Love and Marriage

Chapter Sixty-Eight

It was soon Friday and everyone was getting ready to go home—well everyone except Martin. He seemed determined to do as much paperwork at the office as he possibly could in order to delay having to go home. He'd been doing that all week and the rest of the team was determined to help him stop that.

"Hey Martin," Vivian greeted as she walked up to his desk. "What are you working on?"

"An old report that never got typed up." Martin replied, not looking up from his work.

"Well if it's waited this long to get typed up, I think it can wait until Monday. Why don't you come have dinner with my family tonight? We're not having anything special. I think it's meatloaf night, but we'll have plenty." Viv offered.

"Thanks Viv, but I want to stay here and catch up on some work." Martin politely declined.

"It wasn't a request Martin." Viv grabbed the papers from his desk. "It was more like an order."

"Viv, c'mon!" He objected. "Give me those papers back."

"No." Viv shook her head defiantly. "Not until you agree to come have dinner."

"It's nice of you to offer, but I'm not really in the mood." Martin told her.

"That's exactly why you should come over." Viv reasoned. "Look, we both know that if I leave you here, you're going to work right through dinner and then probably pick up Chinese or something equally as unhealthy. When was the last time you've eaten a real meal?" She suspected that he wasn't eating regularly and that when he was eating it was all junk food. She would even go so far as to bet that his house was starting to become littered with pizza boxes and takeout containers. "You haven't since Sam left, have you?"

"Maybe." He hated to admit that Viv knew him too well. It was one of the things he enjoyed and disliked about working with her for so long.

"Does she know that you're letting yourself go like this?" Viv asked, taking a softer and less demanding tone.

"I'm not letting myself go." Martin chuckled.

She looked at him carefully. "Martin, you're barely eating, you look exhausted, you're sad all the time and you're burying yourself in work. We are all concerned about you."

"You don't need to be." He assured her, flashing her a big smile that he hoped would get her off his back.

"Why don't you let us be the judge of that?" She replied, not believing that he was fine. "But back to my earlier question. Does Sam know that you're basically falling apart?"

"I'm not falling apart." He objected weakly, getting tired of having to defend himself against accusations that were really true. If he wanted to be honest with himself he would admit that he was falling apart. He would admit that he was barely functioning without his family around him and that he could feel himself spiraling downward. "And she doesn't know anything is wrong."

"Maybe I should give her a call and let her yell at you for awhile since I'm not getting anywhere with you." Viv reasoned, picking up Martin's phone. "What's the area code for Houston?"

Martin gently grabbed the phone from Viv's hands. "I don't want her to know. She has enough to deal with and I don't want to worry her needlessly."

"I think she deserves to know how you're doing without her." She pointed out.

"But she's doing fine without me." He explained to Viv. "She's making new friends, fitting in well with her co-workers, and having a good time at work. She actually enjoys her job again. She's ok without me. I don't think she needs me."

Viv placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. "You have to know that's not true."

"No I don't." He replied sadly. He was grateful that he had friends that wanted to look out for him but he didn't feel like getting into this with Viv right now. "Look, like I said, I appreciate the offer but I'll pass on dinner."

"And like I said, it wasn't a request." Viv replied, giving him a stern look. "We can do this the easy way or the hard way but either way you're coming home with me for a home-cooked dinner."

He sighed, knowing that she wasn't going to budge. She could be a very stubborn woman when she wanted to be and he could tell that this was one of those times. She wasn't going to take no for an answer this time. So that meant he had two choices. Either he could spend the next half hour trying to convince her to stop trying to feed him or he could just give up now and not waste thirty minutes of their lives. "I want it noted that I'm not coming along on my own volition."

She gave him a big smile. "Dually noted."

He turned off his computer and straightened some papers around on his desk before following her out of the office.

Sam was getting ready to go to bed but decided to check on Claire first. She quietly opened the door to her room and saw that Claire was awake, even though she had tucked her in hours ago. "Claire? Is anything wrong?" Her first thought was that maybe Claire was getting sick and that's why she wasn't asleep.

"No." Claire shook her head.

Sam entered the room and sat on the bed beside her daughter. "Then what are you doing still awake? Did you have a bad dream?"

Claire slowly nodded her head. "Can you stay with me please?"

"Of course." Sam replied, moving onto the bed so that she was lying on her side. She reached out and pulled Claire close, wrapping her arms around her daughter. "Do you want to tell me what the dream was about?"

"No." Claire shook her head.

Sam was concerned. Claire rarely ever had bad dreams, and the few that she had never affected her this much. "Claire, if you tell me what it was then it won't be so scary."

"It wasn't scary." Claire informed her mother. "It was just sad."

"Are you sure you don't want to tell me about it?" Sam asked gently, pushing a strand of Claire's hair out of her daughter's face. "It might make you feel better."

"It was about daddy." Claire replied after thinking about it for a moment.

She shouldn't have been surprised that the bad dream had something to do with Martin. In fact, she should have expected it to happen sooner or later. "What happened to daddy?"

"He was really sad because we left and he cried." Claire explained. "Can I send some of my pictures to daddy?" She had been drawing a lot in the past few days while her mommy was working and thought about sending them to her daddy. She thought that he would like some new pictures for the refrigerator. Maybe that would make him happy and then he wouldn't be as sad as he was in her dream.

"You know, that's a wonderful idea." Sam smiled.

"Do you think he'd like that?" Claire asked hesitantly.

"I know that he would love it!" Sam exclaimed. Claire was becoming such a kind, compassionate person.

"Do you think daddy's sad without us there?" She didn't want to think that her daddy was sad, but he was alone now.

Sam could hear the worry that was in Claire's voice and wasn't sure how to answer this. She knew that Martin missed them, and she could hear the sadness in his voice every time they talked. But she didn't think that she should tell her daughter that her daddy was sad, especially since that's what her dream was about. "I know that your daddy misses you terribly, but I don't think you have to worry about him."

"Would the pictures cheer him up?" Claire asked.

"They definitely would make him smile." Sam answered.

"Then I'm going to draw him a bunch of pictures every day!" Claire exclaimed happily. "Then we can send them to him and make him smile."

Sam loved the enthusiasm and energy that Claire always seemed to have for life. "I'm sure he would love that."

"Mommy?" Claire asked, yawning..

"Yeah?"

"I miss daddy." She admitted as her eyes slowly started to droop.

Sam held her daughter tighter, placing a kiss on her head and noticing that she was already asleep again. "I do too." She whispered to the dark room.