Page 59 of All In
I printed off her last one, as I always do, and placed it away with the others. Along with her handwritten letters and her ring. It’s all tucked away in a Nike shoebox under the bed in the spare bedroom. Do I get them out from time to time and read them? Maybe.
Okay, yes, I do.
As I read them, I question everything about my life. I know I shouldn’t. I know that I need to let her go because this isn’t healthy. My schooling tells me this. But each time I get into my email and see one from her, I can’t walk away.
I need to stop thinking about this because I have a seminar tomorrow morning. Plus, I need to know the time, which means I need to get out of bed.
Ugh. This is so annoying.
I throw off the blankets and pull on my pajama pants. As I walk toward the hallway, the house is eerily quiet as it always is this late at night. My bladder warns me to make a pit stop at the bathroom first. As soon as I step out onto the carpet and turn right to head toward the bathroom, I look left and notice that the light is on in the spare bedroom. Erica must be here for her time with Mikey. Tomorrow is her day, per our parenting agreement. She still has a key to the house and occasionally, when she is up for it, she will let herself in and sleep in the spare bedroom. That way, she is here when Mikey wakes up. It’s worked out pretty well.
When she actually shows. Plus, she has to spend her time with Mikey here, and she can’t drive him anywhere. Why? It’s simple. I don’t trust her.
It’s odd, though, that she would have the light on. I’m assuming it’s late, so she should be sleeping. Or perhaps she just arrived, in which case, I should be polite and say hello. Curiosity gets the best of me, and I head toward the bedroom. The soft carpet under my feet masks my approach. With each step, I try to be as silent as possible, not wanting to disturb either Mikey or a potentially sleeping Erica.
I walk until I’m inches away from the door but stop because I hear sniffling and the russeting of papers. Is she crying?What in the heck is she doing in there?I round the corner of the threshold and …
CRAP!
There sits Erica in the middle of the floor. Her legs are criss-crossed, hair sticking up on end, bloodshot eyes, mascara streaks down her face, and Maria’s letters and emails scattered around her. The Nike box is open, and the ring box is resting on the bed, standing out like a sore thumb.
Thering.
The ring box keeps pulling my focus, as if it holds some kind of magnetic power.
In an instant, memories of the day I bought it start rolling in my head like a movie.
It was right after the day she got the job at the warehouse. We were so excited and thought that this job was exactly what we needed to start our life together. Little did I know that it would lead to our demise.
We went to the mall to buy her some professional work clothes. While strolling past store after store, we passed the jewelry store that I had frequented dozens of times without Maria’s knowledge. I was eyeing a ring that I knew she would love. A simple one and a half carat round diamond. Understated yet dazzling. Just like Maria. But I needed to know if she would love it like I suspected she would. So, I played dumb and pulled the let’s-just-go-in-and-look act. She bought it. And while browsing, she picked outthering. I never told her what I was planning. But that night, I went back and maxed out the one and only credit card I had to buy it for her.
When everything imploded, I could have returned it. But I didn’t.
It was her ring.
Erica immediately senses my presence, and her head shoots up. Her eyes meet mine, snapping me out of the past. They are glassy and somewhat crazy looking.
The temperature rises in my head, and the room starts to spin. Because if she is reading those emails, then she knows that Maria and I were communicating while we were still married. Erica always felt threatened by Maria during our whole marriage. Her curiosity about our relationship sometimes was relentless. And that’s because, deep down, she knew.
This isn’t going to be good.
Chapter twenty-one
Sam
As I shut the door behind me, the tension builds in the air, and I suck in a deep breath. Plus, I don’t want this confrontation to wake up Mikey.
I glance at the ring again, wanting to snatch it off the bed. Erica looks so desperate right now, I’m not sure she wouldn’t do something with it. Like flush it. I turn to face her. “Erica, let me explain—” She immediately starts reading from the letter in her hand.
“—I was with Cara for a whole year, and she never made me feel what I felt for you.”She lays it on the pile, searching for another one. “Who in the heck is Cara?” she asks, head down, hysterically flipping through papers and envelopes.
The fact that we never once talked about Cara is proof of how little we truly know about each other. And how we never should have gotten married in the first place.
“Erica please, let’s—”
“A-ha!” She finds the one she was looking for. “Here it is! This one is great, it says, oryousay, ‘All I know is this, if you were my wife, I would want you to be just…you. There’s no one better.’”She tosses the letter and starts frantically searching for another one.
With no defense here, I run my hand down my face in frustration. I’m at a loss for words, unsure of what to say or do.
