Silver Currents of Change

Chapter 15

Several days passed before Harvey realized it wasn't going to be as easy for him to leave his marriage as he'd first thought it would be. In shock and not thinking straight, some days, he found himself hoping there might be a way to save it, mainly because the vows he took at the altar were meant to be forever. He loved being married, devoted for life to one special woman. Even though, now, he knew Dinah was not that woman. She had never loved him. She was his wife, but she never loved him. Finding out left him in pain, and he knew it would take time for him to heal.

Knowing he'd never move back to Pinehaven, the day after he left, he put together the best team he could find: Construction engineers, architects, interior designers, and several construction companies, to work on building him a refuge, expertly and rapidly. He moved out of the Gothic mansion immediately and accepted his parents' invitation to stay in their guesthouse. Once settled in, he hunkered down and prepared to ride out a divorce storm. Then Dinah called, crying and pleading, messing with his mind and his heart. His wife was begging, desperately, asking him not to file for divorce right away. She admitted she didn't deserve it, but she still asked him to give her time. Time to get used to the idea of being alone. After listening to her for a while, his heart softened, and he gave in to her request.

A week passed before he finally gathered the nerve to assemble his family around him in the guesthouse. He told them the whole story about the day his marriage crumbled away in front of his eyes. After that, his dad wasted no time telling him he should have it annulled. Immediately. His dad and his brother, both attorneys, assured him he had clear legal grounds for it, but his stepmother, Mary Jean, was silent. She just looked at him with nothing but love and understanding in her eyes. She knew him and his brother just as well she knew her daughters, their sisters. Without saying a word, his mother's eyes told him she knew he wasn't quite ready to let go of what he thought he had, with the woman he thought he married.

Sitting at the kitchen table with his head in his hands, Harvey told them he allowed Dinah to convince him not to get an annulment. Instead, despite what he'd seen and heard that awful day, he told them he'd convinced her to go with him to counseling. When his dad asked, "What the hell for?" he explained it wasn't to save their marriage, but for both of them to gain a better understanding of why things had gone so wrong. Even though he knew his marriage had been a lie from the very beginning, he told his family he felt he had to do something to create a bridge to the future. For both of them. Getting a stronger grip on the past, he said, might help him and Dinah understand how to deal with and get ready for their new lives apart from each other. No matter what, he reasoned, he had been half of a married couple for five years, and that meant a lot of emotional investment on his part, if not on hers. He needed time, he told them, to say goodbye to what he thought he had with Dinah.

Two weeks later, after hours of counseling and therapy kept him and his wife incredibly busy, it finally became clear to Harvey that both of his parents were right all along. His dad, for trying to get him to see that since his marriage was originally based on a lie, nothing but divorce could fix it. And his mother, for saying very little while showing him he needed to come to that conclusion all by himself.

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The first week of October, in the middle of the first installment of a two-semester advanced magazine features writing course, the course professor, Dr. Lofton, left JCU unexpectedly. Selected to work on an important mass media research project in another state, she couldn't turn down the appointment, and wouldn't be able to return to JCU until the following fall. The problem was, her unplanned departure threatened to upset a lot of students' May graduation plans. After checking with all full- and part-time faculty members, Dean Jared Broderick realized there was no one who could teach the abandoned course in either the fall or the spring. As much as he hated having to ask his benevolent and loyal friend for a favor, he had no other choice. He had to do it, so he called the man who was behind the College of Communication's greatest financial gift ever, and he asked if he would come to the rescue of its students, once again, by teaching the two-semester course.