Chapter Seven
Leave It With Me
Ariana
Present
“Drops of Jupiter” played on the sound system as I slid a box cutter through the tape of another box. This one was marked books, and though I knew my husband would likely want me focused on unpacking the kitchen first, I reached for this box, instead.
I was trying desperately to feel some kind of joy.
I’d put on my favorite throwback playlist, one that reminded me of a time in my life where I felt full of possibility.
And as I began plucking book after book from that box and placing them with care on the built-in bookshelves surrounding the television in our living room, I waited for happiness to hit me.
I’m so lucky, I thought as I pulled out my J.R.R.
Tolkien collection. So many women would kill for what I have, I swore as I shelved my classics — Hemingway and Emerson and Salinger and Bronte and Austen.
I have so much, I reminded myself as I thumbed my copy of A Wrinkle in Time, the book that had served as my favorite escape as a child.
But each time I berated myself, it did nothing to change how I truly felt.
On the outside, I was the beloved wife of a successful man. I was rich in both money and love. I was beautiful and healthy and couldn’t possibly ask for anything else.
On the inside, I was dying a slow, merciless death.
This is because of Shane.
I knew it and refuted it all the same, that being reunited unwillingly to the first man I ever loved — and the first to break me — had ignited all these feelings. Truthfully, I’d felt them well before that man had crashed back into my life. I’d been trapped in my own personal hell for years.
But seeing Shane again, marveling at the way time had changed him, wondering what would have happened if only he’d chosen to stick it out with me instead of run…
It stirred up my insides like a storm over a muddy river, all the thoughts of the past swirling with the realities of the present and the darkness of the future.
My hand hovered over the spine of Angela’s Ashes once I’d placed it, and again I found myself remembering the first time I’d read it, when I was a teenager and felt seen by someone who also understood the reality of living in an unstable home.
I hadn’t meant to end up here again.
But life rarely unfolds the way you intend.
After Shane left, I did everything right.
My mother was gone. My brother was now in my care. And I was preparing to fight an uphill battle against my stepdad. If all of that wasn’t enough to bury me, the heartbreak I felt from Shane walking away when I needed him most would surely do the trick. Except, I didn’t let it.
Just like the case studies of children we’d covered in my sociology classes, I was resilient.
I stayed in school, worked nights and weekends to finish my undergrad degree and then earn my master’s. I poured every ounce of myself into becoming someone I could be proud of. I built a life for Georgie and me from the ground up. It was modest, but it was ours.
There were nights I fell asleep on the couch with his homework spread across my lap, the smell of burnt coffee in the air, student loan statements stacked on the counter.
I was tired, but I was steady. I didn’t need saving.
I told myself that over and over — that I could do this, that love wasn’t a requirement for survival.
But still, I’d catch myself lingering on other people’s lives.
I stared too long at couples holding hands in grocery store aisles.
The sound of laughter from a neighbor’s backyard would have my chest aching.
The announcements from my college friends of engagements or babies made my eyes water.
I told myself I didn’t crave it — but God, I did.
I longed for security, for comfort, for the soft kind of joy that comes from knowing someone else was there with you to go through anything.
And then, Nathan Black walked into my life.
He was everything I thought I wanted — calm, certain, dependable.
He came to one of our nonprofit fundraisers for the youth outreach program I was leading at the time.
Older than me by a decade, Nathan was there to speak on behalf of the financial organization he worked for, to talk about the importance of budgeting and how to get started even as a kid.
I remember thinking how effortlessly he commanded a room, how safe he made everyone feel, including me.
He asked questions no one else bothered with, listened like he actually cared about the answers. He told me I was extraordinary — that I’d done what most people couldn’t.
He asked if he could take me to dinner that night, and we ended up in a run-down diner at just past midnight, laughing as we bonded over our love for books and kids.
And it happened so easily, how we went from strangers to dating.
Nathan loved to dote on me, to take the weight off my shoulders in any way he could.
He hired a housekeeper once a week to clean the apartment I shared with Georgie.
He would often show up at my door with bags full of groceries.
He’d cook for us and help Georgie with school projects.
For the first time in years, even though it was terrifying… I let someone take care of me.
The first few years of our relationship flew by, and they were as golden as a sun beam.
Nathan would spoil me with dinners at restaurants that boasted dishes more expensive than my car payment.
We’d take weekend trips to the lake with Georgie, where Nathan would grill and tell stories that had us all in stitches.
He came to every event I organized, donated quietly to my programs, bragged about me in every room.
I felt seen and protected and cherished.
When he proposed, it was the easiest yes I’d ever said in my life — even if my mind did flash back to Shane.
I knew it was silly, even then, to think about that boy.
We had been kids when we fell in love. It had been so long since we’d even seen each other.
I told myself it was just my heart holding onto the feeling of youth and innocence.
Nathan was my new path, and I was ready to walk it.
I thought I’d finally been rewarded for all the ways I’d fought and scraped and survived.
But slowly, the shine dulled.
It started with small things — the way he’d correct me when I told a story, as if I couldn’t quite remember it right.
The way he’d suggest I wear my hair differently for a fundraiser, or tell me a certain dress wasn’t “professional.” At first, I thought it was love — a man who wanted me to be my best.
Then came the comments about my friends, the subtle sighs when I made plans without him. He’d tell me I didn’t need to work so much, that it was time to “enjoy the life he’d given me.”
And when I bristled, when I reminded him that I earned my life — that I had before him and could again — his smile would falter, and I’d see the flash of something behind his eyes I didn’t recognize.
By the time I did, it was too late.
Slowly, I found myself living a life I didn’t recognize. I didn’t work anymore — only volunteered for the organizations that were best suited for Nathan and his own professional goals. Nathan paid for everything — our house, our cars, our groceries, Georgie’s medical school tuition.
Nathan took care of me. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had to take my car in for service or even pump my own gas. I never had to ask to buy a thing — the money was there, and he wanted me to spend it. You don’t have to worry about anything, sweetheart, he said to me often.
But I did worry.
Because I never knew which version of him would come home.
I was a kept woman, and I should have been thankful.
This was what I’d wanted — security, dependability, love.
And he did love me. He loved me so fiercely he sometimes acted like a monster, only to grimace at his own actions and drop to his knees, crawling to me and clinging to my legs to beg for forgiveness and understanding.
Most of the time, my life was picture perfect.
But it didn’t matter how rare the bad times were — they still screamed so loudly I couldn’t ignore them if I tried.
And it felt like a repeat of how I’d begged my mother to wake up and walk away, except this time, I was beating on my own ribcage instead of her door.
My phone buzzing on an unopened box snapped me from my thoughts, and the first genuine smile of the day found me when I saw my little brother’s face on the screen.
It was a photo of us at his college graduation, him in his cap and gown, and me in a white dress Nathan had picked out for me.
Georgie had me tucked under his arm with a proud grin, and I leaned into his side with a closed-lip smile.
“Why hello, Doctor Campbell.”
Georgie’s laugh made my heart squeeze. “Still have quite a few years before I earn that title. Haven’t even gotten into rotations yet.”
“Well, the title should be yours based off the amount of hours you put into studying alone.” I put the phone on speaker before opening the next box of books. “I’m surprised you even find time to call me.”
“You know I always have time for my big sis. How’s it going in Florida? Been to the beach yet?”
“Have you seen how pale I am? Not exactly my scene.”
“I think that’s the whole point of going — to get a tan.”
“I don’t tan,” I said with a laugh. “I was cursed with our mother’s skin.”
I regretted the words as soon as I said them, because of course that meant I was insinuating that Georgie’s skin tone, so effortlessly bronze even in the wintertime, came from his father.
And I knew he wished he had nothing to do with that man.
It was part of the reason he was George Campbell now, the same way I’d changed my name from Ridley to Campbell after the whole ordeal, too. Campbell was our mother’s maiden name, and we claimed it the way we wished we’d been able to claim her before it was too late.