Josie
What the fuck? A wife? This asshole had a wife! He didn’t even say ex-wife.
“Let me go,” I growled as I struggled to get out of his lap.
I was so pissed. There was a very good chance I’d explode any second. I’d just bared my soul to him. Exposed my deepest and darkest secrets. Let him in. Told him things I hadn’t even confessed to Mia. Fuck! He’d just had his tongue down my throat. And he was married. I wanted to slap him like I’d never wanted to slap anyone before. It hurt even more than the moment Matilda’s douchebag sperm donor told me I was a whore and he couldn’t even be sure she was his.
“No.” His voice was commanding and I felt his fingers dig into my hips.
Wife.
The word kept bouncing around inside my head. I wanted to get out of this house and away from him.
“Nate!” I returned as forcefully as I could.
“Josie, please. Hear me out. Please?”
Lifting my head to look at the asswipe, I was beyond shocked with what I saw. Gone was all the bravado, replaced by the same guy I remembered staring miserably out my car window barely an hour earlier. I wanted to run, but something was stopping me. For some reason I knew I had to hear him out. Then I’d kick him in the nuts. Yeah, that’d work too.
“Fine!” I huffed, folding my arms across my chest. I may have still been perched in his lap, it didn’t mean I had to like it. For a long moment, he didn’t say anything. He didn’t move, hell, I don’t remember even seeing him blink. And I was staring straight at his face.
“My wife, Alicia…”
I shuddered at the words. I didn’t mean to. I really didn’t. It was an involuntary thing.
Ignoring my physical reaction to his words, Nate’s eyes froze on something on the other side of the room as he continued, completely emotionless. “We were at home. It was a Sunday morning. Nothing exciting or memorable that day. Samuel was barely three weeks old. We’d just gotten home. It was a beautiful sunny day and Alicia wanted to get out of the house. After breakfast out, something we did almost every week pre-Samuel, we went grocery shopping. After twenty minutes in the shops, he was a nightmare. Screaming and fidgeting. Nothing we did seemed to calm him. Giving up, we abandoned the trolley in the aisle and came home. While Alicia was embarrassed, I didn’t give a shit. My son was the most important thing in the world. I’d go out later and get the crap we needed.”
I felt Nate stiffen. He didn’t have to say ‘here it comes,’ his body said it for him. His fingers dug in a little more as he shifted me in his lap, holding me even closer. For now I let him. I hadn’t forgotten about his wife, but the way his face paled meant I couldn’t pull away no matter how much I wanted to.
“We got him home and Alicia was just as frazzled as he was. I think she was just overtired. I had been back at work for the first time since he’d been born and she was doing it all alone. After changing his nappy, she settled him against the lounge and gave him a bottle. Even though I’d seen her do it before, it still broke my heart. All she wanted to do was breastfeed him, but he wouldn’t latch on, and we had no choice. After she fed him, she handed him to me to burp. It was something I did whenever I could. I wanted to be a part of his life as much as possible. It was harder now I was back at work, but any moment I could have the little guy to myself, it was something I cherished. Even if it meant changing the stinkiest nappies. Alicia went back into the lounge room and I handed him back. She settled on the lounge and watched as he wriggled around before his eyes fell closed and his breathing steadied.”
“We were chatting. We shouldn’t have been. I should have been paying attention. I should have done something. Noticed earlier. Not distracted Alicia.”
Grabbing Nate’s face between my hands, I forced him to look at me. I could feel him falling apart. Fuck, I was falling apart, and I didn’t even know how this story ended. All I knew was it wasn’t going to end with a happily ever after.
“It’s okay. You’re okay. You don’t have to keep going.”
“He was blue. I don’t remember what happened or what made me look, but he was blue. I remember Alicia screaming and tapping his back. I couldn’t find my phone. Then I couldn’t get Alicia’s to work. Everything was fucked. The ambulance arrived and my life was bundled into the back before it tore down the street, the sirens blaring. I don’t remember how long I stood there, the front door wide open. Somehow I found my way to the hospital. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to step foot inside. I knew I had to, but I didn’t want to. I knew what was waiting for me on the other side of the heavy glass doors. When someone slipped their hand into mine, I almost collapsed. My mother was there. Right beside me. I don’t even know how she found out or how she got there so fast. It was barely midday and my life was in tatters.”
“Mum led me inside and I found Alicia slumped in a chair. Her head was in her hands and she was shaking. I should have gone to her. It was my job to protect her. Protect them both. And I’d failed. In the moment it mattered the most, I’d let the most important people in my world down. When Alicia looked up and our eyes met I slumped to the floor. I remember Mum pushing me into a chair, then everything’s a blur. Samuel was gone.”
“Nate…” my voice choked out painfully.
“There are almost three hundred thousand kids born in Australia each year. Three hundred thousand. And three and a half thousand of them died from SIDS. Samuel died from SIDS. Point one percent of all those born, Samuel was taken from me. He became a statistic.”
I knew I was losing him. And he was losing it. Obviously he’d done his research since, but statistics weren’t going to help him. I really didn’t think anything could. I don’t know what I would have done if something like that happened to Matilda. I couldn’t even think about it.
“It wasn’t your fault, Nate.”
“You weren’t there.”
His words cut life a hot knife through butter. I know he didn’t mean it the way it sounded, but it stung like a motherfucker.
“I know.” I didn’t want to ask the next question, but I had to. I had to know. “Where’s…where’s Alicia now?”
He laughed a sadistic, pained laugh.
“Buried next to Samuel.”
What? How? Oh my god! How was this guy still standing? I knew there was something about Nate the moment I laid my eyes on him, something that called to me. Not once did I dare to imagine that it was a strength built from surviving the depths of hell he’d been dragged through.
“We buried Samuel on a Thursday. It was raining and miserable. Everything was. Alicia and I were creeping around each other, barely saying a word. Neither of us bothered to cook dinner, or grocery shop, or even do the laundry. It was like our lives stopped the moment Samuel’s heart did. It was pointless going on without him. The moment we’d got home from the hospital I’d pulled his nursery door shut and hadn’t opened it. It didn’t get opened again for six months.”
Tears were falling from my eyes like a waterfall. One I couldn’t tame. As much as I hated Nate for being married before, I couldn’t hold back. Squishing myself up against him as much as I could, I wrapped my arms around him and held tight. As bad as this was, I felt like the worst was still coming.
“We had a gap between the funeral and the wake. Mum planned it, and I just went along with it. I was a zombie. Going through the motions, but not really participating in my own life. I’d gone home and sat on the swing out the back. It was Alicia’s swing. One she’d demanded six months into her pregnancy and I caved. Anything she wanted, she got. When Mum rang and asked where I was, I noticed I was already late. Like a robot, I got in the car and drove over.”
“The moment I pulled in the drive, Dad was there, hugging me close. We’d never really been big on the hugs before, but seeing him with tears in his eyes, it cracked the only part of me that was still holding together. I remember him asking where Alicia was. I had no idea. I’d just left without her. What sort of asshole husband leaves without his wife to go to their son’s wake?”
“Nate. It’s not your fault.”
“She was asleep. I got home and that’s what I thought. So I left her there. For hours. When I went in to change out of the monkey suit I’d had on all day, she hadn’t moved a muscle. Not one. Usually she tossed and turned. I don’t know what made me do it. I think I already knew, and just needed to be sure. I went over to the bed and touched her face. It was ice cold. I remember sliding down the wall and calling the ambulance. Twice in two weeks. Twice they had come barrelling through the door, lugging bags of stuff. Twice I knew it wouldn’t help. Barely two minutes. Two minutes is all it took for them to declare my wife, my Alicia, all that I had left, was dead.”
“When I woke up, I was in hospital with an IV line pumping into my arm. My mother sat beside my bed with a grip on my hand. She explained what had happened and it hurt all over again. Alicia had OD’d in our bed on anti-depressants. If I’d have checked on her earlier, if I hadn’t forgotten about her, if I hadn’t left her to deal with everything on her own…”
“You were dealing with it too…” I reminded him.
At my voice, Nate looked at me. Up until that moment I wasn’t even sure if Nate realised I was still there.
“Alicia needed me, and I wasn’t there. I did this. I let my family die right in front of me. Josie, we can’t be friends. You have Matilda to take care of. You’re beautiful and full of life and that little girl needs the best mother in the world. You. I’ll just destroy that. I’ll destroy you.”
That pissed me off.
Really pissed me off.
I got where Nate was coming from, I really did, but this man in my arms, he wasn’t a monster. Nothing that happened was his fault. Yet here he was, blaming himself and trying to survive. He never would if he kept trying to punish himself for something he had no control over.
Nate stood up, and instead of me tumbling from his lap, I wrapped my legs around his waist the same time my hands grabbed hold of his shoulders. He wouldn’t let me go earlier when I bared my soul to him, I wasn’t about to let him block me out.
“Josie, let go.”
“No.” I squeezed tighter.
“Let go. I’m tired and I want to go to bed.”
He was probably telling the truth. Beneath his eyes were deep black bags, even though they were filled with unshed tears. “Then go to bed.”
“Are you letting me go?”
“Never.”