“I’m sorry,” she says, but everything sounds like a sharp metallic buzz. My hand is numb, my head on fire. “I wanted to tell you. But it isn’t like it sounds.”
“Then how is it? How is the woman I love married?”
“I haven’t seen him in five years. I never want to see him again. I should have told you, but I’m so ashamed.... And I can’t. I can’t, Landon. I can’t have you hate me for this. I never expected to fall in love. With you. I was going to tell you. You have to believe me.”
“Believe you? Trust you? I’m not sure you know what that means, Claire.”
“Listen, I should have dealt with this, but I don’t even know where he is.”
“That’s a fucking excuse.”
“No, it isn’t. I tried to get a divorce—I got papers made up, signed and everything—but then I just got so scared to face it all again. So I pretended it wasn’t real. Pretended he and I never got married. Pretended he wasn’t Sophia’s father.”
I don’t want to punch something. I want to punch someone. The person who did this to her.
“He hurt you? I’ll fucking kill him.”
“Landon, it’s not that easy.”
I snort. “Perfect. You don’t want me to off him. Sounds like maybe you’re secretly in love with him, and that’s why you’ve never cut things off.”
“I swear that’s not it,” she says, her words fierce. “I want a life with you, Landon. You’re all I want.”
“I want to believe you, Claire, but right now I feel like I would be a fool to.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I gotta go.”
“Don’t hang up like this,” she begs.
“I don’t think I have a choice.”
I hang up the phone, completely destroyed by this woman.
Claire
When he hangs up the phone, I start sobbing.
Like, heaving sobs.
I can’t believe Landon found out this way. That he found out my painful past over the phone.
I can’t believe that Landon doesn’t believe me when I say my husband means nothing. When I say Landon means the world.
Emmy and Tess must hear my crying from down the hall, because they’re in my bedroom in minutes.
“Sweetie, what the heck is happening?” Tess asks, sitting next to me on the bed, rubbing my back as I cry into my hands.
Emmy sits on the other side of me. “Claire, what is going on?”
“I just—I just spoke with .... Landon. And he knows everything.” I can’t control my crying. I don’t even try.
“Everything what?” Emmy asks.
I sit up, shaking my head, tears streaming down my cheeks.
“I’m married. And Landon just found out.”
I press my hand to my forehead, ashamed of my past, of my story. Wanting it to disappear. Not wanting it to be known. It’s safer to hide, to keep secrets. Because then there’s no judgment, no definitions of who you are or what you’re worth.
“What?” Tess asks, gasping. “Claire ... you have a husband?”
Emmy looks at me in shock.
I understand their surprise. I’ve never said those words aloud in my entire life. I could never even get myself to utter them to my own mother.
I take a deep breath, knowing I need to tell them the entire story.
“When I was eighteen and living with some friends, I met a man ... he wasn’t from Vegas, but was here for business. We went out a few times, and I don’t know why I ever agreed. From the start he was always rough with me, really demanding. I was too naive to realize it was abuse. I slept with him a lot over the course of a week, and one night we got really drunk, and ended up in a wedding chapel.”
“Oh, shit,” Emmy says.
“Yeah, I know. It was stupid, but he promised to take care of me. He had money and seemed so confident and in charge—that was what drew me to him. He lived and worked in Utah, but after the wedding, he got me an apartment here in Vegas. He’d fly in on the weekend, and I thought that was enough, that he loved me. But he didn’t.
“My mom was totally MIA back then, because she was basically a mess over my dad’s death, so I become really isolated. I didn’t even tell her I had gotten married. I wasn’t working, obviously. I didn’t even have a phone.
“I stopped everything, really, because he always wanted me to be in the apartment in case he decided on a whim to visit. Like, one time I was in the laundry room when he showed up at our place unexpectedly, and when I came back in, carrying a basket of clothes, he beat me up so bad I couldn’t stand for three days.”
“Claire, what are you talking about? Why are you still married to him?” Tess asks.