Before I Knew (The Cabots #1)(2)
His typically mellow voice held an edge today that scraped against her skin like rug burn.
“I’ve apologized to your family.” Mark didn’t flinch. “You have to forgive me, Alec. You know I loved Joe like a brother.”
“Lucky for me we’re not close.” He then spared Colby a brief glance. “Make him go, Colby. He shouldn’t be here.”
When their gazes locked, she noticed a cold, yawning distance that had never before existed. The loss of warmth hit her deep in her chest, choking off what little breath she still had. “I’m sorry. We don’t want to cause you more pain.”
She reached for Mark’s arm, but he shrugged her off. “I’ll sit in the back of the church and slip out early, but I’m staying. Joe would want me here.”
“Would he, really?” Alec gritted his teeth. “We wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for you.”
The flicker of heat in Mark’s eyes warned he was about to do or say something awful. Before Colby could pull him away, he snarled, “Joe’d want me here over you. If it weren’t for what you did, he might not have been so eager to go on that hike, or take that dare.”
Pain—bitter, brutal anguish—arrested Alec’s features. She had no idea what Mark had meant, but apparently Alec did. Colby reached out to comfort him but retreated when he snapped at Mark, “Get. Out. Now.”
Other mourners had started to stare at the two men despite the fact that, until Alec’s outburst, they’d kept their voices low. Colby heard whispers, saw shaking heads. “Mark, let’s go.”
She yanked his arm, forcing him to bend to her will just this once. He ripped free of her grip and stalked to the car. Before he opened its door, he punched the roof and shouted at the sky. By the time she took her seat, Mark’s head was in his hands, his shoulders shaking. Sniffling, he repeatedly banged his forehead against the steering wheel while muttering, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Colby sat beside her husband, in the wake of his suffering, and cried.
She cried for all the years Joe would miss. She cried for the Morgans’ unending pain. She cried for Alec’s tortured history with his brother. And she cried for the empathy she could not feel for her husband.
For the last bit of love that seemed to have died right along with Joe.
Chapter One
Present Day
People liked to tease Colby that, if she were ever late, they’d assume she was either dead or arrested. She’d prided herself on her punctuality. Today, however, a quick glance at the car’s clock warned that she’d be late for her appointment.
It couldn’t be helped.
Her grip tightened on the steering wheel as she stopped at the entrance to the Queen of Heaven Cemetery. Its gates always triggered the same flashback—Mark taking flight off their ninth-floor balcony several weeks after Joe’s funeral. Like a cascade of dominoes, next came the sour stomach, the pasty mouth, the sweaty palms. Breathe.
Mark’s refusal to properly treat his bipolar disorder had doomed their marriage, but Colby had never wanted that ending for him or herself.
The echo of survivor’s guilt—as unshakable as her shadow—often steered her into the graveyard. Today, the second anniversary of Joe’s death intensified the summons. Inevitably, a mental fog descended, clouding her thoughts about the two important men in her life who now lay buried beneath earth and memories and broken dreams.
Although her last three visits to these graves hadn’t ended with mascara-streaked cheeks, the jury was still out on today. Having only recently weaned herself off the medication that had been prescribed to manage her PTSD, this visit would be a test. She’d been feeling stronger, banking on new memories and dreams to mend her broken pieces.
Colby parked along the narrow road that separated two larger plots of land. To her right lay Mark. To her left, one hundred yards across the road, was Joe’s headstone. A bouquet of fresh hydrangeas lay at its base. No surprise, considering the anniversary. Thankfully, she hadn’t run into his family. But for her whirlwind courtship and impulsive elopement with Mark, the Morgans wouldn’t be visiting Joe’s grave—a fact no one could forget.
Cold fingers of dread crept up her neck when she thought of meeting with Alec later this morning. Their former friendship had been another casualty of these tragedies.
Joe had been her childhood playmate, Alec her protector. Opposing images of Alec cycled through her mind like a flip book: him patiently tutoring her in French (which she’d only taken because, when she’d heard him speak it, it had sounded more romantic than Spanish), then politely brushing her off at the grocery store a few months after the funerals. Knowing her face would always be a painful reminder of Joe’s death, she’d given Alec the space he’d demanded without words.