Page 10 of The Next Of Us
I’d cried more over the past two weeks over the demise of my marriage, than I had throughout the entirety of my father’s illness, his passing, my mother’s resulting decline, and ultimate passing six months later.
Aaron was my love, my life, my home.And our foundation was crumbling.
I forked a mouthful of mashed potatoes and lifted it to my mouth as I stared unseeing out the window.
The winter sun had long since retired.This used to be the most hectic time of day.Aaron and I flying around the house getting kids ready for ice skating and taekwondo, or scrambling to complete homework or school projects that had slipped through the cracks.Rushing past one another in the hallway, offering brief kisses, dirty winks, and naughty promises for a bedtime that found us more often than not ready to pass out even as we giggled like the teenagers we used to be as we promised each other sexy time tomorrow.
And when the promised tomorrow inevitably came, it was always more than worth the wait.
Now the blackness of night seeped beneath the windowsill and sucked the last remnants of our joy from the bones of this old house.
I twisted the embroidered edge of the tablecloth between my fingers.Our trip to Portugal afforded this particular piece.The bowl on the table, the one I used to fill with fruit for the kids, came from a craft market in Quebec.
A small smile touched my lips.We’d gotten adjoining rooms for that trip.
The contents of our house constituted a journal of all our best vacations and anniversaries.I didn’t need to look around to catalog them, I’d done nothing but that for weeks, in part to bolster my faith in us, in part to search for clues to how we’d ended up in this cold, silent place.
Reaching for my water, I eased my parched throat before carefully placing my glass back down on the table.The arguing was bad, but nothing came close to the agony of his silence.
Watching him closely, my heart harboring a scrap of hope, I cleared my throat.“I think we should have a trial separation.”
He froze, his fork halfway to his mouth and blinked once.His eyes darted back and forth from his plate to his water glass and back as if somewhere, buried underneath the mashed potatoes, lay the key to decode my message.
Alarm bells peeled in my head.
His eyes, wide and stripped bare, locked onto mine for a pregnant moment before dropping to the table.
How could this come as a surprise to him?He’d barely spoken to me in months with no explanation as to why.
Oh, God!His eyes!I blinked back my tears.Had I misjudged?
Over the past year and a half, my emotions ran the gamut from devastation to gratitude and back again seemingly out of control.Was this just another extreme mood swing?
The very last thing I wanted to do was hurt him.
Finally, his gaze rose to meet mine.“What?”he whispered, hazel eyes stark with pain.
My chest seized painfully.
I thought I had nothing left.
I thought I’d been hollowed out.
I even thought he might be relieved.
I thought wrong.
“I—” My voice failed me.
What was I without him?Less than half.And the half that was left was not the half I wanted.
Carefully laying down his fork, Aaron gave me his full attention, his eyes clear and focused on my face for the first time in months.A deep frown marred his forehead.“I heard what you said.”He cleared his throat.“Nadine—”
“You’ve barely spoken to me in months,” I blurted, latching onto his attention like a buoy no matter that these conversations always sent us to sleep with our backs to one another.
“I know,” he conceded with a short nod, hands gripping the edge of the table.
Those two words were sharper than they had any right to be.
