He laughed sardonically.
“You’d never have an affair, but you’d go behind my back and murder my child, then try to top yourself because you can’t live with the guilt?” He was frothing at the corners of his mouth as he spat out his words through clenched teeth.
“I don’t know you any more, Sarah, and that breaks my heart. I don’t know you, but right now, I fucking hate you.”
He lifted both hands to his head and gripped at his hair whilst he tried to draw in a breath. His face was wet from tears, his nose was running, and he could barely breathe. He was broken. I had broken him. My husband. The one and only love of my life. I had broken him.
“You murdered my baby,” he stated very quietly. “Without even discussing it with me. Fuck. Fuck. After everything we went through to bring them into the world? How could you do that without talking to me?” He picked up the chair he was sitting in earlier and smashed it repeatedly against the wall.
I cowered in my bed and cried.
“We’re done! We’re fucking done, you murdering cunt. Right now, I don’t think I care if I never set eyes on you again.”
I curled onto my side and cried harder, not bothering to watch him walk out of my hospital room and my life.
2016
I kicked the side of my car so hard that the dent I caused was deep enough to split the paintwork. I kicked it again for good measure. I pressed my forehead against the cold of the driver’s side window and tried to draw in deep breaths.
From the minute I realised Sarah wasn’t home yesterday afternoon, I had been shaking. My heart, my soul, my bones, even the blood in my veins had been shaking nonstop. I had never been so scared in my life. Terrified.
I went through the doors of that hotel room expecting to find one thing, and instead, I found another. Something I never expected to see in my life—ever.
A loud sob ripped from my chest, and I pulled open the car door, collapsed into the driver’s seat, and slammed it shut after me.
Why? Why would she do this? To herself, to me, to our boys?
I was hurt, scared, and so fucking angry.
I had cried so many tears and held even more back, but now that I was finally on my own, I couldn’t let them go.
The image of my wife lying so small and lifeless on that hotel bed hit me again, and I only just got the car door open in time to throw up the four cups of shit-house hospital coffee I drank while I’d waited for her to wake up.
I swiped the back of my hand across my mouth and tried to breathe. I needed to get home to my kids—our kids—our boys. The babies that Sarah and I made together. What the fuck was I going to tell Carter? He was almost eight and did not miss a beat. He was gonna want to know where his mum was. The twins and Lucas were still young enough that as long as their little bellies were full and the Disney Chanel was on, they were happy and oblivious to what else was going on around them.
Our boys.
How could she?
I needed answers. The same questions circled in my brain like vultures, picking me apart. How the fuck could she do this? All she had to do was talk to me.
I shouldn’t have shouted at her the way I did. I shouldn’t have said the things that I did, but fuck, she terminated a pregnancy without even telling me.
She went through all of that by herself. She said six months ago, but why the fuck didn’t she come to me? I would have listened. I would have helped her through it. My whole body froze, and guilt sank its teeth in deeper.
Would I really have helped her through it?
I wanted that baby—even now, I wanted it.
I was so fucking mad that she didn’t talk to me.
I was furious that she did what she did…
My heart broke that she went through it all on her own.
My chest felt cleaved open, my heart shredded.
My wife couldn’t talk to me, she was scared, lonely and depressed. I was her husband and she couldn’t even talk to me about it, because she knew, she knew and I knew, what I would say.
I started to cry again. My chest, my heart, and my head were at war with each other. I was so fucking angry with myself for not seeing there was a problem. A problem. That was the understatement of the fucking century. My wife just tried to kill herself, and I had no clue . . . no fucking idea that she was the least bit unhappy. How? How did I not know this?
We had a good life. That was what I thought. Yeah, work had been an issue, the long hours and the travelling were a huge stress on both of us, but we were just coming out the other end of that. Things would have started to get better.
The boys were growing and becoming more independent. She would have had more time for herself over the next few years, and we would’ve had more time for each other.
The phone rang, and I grabbed it, thinking it was the hospital. It was Luke.
“What’s happening?”
“All’s quiet here, the kids are sleeping. We made a camp in the playroom. I’m the best uncle in the world.”
“That you are my friend, that you are.”
“She awake?”
“Yep.”
“Answers?”