“Tell me the truth, Thomas. That woman I saw, the one who’s been driving you around, who’s been talking to you behind my back, who’s been to your apartment, probably many times, and even said you two were ‘over’ … She’s your girlfriend, isn’t she?”
“Girlfriend?” He cocks his head and a smile slowly creeps onto his face. “No.”
I grimace. “Your wife?”
“No … She’s my sister-in-law.”
My brows furrow and my jaw drops. I don’t get this at all.
“Actually, more like my ex-sister-in-law.” He looks away. “The point is, no, we’re not dating, and I’m not seeing her behind your back.”
“But … she …” I mutter. “Ex … Sister-in-law.” The realization hits me like a brick. “You were married.”
Chapter 27
Thomas
“Exactly. Were. Past tense,” I say.
“What happened? Did you divorce?” she asks.
“No.” I lick my lips. “A few years ago, she died.”
Two years ago
My heart is racing as I see the scene in front of me unfold.
My wife with tears in her eyes, standing in front of the ten-story building window. Our window. In our home. With a knife in her hand.
I plead with her not to do anything she’ll regret.
Thoughts about what I could’ve done differently spin through my head. Why she keeps going back to this point. This unhappiness. It’s always looming in the background, waiting for a chance to spring back up.
Like now.
She’s tired of life.
It’s been so long since I’ve last seen a genuine smile that I don’t even know what happiness is anymore. At least, not when I look at her.
The confident, cheerful woman I once knew shriveled up and died in front of me. But why?
What drives a person to sit on the edge of a ledge and look out upon their death?
Is it the need to go beyond what we can see in life?
Is what she has not enough?
Every time this happens, it’s always something different.
A new house. A new job. This time, it’s a baby.
Or rather, the lack of.
We’ve had the discussion so many times that I started avoiding talking about it altogether. Maybe I shouldn’t have turned off that switch. Maybe I should’ve kept talking. Or maybe I never should have brought it up in the first place.
Because it was me.
Me, who first asked … do you want a baby?
Me, out of all people.
Can you imagine?
I can’t.
It’s not in my nature, and I’ll never be a good father figure. But I wanted to do it for her because I saw that joy in her eyes whenever she saw her friends’ babies. Whenever she cuddled them. I could feel it in my heart that this is what she needed.
For a moment in my life, I thought I could fix things.
Fix her.
With a baby.
As if a baby could ever fix anything.
As if it would magically solve all our problems.
It was messed up. And I know now that this is ultimately what led to her sitting on the edge of our window this very second.
Because that baby was a seed that I planted in her head. A seed that would never come to fruition.
Why? Because her body wasn’t able to. That’s what the doctor said.
For months and months, we tried, and when we got tested, that’s what came out.
It wasn’t me. God, I begged it was me. I fucking begged that it was me, so she could move on, find another man, and have a baby. So she’d finally be happy.
But that was impossible.
And now, we’ve ended up here.
Again.
First, it was the scissors.
Then, it was the tub.
Now, it’s the window.
Every time, it’s something new. Something else she’ll try to take away her pain.
How many more times can I save her? How many more times will she allow me to?
When I step closer, she says, “Don’t.”
I wonder if this is the last time I’ll ever see her face again. If it’s the last time I’ll hear her voice. It goes through my mind every time she does this, and each attempt is another crack in my heart.
“Please … come here. We can talk about it.”
“No … we’ve talked enough. I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“We can work things out,” I say.
“We can’t. Nothing can fix this.” She points at her belly. “Nothing that can fix us.”
I don’t know why it became this way. Why we became so disconnected. Why we became two people just living together instead of one love.
I swallow and hold up my hand to make her stop, even though I don’t dare to step closer, afraid of what she’ll do. “Just give me the knife, and I promise I will do something. We can go into therapy again.”