Page 44 of The Regrettable Mistake

“I guess the tables turned on her.”

“Ollie turned them on her. No one had even bothered to look into what happened that night before your husband and Caleb had someone dig into her past to look for dirt they could use to impugn her character.”

“Don’t go idolizing my lying, cheating bastard of a husband, Steve. He still caused this whole circus.”

“Not saying he didn’t. You needed to know what was going on, though. Even if we go get your phone from the house, I don’t think you’ll ever hear from that woman again.”

“I never want to see that cell phone or that house again as long as I live.”

“I know,” my brother whispered as I leaned into him and closed my eyes. It used to be my favorite place. Home. It was our home until he blew our family up. I didn’t think there was any way to forgive what Ollie had done to me, to his son, to us as a family.

CHAPTER 16

Ollie

I drove up to the house I’d once lived in with my family and had to fight back the tears that clouded my vision. There was a literal yard sale going on. The masses had clambered to come pick apart our lives and haul off little pieces of what I’d cracked and torn apart.

“You going to help or just sit in your car all day?” I glanced up to see my wife’s brother staring down through the window at me.

I turned the car off, opened the door, and got out. “It’s hard to see everything laid out like this,” I admitted.

Steve continued to stare at me and then offered a slight shrug of one shoulder. “This is what happens when you throw everything away for what you think might be a better life. You get to watch as the shit you left behind is scattered to the wind.” He glanced around. “Or in this case, sold off to scavengers ready to snap up the scraps of the life you didn’t want.”

“I’m here. Let’s get this done.” I had to bite my tongue to keep from snapping at my brother-in-law. He wasn’t wrong. This was the culmination of the shitshow I’d put into play when I’d stupidly agreed to meet up with Jia that night.

“Is she here?”

I watched as Steve’s head swiveled back and forth. “She meant it when she said she never wanted to see the house again or her cell phone.”

That last bit was a dig, because when I tried to return her phone, Steve refused to take it. “She never wanted to see it again.” That was what he’d told me then too. Unfortunately, he had followed that up with “And she doesn’t want you to have her new number either.”

It had been three weeks since Steph had been taken to the hospital and I had not heard her voice or seen her since. The tiny glimpse I’d gotten of her breaking down in the hospital had been the very last time I’d laid eyes on my wife.

“Are you sure she doesn’t want to keep any of this furniture?” I asked as my eyes tracked the strangers who had come out to pick through my life. “How did you even get the community to allow this?”

“They felt bad for my sister and wanted to help her out after everything she’d been through.” Steve turned his back on me. “Seems your little speech about my sister’s innocence and what everyone had put her through finally sank in for people. Then again, it might have something to do with the very public legal battle the school board is fighting for her wrongful termination.”

When Steve moved to walk away from me, I reached out to grab his arm. “I haven’t seen her in weeks.”

“She’s doing just fine.”

“Damnit, my wife is pregnant. She’s five months along now and I don’t even know what she looks like with my baby in her belly.”

Steve turned around in a flash and stared me down with a cold, lethal gaze that would have put me six feet in the ground if he had the power to do so. “It’s your own damn fault! You haven’t seen her because she got to see what you really thought of her. She had that shit shoved in her face. Honest to fucking God, she wishes that baby of hers was fathered by anyone else but you. My sister is still coming to terms with the fact that she will be stuck with you in her life because of that baby for at least the next eighteen years. Since you are the one who caused this mess, you will give her the time she needs to come to grips with that.”

Steve stomped off before I could say a word. He was right, she deserved to have her time, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t painful for me to know exactly what I was missing out on.

“That was harsh.” I turned to see Steve’s friend – my wife’s lawyer – standing beside me. “Deserved, though.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Me? I’m here to make sure that certain unsavory types don’t try to abscond with any of the merchandise or the money from sales.”

I rolled my eyes. “I bet your thrilled to fucking death with this outcome.”

Hutch shook his head. “No, man. I’m really not. I was there the day we found Steph on that floor.” He pointed toward the house. “I would never, in a million years, wish that kind of pain on anyone. Not even my worst enemy. Not even you.”

Hutch walked off as I stood there and let his words sink in. If I could bury myself in that hole my brother-in-law wanted to dig for me, I would. Unfortunately, I didn’t just have an angry, heartbroken wife to think about. I had a son and another child on the way who needed a father.

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