was involved. I hadn't been able to reach him all day, but the next morning when I found him sitting in the chair next to my, our, bed asleep I knew what had happened. I knew that he had been able to work through it, and he needed to see the girls. I must have been an after thought.
When he woke up about 10 minutes later, I asked him what he was doing here. He told me that Samantha had been shot. It took me a while to figure out why he was telling me this. But then it dawned on me. Samantha... her... the mistress. I don't know why he told me that, and that is when I noticed it. The blood. So red standing out on his perfectly white shirt. At first I thought it was his, but then again, it wasn't that much blood. Only a drop, and that is when I knew that it was her's. I asked him what happened, and he told me the whole deal. Samantha had gone undercover to help with a drop, but something went wrong, and she put herself between a bullet from her gun, and another random citizen. Samantha had been shot, and the man who was holding the people hostage would not let her go. He told me that he was able to get at least one person out, and that man had told him that Samantha was bleeding all over the place, and that if she didn't get any help that she would die soon. He told me that it was then that he knew what he must do. He said that he handed Martin his gun and badge and walked into the bookstore to get Samantha.
It was then that I told him that I didn't want to hear anymore. I didn't want to know how he had saved his mistress, how he risked his life for her's and how he probably didn't even think about his family, his girls, his own life. But that is when he told me that he had cut it off with her a long time ago. I looked him in the eyes and I saw that he was telling the truth, but I could also see the love he still held for her.
He continued his story by telling me that this man Barry and he had talked about me, the girls, Samantha, and that the only reason why he was sitting here with me now was that he wanted to give me, us... a second chance. He said that he was sorry for the way that things happened, and that he wanted to be a family again. I told him that it was going to be a long while till I was going to be able to trust him again, and he said that he understood. But he was willing to do what it took to make it work again.
And I believed him.
It started off great. Him taking the girls to school, coming home at some normal hours, missing only at the most one family dinner a week, but only if he was out of town. It had seemed like it was getting all better. But as fate would have it, I guess that it just wasn't meant to be. It wasn't to long before we were back to our old retinue. He was staying late at work. We were fighting more and more, and it just wasn't working. The day that we ended it was the day that Katie's teacher called us in for a parent teacher meeting and told us that Katie was starting fights by yelling at people. She was always yelling and the teacher thought there was a serious problem going on. She recommended that she went to go see a doctor. We thanked her and that night we decided that it would be the best if we ended it. Our daughters were starting to think that all we did was fight, and that, that is how you spoke to people, by yelling, by fighting, and I couldn't stand to know that, that is how they thought of their parents. So we ended it.
When Jack told me that he wanted to start dating Samantha once the divorce was final I didn't want her around the girls. I didn't think that she should be allowed to be a part of there lives, but Jack fought it, he wanted her to be a part of their lives, and there wasn't anything that I really could do to stop it.
So Samantha became a part of my daughter's lives. At first it took a while for Hannah and Katie to really warm up to her. Kids can be very trusting, but they can be evil. Soon they started to believe that she was cool, and was totally awesome to hang out with. They became friends and I could tell that Jack seemed to be truly happy, and I was actually glad.
Now my relationship with Samantha didn't go exactly as smooth as the girls did. I wasn't as accepting of the woman who was sleeping with my husband while we were married. But I soon learned to like her, and we even started to become friends. There were night's when we would have family dinners. It would be all five of us. Anyone looking in on these times would really begin to wonder what was wrong with this family, but in our own special way we all agreed with one another, and we all got along... most of the time.
Sure there were times when Jack and I would fight, when Samantha and I would fight, and even times when Jack and Samantha would fight. No matter what we always tried to keep these times away from the girls, and we were good at it. Sometime, some how, on our way to trying to figure everything out, we became a family, and we were all happy.
About 7 months after Jack and mines divorce, and the day that he and Samantha got together they decided that they were going to get married. I was supportive of corse, because, even I, had welcomed her into our family. The wedding wasn't huge, but it wasn't little either. It was just close family and friends. They were married by Father Walker and it was just beautiful. Now as many times as I had spent with both Samantha and Jack, I had never seen either one of them smile as much as they did that night. Both of their smiles were huge, and lit up the room when they both entered the church.
Now every marriage had there hard points, the bumpy roads that they had to travel together. Together they decided that they were going to live near the girls, but still not to far from work. Together they went through the fact that Samantha may never have been able to have children, and together they created a family that was all there own.
To say I wasn't happy for them would be a lie. In all honesty. If anyone deserved to be happy it was us, and together we made this messed up happy family.