Total pages in book: 183
Estimated words: 178343 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 892(@200wpm)___ 713(@250wpm)___ 594(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 178343 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 892(@200wpm)___ 713(@250wpm)___ 594(@300wpm)
But I’ve been working hard and showing up every day on time, staying late, and going out of my way to be the model employee so I’m hoping she’ll thaw eventually.
She’s been weird with me since I got back from my honeymoon, in fact. It was like she liked me best when I was fresh off my breakup with Ray, but lately, it’s like she’s my bully and won’t leave me in peace.
God knows how she’s going to react when she finds out I’m pregnant.
Ugh.
Yeah. I haven’t taken a test yet, but my period is a week late, my breasts are beyond sore, for the past few days I can’t tolerate the smell of coffee or almost any food, and I’ve had no appetite. This morning I tried to eat an apple, but after one bite I threw up over and over until I was just vomiting air.
Stress tends to eliminate my appetite, but being off the pill and the other symptoms, plus all the honeymoon sex – it’s pretty obvious.
Today, on my way back to Grampa’s after work, I even bought prenatal vitamins. No pregnancy test, but vitamins, which is silly.
I’m not getting confirmation but I’m behaving like I’m pregnant because in my core I feel like I already know I am.
As for the other people in my life, Cammy looks at me like she can see through me. I’ve avoided going to lunch with the girls. I haven’t avoided Susanna, but I’ve been getting interrogated repeatedly because apparently Killian phoned her, looking for me the night I left, and she direly told me that he sounded like someone ran over his dog when he called. I guess my reaction told her just how seriously wrong things are in my marriage, so she got panicked, tried to pry, and when she kept failing to get answers, told me she paid him a visit. She complained about the fact that he’s as tight-lipped about what’s going on as I am.
Of course he is. It’s not like he’s about to tell anybody what he’s been doing.
Susanna guilted me for closing up on her so soon after we’ve reconnected, after how much I apologized for closing up on her before. And this made me burst into tears and cry into her beautiful curls as she hugged me, letting me cry it out for what felt like an hour before I pleaded for her to just try to understand that I can’t talk about the problems in my marriage, but that I want her in my life. That I need her more than ever.
“What did he do? Please tell me. Should I hate him? Because I saw him and he looks like you look, sad-sauce faced, so it’s hard to hate someone who clearly loves you so much.”
She let me off the hook. Temporarily, she said. But she warned me that she won’t sit back and watch me wither again.
I feel like I am withering. Like I’ll continue until I fade into nothing. But I can’t do that. Because I need to take care of myself and this baby I’m sure I’m carrying.
I’m wrecked. Ruined. And I’m pretty sure I’m going to be coparenting a baby with a man who might have manipulated me into falling in love with him and marrying him just so that he could get revenge on the guy that ruined my life. And the guy that ruined my life is locked up in my new husband’s basement, getting tortured and fed pet food. I have no earthly idea what to do about any of this.
So, I’m staying at a place that has always brought me comfort where I can be left mostly alone. I’m going to work every day and doing my job to the best of my ability despite the constant bullying, because work is the only constant for me – like it was when things were at their worst with Ray.
I eat dinner with Grampa and make sure he eats properly. I help around his house and watch TV with him at night. He doesn’t hassle me about why I’m not with my brand-new husband. I know he has opinions about it by the look in his eyes, but he’s on my side. My parents, my cousins, my aunts, and even Uncle Huey are all trying to find out what’s going on with me – why I’m a newlywed staying with my grandfather.
All I’ve told them is that Killian and I are having problems, that maybe we got married too quickly – before we really knew one another and that I’m taking a minute and to please just give me that minute.
I don’t know anything except that I’m just trying to continue to remember to keep inhaling and exhaling, do my job, and make myself get out of bed every morning. Because without those reminders, it really feels like I could just curl up and do none of that. I have to try to focus on the things I can focus on, so I don’t give in to allowing my brain to torture me with thoughts about all the lies and deceit and uncertainty about Killian’s true motivations. And the not insignificant fact that Ray is still locked in a room in his basement.