Love and Marriage
Chapter Nine

The next few days passed by without any major arguments between Martin and Sam. Sure they fought, but it didn't seem like they were fighting as much. He thought that was a good sign, although he would've liked it better if they weren't fighting at all. Now he sat in Leslie's office, waiting for Sam to show up for their therapy session. He was a couple of minutes early.

Leslie glanced at Martin, who wasn't acting nearly as anxious as he had in previous sessions. His hands weren't clasped together and his body posture was more relaxed. "I'm actually glad that you're here first. I wanted to ask you if you've had an opportunity to talk to Samantha about what we discussed last week in you individual session."

"No." He shook his head. "I haven't found the right time to do that. We've been getting along a little better lately and I didn't want to rock the boat by bringing that up."

"I understand." Leslie told him. "But in order to fix your problems you're going to have to rock the boat."

Sam came rushing into the office, giving Leslie an apologetic smile and quickly walking over to the other side of the couch. "I'm sorry that I'm late."

"It's ok." Leslie nodded. "We haven't started yet anyway."

"Good." Sam replied, sneaking a small glance at Martin before turning her attention back to Leslie.

"So how have the two of you been?" Leslie asked, starting the session.

"Ok." Sam replied.

"Fine." Martin answered.

Leslie sighed. That question was supposed to encourage them to elaborate. "Last time we met I asked you to start thinking about when the problems in your marriage started. Who wants to begin this discussion?" She looked back and forth between them, seeing that neither really wanted to be the one to start. It looked like she would have to choose who went first again. "Ok, Martin, why don't you go first?"

She always seemed to pick him to go first, and he didn't like it. But he sighed and prepared himself for the argument that was bound to happen once he brought this topic up. "Well I've thought about this a lot and I think that a lot of our problems started after the miscarriage." He didn't dare look over at Sam out of fear that she was angry with him for bringing that subject up.

"I see." Leslie interjected, looking at Sam. The blonde had been sitting on the couch in a relaxed manner similar to Martin, but at the mention of the miscarriage, she tensed up and started picking at invisible lint again. "Samantha, would you agree with Martin's suggestion?"

She would rather be anywhere but here talking about the miscarriage. Why did he have to bring that up? "Sure." She shrugged.

"Martin, what happened after the miscarriage between you and Samantha?" Leslie hated having to bring up subjects like this that were so distressing, and she hated seeing the look of sheer pain that was stationed in Samantha's eyes just thinking about the miscarriage, but it was necessary.

"We…it was hard." Martin replied.

"Hard? How?" Leslie prodded.

"It was just hard." He repeated. "I don't know about Sam, but I felt like I was constantly walking on eggshells when I was around her, not wanting to upset her or fight with her." After pausing for a moment, he added, "I still feel like I'm walking on eggshells sometimes."

Leslie made a few notes before looking over at Samantha. "And what about you Samantha? Did you feel like you were walking on eggshells with him?"

She nodded her head. "Yeah, I did."

"What were these fights about?" She was curious about what exactly they fought about.

"Anything and everything. We fought about a lot of stupid things that didn't matter." Martin answered.

"So these fights weren't about anything important or serious?" Leslie asked.

"No, not really. They were fights about whether or not it would rain or what radio station to listen to in the car." Martin informed her.

"I see." Leslie stated. She was about to ask another question when Samantha spoke up.

"He's neglecting to tell you the whole truth." Sam stated.

"What do you mean Samantha?" Leslie was curious and looked back and forth between Martin and Samantha.

Martin was also looking at her, and she turned to make eye contact with him before turning to face Leslie again. "There was one fight in particular that wasn't about radio stations or weather. Maybe he doesn't consider it to be something serious, but I do and I think you should know about it."

"Then please go on." Leslie encouraged her.

Sam took a deep breath before reliving a conversation that, until today, she had almost forgotten about.

Sam entered the bedroom after tucking Claire into bed and saw that Martin was reading a book while lying on the bed. It had been three weeks since her miscarriage, and they still hadn't talked about it. As she changed into her pajamas, she could feel his eyes focusing on her. He was doing that a lot lately, staring at her without saying anything. It was like he wanted to say something but kept changing his mind before the words came out.

"So are we going to talk about what's happened or just pretend that it never happened?" She finally asked, approaching her side of the bed and pulling back the covers.

"What do you mean?" He asked, feigning ignorance when in reality he knew what she was talking about.

"You know what I'm talking about." She rolled her eyes. "The miscarriage." She didn't really want to talk about it, but they needed to.

"What's there to talk about?" He asked, still not putting down the book and giving her his full attention.

She wasn't sure what angered her more—his indifference or the fact that she wasn't getting his full attention. "We should talk about this."

"Why? What's the point?" He shrugged, looking up from the book.

"Don't you even care?" She exclaimed passionately. "We just lost our child and all you can do is sit there and calmly read a book?"

"Well excuse me!" He rolled his eyes. "I didn't know that reading a book was such a big crime."

She sighed, not sure why talking to him was suddenly so hard. " What the hell is wrong with you?"

"What the hell is wrong with me?" He yelled back, throwing the book down on the bed. "You're standing there basically telling me that I'm a horrible human being just because I'm reading a book. Then you have the nerve to question how much I cared about our child." He could feel himself getting angry. "Don't you even dare question how much I cared! I wanted that child from the beginning; from the very first moment you told me you were pregnant. You were the one that didn't."

She couldn't believe that he was throwing that back into her face. Yes, she wasn't entirely thrilled when she found out that she was pregnant. It was the last thing she had expected to happen, but she did love that child. It was a part of her. How could she not love her own child?

Still angry, he spoke without thinking. "I would have thought that you would be happy about the miscarriage. You didn't want anymore children anyway." He heard the words come out of his mouth and cringed. Even though that was what he was thinking, he never meant to say that to her and immediately regretted it as he watched her face react to his words.

His words were like a slap in the face and she stood there shocked for a moment. She didn't think that he would ever say something that hurtful to her face like that, but she was obviously wrong. Feeling the tears start to build up in her eyes, she picked up her robe from the end of the bed and ran out of the room.

He internally berated himself for saying such a thing to her and jumped out of bed to follow her. But she had a head start and by the time he caught up with her, she was already in the car, backing out of the driveway and speeding off into the night.