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)
Rafe laughed as he hung up.
“Problems?”
“Kind of,” I muttered. “But I was told they’re not my problems, so I’m to stay out of it.”
Sterling grunted, sounding lazy, but I knew he’d taken in everything.
Sterling used to be a Navy SEAL, and you never stopped being a Navy SEAL. He may be a professional baseball player now, but that didn’t mean that his mind wasn’t as sharp as it’d been a few years ago when he’d been on the SEAL Team.
“You need anything, let me know, okay?”
“I’m not a slouch, Ling-Ling.”
Sterling flipped me off at my use of the name his kids called him.
I winked and pushed the phone back into my pocket, but as my eyes caught on the blanket that I’d covered Cobie up with just last night, I realized two things.
One, I wasn’t okay with Cobie leaving the way she did.
Two, I needed to talk to Ruthie, and I needed her to give me her honest advice.
***
An hour later, Ruthie and I sat on my front porch while Sterling watched TV on the couch with my daughter. He’d done it on purpose, of course, giving Ruthie and I time to discuss what she’d come here to discuss.
“It’s been years, D.”
I knew that.
I felt every single one of those years in my heart.
“Yeah,” I croaked. “It has.”
“And it’s been enough time that you’re allowed to move on,” she continued.
I knew that, too.
“It’s time to stop hiding.”
I didn’t feel like I was hiding.
“I’m not hiding,” I told her. “I’m trying to recover.”
“You’re hiding.”
“I’m not…”
“Why did it take you this long to come back here?”
I didn’t have anything to say to that.
I couldn’t stand to be here without my family in it.
The only reason I was back now was because of Mary.
“Why are all those doors up there locked?” she asked. “Why aren’t you sleeping in your bed?”
“How do you…”
“I saw the spare bed in Mary’s room. I’m not dumb, and don’t act like I am.”
That was right. Ruthie had gone up earlier to change Mary’s diaper, and she must’ve seen it then.
Shit.
“Ruthie…”
“Lily wouldn’t want you to live like this.”
I opened my mouth to retort her statement when she continued.
“Lily told me once, when I got out of prison, that she would never want somebody to live such a lonely existence as I’d once been living.”
Ruthie had killed her husband. Ruthie also had a valid reason—her husband, once my best friend, had beat her so ruthlessly that he’d made her miscarry. She protected herself, but in the process, had killed her husband.
She was convicted of murder, but only served a few years as opposed to her original multiple year sentence.
Silas, Ruthie’s cell mate’s husband, had gone to pick her up the day she was released, and I remembered the very conversation Ruthie was speaking of.
“Lily loved you with all her heart,” I found myself saying. “And you’re right. She would’ve never wanted anyone to live the existence you were subjecting yourself to. But, things are different… my life… Lily was the one, Ruthie.”
She stared at me for so long that a lesser man would’ve started to squirm. She saw things differently, and always had.
“If the situations were reversed, would you want Lily to be happy?”
I blinked.
“The selfish part of me would want her to never have anyone else,” I told her honestly.
“But…”
“But, the other part, the part that was happy that Lily was happy, would’ve wanted her to find something after I was gone.”
“And why don’t you deserve the same?”
I didn’t have anything to say to that.
“I’m trying, Ruthie.”
“You’re not trying,” she countered. “You’re using every excuse you can find not to move on. You have Mary, and she pulled you out of the darkness, but you have to do the rest. You have to want to live, and you can’t do that while you still cling to your dead wife. She doesn’t want you to live like this. Nobody wants you to live like this.”
I gritted my teeth.
“Ruthie…”
“It’s time.”
It wasn’t time. It’d never be time.
Would it?
***
“If I died, how long would you wait to move on?”
I looked over at my wife.
“At least six months. Maybe three if the girl was hot,” I teased.
Lily punched my arm and then burst out laughing.
“Seriously, though. If I died tomorrow, would you move on, or wallow in a vat of self-pity?” She looked at me, all seriousness in her eyes.
I shrugged. “I would move on. I would find a way to live because of the kids. Why?”
“I read a book today,” she said, shrugging. “It was a time travel romance. She traveled to his time, they fell in love, and then she was transported back. She meets his reincarnated self on the plane that she was transported back to, and they knew instantly who the other was. He, on the other hand, had to live the rest of his life by himself. He died with no kids. No nothing. Meanwhile, she’s pregnant, and meets his ghost seconds after she returns.”