Page 26 of Breathing Wisteria
My brow furrows. Money shouldn’t be an issue for her. I’ve always sent her as much as I could every month. Despite the fact that we were never technically divorced, I made sure I took care of my financial responsibilities, sending her what I considered to be alimony every month.
“Wait, why do you need money?”
She looks startled at my tone and I try to reel it back in a bit, but I’m fucking confused.
“Well, being an artist doesn’t always pay that great.” She quirks an eyebrow at me. “For most of us anyway.”
“I send you money, Wyatt. Every month.” My hands clench the edge of the table.
“Oh, I don’t touch that,” she replies dismissively.
“Why the fuck not?”
“Because it’s not mine.” Her expression tells me she’s confused by the direction this conversation has taken. “Why are you acting so pissed off?”
“Because I am pissed off,” I bark. “What kind of man lives the life I’m living while his wife is struggling to get by?”
Wyatt glances around nervously. Pacified when she doesn’t spot anyone within hearing range, she turns to me angrily.
“I am not your wife, and I don’t need you to take care of me. Just because we never ended this legally, it doesn’t change what happened. You left me.”
“You didn’t give me a choice.”
“Wyatt? You home?” My voice echoes in the empty room. I dump my guitar on the empty armchair and flop down onto the sofa, scrubbing the heel of my hand over my painful eyes. The gig went well last night, but the four-hour drive home after was a killer. I didn’t want to stay overnight in Shiner and away from Wyatt even longer than necessary. She seems to be doing better at the moment, but I like to be around, just in case.
Getting no response, I drag my ass to our tiny kitchen and take a drink of juice right from the carton before heading to our bedroom, ready to curl up next to my wife and get some sleep.
Doing my best to be quiet so I don’t wake her, I pull up short when I spot the empty bed. Assuming she’s gone out for a run, something her new therapist recommended she take up, I strip down to my boxers and slide under the covers. Stretching out to take advantage of having the bed to myself, my hand hits something hard shoved under Wyatt’s pillow.
Pulling it out, I stare hard at the blue notebook. She’s been scribbling away in this for months. Another technique her therapist suggested to help her cope, and one she’s taken to much more easily than the running.
Sitting up, I balance the book on my knees and try to talk myself out of reading it. We’ve been so disconnected this past year, both of us lost in our own grief. I would do literally any-fucking-thing to make her better and to possibly have the answers right in my hands? There’s no way I can resist that temptation.
Before I can change my mind, I open the book, my eyes quickly skimming the entries. Wyatt’s normally perfect handwriting is messy and haphazard, making it difficult to read, but words jump out at me. Words that have me rubbing my chest, trying to ease the ache.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
You would think the sound of her voice—her obviously angry voice—would stop me, but my eyes continue to devour her pain and numbness begins to seep into the very fiber of my being.
I feel the bed dip beneath me but, still, I keep reading, until the book is viciously snatched away. Looking up, I take in her red face. Tiny drops of perspiration bead her hairline and her mouth is turned down in an aggressive frown.
Suddenly, the memory of the first time I ever saw her rushes at me. She was all big smiles and innocent happiness. She radiated unadulterated joy and, after surviving my parents’ messy divorce and a cross-continent move, she was everything I wasn’t. I have no idea what she ever saw in me, but I needed her from that very first minute. She was as necessary to me as oxygen, vital for my survival.
But this girl kneeling on the bed before me now with tears glistening? She’s a broken version of my Cherry.
And I did that.
“You should have told me.” I don’t recognize my own voice.
“Told you what?” She shifts back and swings her legs, moving away from me. Always moving away from me.
“The truth.”
She laughs, a small, ironic laugh that hurts more than any physical blow ever has.
“You want the truth, Flynn?” Her entire body stills by the bedroom door, her back to me. “Our baby is dead and it’s because of you. Every time I look at you, I hate you a little more.” Then she walks away.
She slumps back in her seat, her shoulders sag and she looks exhausted.
