Chapter 23
Harding~
A fter Officers Boone and Clinton had left this morning, I knew that I could no longer afford to play nice with Paige. Their visit had only confirmed how far over the edge she was, and my only hope was to end this marriage as soon as possible.
So, while I’d had all the paperwork, finding someone to serve her had been a bit of a challenge. I hadn’t wanted to subject anyone to her insanity, but I also knew that I couldn’t serve her myself. So, when Trista had volunteered one of her cousins for the task, I had immediately said no. However, since Paige knew most of my family and friends, she could easily avoid them. So, even though I hadn’t liked the idea, sending a stranger to her front door had seemed like the only option.
“How are you holding up?”
I looked over at Trista as she walked into the living room, and it’d be so easy to lie to her just to make her feel better, but I wasn’t going to do that. “I don’t even know.”
She sat down next to me, and while I adored her kids, being able to just relax with her was worth everything right now. I was getting tired of that fucking hotel room, and so it was nice to be able to sit comfortably inside a real living room in a real home. We’d just finished lunch, and Trista had sent me to the living room while she’d been busy cleaning up. Now, normally, I would have been in the kitchen with her, but she was trying to take care of me, and I was tired enough to let her.
“Are you worried that she might actually do something dangerous?” she asked as she took a seat next to me.
“I don’t know what I’m worried about,” I answered honestly. “I knew that she was going to be upset, and I even knew that she might act a little out of pocket, but I never imagined this.” I shook my head as I let out a heavy sigh. “I never imagined that she’d…she’d act this crazy.”
“Is she crazy?”
My brows furrowed at that question. “What?”
“I’m not trying to be an asshole,” she quickly replied. “But is it possible that she’s actually crazy?”
“I…”
I stopped.
It was on the tip of my tongue to say that she wasn’t again, but what else would explain her insane behavior? Paige was a woman scorned, and while I understood that, her hurt feelings weren’t reason enough for all the extreme things that kept coming from her direction. Of course, I didn’t want to think that I might have married someone that could actually be mentally unbalanced, but it was getting harder and harder not to give the thought some real merit. While I’d be the biggest fool on the planet to have missed or ignored the signs, I didn’t even know anymore.
“Honestly, I don’t know,” I finally answered. “I don’t want to believe that she might actually need some help, but…but I really just don’t know at this point.”
“Look, I should be the last person judging her, considering my part in all this, but I’m beginning to wonder if she really does need the help of a professional, Harding. It’s not just the texts and calls, either. It’s how she’s sending these awful texts, locating every person that we’ve ever known to tell them what’s going on, making these fake social media accounts, and even accosting your mother, but then…then she’s making these posts about what a good Christian she is and how she’s taking the high road.” Trista shook her head in emphasis. “That’s crazy, Harding. Especially, when no one would fault her for going all scorch-the-earth. People would actually sympathize and understand her anger, but…but that’s not what she’s doing. It’s like she’s got five different personalities, and they’re all doing something opposite of the other.”
“Maybe it’s just mood swings,” I suggested.
“Maybe you’re letting guilt still cloud your vision,” she replied quietly. “Just remember, just like her anger doesn’t justify all that she’s done, your guilt doesn’t justify it, either.” Trista reached over, then squeezed my leg. “Even if we deserve all her crap, our families don’t, Harding. Our family and friends have nothing to do with the decision that we made to be together, so that’s what you have to remember. Paige has made this more than just about us now, and you can’t keep your head in the sand about what kind of person she really is.”
“I just…” I let out a deep sigh. “I just…you know, there were good times, too. My marriage hadn’t been all bad. In the beginning, Paige…things had been perfect. I’d been happy, and a lot of that had been because she’d been happy.”
“Happy wife, happy life?” she chuckled softly.
I smiled at her, even though I wasn’t feeling any kind of happy at the moment. “It was more than that,” I replied. “I didn’t want Paige happy just to keep her from nagging me; that wasn’t it at all. I wanted to see her happy because I loved her. I wanted to see her happy and know that I was the reason.”
“Then what happened?”
“She started doing things that I could no longer ignore, and once I finally opened my eyes, there was no unseeing any of it,” I answered. “Then, all the little things from the past started to make an appearance, and then I began to feel horrible over how I had always chosen her side when she’d been so obviously wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well…like, there was this one time when my cousin, Beth, was going to host Easter for the first time, and she’d been so fucking excited,” I said, chuckling at the memory of her enthusiasm. “Beth had spent hours on Pinterest and whatever for Easter decoration ideas and games, and…God, I just remember her being so damn happy about it.”
“What happened?”
“Paige had ended up buying her own decorations and games, and when we showed up for Easter, she had replaced some of Beth’s games with her own, and when Beth had voiced her displeasure, Paige had ended up in tears,” I told her, the memory coming back to haunt me like a relenting ghost.
“What did you do?”
“I accused Beth of being too sensitive,” I admitted. “I also told her that she should have been grateful that someone had wanted to help her with all that work.”
Trista winced, and I didn’t blame her. “Ouch.”
“At the time, I’d been defending my wife,” I told her. “However, looking back, I’d been such a fucking asshole to a lot of people as I’d kept taking her side.”
“You’re supposed to side with your wife, Harding,” she pointed out kindly.
I shook my head. “Not like that, Trista. Not to the point that you can’t see the truth around you.” I leaned back against the couch. “And she did stuff like that often. It was like she needed to constantly upstage people, and I had refused to see it as anything other than her just trying to be helpful.”
“I’m sorry,” she remarked softly.
“I just…she’s such a good manipulator, and so I wonder how much she’s really going to get away with when this is all said and done,” I went on. “How many people are going to believe her bullshit?”
“Oh, hey,” she said as her knee nudged mine. “The people that matter aren’t going to believe anything that she says. The people that know you and love you aren’t going to hold your personal life against you. C’mon, Harding…it’s not like you’re on the street corner to sell drugs to school kids. You also didn’t beat her or pimp her out.”
“Jesus,” I choked out, her comparisons making me laugh a little, despite the dour subject.
“I’m just saying that it’s not that big of a deal in the scheme of things,” she went on. “Yeah, what we did was wrong, and we also hurt her terribly. But compared to the tragedies of life that are happening every day, you had an affair, Harding. You made the mistake of not leaving your wife before we finally got together, but that’s all you did. While wrong, worse would have been to stay married to someone that you didn’t love anymore.”
“That doesn’t mean that I still don’t feel like crap about it,” I pointed out. “Even though Paige has gone off the rails, I still broke my vows, no matter who my wife is.”
“And that’s between you and God,” she returned easily. “Your family and real friends aren’t going to care about your mistakes, Harding. Especially, when you consider that they’re not perfect themselves. That’s where love and grace come in, and you’ve got that from the people that love and know you.”
I reached out, then pulled her into my arms, thankful for so many reasons. “I appreciate how you’re trying to make me feel better.”
“I just hate seeing you so torn up about something that neither of us can change, no matter how much we’d like to go back in time and do it right,” she replied. “All we can do is make better choices moving forward.”
“You make it sound so simple,” I huffed as I squeezed her tight.
“Life is simple,” she said. “It’s us that make it complicated.”
She wasn’t necessarily wrong.