Page 132 of Chosen Road

I looked down, feeling shamed. For myself? For Gus? I wasn’t sure. “Does Ruby know?”

“I doubt it. Her mind would not allow her to see Gus through that lens.”

My eyebrows pulled together. “But you can?” I grew incensed, that even if she was right, how dare she see him as that type of person?

“I can what?”

“See Gus through that lens?”

She looked at me steadily. “No. I just see Gus’s heart. It’s visible through any lens.” She stopped and looked at me thoughtfully. “I love him, you know. I don’t give my heart to just anyone, and I love Gus. More importantly, I love him for you. Gus is…” She searched for the right word. “…good.” She shrugged. “He’s just good.”

“He didn’t go through with it. It wasn’t planned. She ambushed him,” I spilled.

Minty rested her palm on my arm. “You owe me no explanation. And I’m not a bit surprised. Like I said, Gus is good. And he loves you the way women everywhere dream of being loved.”

When I got home, I found a huge bouquet of flowers with a handwritten card from Gus. A smaller arrangement graced the coffee table.

“Gus, he send me flowers,” Yiayia exclaimed, pointing to them. “He send you beautiful flowers, too, koukla mou. Gus is good man.” She looked at me more closely. “What happened pouli mou?”

Without thinking, I shook my head. “Nothing, Yiayia.” As I turned away from her I caught her look of disappointment and turned back. “Yiayia, the girl I told you about? The one who reminds me of myself? She quit therapy today.”

Her face folded into lines of compassion. “Pouli mou,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry, agapi mou.”

I took a deep breath to steady myself, then gave her the hug she so clearly needed to give me.

Ruby barreled in shortly after, and we curled into each other on the couch with Yiayia and cued up the movie. I barely took in any of it.

George, Mallory, Jacqueline, and all that each of them meant to me, spun on an endless loop in my brain.

George’s stricken face on Monday night took me right back inside the head of twelve-year-old me, screaming on the driveway, poised on the cusp of womanhood, abandoned by the one who should have had her back. The days, and weeks, and months, I spent looking for my mother. The years I wondered where she was, why she left, and even more so, why she never came back. The years since that I’d spent looking for myself, more lost than I ever cared to admit, there was now no more denying it.

Mallory’s absence, highlighting my failure, guaranteed her a sure slide further downhill, and left me helpless to do anything for or about her. Yet another factor out of my control, leaving me wrestling with impotence and rage. Some people should not have kids. I knew their issues probably came from their own traumas, but I had little compassion. If you can’t handle having kids, don’t fucking have them.

I still worried I might fall into that category.

Jacqueline’s sly smile burned into the lining of my stomach like acid. Her false mask of innocence. The years I spent worrying about her play on Gus but refrained from saying more than I did.

Disgust fueled my rage. Disgust for myself for not heeding my intuition, disgust for her preying on a good man, disgust for her inserting herself into my marriage, disgust for myself for leaving a crack for her to work her way in, disgust for Gus for falling for it, disgust at the knowledge that they came together, if only for a minute.

I shuddered.

“You cold, pouli mou?” Yiayia asked, startling me back to the present.

“No, I’m okay, Yiayia,” I answered.

She pushed herself off the couch. “I get you a blanket.” She returned and covered me and Ruby both. “You want something to eat? You didn’t eat too much dinner.”

Ruby paused the movie. Yiayia lacked movie etiquette, especially when it came to food.

“I’m not hungry, Yiayia,” I assured her.

“I make you a snack. Ruby, you want something?” she asked as she headed to the kitchen.

“Does it matter if I say yes or no?” Ruby quipped.

Yiayia raised her hand in a spanking motion but didn’t turn around. “You’ll eat wood, Ruby mou.”

I smiled at Ruby, and she smiled back, her eyes knowing.

---