Page 8 of A More Than Mayhem Christmas

Just for a moment.

I leash all four dogs and exit through the garage.

I hope for silence in my mind, but the more I walk, the more painful the thoughts are that fire off inside me. It’s one thing for my wife to be hurting, but it’s so much worse when she carries the weight of my pain along with hers. She says she doesn’t want to talk about it, so I don’t know how she feels. But, someday soon, she’s going to fall apart. And I don’t know if I’ll be strong enough to piece her back together.

When I get back in the house, Riley’s sitting at the kitchen table, her eyes filled with liquid heartache as she stares at the bottle of wine in front of her. I’m quick to get to her—as quick as she is to wipe her tears, hide them from me.

I know my first response should be to check on her, but I check the bottle instead, inspect it closely. “It’s sealed,” she assures, and my shoulders drop with relief.

Given Riley’s history with alcohol, I make sure there isn’t even a single drop of it in the house. I have no idea where she got this from, and I don’t ask. Instead, I say, “Maybe we shouldn’t go tonight.”

“Why not?”

“Our friends are going to be drinking, and?—”

“I can control myself.” She waves a hand toward the bottle I’m still holding. “Obviously.”

I look from her dejected eyes to the bottle in my hand, then I empty it into the sink as I stare out the window. The dogs are all out in the yard, Bacon clearly the king of them all. I still remember the look on her face when she first showed him to me. She was working at the animal shelter at the time, and I’d been waiting in the car to pick her up. She was late, and so I went in to get her. She was sitting in front of Bacon’s cage, too upset to walk away from him. I barely looked at him the first time, too wrapped up in the news that I was about to be deployed. That I was about to leave her.

She never outright asked, but I knew she wanted to bring him home.

And I said yes, only because I knew she needed something else to focus on while I was gone. Something that wasn’t made up of the liquid currently filling our drains.

“Dylan?” Riley says, pulling me from my thoughts.

I drop the bottle into the sink and turn to her. “Yeah?”

She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t need to. Her eyes give away everything she’s feeling. Sadness mainly, but also defeat and fear. Fear that she’s disappointed me somehow. It’s the last thing she should be feeling. The absolute last thing she needs right now.

I sit down beside her, grab the legs of her chair and spin her to me, scoot her in closer. Then I take her hands in mine, brush my thumb over the rings on her finger—rings that symbolize the life we wanted and the future we spent many nights speaking and dreaming about.

“Will you come with me tomorrow?” she asks.

“Yes.”

She cracks the faintest of smiles. “You don’t even know where.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll go anywhere with you.”

Gaze lowered, she says, “I think I should tell my mom.”

“Tell her what exactly?”

“The truth.”

I nod, release a shaky breath.

Thetruthis harsh and unforgiving.

The truth is painfully agonizing.

The truth is… wedowant kids.

And we’ve had them.

Two pregnancies over the past two years, and neither one of them made it past eight weeks.

The first one devastated us.

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