In the Stillness

CHAPTER 27



I’m not ready to talk to Eric. Or to stop drinking. This morning Tosha and Liz had to take off to visit her parents for a few days, leaving me to my own devices. I think she took the vodka and dumped it out. Oh, no, I drank it. I’ve filled my morning with organizing Ryker’s letters by date. Maybe I’ll get them bound into a book.

Or throw them away.

I spend the afternoon analyzing what the healthy thing to do would be, when I’m interrupted by a knock on Tosha’s door.

“Who is it?” I ask, walking toward the door.

“Natalie, it’s me, let me in.” Eric sounds thoroughly exhausted.

Well, I’m out of liquor and, it appears, luck. I open the door.

“What.”

Good, he looks like shit.

He seems to be struggling to make eye contact. “Can I come in?”

I leave the door open as I walk away and sit on the couch. Eric moves to sit next to me.

“I didn’t ask you to sit.”

He stands without protest. “Will you at least look at me?”

“I don’t think I can.” I’m honest, and am tempted to remind him that he likes that about me.

“Nat . . .”

“Don’t. Call. Me. Nat.” I growl as I finally make eye contact with him.

I can tell by the puffiness around his eyes that he’s been crying, or that he’s massively hung over. If his night was anything like mine, it’s probably a little bit of both.

“I’m sorry,” he says in the same tone he met me with in the kitchen yesterday.

Then, it hits me.

“Is that what you were apologizing for in the kitchen yesterday? Cheating on me?”

“No, I was saying sorry for . . . just . . .”

“Do me the decency of telling me how long it’s been going on. And not just with her. With anyone else, too.” I hug my knees to my chest to prevent my guts from spilling out as I realize she likely wasn’t the first woman to wrap her legs around his waist while he’s been married to me.

“It was just her.”

“Who is she?” I didn’t give myself permission to ask that question, but out it came.

Eric folds his hands into his pockets. “A colleague. She works in the same department.”

“How long, Eric?” I start to regret asking again as I watch his face turn a slight shade of green.

Looking at the floor, he barely manages a whisper. “Just over a year.”

My hands fly to my mouth to prevent vomit from spewing all over him as I race to the kitchen sink. I’m only half-embarrassed that this is happening in front of him. The other half reminds me he deserves to see this. I walk toward him after rinsing my mouth out. He has tears in his eyes. Bastard.

“Just over a year? Just over a year! Eric?”

I feel like every woman I’ve known on TV or in real life that I’ve made fun of. Dumb. Clueless. I always stare at these women, the ones who couldn’t hang on to their husbands, and wonder how on God’s green earth they couldn’t know something. It’s been a solid three years since I’ve felt like Eric and I were in anything that could be considered a “happy” marriage. But, an affair? It’s never once crossed my mind that he might be having one, or to have one myself. He was working long hours on his Ph.D. while I was busy with our boys and trying to hold it together. Trying to get us through the experience in one piece. Apparently, we had different goals.

He opens his mouth, maybe to answer, but I continue. “Aside from the complete disregard you had for our marriage and our family, do you realize what physical risk you put me at by having sex with someone else?”

“We weren’t having sex the whole time, Natalie.” His honesty is like a machine gun. While I assumed that they were having sex, I both now know for sure that they were, and am faced with the reality that their relationship had time to develop to that of a sexual one.

I collapse onto the couch again. “When did the sex start?”

He kneels in front of me and I literally do not have the energy to push him away. “We only had sex once. Last week.”

“Ah, yes,” I proceed sarcastically, “last week was a tough one for us. I can see how bringing someone else into our marriage would help. But, come on, Eric. You can’t expect me to believe that you’ve been sneaking around behind my back for a year and have only had sex once.”

Eric sits back on his heels. For a second, I think he’s going to try to convince me that they really did only have sex one time. Maybe that’s wishful thinking. He doesn’t argue, though, and that’s the only answer I need.

“Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

He has the audacity to look annoyed. “Come on. You said yourself we haven’t had a marriage in a long time—”

“We haven’t, but I still never cheated on you. Though I suppose you knew that since I was rarely let out of the house by myself. Was that part of your master plan? To keep me at home so you could go fool around and come home to your version of a perfect family, confident that I wasn’t with anyone else?” As I stand, so does he. He follows me into the kitchen.

“I f*cked up—”

“A year, Eric? A f*cking year! Do you understand that that means every single second of every single day for the last year you told me a lie? You’re a doctor, quick, add it up. How many lies is that?”

His head shakes as he looks down and licks his lips.

I step toward him again and duck down to meet his eyes, and with a cold voice I tell him. “It’s over thirty-one million. You’ve told over thirty-one million lies to me and to your boys.”

“I’m sorry, Natalie . . .” his voice seems to catch on some brewing tears as he walks to the couch and sits down, burying his head in his hands. “I honestly didn’t think you’d care,” he says, looking up. “You’ve hated me for more than a year.”

True.

“I’ve never completely disregarded your humanity by turning myself over to someone else, while still in the ring with you. For God’s sake, Eric, you’d come home and lay in bed with me after kissing someone else? How did you do it without going completely insane?” I sit on the chair across from him, he follows my every move. “And, to think, I beat myself up over feeling detached from you for so long. I reminded myself daily how much you cared for me and the boys. How much you loved me. How I was f*cking everything up by being so selfish in being angry that I had to put everything on hold . . .”

“Like I said, I didn’t think you’d care. Then, the look on your face when you walked into my office . . .” Eric rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands.

“You can’t erase a visual memory that way.”

“You looked like you still loved me . . .”

“That was betrayal I was feeling, Eric. Not love. You don’t have to love someone to feel betrayed by them. I still trusted you, even when I stopped loving you.”

Ryker’s Valentine’s letter sits inches from Eric’s foot. I reach for it and tuck it in the box behind me while Eric still sits with his eyes tightly closed. I resist the urge to show Eric all of the letters, to show him what true love looks like. To explain that when someone you love is hurting, you would walk barefoot through hell and back to bring them back to you, even when you know you’re fighting a losing battle. You don’t turn to someone else. War, though, is a crueler mistress than a scientist with morals with the tensile strength of a Twizzler.

“I think we can fix us.” He kneels in front of me again, taking my hands.

“Don’t touch me.” Recoiling, I pull my hands away and tuck them between my legs. “I want you to leave, Eric. I’ve heard all I need to know, and I don’t think I can take anymore today. Don’t say anything to your parents yet, and I won’t say anything to mine.” I stand and walk to the door, opening it.

“Come on, Nat—”

“No, Eric. This . . . this is too much. We might be broken, but I’ve been broken for longer, and I need to figure some shit out. Just leave, please.”

Eric walks, slumped-shouldered, toward the door. “I love you,” he says as he meets me in the doorway.

“Just because you say it doesn’t make it true, you know.” I look toward the stairs, where I want him to go.

“I do love you, Natalie.” His brown eyes are faded, pleading. He’s actually able to pull off looking remorseful, which makes me feel even sicker. He’s an actor of the most threatening kind.

“Yeah?” I huff. “Well, you’ve just proven that it’s not enough.”

Feeling used, disgusting, and disregarded, I let my tears fall freely out of his view when he leaves. I can’t get over the gratefulness I feel over our boys being gone for the week.

Our boys.

I can’t make a clean break and never see him again. There’s no restraining order or semester at home with my parents that will make this all go away. Not this time. I’m going to actually have to deal with this. So, grabbing my purse, I decide the first place to start is a quiet townie bar on a Sunday afternoon. One I’ve never been to with anyone before. One that will be free of any memories the last twelve years have etched into my brain.