Page 56 of Kiss From A Rose

"She'd been thinkin' about dyin'," Malou suddenly spoke after a long moment of silence.

Tears choked me up. How had I let things slide so far that my wife had been so fucking depressed that she contemplated suicide? This wasmyfucking fault. If she didn't forgive me, and I couldn't win her back, it was what I deserved.

"But she looks at me, and she feels guilty 'cause I'm dyin', and I don't have a fuckin' choice." Malou looked at me with her dark eyes, which were sunken now. Once upon a time, I was certain she'd been a beauty; you could still see it on her face. But chemo was cruel medicine.

"I know. I read some of her emails." I explained to Malou how I'd come upon them and waited for her to rip me a new one for invading Rose's privacy the way I had.

But Malou surprised me. "Good. I want you to keep checkin' up on her however you do it."

"Will she talk to me?" I asked.

"If you have an honest conversation with her, yes.Butshe isn't going to let you walk all over her any longer," she warned me. "That Rose is gone. Between therapy and antidepressants, she's getting stronger by the day."

She was on antidepressants? How the fuck did I not even know that? God, I was a shit husband.

"I have seen glimpses of that."

"Andyou still want her?"

I smiled. "Yes."

"She's not goin' to be your doormat any longer, Gray."

That got my back up. "She's not. I—"

Malou raised a hand to silence me. I did so.

She chuckled. "This I'm dyin' card is awesome. I pull it out, and everyone gives me a wide berth. Shewasyour doormat, let's not sugarcoat that shit. Now, it's not just your fault; though, you fucked up plenty—Rose has never understood her own value. Sure, to protect those she loves, she'll bash someone's head in with a saucepan, but when it comes to herself, she believes that good things don't happen to her."

I listened.

Malou was like the Rose whisperer, and it behooved me to gain as much knowledge as possible so I could get my wife back.

"When she got pregnant, she was certain you'd not have anything to do with her. She was gonna come to Savannah, and we were gonna raise the baby together. We didn't know then y'all were having twins."

I clenched my jaw and kept my mouth shut. Since Rose had left, I'd gone through a variety of stages of grief. The anger part of the program was all directed inward toward me.

"Then you married her, and she was grateful. I was grateful. Your mother, bless her heart, was a cunt."

I let out a laugh. I couldn't help it. Mama Rutherford could be the C word, for sure.

"She threatened Rose all the time."

I closed my eyes; it tore at me to hear those words, to be told that. I hadn’t seen it or heard it firsthand, but I had known. I had let Rose handle it alone, as a good wife should, and kept it from becoming my problem.

"You didn't protect her."

"I didn't." Those words were like acid in my mouth because they were utterly true.

"Why?"

I had thought about this a lot as well and found some perspective that I was happy to share with Malou, even if it made me look really bad.

"When I was a kid, I was scared of my parents. After growing up, I just didn't want to deal with them. I decided that Rose managed them fine," I said, and then added, "I was a fuckin' coward, Malou, and a lazy one to boot. I just didn't want the conflict. I had ways of making it work with Rose; I had nothing to fix shit with my parents when it hit the fan."

"She didn’t have parents, but you did, and yet you're both damaged because neither of you received the love you should have while growing up from the people who were supposed to love you the most." Malou wiggled her eyebrows in amusement. "I went to therapy for a short bit, so I got the lingo down."

I liked this woman's sense of humor. There was something courageous about someone who was dying, still being able to crack a joke and not wallow in self-pity.

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