Page 26 of Divorced from Number Thirty-Eight
To disappear so completely no one sees me.
I felt it when my dad died, when my mom lost herself in her grief.
I felt it again when my mom passed, Nana doing her best to go through the motions for me, but knowing that with just the two of us, we wouldn’t ever be the same.
Then I felt it again when she was diagnosed, when she slowly wasted away, when I eventually lost her too.
And I felt it…
No, I feel it right now.
This beautiful man sitting next to my bed, touching me then not, and lying to me.
His eyes spark with anger and I brace.
Because the emerald depths have flash frozen.
He opens his mouth.
But his words are so damned far from what I expect—which, for the record, is a harsh retort designed to shove me firmly back in my place—that I can’t breathe for a second.
I can’t think.
Then I absolutely lose hold of the sadness inside me.
So when he says, “That woman is my wife,” I burst into tears.
Like a complete and total psycho.
Nine
Gray
I’m right in the middle of correcting myself—or rather adding, “My soon to be ex-wife,” even while knowing that doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of making me sound any better when I hear a strange noise.
I unclench my fists and look up.
Faye has her face averted, her chin lifted so high I can see the outline of the tendons along the column of her throat.
“Red?” I ask.
Her body jerks and terror punches a hole in my middle because at first I think she’s having a seizure or something, like the doctors were right in worrying about her enough to keep her overnight.
Because something has gone seriously wrong.
Then her chest hitches.
And I see a single tear emerge from the corner of her eye, slide down her cheek.
Fuck.
“Baby,” I murmur.
Another hitch, more violent this time, and more tears fall, faster now, cascading down her cheeks, soaking into her pillow.
I reach for her hand, but she seems to anticipate that, yanking her arm away, curling it around her middle and rolling to her side, away from me.
Hiding from me.
