Page 56 of Two Wrongs

“I thought you liked the age difference. Isn’t that the fantasy of most men in their forties, to have a young girlfriend?” She says and rolls her eyes.

“I’m not having a mid-life crisis, if that’s what you’re suggesting.” I ignore the girlfriend part of her comment, because that leads to believing we could be a normal couple in the light of day. That’s not possible for us.

“Really, daddy?” she teases.

“I think you just really want to distract me so you don’t have to tell me what happened. For the record though, your age isn’t what attracts me to you. If anything, other than the fact you’re married to my son, it’s part of the reason I worked so hard to avoid you. I won’t lie and say I don’t love dominating you, but the daddy thing is mostly because I like taking care of you.”

Wren clutches her wrist in her hand, and I know her mind is going back to that night. I remain silent and let her finish telling me what happened in her own time. “Yeah, okay. No more distracting. That night was the first time in two months he slept in the same bed as me. Despite my pounding head, when I first woke up, I snuggled up to him like I used to. He smiled, held me tighter and mumbled something about loving waking up with me.”

She pulls her knees up to her chest, and it’s like she’s folding in on herself. “For a few seconds I felt like everything was going to be okay again. Whatever was going on was over. I told myself it had nothing to do with me, and we’d be fine. Then he opened his eyes, and the smile slipped off his face. He shoved me away and jumped in the shower.”

She starts to rock herself, and my heart is breaking for her. “A switch flipped alright, but not in the way I’d hoped. When he came out of the shower he was pissed off. He picked a fight about how clean the apartment was, my inability to cook, and said I spent too much money on useless shit. He even said that was why he wouldn’tletme have access to our bank account. I told him the apartment was only a mess because we were a bit wild, and pointed at the trail of our clothes leading through the apartment.”

Wren turns her face away, but not before I see a tear slide down her cheek. “He accused me of seducing him. Asked me if I was even still taking my birth control, and implied I was trying to trap him. He said that I couldn’t take care of him, so why would he want to have a kid with me. Then he stormed out.”

My fists clench, but by some miracle I manage to stay quiet. A breath shudders out of her mouth. “I cleaned the apartment and waited. He didn’t come back. So I sent him messages, begging him to come home. He texted me back and told me to stop being pathetic. I waited for two days and he didn’t come back. I think it was the hope I entertained for a few minutes. Losing it made everything feel so much more desolate.”

She takes a deep breath and holds it before forcing it out. “I spiraled. Started looking at old pictures of my family. I wondered what was wrong with me that I was always alone. I didn’t sleep the entire time, and I just wanted it to stop.”

More tears fall down her face, which seems to agitate her. She scrubs at them. “I got pissed off at myself for cleaning up everything thinking it was going to bring him back. I was mad at myself for being so weak. For being so afraid to be alone that I stayed with someone I wasn’t sure I even liked anymore. In that moment, I hated myself more than I hated him though. So, I trashed the place. Then I broke a mirror. The fragments felt so poetic. All their broken and jagged pieces would never go back together again, not and function the way they were supposed to. The picture it presented would always be a little bit skewed.”

My chest squeezes knowing we’ve arrived at the part of the story I asked to hear, and yet I didn’t want her to speak the words.

She blinks up at me. “I can stop.”

“No,” I croak. “You’ve carried this alone for too long. I wasn’t there for you then, let me be here with you now.”

She nods. “I wasn’t thinking about life and death. There was no plan. There was just one moment where everything was too much, and I gave in.”

Her finger traces one of the lines. “I don’t know why I cut myself the first time. I think maybe I just wanted to feel something different than everything inside of my head. I chickened out after it started to bleed. But a little while later I did it again. I panicked after I realized I’d cut deeper than the first time.”

“What happened then?” I manage to ask.

“I thought if I wrapped it the bleeding would stop. I started picking up everything I wrecked. The activity and my shitty attempt at a bandage made me lose a bit more blood than I thought. I blacked out for a bit. It was only a few minutes, but when I came to, I drove myself to the hospital.”

“What?” I shout the question. “You fainted then thought it was a great idea to drive yourself to the hospital? If you thought I was overbearing before, then you’re really going to hate how I’m going to be now.”

She rolls her eyes at me again, and I refrain from giving her the spanking she’s clearly begging me for. “I think we can agree I wasn’t in the best frame of mind that day,” she comments.

“Okay, so you drove yourself to the hospital, what happened then?” I concede.

“I was rushed back to a room, where I got several stitches. They had to give me blood because I’d lost a little bit too much. I tried to tell them it was an accident, but they didn’t believe me. I stayed at the hospital for a few days on a psychiatric hold.”

“How did I never hear about this? Liam never said a word,” I say.

She shrugs. “I didn’t go to the med clinic here. I drove to Galesburg. They asked for my next of kin, and I told them I didn’t have any family, which I think was accurate. That they believed. It was good that they kept me though. They had me meet with a therapist, and I’ve been going a couple times a month since.”

“Where did Liam think you were?” I ask.

Her eyes open wide and fill with tears, which she furiously blinks away. She might not love him anymore, but the hurt hasn’t gone away. “I don’t think he ever realized I was gone. He didn’t ask when I finally got home, and I never told him.”

“Why were you with him for four more months?” I don’t want to say that it sounded like he was trying to leave her then. He’s fighting the divorce now, so I really want to know what changed if he was still seeing someone else.

Wren shrugs. “I should have left. I told him I was going to leave. We fought, and it wasn’t like I came out of the hospital cured. He started by promising me we’d go to counseling. That lasted a week before he denied he said it. He convinced me I couldn’t make it on my own. He said I couldn’t handle our money, I don’t make enough to live on my own, and I never would. I was afraid he was right, because I only have a high school diploma, basically I needed him. I didn’t have anyone else, and that feeling I had sitting alone for two days terrified me.”

“You’re one of the most capable women I know. Why would you believe him?” I didn’t think it was possible to be angrier at him than I was. Cheating on her was bad, stealing from me was a horrible betrayal, but this is disgustingly abusive.

There’s so much sadness and shame reflecting in her eyes when she looks at me. “Because not long ago I was telling myself the same thing to the point I convinced myself, even if just for a little while, that I shouldn’t even be alive. Believing I couldn’t live without him wasn’t a huge stretch.”

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