43. She Opened the Envelope
She Opened the Envelope
Gwen
Our dressing table was an antique.
Years ago, we’d picked it up from a yard sale when it was shabby and not remotely chic.
Toby had spent a few weekends refurbishing it.
He’d stripped the timber, restored it, restuffed and reupholstered the stool that matched, and then, with a lot of cursing and one almost-broken toe, he and Ian had hauled it upstairs.
My eyes flicked across the bedroom, but I avoided looking at that beauty with the dark wooden swirls I loved tracing with my fingertip.
The envelope waiting on top was only bad news.
My stomach tumbled. I couldn’t avoid the truth forever. The hearing for the restraining order was the next day. I needed to be ready for anything Kayleigh or her big bad lawyer threw at us.
What was holding me back? I’d opened hundreds of packets of gruesome crime scene photos.
Preparing for a case— winning —was in my DNA.
But imagining the words waiting inside the envelope made my heart pound, and my thoughts scrambled, topsy-turvy, barely untwisting long enough for me to pad barefoot across the room.
The envelope remained untouched for now.
I wobbled past the dressing table and headed for the shower. Warm water blasted until I was a wrinkled prune. I dried off, slathered myself in moisturizer, and tugged a T-shirt over my head.
Is it time?
I wiped the steam off the mirror with a trembling hand. Wide eyes in a white face frowned back as I reached for my toothbrush.
Can I really do this?
Eventually, I summoned enough courage to drift back into the bedroom. Toby sat on the bed. His head turned.
“Oh, um…” His cheeks flushed pink. He snatched a pillow from the mountain stacked against the headboard and shoved it over his crotch.
I smothered a laugh behind my hand. “Tobes…”
“Sorry. Sorry. You walk around flashing all that”—he waved his hand at the least sexy oversized T-shirt I owned—“and things happen.”
“You’re a dork.”
“Knight,” he corrected. “I’m a knight , remember?”
“Uh-huh.” I leveled a pointed look at the pillow covering his striped pajama bottoms. “With a big sword, huh?”
He laughed. “Love it, doll.”
Swallowing hard, I ignored the hammering in my chest and shuffled to the dressing table. I picked up the envelope and clutched it in shaking hands.
“Guess it’s time?” Toby asked.
I grimaced. “Yeah.”
“Want me to give you some space?”
“Can you stay?” I flopped on the bed and shimmied against the mountain of pillows. I got as comfortable as I could with the crumbling walls of my marriage about to crash at my feet. “I might have some questions.” I patted a spot closer to me, and Toby scootched over.
We exchanged a look after I flipped open the envelope.
We’d shared a look like that once before, with our toes peeking over the scratchy sandstone edge of the Blairgowrie Jumping Rock.
First, we’d stared at the ocean twenty feet below, then at each other.
We’d kissed. We’d gulped a big, brave breath and jumped off the edge into the abyss.
This moment was like that, but it probably wouldn’t end the same. There wouldn’t be excited laughs or salty ocean kisses in front of clapping tourists. There was only…abyss.
I took out the wad of paper stuffed inside the envelope. My stomach plummeted just like the day we’d leaped off the Blairgowrie Jumping Rock. Blue biro words blurred as I fanned the pages. Betrayal took up a lot of space.
I can do this.
The first entry, written in blocked capitals, was dated almost a year ago.
Ian brought Kayleigh to meet me. I thought she was another fill-in from the agency. She’d only worked for one clinician.
One.
It showed. She was hopeless. She talked a lot about herself. I told her about you and how we were expecting a baby. She made a face. A face! She said babies were gross. I thought that was weird. Who doesn’t love babies?!
I flicked my eyes over the rest of the page. Toby had spelled out random conversations about life and clinic gossip. An extra note had been scrawled at the bottom of the page in a different-colored pen.
Actually, on this day, I was making myself a coffee in the break room.
Kayleigh asked me if I worked out. I was like, “Yeah, gotta keep it real for my wife, ya know?”
She looked at me for a long time, and then said something like, “You’ve got such nice muscles.”
And I’m pretty sure I said, “My wife asks me to lift stuff sometimes just to look at ’em.”
I snorted. I had asked Toby to lift and carry unnecessary things sometimes. In the old days… Before…
Toby’s hand was gentle on my thigh—just a quick touch to tell me he was still there. “Everything okay?”
“Tobes, this bit”—I pointed to the page—“where Kayleigh first comments about your muscles. You know she was hitting on you, right?”
“I do now. It didn’t even register back then.” His face fell, and he waved his hand. “Although… You should probably keep reading… It’s…” He grimaced.
I turned to the next page.
When I got to work after my run, Kayleigh was trying to get a box out of the trunk of her car. I was sweaty and gross, and I needed to shower, but I went to help anyway.
The box was heavy, and I joked, “What you got in here? Bricks?”
She stared at me for ages, and I thought it was because I was a bit stinky or she didn’t get my joke, but then she kinda licked her lips and said, “Wow. You’re good at lifting stuff.”
I felt kinda weird. Not good weird, like when you tell me I’ve got a cute butt. Creeped out. I took the box inside, but the next time Kayleigh asked me to help carry something, I made an excuse to get out of there.
Avoiding how uncomfortable it made me wasn’t the right thing to do. I should’ve told her to back off or go to Judy.
Conversations about makeup and fashion began to weave through the pages. Snooze. I snickered. That’s exactly what Toby had written, too.
The pages went on…and on…
It was around here that Kayleigh had a coffee waiting for me when I got to work.
And then…
This was the first time Kayleigh asked me to go to the coffee shop with her. She said I needed a break.
I did.
You weren’t sleeping because NoBo thought nights were for dancing in your belly, so I wasn’t sleeping, either. I was zonked.
Kayleigh said she’d buy me a coffee every day if it made me happy. She did after that.
It was the same. Over and over. Coffee shop. Break room. A walk here or there. Boring conversations about nothing and Toby acting utterly oblivious despite the fact the woman had clearly fallen head over heels for him.
I skimmed his notes until I landed on an entry when Noah was about a month old.
You called. Mrs. Peterson was numbed up, but she was carrying on like I was murdering her. She’s a nervous patient. She nearly bit my finger off once! You kept calling. I was worried something was wrong. I asked Kayleigh to answer my phone to let you know I was halfway through a root canal.
She said you told her it wasn’t anything urgent. She sounded like she was being nice.
God, I wish I’d answered the stupid phone myself. I don’t think I called you back, either. I should have called you back. You didn’t talk to me when I came home. You weren’t fine, were you? You needed me, and I wasn’t there.
I pushed my fist into the hollow ache in my chest. I didn’t remember the day as clearly as Toby. All the days I’d called him and Kayleigh had answered were stirred together in one big pot of misery.
Toby shuffled closer and pecked a kiss on the shoulder of my T-shirt. “You still okay?”
“No.” It was hard reading about those days. Noah was a perfect baby, but I was so unhappy…and so lonely. “But I need to keep going.”
And I did.
I bumped into Kayleigh in the treatment room. It was an accident. Sometimes it’s hard to get around all the crap in there. She stumbled, and it was just a split-second thing where I stuck my arm out to grab her before she fell over.
And she was being all weird about it, breathing like she’d run a marathon or something, and then she said, “Toby, you saved me.”
I think I said, “Sorry.”
Then, Toby listed more coffee shop trips and a few near misses in the break room. Kayleigh had an interesting habit of cornering him in there, the little witch.
I came into work dead on my feet. Kayleigh asked me if I was okay. Gwen, I wasn’t. I was miserable. I didn’t understand why you’d been mad at me for two days.
I told Kayleigh I wasn’t sleeping well and whinged that the couch was shit for my back. That’s true—that couch looks great, but it is NOT made for sleeping.
Kayleigh said she’d never make me sleep on the couch. I didn’t say anything.
That’s worse, isn’t it? I shouldn’t have been talking about that stuff with her. I should’ve tried harder to talk to you and listened to the warnings you were giving me.
Where would we be now if I had?
I scrubbed a hand over my eyes. The tears were embarrassing.
This was the worst possible time to show any weakness, and Toby didn’t miss it.
He launched across the room to grab the box of tissues off the dressing table.
He ripped some free as he lumbered back, eyes on the floor, his face scrunched up.
He crouched in front of me. The wad of tissues lifted, but his eyes didn’t.
A sniffle of his nose was hastily swiped away with the back of his hand.
“I’m okay,” I lied, waving away the tissues. “This is just…” Hard. So freaking hard. “I’ll keep going.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he nodded. He climbed back on the bed beside me, his arm wrapping around my waist and his nose resting in the crook of my shoulder. Solidarity. We were in this mess together until the end.
I read every painful word—all the missed calls, all the times Toby had fobbed me off while Kayleigh had skipped around the treatment room like a breath of fresh air compared to the wife who ignored him at home.
Finally, I landed on the page that started it all—the night of the accident. I flicked ahead through the pages. It kept going… And going…