Avalon and Maddock

Chapter 1: Avalon

My voice trailed off as my little boy's body got heavy against my arm. When I glanced down, his long lashes, exactly like his father's, lay against his cheek in slumber. Landon always thought staying up ten minutes later than his three-year-old brother made him such a big boy, but two stories and he was always out cold. For a few minutes, I just savored the weight of his little body against my side, then I quietly slipped off his bed, pulled his blanket up and kissed his forehead. He was so like his father in both looks and disposition – the same serious, sturdy personality.

I sighed, then immediately chastised myself as I walked into the living room, sitting on the couch, my bare feet drawn up under me. Maddock was apparently having yet another late night, missing all of those important "times" with his family: dinner time, play time, bath time and bed time. The last seven months had been...frustrating. I barely saw my husband when he was in town, but mostly he'd been out of town, flying around the country for business, not really having time for calls. And if he did call, they were brief and impersonal, distracted. When he was at home, he wasn't with us emotionally and hardly physically. I went to bed alone and when I woke, he was often out of bed staring at the night sky through the window. I couldn't remember the last time we'd been intimate and if he remembered to kiss me good-bye, it was chaste, perfunctory.

So I tried not to jump to conclusions, I tried to be supportive when all he would answer in response to my questions about what was wrong, was that work was crazy and needed his full attention. He was short and snappish if I pushed beyond that, so I'd stopped asking about work.

But my radar had been pinging for about six months now that something else was going on. Like maybe an affair kind of something else, much as I didn't want to believe it, couldn't believe it of Maddock. As the weeks wore into months, I had tried, several times, to talk to him about our relationship. Work had been crazy before, but he'd still found time for all of us, he still made time for just the two of us, still managed to make me feel desired, wanted...loved.

Now he was more like a man who sometimes slept at the house where his family lived. What to do when your husband wouldn't talk to you? Wasn't even there to talk with 95 percent of the time? And when he was around, he wasn't really present? The boys rarely asked about him any more, no longer expected him to go on family outings. After about the twentieth time of being told Daddy couldn't make it, they'd stopped asking as often, and then after a few months, they didn't ask at all. We had become a trio, and even if the boys accepted this new reality, I hadn't, couldn't. I felt alone in this marriage and needed some answers.

Something had to give. On that thought, I fell asleep on the couch.

So sound asleep from my emotional exhaustion that I never heard the garage door go up and down, or the door from the garage into the house open.