Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75642 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75642 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
I mouth a thank you when the nurse helps Mom stand before turning her toward the restaurant exit. We’re in a hotel nicer than any one I’ve been in. Vincent suggested it because of the ease it provides with the restaurant right here. He said it would be best if Mom didn’t have to be loaded back up into the vehicle more than was necessary.
Mary, the nurse, has been a lifesaver, but I know she comes at a cost. Vincent hasn’t told me what the expense of this trip has been, and I have no plans of asking. I convinced myself at some point over the last month that the best way to pay the people back who have helped me is to offer help to them when I see a need for it. That seems to be the Cerberus way, even though those helping expect nothing in return. I’d never met so many selfless people until them.
“You going to be okay?” Vincent asks.
“I’ll be fine, Roger,” I tell him with a quick grin.
He chuckles. “Who is Roger anyway? She called me that the last time too.”
I shrug. “I have no idea.”
“Let’s go take a shower and get into bed. We have a long damn day tomorrow.”
He holds my hand out of the restaurant, in the elevator, and all the way back to the room. I soak up all the comfort he’s offering.
I know my mom’s illness is hard on her, and I feel utterly selfish for being upset with how hard it is on me too. I’m not feeling that way in an effort to discount what she’s going through but illness is hard on everyone. Watching her suffer hurts me and feeling like I’m not important enough in her life to be remembered claws at me like an angry tiger. She had no problem talking about my deadbeat dad. She can remember all sorts of things about him. At least this time she remembered she had two daughters but didn’t recognize me sitting right across the table with her.
Vincent urges me into the bathroom before pulling at the hem of my shirt. He undresses me slowly before stripping down himself. The shower is slow and soothing with him washing and conditioning my hair before running his soapy hands all over my body.
The touching isn’t overtly sexual, but he must know that I’m exhausted. Despite his erection, he doesn’t try to push that agenda this evening.
He kisses my shoulders as the water washes away the suds.
He’s quick and efficient with his own shower, stepping out before me to grab a towel.
After we’re dried, we don’t bother to get dressed, instead falling naked into the bed, and curling into each other.
“I’m afraid I’m going to lose you,” I confess into the darkness a few minutes later when my mind refuses to shut off. “I think I come with so much drama that you’re going to get tired of me and bolt.”
“I’d never do that.”
“My dad did,” I whisper into the darkness. “Two kids was too much for him.”
“Your dad was a coward, and I’m not afraid of hard work. You don’t abandon the people you love, and it’s a sorry man who would.”
I hold him a little tighter. He didn’t exactly tell me he loved me, but in a way he did. He wouldn’t have to ever say the words, I realize, because he shows me with his actions each and every day.
As passionate as we get when we have sex, it’s the other stuff that tells me how he feels. He’s great with the kids, some days taking on more than his fair share. He spends recess with them every day when he’s home. The one time he had to leave for work and was gone for five days, he called day and night, doing his best to keep up with everyone’s schedules so he could video call to see and speak with all of us.
“I don’t know how long it’s going to take for you to understand how much you all mean to me, but I’ll fight every day to prove it. Eventually, there will be no doubt.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, hot tears dripping from my eyes. “I’m sorry for punishing you for what other people have done.”
We’ve had more in-depth conversations about why I didn’t call him when I found out I was pregnant. Even married at the time, my father tried to convince my mother to have an abortion, and he left when she refused, the divorce papers showing up in the mail six months later. She found them the day she brought me home from the hospital. Her being so adamant when I was growing up that I was loved and wanted, and everything turned out the way it was meant to be, is what makes it so hard to reconcile with the woman who didn’t even recognize me today.