to him.
“It’s not fair, Max. It’s not, and you can’t tell me otherwise.”
He walked toward her and put his hands on her shoulders, pressed his forehead to hers.
So close she could smell him. She loved the scent of him. No matter how long he’d been on shore, to her he always smelled like the ocean.
“Nor, look at me. There are times you have to accept that some things are bigger than any one person. Bigger than any one relationship. Four months is nothing to us. A blip in our life.”
She shook her head and stepped out of his reach. “No, it’s four months this time. Then five months the next time. Then a year after that. It’s always going to be you needing to be on the ocean finding more and more data. Thinking you can prove that climate change is happening and suddenly everyone will listen to you.”
“Yes, Nor. The data I collect. It’s important. Not just for me but for everyone on this planet.”
“You have to make a choice. You have to choose. A life with me or a life on the ocean. But you can’t have both.”
He frowned. “Ultimatums? You’re sitting there, right now, issuing me an ultimatum. How crappy is that?”
Eleanor could feel tears welling up, but she worked hard to make sure her voice didn’t crack when she said it. “Max, do you love me?”
“With everything I am.”
She smiled sadly. Because it was true. It’s what she felt every day. But only when he was here. Only when he was with her. They had dated a mere seven months before he proposed. Before she accepted. Her mother had thought the proposal had come too soon. So much so that she refused to put together any kind of wedding until the two of them came to their senses and waited at least a year.
Giving Eleanor no option other than the obvious one. They’d eloped. To this day, almost three years later, her mother was still furious about it.
“We’ve been married nearly three years, and in that time we’ve only been together eighteen months. I can’t...I can’t...keep doing this.”
“Well, maybe it’s time you thought about your own passions.”
It felt like a slap of some kind. “What?”
“Look, I know it’s hard when I’m gone. It’s hard for me, too. You think I like spending my days with a bunch of other smelly scientists and rough sailors on the freezing cold Arctic Ocean? I like spending my days with you. I like spending my nights with my wife. I like screwing my wife. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think it was vitally important. So while I’m gone, maybe you need to find that thing, too. The thing you think is important.”
“I think you’re important,” Eleanor told him. Not sure why he was saying what he was saying.
“Nor, I can’t be the only thing in your life. That is not the woman I married. You’re not this clingy weak thing. You are Eleanor Gaffney. You’re the girl who shook off her small Nebraska town, who found a way to put herself through school. You were going to rule the world. What happened to that girl?”
You married her and took her to a research facility in northern Norway. Eleanor wanted to say those things, but it sounded pathetic in her own head. Then she did the only thing she could think of, the thing they had both talked about having.
“We talked about getting pregnant this year,” she said.
Another snort. “Really? You’re pulling the baby card?”
The sound of his disbelief made her furious. “A baby is not a card. It’s supposed to be about having family. It’s what we both talked about wanting. We talked about doing it this year!”
“Are you pregnant now?”
“No,” she told him.
“Then when I get back in four months, we’ll talk about this. But I mean it, Nor, you need to find out what you want to do with yourself, with your life. Because being my wife, and hell, being the mother to our future children, isn’t enough. You need something for you.”
“I studied business! What the hell am I supposed to do with that in Trondheim? Create an ice-selling business? Oh, I know! What about a new pickled herring recipe?”
He had the audacity to smile at her. “Are you going to kiss me goodbye? I’m running late as it is.”
Eleanor shook her head as it finally settled on her. The truth. He was leaving. He was leaving, and his answer to that was she needed to find a hobby that would occupy her time while he was away.
This was going to be her life. Watching him leave and waiting for him to come back. She hadn’t known that’s what it would be when she married him. She didn’t know that going in or she would have...
You would have married him anyway. Your mother was right. You’re too stubborn for your own good.
“I don’t think you understand what I’ve been trying to tell you. If you leave me, I’m leaving you.”
Eleanor watched as his whole body tensed.
Max shook his head. “You don’t mean it.”
“Look at me, Max.” Eleanor stood in front of him, and she knew in her heart she meant every word she said. It would take all her courage to leave him, but she would do it. “I love you. Like no one I’ve ever loved before. But I can’t spend my life doing this. Watching you leave. So it might break me, but if you leave, then I’m gone.”
“I’m not going to be brought to heel by my wife,” he snapped. “I’m not your damn dog.”
“I’m not trying to do that. I’m trying to save our marriage. You think love is enough.”
“It should be,” he shouted.
“It’s not. It’s about compromise and working together and finding a solution. It’s not about you telling me the day before, Sorry, babe, I need to leave for a while, and that while is four months.”
“The funding came though from Tom yesterday. I had no control over that. Or when the ship leaves. I told you that, too.”
“Max! You’re not listening to me.”
“Eleanor, I’m hearing you loud and clear. Now you’re not listening to me. I don’t do threats. I don’t do ultimatums. I have a real opportunity to collect meaningful data that might help people really see what’s happening to our planet. I’m sorry, but that’s more important than four months of our marriage.”
She swallowed as the words penetrated her skull. “No, Max,” she said sadly. “What you mean is that it’s more important than me.”
“Nor...”
She took a step away. “Stay safe.”
“I’ll see you in four months.”
She shook her head. “No. You won’t.”
He
