Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 72822 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72822 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Dante grunted, but did nothing more than that, leaving me to wonder if I should continue with my observations.
“What was Marianne like?” Dante surprised me by asking.
I smiled. “Kind. Loving. Devoted to her son. Which always surprised me with the postpartum depression thing. I never saw her being distant with him. Never saw her do a single thing that would’ve set off alarms inside my head. She was utterly devoted to him.”
Which made me feel a little guilty.
“I should’ve questioned the depression. I just never thought to. She was the one who told me that she had it. Who was I to argue with that?”
“You couldn’t,” he said. “My wife had it with our kids for two or three months. It was so weird. She just wouldn’t have anything to do with them. She let me do all the heavy lifting, so to speak. Diaper changes. Getting up with them in the middle of the night. Baths. Then, one day, it was like she was back. Boom. She was the devoted mother again. Though, that was due in part to her doctor prescribing her meds to help battle it. Once she took them, she was better. But, you would’ve never known, on the outside, that she had it. My wife—she hid it and played the part for everyone but me. Why would you know? If someone says that they have something, who am I or you to tell them that they don’t have that?”
I was glad that she had that with him. Wasn’t I?
I wanted so badly to ask him about his wife. Where was she? Would she care that this man—her man—was currently taking a washcloth to a practically naked woman? I would, even if all he was doing was helping.
“Well,” I hesitated. “I didn’t notice it. That’s just my opinion.”
“Do these drains need to be emptied?”
The drains in question were there to help release the fluid from inside my chest. In a week or so they’d be removed, but for now, they were my new friends.
“Yeah,” I cleared my throat. “Please.”
“How?”
So, there I sat, half naked, telling this man how to empty the drains that were pulling fluid out of my chest cavity.
If this man wasn’t already married, I just might have to hug him.
“That kid of yours,” I murmured as he emptied the second drain into the sink. “She’s good. I’ve watched her beat three levels at that game she’s playing.”
He looked over and down at her, grinning slightly. “My other daughters used to love that game. Really all you do is touch the shape. Pretty simple, but it helps them learn the name of the shapes as they do it since it calls it out. Though, there’s one shape—circle—that sounds more like ‘jerkyll’ to me.”
I would’ve laughed, but the inhalation I took in order to expel the laughter wound up stealing the breath from my chest.
“Don’t laugh,” Dante said as he saw my face.
I didn’t have anything to say to that, mostly because I couldn’t.
I just nodded, closed my eyes tightly and started to count to a hundred in my head. I got to thirty before the pain began to ebb. Forty-nine when it became manageable enough to open my eyes again. It was at eighty when I felt that I could speak without crying.
“That wasn’t good,” I wheezed.
Dante didn’t say anything as he finished up his work and then left the room.
I waited, knowing he had a purpose and wouldn’t forget me, and wasn’t disappointed.
He came back with a button-up flannel shirt.
One that I knew wasn’t mine because it was about eighteen sizes too big.
“Where’d you get that?” I questioned, looking at the fabric with a curious eye.
“My truck.”
My brows rose.
I hadn’t heard the front door open and told him as much.
“I parked in the back,” he said. “Your friend Drake was at the front.”
My lip lifted in a silent snarl. “He called me. I didn’t answer.”
“Why?” Dante asked as he laid the shirt on the counter, and then lifted another washcloth out of the sink.
This one he ran against the exposed skin of my neck and belly. The last one that was in there he used to wipe down my face.
“I’ve never felt something so wonderful in all my life,” I told him.
He grunted. “Showers make everything seem a lot more bearable.”
I agreed with that wholeheartedly. I could be having a really shitty day, and all I would need to do was go take a shower, and it didn’t seem as bad by the time I got out.
Then again, the one-hundred-and fifteen-degree water that I used to shower with likely fried away some of my working brain cells.
“All done,” he said, causing me to look up at him.
I watched as he moved me where he wanted me, drying me off and placing his shirt on my body.