Page 69 of Mr. Aster
“It’s hard to say, I guess,” he said before a humorous grin crossed his face. “Have you ever heard about old couples who talk about being in love with their spouses of sixty years or so?”
“Oh, like those cute articles on social media?”
“I’m not on social media,” he answered, perplexed.
“Right. Well, there are these stories about the answers to lifelong love and how elderly couples hung onto it over the years. The men talk about how they loved it when their wife entered a room, dazzling everyone with her smile and lighting the place up, making everyone feel at home. Stuff like that.”
“Melissa never entered any room with a dazzling smile, lit it up, or made everyone there feel at home.”
“Well, okay,” I laughed. “How long were you married?”
“Five, almost six years,” he said. “And before you remark, our love would’ve stood the test of time.”
“I guess she must’ve been a good cook, then, because what you’re telling me is that Melissa would walk into a room and shut the place down with her ice-cold, bitchy behavior.”
“She didn’t cook at all,” he said. “One time, we came home early from vacation, and the house staff weren’t due to arrive until the next day, so I asked if she wanted to cook dinner or dine out.”
“And, let me guess. She didn’t know how to cook and nearly burned the place down.”
“No, shedidknow how to cook. She just preferred not to,” he said. “Anyway, she was so angry that I even suggested she cook that we slept in separate rooms until I bought her a yacht to apologize.”
“What the living hell?” I asked, recalling what Nat said about the woman earlier tonight when she warned me not to do things like I was doing right now, forming bonds and shit that would only lead to heartbreak later. But here I was. “That’s the most pretentious shit I’ve ever heard.”
“Thatwas my wife,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “She knew how to get what she wanted from me.”
“I have a hard time seeing anyone get away with something like that with you. Sounds like a pretty fucked-up, loving marriage.”
“Before I say more,” he said, becoming serious, making me feel bad for insulting his dead wife. She seemed like the devil’s mistress, but hewasthe devil, so I guess it was the perfect marriage. “I must insist anything spoken about Melissa be off the record. I don’t wish for anything to be written about her.”
“Trust me, from the way you’re already starting about her, I wouldn’t be surprised if she returned from the grave to haunt me.”
He chuckled, “She’d haunt my ass too.”
“Were you afraid of her?”
“Hell no,” he said. “I was annoyed a lot, though, especially when she hired a private investigator to follow me around and ensure I wasn’t doing anythinguntoward.”
“What the fuck?” I couldn’t hide the look of disgust on my face. Surelyno onewould put up with that shit. “I don’t even know what to say about that.”
“She did that when she was withholding sex, so she must’ve been worried I’d get it elsewhere, which is something I’d never do.”
“Okay,thatsounds like excusing horrible behavior,” I said, surprised there was any justification for her actions in his mind.
“Maybe it is,” he said. “I let a lot of things go once she got pregnant. I thought things would change in her behavior, becoming a new mother, but it became evident that our daughter was just another step to take for us to seem like we had a perfect marriage.”
“I don’t even know what to say,” I answered.
Everything I heard was so foreign and opposite to my opinion of how relationships should be. I was only intrigued because of the shock factor this story was producing.
Good God, Nat wasn’t lying at all.
“I assume she hired the private investigator to follow me around because if she ever wanted out of the marriage, all she had to do was catch me cheating on her to be awarded a large sum of money. And if it were my fault, no one would frown upon her for divorcing me.”
I didn’t want to say what I was genuinely thinking, which washow the hell are you sad that a woman like that is gone? How are you grieving and not rejoicing?But I knew it was best to keep my mouth clamped shut…that didn’t mean I couldn’t think it, though. To say I was appalled to hear any of this would be an understatement.
“Was there anything that you, um,lovedabout her? I only ask because I can tell you’re having a difficult time in the grieving process, as any husband rightfully would, but I am starting to wonder why you’re having such a difficult time after hearing the things you’ve said.”
“Aren’t you the psychologist?” he teased.
