Chapter Text
Darryl didn’t know what, exactly, “separation” entailed, besides Carol packing her clothes and lipsticks and work computer in a little plastic tub and heading to her parents’ house. She kissed Grant’s brow in the doorway before she left, not telling him where she was going — leaving that to Darryl — and stood on her toes to kiss her husband’s as well, cupping his cheek so tenderly that for a moment he forgot what was happening, where she was going, and his lips cracked into a lopsided smile.
It was a Monday evening, seemingly like any other. Grant was in his room doing homework, some pop ballad about “hoping I never lose you” blaring from his Bose speaker. Carol was in the bathroom, cleaning off her makeup with those cotton pads that filled the medicine cabinet. Darryl was at the stove, stirring a pot of something hearty, something that smelled like coriander and autumn. He had been excited to feed his family, like he was every night; that was something that never went away.
And then, breaking routine, Carol came out of the hallway, holding that translucent tub in front of her chest so Darryl could see everything inside it, and a jolt shot through his bones before she could even explain she was leaving.
His in-laws lived in a bungalow in the town Carol and Darryl were originally from, about 30 miles away from their cul-de-sac in San Dimas. If Carol had to come home, if there were an emergency, she could be back within the hour. But it didn’t feel like that. It felt like there were worlds between them, like he was back in the Forgotten Realms, like quests would have to be undertaken, anchors broken, dragons vanquished to bring them back together again.
As soon as Carol was gone, her Honda Civic haloed by the setting sun as she made the right out of the neighborhood, Darryl explained the situation to Grant as well as he could, as well as he knew, based on the five-minute conversation he and his wife had shared before she left.
He seemed to understand — maybe better than Darryl himself did.
“Things have been weird since we’ve been back,” the 13-year-old said, nodding, leaning ever so slightly into the heavy hand his father rested on his shoulder. “I know you and mom love each other, but when you go through something like that, it can push you apart, I guess. Just like it can put you back together.”
“Is that what she’s upset about? The — everything that happened?” Darryl asked, and Grant shook his head.
“I don’t — well, I don’t know. I just meant, look, I know you guys hoped the adventure — and the therapy — it’d make you closer, like it did for the others, and for Glenn and Jodie,” Grant said. “But it can’t work for everyone.”
“You don’t seem sad about it, bud. It’s okay to be sad.”
Grant sucked in a measured breath at the question, turning his gaze to stare at an empty spot on the carpet and shrugging his father’s hand off his shoulder. In the months since the duo had returned from Forgotten Realms, the child had come to look more like a teen — he was taller, perhaps a bit stockier, and his floppy hair was often slick with grease. In moments like this, it made Darryl unintentionally give his son’s words more weight.
“Sometimes when I’m not sad, it’s — it’s a bad thing. It means my stuff,” he said, vaguely gesturing to his head, “isn’t working right. But this isn’t that. It’s just, yeah, I’m sad, I guess. But I always — or, for a long time — sort of expected something like this. So I already felt all the feelings I have about it.”
He shrugged, and Darryl shrugged back. Grant’s brain worked differently than his did — and not just chemically. He was more astute, hyper-aware of impending doom, a meteorologist of sorts. Whereas, when Darryl had gotten back from the Forgotten Realms and Carol had put them in weekly couple’s therapy, had gone with him to a square dancing class, had rewatched Primer with him and beamed when he periodically paused the DVR to make sure he had understood the latest twist, he had been certain, absolutely certain, that things would be okay.
◊ ◊ ◊
It was another half-week before he told anyone. It wasn’t on purpose — he hardly left the house in those three days, except to go to the grocery store and chauffeur Grant — but it wasn't not on purpose. He bumped into Samantha while picking Grant up from soccer practice on Tuesday and gracelessly avoided the topic, even when she asked if he and Carol would like to join the other couple for a production of La Traviata in a few weeks.
“I’ll have to ask,” Darryl replied sheepishly, before improvising, “it might be tough, it’s, ah, Carol’s sister's birthday.”
It wasn’t until a standing appointment of his — Thursday night drinks with Henry at the Black Ash Inn, a cozy sports bar in a strip mall halfway between the two men’s neighborhoods — that he finally let it slip.
They were exchanging their usual pleasantries, talk of children and wives, remembrances of Neverwinter and Rocqueporte, when Henry interrupted his own story (something about Mercedes’ newfound interest in something called “therapeutic scrapbooking”) to tap Darryl on the arm.
“Hey. Everything alright?”
Darryl hadn’t realized that he was only half paying attention to what Henry was saying, his unfocused gaze looking straight through the slender man. He was distracted, his mind buzzing with questions about why Carol had gone and when she was coming back — questions he wanted to and couldn’t bear to pose to Henry, who always seemed to have the answer — and it didn’t help that he had slept poorly all week, his entire body wracked by a dull, tired ache.
“Sure is,” he replied after a pause a half-second too long, flicking his eyes back to Henry’s and putting on that same lopsided smile with which he’d bid Carol off.
Henry furrowed his brow, lowering his beer back onto the bar and scooting his barstool an inch closer to Darryl.
“I thought we were over the whole repressing emotions thing. I won’t push; if you’re uncomfortable, we can move on, but you’re allowed to tell me if something’s bothering you,” the shorter man said seriously, holding eye contact with Darryl even as the latter shifted his gaze around the bar, only half-full on a clammy Thursday evening.
The impulse to turn Henry down again, to make some excuse — he was up late watching some nebulous sports game last night, perhaps — came and went. It was hard, for whatever reason, to lie with Henry’s clear blue eyes staring through him. They reminded him of stained glass windows, letting light into a chapel.
“Okay, okay. I want to tell you, it’s just hard to get out,” he said, before taking a moment to squeeze his eyes shut and breathe — a four-count in, through the nose, then eight, slowly, out through the mouth.
The therapist had given him breathing exercises to center himself, not unlike the ones Grant’s had given him, but now, they seemed to stop working. Behind the blackness of his eyelids, he saw Carol driving off, leaving him and Grant in the doorway, followed by a PowerPoint presentation of all the reasons she may have left, all the things he had done wrong that week.
He’d forgotten she hated mushrooms, and had ordered mushrooms on the pizza Friday night, and she’d sulked, saying she couldn’t just pick them off (the taste lingered, she claimed), opting to eat a cheese sandwich on Wonder Bread instead. He’d kissed her before work the previous Thursday, which had smudged her lipstick and forced her to reapply it, making her late for a meeting. And he’d been regaining the weight he’d lost in the Forgotten Realms, too; Saturday morning, she’d poked his belly after a hearty breakfast of bacon and pancakes and made some quip that if he kept eating like that, he’d have to go on another epic adventure to lose it again.
It hadn’t hurt in the moment, but the memory made a scarlet flush rise up his neck. Maybe he didn’t look good enough for her anymore. Or maybe it was lots of things rolled into one.
His eyes shot open as quickly as he’d closed them, his breath coming heavier at the memory. He offered Henry a sheepish smile, a half-apology for his unusual behavior, but the look he was met with was one of concern. The druid placed a gentle hand on Darryl’s knee.
“Hey,” he said, leaning to meet the taller man’s eye. “It seems like whatever is going on is making you really anxious. We don’t have to talk about it here. We can go back to my house, or wherever you’re comfortable, or we can table the conversation for later. Whatever you want.”
“No, no, I can tell you. It’s Carol,” he replied softly. “She’s — we’re separated. Whatever that means.”
“Oh, Darryl.” Without hesitation, Henry pulled the other man into a hug from his position on the barstool, one hand in the center of Darryl’s back, the other on the back of his head. It took a second for Darryl, who had brought his arms to his chest, instinctually on guard, to unspool, letting his arms limply wrap around the others’ waist and resting his forehead on his shoulder.
For a second, he thought he might start to cry, but he didn’t — he just felt tired, empty. He wondered, for a moment, if what he was feeling was anything like when Grant felt not-sad.
He pulled away after a moment, squeezing his lips together and nodding, a thank you in the language of men who struggle to speak their appreciation aloud.
“Was it sudden?” asked Henry, always the pseudo-psychologist.
“It was to me. I don’t know if she’d been planning on it, but I thought we were good. Great, even. Of course, Grant said he saw it coming. Don’t know how he knows these things,” Darryl sighed. “She left for her parents’ Monday. Haven’t heard a word since. Still don’t know what made her want to leave.”
“I —” The furrow in Henry’s brow deepened, eyes flicking to his own reflection in the mirror behind the bar before turning back to his friend’s face, as the rouge brought on by the memory of Carol in the kitchen finally faded. “Darryl, I hope this isn’t out of line to say, but I think it’s pretty dang messed up that Carol left without even telling you why. I mean, how are you supposed to fix whatever upset her if you don’t know what it is?”
Darryl sighed, grabbing his beer and going in for a swig until he remembered — his gut. If that was Carol’s problem with him, 32 ounces of Heineken wasn’t going to help. He paused before the glass touched his lips, lowering it back onto the bar and pushing it, practically untouched, away from him.
Henry’s eyes followed the tankard’s path in the air. He didn’t know why Darryl wasn’t drinking it, but the sight of it still made a sour lump appear in his throat.
“I know you don’t know Carol that well, but she must’ve had a good reason. She doesn’t just do things for no reason,” Darryl said. “And she’s like me — she’s not always good at explaining what she’s feeling. Maybe she’s waiting ‘til she can say it right.”
“Maybe.”
For a moment, Henry sipped his locally-brewed sour and Darryl stared at a spot on the bar’s brown brick wall, absently kneading the skin between his left thumb and pointer finger, until the blonde man spoke a minute later, his voice wavering as he broke the uncomfortable silence. It was so rare that there was uncomfortable silence between them.
“Do you not like the beer? Wanna order something else? We could get cauliflower wings, too; I’m feeling a little peckish,” he said, offering Darryl a closed-lipped smile, changing the topic so Darryl wouldn’t have to — a condolence, a peace offering.
“Just not too thirsty, honestly,” Darryl said with a low chuckle. “Or hungry.”
Henry raised an eyebrow. “Your choice, obviously, but if you haven’t been eating as well since — since Monday, it might be good for you to have a nice meal.”
Darryl thought back to the morning. He’d had a bowl of eggs and cup of black coffee, but the meal had churned his already-uneasy stomach, and he’d skipped lunch. Perhaps it would be good to have a meal; with Grant having dinner at the Stamplers’, it wasn’t likely he’d want to cook when he got home, anyway.
“Yeah, you’re right. Thanks, Henry,” he said, before turning to the bartender, laminated menu in hand. “I’ll have a, uh, Caesar salad. With the dressing on the side. Thanks.”
◊ ◊ ◊
Carol didn’t call until the next Monday.
It was the morning, 7:30 a.m. or so — around the time she normally woke up for work, but Darryl guessed the longer commute, from the suburbs of San Bernardino, had forced her to adjust her schedule.
Darryl himself had only just crawled back into bed after seeing Grant off as he left for the bus stop minutes earlier. Clad in a threadbare Bruins tee and grey boxers — and still only capable of curling up on the bed’s left side, as if stretching an arm, a hand, even a knuckle into Carol’s usual spot was an implicit acceptance that this separation was a permanent thing — he had only just begun to close his eyes when the phone buzzed to life.
Darryl let the Nokia ring for a moment before he answered, feeling heat rise up the back of his neck, into the shells of his ears. He briefly considered what might happen, what it might mean, if he let the call go to voicemail. Would it trick Carol into thinking he had some other obligation beyond her and their son? That he had moved on after only a week without her? Would it hurt? Is that what he wanted?
Instead, he answered on the third ring, his hands shaking as he propped himself up on his elbow and held the phone to his ear.
“Hi.”
“Hi? Is that it?”
“Hi, honey?”
“Why haven’t you called?”
It was hard to choke back the natural retort, the ‘why haven’t you?’ that sat like lead on Darryl’s tongue. It was a double standard that bothered him more than it deserved to, the four-word question poking and prodding at every insecurity he harbored about his marriage. She wanted him to be more sensitive, more vulnerable, more romantic — things he was, partway, but never as much as she needed.
And she wanted him to at least be the type of guy who would call her at some point in the week she was away, if he couldn’t be the type of guy who chased her car down the driveway, begging her not to leave.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled into the receiver, like a child, called on unexpectedly by his teacher, giving an answer he knew was wrong. “I thought you wanted some space.”
He heard a sharp sigh on the other end of the line, and he could almost feel the huff of air through the Nokia’s speaker.
“That’s a lame excuse, Darryl. Seriously.”
“Listen, Carol — please come back. Whatever it is, whatever I did, I can make it right.” The plea tumbled out of Darryl lightning fast, half-lisped, the way words often did when the man tried to speak sincerely. “If you’re mad about something, we can talk about it. I can fix it. I’ll fix whatever you don’t like. Just don’t — don’t leave. We need you.”
Silence fell over the other end of the phone, and Darryl pictured his wife like a one-woman jury, carefully deliberating over the case he had made.
But Carol wasn’t a jury, stoic, unbiased, taking notes in a state-provided notepad. She was a person, he had to remind himself, with her own motivations, mysterious though they were. And after a moment, she let out another sigh — this one, Darryl thought he noticed, punctuated by a hiccup, or even a sob — breaking the illusion that she was anything but that.
“I — I actually think we should talk about this later. Alright? I’m sorry I got snippy.”
“Can’t we talk about it now? I just want to know what it is —”
“Later, Darryl. I have a meeting.”
And, with a beep, the call ended.