You Don't Love This Man: A Novel

By Dan DeWeese

“You Don't Love This Man is an exquisite puzzle….Which is more gorgeous, more satisfying here, the story itself, or the language DeWeese uses to tell it?” —Mary Rechner, author of Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women

Set in the Pacific Northwest, Dan Deweese’s debut novel delivers a witty, heartfelt, and keenly observed day-in-the-life of one father of the bride, casting luminous insight into marriage, fatherhood, and bank robbery. Readers of Benjamin Kunkel, Joshua Ferris, and Kevin Wilson, as well as fans of contemporary American masters like Philip Roth and Tobias Wolff, will be enthralled by Deweese’s evocative, literary exploration of an everyman protagonist’s quiet struggles and tender joys on one of the most monumental days in his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9780062036971

Book preview

I

I LOST MY DAUGHTER ONCE. She was three. It was after dark on Halloween, and we were standing on the sidewalk in front of a house down the street from our own. She wore yellow rain boots and a fuzzy brown puppy dog costume that zipped from her feet to beneath her chin—black spots dotted the costume’s body, and two black ears flopped atop the hood as she peered with undisguised suspicion at the cement walk that led to the door of this stranger’s home. When I told her to go ahead, the door was right there, she shook her head and put her mittened hand in mine. No, she said. You go with me. I told her she was big now, she could do it herself—did she remember what to say? She mumbled the phrase, and I gave her a little pat to move her up the walk, but she turned back and hugged my leg, wordlessly holding on. Miranda, I said, exasperated, I’ll be right here. You can do it. No, she said, clutching even more tightly. "No."

A group of six or seven ghosts, animals, and witches roughly her age or a bit older shuffled up behind us, bunched together in the dark. A few carried flashlights with orange plastic pumpkins over the bulbs, spheres that wobbled through the damp night air. A woman in charge of the group—in the dark it was just the shape of a woman, really—looked down at Miranda as the other kids moved past. Did you want to go up, too? she asked. And as if the words of a single stranger were all it took to hypnotize her, Miranda moved obediently up the walk with the others, the woman following. I watched them make their way up three stairs and congregate on a small concrete porch beneath the glow of a weak light above the door. A middle-aged woman in orange sweatpants and a black sweatshirt opened the door and asked with great astonishment who all these little creatures were, and the kids eagerly extended their bags. The homeowner distributed candy, the kids sang their ragged chorus of thanks, and the woman in charge herded the group laterally across the front yard toward the next house. Once beyond the reach of the porch light, only the orange glow of the flashlights betrayed their location, and when they passed behind a thick laurel and some rhododendrons that bordered the yards, even those lights disappeared from view.

My breath rose in a mist as I navigated the tilted and cracked sidewalk slabs toward the next house. It had rained earlier, and fallen leaves covered the concrete. They had formed a tapestry of rich browns and reds and golds during the day, but at night had become a slick material that slid easily beneath the pressure of a foot, so I chose my steps with care. I heard kids chattering nearby—whether it was the group I was following or just one of dozens of other groups nearby, I couldn’t tell—but when I reached the head of the walk to the next house, I saw the little group of creatures and their trailing chaperone scramble up the four wide wooden steps that led to the next porch. The woman caught one stumbling little ghost by the arm, raising it up the steps to where it could join its fellows, and a brave lion pressed the bell next to the red front door. An old man in slacks and a cardigan appeared, dispensed treats into the pails and bags, and after another chorus of thank-yous, the woman herded the group off the porch and brought them out to where I stood on the sidewalk. They seem to have the hang of this, I said, searching the group for my puppy. It’s the incentive, she said, laughing. I started to grab what I thought was a puppy, but realized it was a bear. Present also were the lion, a Darth Vader, a ladybug, witch, and ghost, and a gorilla. But no puppy.

But she was right with us, the woman said.

I walked toward the house and checked the porch, but it was empty. I crossed into the dark area between houses then, calling Miranda’s name, but all I heard was the woman telling the children in her group to wait, that everyone should stay together. The glare of porch lights pushed the space between houses into deeper darkness, and I could easily have tripped over any child dawdling there. I called Miranda’s name into the void between the twisted rhododendrons, and called it again as I moved behind and around a laurel, but there was no response. Children’s voices carried from multiple directions, their shouts and laughter bouncing through the cool night air. A car coasted slowly up the street, and I thought, But what if…, and found myself running toward the street, intending to head right onto the pavement to throw myself across the car’s hood and bring everything to a halt. I stopped at the curb, though, and gazed breathlessly into the section of street illuminated by the vehicle’s headlights while I shouted Miranda’s name again, as if the sound of my voice would prevent her from appearing in their pale sweep. The car passed without incident, its taillights dissolving in the distance.

I hear you’re missing one, a voice behind me said. I turned and saw a man in blue jeans, a jacket, and a ball cap. It was the same outfit I myself wore, as did any number of other fathers in the neighborhood that night. Two boys stood silently beside him: the taller was a pirate with an eye patch, the other wore a bathrobe and held a sword.

Yes, I said. Somewhere between these houses.

Could she have wandered home?

Not in the dark. She wouldn’t find it.

Which direction is it? he said. We can head that way.

I pointed down the street. She’s three. Dressed as a puppy.

The man patted his boys on the back and they headed off.

I walked again into the dark section of lawn between houses, calling her name. If she didn’t make it across the lawn with that group, then where did she go? Did she double back and return to the house she’d just visited? Did she wander into a backyard? I shuddered at thoughts of dogs and chains and darkness, but decided a child wouldn’t do that—she would follow the lights, the people, and the candy. I heard the approach of another car, but when I planted my foot to move toward the street, I slipped and fell in the wet grass. My knees hit, but I steadied myself, fingers in the sod, and pushed myself up, calling her name until the car passed and disappeared down another street.

I continued through lawns, past groups of parents and children who must have wondered why a lone figure was cutting through the darkness. Which way had the woman with the group of children gone? There was no way I would find them, or that they would find me. What had the man with the two boys looked like? I had hardly glanced at him.

I wondered how I was going to walk into the house and announce to Sandra, my wife, that I’d lost our three-year-old. It wasn’t possible. Jack-o’-lanterns sat in windows and on porches, flames dancing behind their grins, while knots of adults and costumed children strolled the sidewalks. What would I say? That my only job had been to keep track of our child, and I had failed, and she was gone? Someone had probably stolen her, with the intention of doing unspeakable things? Sandra would run out the door and through the neighborhood, screaming. There would be police and questions and a massive search.

If I can just find her right this moment, I thought, then none of that needs to happen. So I will find her.

The sky, a sodden wash of clouds during the day, had become a great charcoal swath at night. Every breath clouded silver in the air and then vanished, and I jogged to the far end of the street so that I could turn and start slowly back. Miranda knew not to cross the street, and no adult would stand by and watch a three-year-old step alone onto the asphalt, so she couldn’t have left the block. I tried to walk casually, while still examining every tree and bush and yard and adult and child I passed. From one lawn a whining motor powered a scarecrow that waved its arm and turned its head, and from elsewhere a stereo played a loop of creaking doors and demented cackling. I listened for her voice or cry or laugh, but there was nothing, and the closer I came to our house, the bolder I was about scouring other people’s property: I circled cars, walked through side yards, and flattened bushes. By the time I reached the yard of the house next to my own, I felt as if I were floating, and walked through the grass in silence. A couple and a small boy in a vinyl skeleton costume walked past on the sidewalk. The couple nodded politely to me while the boy looked into his pail and talked excitedly about candy he had received at my own house. I was at the foot of the porch by then, and had a last, desperate thought: Maybe she came home.

The broken gate to the backyard stood ajar as always. I made my way through it and to the concrete pad behind the back door, where the dark sphere of the barbecue grill sat atop spindly aluminum legs. Miranda’s tricycle lay on its side in the grass, as did her broken plastic lawn mower—in the weak glow of the back porch light, everything appeared bronzed. Beyond the light’s reach, in the dark back corner of the yard, sat the little wooden playhouse I’d bought at the beginning of the summer. It had a little doorway without a door and a little window without a pane, and it was through the window that I saw movement—the shift of a shadow within shadows. I reached the house in a few quick strides, looked through the window, and my knees buckled: there was the puppy, sitting amid her scattered candy. I breathed, collecting myself, and knelt at the window. What are you doing? I said.

She looked up with an excited, guiltless smile. Putting my candy away!

Come out of there. Right now.

I reached through the door and grabbed the scruff of the costume’s neck. She struggled and cried, demanding to be released so she could gather her candy, but I was stronger, and pulled her kicking and wailing out the door. She watched anxiously as I swept the candy toward me, gathered it up, and dropped it into her bag. When she was satisfied that not a piece had been lost, she let me pick her up and carry her around to the front of the house. What have you been doing? I said.

She opened her mouth, displaying the contents.

Eating candy?

Yes!

Well, that’s enough now. Halloween is over.

We can go again.

No. You can only go once.

She twisted in the direction of the street, but I pressed her to my chest, and it was a crying and struggling Miranda that I ended up carrying through the front door. Sandra didn’t question the tears—they were an expected part of Halloween, as well as a daily event in the life of a three-year-old. She pulled the costume off Miranda and threw the crumpled thing down the basement stairs to be washed, wondering aloud how it had gotten so filthy. I didn’t answer.

Later, after Miranda was asleep and Sandra, too, had gone to bed, I stayed awake, manning the door for late-evening visitors. When I stepped out onto the porch at only ten-thirty, though, I found the neighborhood empty. Even the candle of our jack-o’-lantern had gone out, the monster turned to nothing but an empty gourd with a sinking lid. The woman with the children, the man with the boys: the absence of police cars or of anyone running through the neighborhood must have convinced them the situation had been resolved. As I locked the door and turned out the lights, I reminded myself that children are lost and found every day. A brief episode did not necessarily need to be mentioned.

TWENTY-TWO YEARS LATER, on the night before my daughter’s wedding day, I dreamed of that Halloween. This wasn’t a surprise, as by that point I’d been suffering the dream for months. I had never in my life had trouble sleeping until that year I turned forty-nine. A whirling of image and sound began to descend on me in the small hours, and I would find myself again in the dark, hearing children’s voices and laughter as I marked the progress of those wobbling orange flashlights. Often it seemed I wasn’t even dreaming, but was trapped instead in an undreaming and unthinking bewilderment. So before dawn on the morning of Miranda’s wedding, exhausted by my mind’s interminable running through darkened yards, I rose and stumbled down the hall, dread trailing me like a nightshirt’s ragged hem.

It was cold in the house—strangely cold for what the forecasters had warned would be one of the hottest days of the summer—and outside it was raining. I squinted in the kitchen light’s harsh fluorescence until I had successfully started the coffee, and then I turned the light off and stood in the dark, listening to the machine hiss and cough. On the microwave, a glowing digit flipped from one minute to the next—a relief—and I wondered if across town Sandra, too, was awake. If so, she would be stealing her own glances out a window, probably while ironing or folding or wrapping or arranging something—whatever she could to stay in perpetual movement. Though we had been divorced for almost a decade, the thought of her bustling created a sympathetic nervousness in me, as if we were still a team, and I, too, should have been doing something for the cause.

I had warned Sandra the previous evening that it would rain in the night, and that she shouldn’t panic when it did. This was after the rehearsal dinner, when Miranda and her friends had led us to a bar where, despite its old-sounding Irish name, the bartenders were two college kids, Asian and Hispanic, respectively. A large adjoining room held a number of pool tables, and the whiplike snap that announced each game of eight ball was heard at regular intervals. Classic rock blared from a jukebox in the corner, forcing me to incline my head in Sandra’s direction so I could hear her ask how I knew it was going to rain. When I told her I could just feel it, she laughed and said, Feel it how? In your knees or in your nerves?

Neither, I said. In the air.

She raised an eyebrow. In the air? That seems suspicious.

It’s just a feeling. I’m telling you to reassure you. Any rain or clouds will burn off. Everything will be fine.

I think it’s cute that you’re reassuring me, she said, patting me on the arm.

Sandra had remarried four years after our divorce, and her new husband, a genial insurance agent named Alan, was engaged in an earnest conversation with Sandra’s sister and brother-in-law a couple tables from where we sat. It sometimes seemed that because I hadn’t remarried, Sandra didn’t quite know what to do with me. That was my guess, at least, as to why regardless of what I said, she often responded as if she found me mildly amusing. Before I could say more, though, an unfamiliar woman sitting to the other side of Sandra—the mother of a bridesmaid, perhaps—asked Sandra to identify the friends and family gathered in the bar. Sandra began by pointing out a few people at various tables, a spatial strategy that allowed her to point out my husband, Alan and then several other people before arriving at our own table and saying, And this, of course, is Miranda’s father, Paul.

Oh, the woman said, brightening at my identification. My daughter told me you gave quite a speech at dinner.

I thanked her for what I accepted as a compliment, though it troubled me. I had assumed that standing before family and friends to express some thoughts about my daughter and her marriage would be easy, so I hadn’t bothered to prepare anything ahead of time. As a bank manager, I was perfectly used to speaking extemporaneously to customers and staff about accounts, cards, procedures, and regulations, and I didn’t see any reason a few remarks at a dinner would be different. In the moments before I was to speak, though, I was surprised to find my hands trembling, and when I struck my spoon too hard against my glass, nearly knocking it over before I managed to control the force of my tapping, I realized I was in the grip of an anxiety whose intensity I hadn’t seen coming. So though I did speak, afterward I retained no memory of what I had said. I remembered that clang of the spoon against the glass and could recall polite applause when I stopped, but the panic I suffered during the actual speech was such that, like film exposed to intense heat, my memory had been almost entirely fogged. So I couldn’t help but note that, technically, the woman’s comment that it had been quite a speech was not necessarily a compliment. I hope I didn’t go too long, I said.

Well, you’re the father of the bride, so you have every right to, the woman said. But where is the groom I’ve heard so much about? Will he be here?

I don’t know, Sandra said, and turned to me. Do you?

I shook my head. I’m sure he’s in charge of his own schedule.

No guarantees, then, Sandra said.

Oh well, the woman said, disappointed. I guess I can wait.

Someone at a nearby table called Sandra over. She stood with what I suspected was relief, gave me a quick pat on the back as she apologized for having to leave us, and headed across the room.

And what about you? the woman asked. Do you have a significant other somewhere here?

Do I have a significant other? I repeated as if it were some kind of quiz. I actually looked around the bar as if one might appear. No.

Not even a date?

She had already been at the bar when I arrived, and though it was an ungenerous evaluation—maybe she was just a friendly person—I noted that the drink in front of her was probably not her first. I guess I forgot to ask someone.

That’s understandable, she said. I’m sure it’s stressful being the father of the bride. But listen. She placed her hand atop mine and leaned toward me. If you need someone to dance with at the reception, I’ll be happy to be your partner.

Be careful, I said. I’m afraid I have two left feet.

She glanced at my shoes. Those feet look fine to me.

All right, I said. I have to mix right now, but I may come looking for you tomorrow.

I’ll make sure I’m easy to find, she said.

I made sure to shake a few hands and trade a few greetings, but it was only a few minutes later that I made my escape from the bar and headed home.

That next morning, though—as I stood there in my dark kitchen, arms crossed and shoulders hunched while I listened to the coffeepot—I felt like calling Sandra and asking that she acknowledge the correctness of my prediction. I was confident she was awake, and that she would have laughed. But there are times of day that one simply doesn’t call.

WHEN I STEPPED OUTSIDE not much later, coffee in hand, it was to discover that the rain was really no more than a mist that hung ghostlike in the air before me, and only slightly fuzzed the surface of the courtyard lawn. The weather here often does this: it gives every appearance of rain, and then doesn’t quite deliver. In summer especially, early threats made above are often false, and I could see that watery patches of sky to the east were already fading to a thin blue-gray. The ground-level mist disappeared as I walked through it, a diaphanous curtain endlessly parting, and in movement I took stock of myself. A click of cartilage dispensed its hurtful little jolt in my shoulder, a reminder that the ball caught in the socket there on occasion. A dull pain lay behind my right knee, the result of spending an entire day helping Alan move sofas and tables and beds in preparation for the arrival of Sandra’s house-guests. My townhouse had two bedrooms, and I had offered the empty one as potential lodging for visitors, but Sandra hadn’t taken me up on the offer. The visiting guests were from her side of the family—maybe she worried that placing someone with her ex-husband would be considered a slight. A pair of joggers, a man and a woman, announced they would be on my left, and then they were, two sets of nylon shorts whisking past as I continued my inventory. Eyesight? I trained my gaze on the lady jogger’s round bottom, rejected that as an unscientific test, and squinted instead at the nearest street sign, pleased to find I could read it, though my already knowing the answer certainly helped. And hearing? The breeze in the firs, tisk of a sprinkler, hum of distant traffic, throb of my pulse in my ears: everything was there, present and accounted for. I was not old. I told myself.

The joggers continued down the street and into the mist while I kept my own pace, covering the route I took most mornings, a neighborhood walk that provided a good half hour in which my thoughts were my own. Satisfied I was in working order physically, I gave myself the mental challenge of recalling that speech. I’d believed I would be able to say something true and moving in two minutes, without preparation. Had I managed this? I knew I had started by dramatically clearing my throat, because immediately upon doing so I chastised myself for already having lapsed into cliché. I clasped my hands before me in order to quell their trembling, then decided I looked odd holding them that way, and shoved one hand into my pocket. The other found its way to my stomach, and I gave up the struggle there—if the pose was good enough for Napoleon, I thought, it was good enough for me. Throughout my search for a natural posture, though, I had been speaking. But about what? Nothing came back. It was a toast—had I raised my glass? Did people drink? I hadn’t the slightest, and neither could I estimate how long I’d spoken. I just remembered Miranda, seated next to me, giving me a kiss on the cheek when I sat down. It’s okay, she had whispered to me. Everything is fine. I didn’t know what she meant, though. Had I apologized for speaking too long, or for the arc of my entire life? Drunk on the moment, the moment had escaped me.

A calico cat eyed me with suspicion from the edge of a shrub before it turned and disappeared within. A young man pressing a bundle of newspapers to his chest ran past and commenced firing the papers toward doorways. A seagull floated in for a wide-winged landing on the sidewalk not thirty feet ahead of me. There was something clumsy and ad hoc about its landing, but it had succeeded, and when it extended and refolded its brown and white wings I was surprised to note, even from a distance, the flick of a thin red tongue. The lizards are their cousins, I guess. The gull monitored my approach in the sidelong way birds have of turning parallel to their object of examination. A few desultory hops carried it into the street, but one wide blue eye remained trained on me. It opened its beak silently, again displaying that tongue, and then snapped it shut. Had the gesture been directed at me, or was it just the avian mechanism adjusting itself? I continued past the bird and onward, and when I looked back, it was to see the inscrutable creature twitch its head in another direction and hop off, pecking the asphalt every few steps—as if it expected to find something.

The morning walk was a new habit for me, adopted from the last woman I had dated, with whom I’d broken up six months earlier. Trish, a Realtor who had just moved into the city from the suburbs, began every morning—or every morning she awoke with me, at least—with a brisk walk through the neighborhood in one of her clean, pressed, nylon sweat suits. She owned these sweat suits, which she called warm-ups, in a number of colors: baby blue with white piping, wine red with yellow stripes, and a neon green with electric blue trim were three of her more consistent choices. I’ve never particularly been one for athletic wear, and walked with her in my usual weekend-morning outfit of jeans and a jacket. That relationship had been over for a while, but I’d kept her ritual of the morning walk. I liked it.

IT WAS AT THE breakfast table in Sandra’s house later that morning that I received the call. It was just after nine o’clock, and I had been listening to her brother, Bradshaw, read aloud from a sports Web site he was looking at on his laptop. He’d been noting various teams’ victories and losses, pulling up detailed information on recent draft picks and trades, and estimating likelihoods of future success. I did my best to nod at appropriate intervals. I was supposed to be at Sandra’s disposal that morning to run errands, pick up guests from the airport, or take care of any other pressing tasks, but I had been there almost half an hour and she had yet to come down from her room. Bradshaw’s own wife and two teenage daughters were also upstairs, and though we heard occasional disputes among them over space in the bathroom, not one of them had shown her face yet, either. So I was trapped, drinking another cup of coffee while I watched Bradshaw take his own breakfast in what struck me as the ensemble of a teenager: oversized red nylon athletic shorts and a white T-shirt memorializing a slo-pitch softball tournament. Between installments of sports gossip, I asked him why the w had been deleted from slo, and Bradshaw pressed his chin to his chest to examine the usage. It’s a different word, he said.

The pitching is slow, I said. So why do they spell it that way?

"The word is slo-pitch, he said. It’s a different word. He took an overlarge, tearing bite of his toasted bagel, the butter and cream cheese of which had gathered into points of glistening white at the corners of his mouth. Miranda once told me, rather gleefully, that Bradshaw had said he was surprised Sandra had ever married me in the first place, since I was such a finicky guy." I don’t think Bradshaw always understands the words he uses. And I was pleased when my cell phone produced its little trill and I was able to consider something other than his T-shirt.

We were just robbed, my coworker Catherine said when I answered. Everyone’s fine, it’s under control, but I thought you would want to know. It was silent, no weapon. Just a guy who pushed a misspelled note across the counter to Amber. The rest of us didn’t even notice until it was over. She used the same disdainful tone she had when she had called me at home one Saturday morning to report that a stray, floppy-eared terrier was in the bank, had evaded capture for over twenty minutes, and was hiding behind the change machine in the back corner. I had driven to the bank, rattled the machine, and stamped my foot, but it was only after I told the staff to return to business as usual that the creature had emerged from his hiding place and loped out of the branch with a sad look in its eyes, as if disappointed we’d given up the game.

I’ll be there in a few minutes, I told her.

You don’t need to, she said.

I watched Bradshaw continue to work at the bagel—his movements were tense, relentless. I have nothing else to do right now.

I know that’s not true. Oh, here they are, we’re all saved now.

Who?

The police. They just pulled up.

What was misspelled?

It was a robbery, she said. "One b. I’ll talk to you later."

I folded the phone in time to watch Bradshaw stuff the remainder of the bagel into his mouth and commence strenuous bovine chewing. He swallowed dramatically, and then again, and then a third time, tipping his head back to better reveal the contortions of his trachea as it convulsed beneath the slack skin and gray stubble of his neck. There’s a problem? he said finally, feigning concern.

Yes. Do you think Sandra will be down soon?

He shrugged. You can go up there.

Upstairs, someone was running the sink in the bathroom, a hair dryer roared from the master bedroom, and I sensed the press of footsteps within one of the smaller bedrooms. Miranda was staying in her old room here for the weekend, which meant there were, theoretically, at least five women trying to share the single upstairs bathroom. To my relief, though, all I was currently faced with was an empty hallway with four closed doors, so I knocked quickly on the door to the master bedroom and called Sandra’s name. The hair dryer ceased, there was some shifting and rustling as she told me to come in, and then the hair dryer resumed. I found her seated at her dressing table bundled in a white terry-cloth robe, her head inclined toward the hand in which she held and waved the dryer while with her other hand she tugged at her long, blond hair. She has always kept her hair long, and in concert with her quick, dark eyes, her looks have held a slightly intimidating power over me. I waited for her to shift her gaze to mine before I told her, over the hair dryer’s howling, that the bank had been robbed. She immediately killed the dryer, creating a portentous silence. "Your bank? she said. Was anyone hurt?"

I don’t think so.

Can you get out of going?

No.

She restarted the hair dryer, waved it through her hair a few times, and turned it off again. It’s your daughter’s wedding day.

It will only take an hour. I’ll talk to the police, fill out the forms, hand tissues to the tellers. And you don’t need me this morning, anyway. There’s nothing left to do.

She arched an eyebrow, just as she had the previous evening. There’s nothing left to do?

You’re all going to the hotel. Why are you doing your hair when it’s supposed to get done at the hotel?

The hair dryer erupted, undead, and I made it out of the room and to the top of the stairs before the machine was strangled silent again.

Have you heard from Miranda? she called.

No, I

Reviews for You Don't Love This Man

[herschelian · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I started this book with high hopes, but alas found it ponderously slow. I don't think the editors did the author any favours, it became turgid at times and I had to force myself to read the whole book, which is a pity as the basic ideas were really . As it is I would hesitate to recommend it to other readers - life is too short!

[literatehousewife · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Paul, a middle aged manager of the bank he’s worked at since college, is at a crossroads and it’s the day before his only daughter’s wedding. His marriage to Miranda’s mother Sandra has ended in divorce and Miranda is planning to marry Grant, a successful business man who has been Paul’s friend since before Miranda was even conceived. He doesn’t feel like an equal part of his daughter’s life and isn’t convinced that she should marry Grant at all. As he’s sitting at his ex-wife’s kitchen table feeling like a useless accessory, he finds out that his bank has been robbed and his daughter is missing. Paul feels obligated to check in on work, but is worried about his daughter. He agrees to Sharon’s request to check on her. From there, his day unfolds in snatches of memories of the past and bouts of coming to terms with his current reality.In some ways I found Paul to be a kindred spirit. There is one scene where he’s thinking about one thing while he’s working and he eventually becomes unsure of where his thoughts end and his memories of what he was doing at work begin. I can very much see myself in that situation. There are definitely times when my imagination becomes very active and things start to blend and bleed into each other. While I've never had personal experience with bank robberies, I could very easily understand Paul's growing cynicism about what is important on the day of his daughter's wedding. All along Paul’s story there were chuckles of recognition from me. I very much enjoyed Paul’s sense of humor, even when under the most stress during that fateful day.With the exception of Paul and Catherine, his subordinate at the bank, I can't really say that I liked the rest of the characters in You Don't Love This Man that much. I truly didn't understand how Sandra became the mother she did during Miranda's teen years. Grant was never anything more than a charming but thoroughly self-centered man. His interest in Paul's appearance was more to make him an acceptable friend. Miranda is likewise selfish. In that sense, I could see how she and Grant got together. I do believe that Miranda loved Paul, which to me is her saving grace. That I didn't like those other characters is important. They all betrayed Paul and I found myself quite protective of him.As one's children grow and you yourself begin to age, the cycle of life becomes all the more apparent. You also notice the ways in which history repeats itself. Try as you might, it's all impossible to avoid. Learning to stand up for and love yourself is the best armor you have in the fight of life. That's what You Don't Love This Man is all about. I'm not entirely convinced that all of what transpired on the day of Miranda's wedding could actually have taken place given the timeline, but it's a small issue in an otherwise interesting read. I really enjoyed it.