Chapter Thirty-One
Phil
She was in every thought I had. But at least during the day when I was at work, I was able to be distracted. The adrenalin of being on the job and the company of Kendrick, Mel, and Ryan helped keep memories of Megan at bay. Not all the time, but enough so that it was manageable, at the very least.
But going home was the worst. My apartment felt so much bigger and so much emptier somehow. I had entertained the thought of asking Megan to live with me before my arrest, and now those hopes were leagues away. I didn’t know what to do with myself when I got home, and it seemed that no matter how tired I was I couldn’t fall asleep easily. I tried blasting music in my ears to drown out my thoughts, but still, she managed to creep into my psyche somehow and torment me with her absence.
I was in the day room that morning. We had been called out in the early morning, but it was nothing dire, and we had been back at the station in less than an hour. Kendrick and gone to take a quick nap, and Ryan was in the shower. Mel sat opposite me, snacking on some corn chips.
“So, Phil, how have you been doing lately?” Mel asked. I could sense the concern in his voice and wondered if my expression betrayed the turmoil going on inside me.
“Umm…fine,” I mumbled back unconvincingly.
“You miss her, don’t you?” Mel asked.
I sighed, realizing that apparently, I was just that easy to read. “I don’t want to miss her,” I admitted.
“She made a mistake, Phil,” he said gently.
“It was a pretty big mistake,” I pointed out.
“Fair enough…but is it fixable?” he asked. “That is really up to you, don’t you think? We all make mistakes in life; some are bigger than others. It all depends on what you’re willing to forgive and what you’re forced to put behind you.”
“She hasn’t tried to contact me at all,” I said.
“And that upsets you?”
“I don’t know what it does to me, to be honest,” I said. “Sometimes I feel relieved, sometimes I’m disappointed, but mostly I just feel like I’m grieving.”
“You are grieving,” he said. “You’ve lost a relationship in the midst of all this—and by the sounds of it, you had it bad for this girl.”
“I thought about asking her to marry me,” I admitted.
“No shit,” Mel said, raising his eyebrows.
“Not right now,” I clarified. “But I was seriously considering popping the question in a few months. I wanted her to move in with me before then, though.”
“Maybe you should try talking to her?”
“Why?”
“Because whether this is the end for the two of you or not, I think it’s obvious that you need closure.”
“Closure,” I breathed. “That’s the word I’ve been looking for all these days. Maybe you’re right; if I can talk to her and put this all behind me, maybe she won’t be dominating my thoughts every minute of every day.”
“Hmm…it’s a possibility,” he said. “But I wouldn’t count on it.”
“Why not?”
“You love this girl, am I right?”
“Yes.”
“Then closure is not going to do you much good,” he said honestly. “You’re still going to be sad about the relationship ending, whether or not you get closure.”
“Well then…fuck me.”
He gave me a sympathetic smile. “I know you’re hurt and angry,” Mel said bracingly. “But there are relationships that have been through worse.”
“Oh, yeah?” I said challengingly. “Like what?”
“Like cheating,” he said softly.
It was his expression that got to me. “Wait,” I said, in shock. “You cheated?”
“I wasn’t the one who cheated,” he replied.
I raised my eyebrows, realizing what he was telling me. “No way… Dana?”
“We had been married about three years,” he explained. “I had just become a full-fledged firefighter and was working all the time. I was so consumed with work that I forgot to carve out time for her. Even when she begged me to spend some quality time with her, I was either too busy or too tired. After a while, she just stopped asking, and I figured she understood. Then a few months later, she came to me and confessed.”
“She told you herself?” I asked.
“Yep.” Mel nodded. “She came clean. She told me she’d been seeing this guy for a few months and the guilt had finally led her to break up with him and tell me the truth.”
“How did you react?”
“Not well,” he sighed. “We separated for a while, and I thought about filing for divorce several times.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Because I realized that Dana was still the love of my life and that kind of love didn’t come easy. She had made a horrible mistake, but she admitted to it. She apologized and wanted to make our marriage work. Slowly, I realized that my life just wasn’t the same without her. So I went to her parents’ house where she was staying and told her I wanted to start fresh. We decided to go for couples counseling, and a couple of months later, we were living together again.”
“Fuck,” I breathed. “How did I not know this?”
“Because it was before you joined up and it’s not something I go around telling people.”
“Right…”
“But we have two amazing children now,” he said. “And a marriage that’s as solid as ever.”
“And the fact that she cheated never comes back to haunt you?”
“It used to,” Mel admitted. “But not anymore… I know my wife now, and I know I can trust her. I accept my part in her mistake, and we’ve moved on. We both learned something extremely important from that experience, and that was that relationships are hard, and if they mean something to you, you need to fight to stay together.”
I sighed. “It sounds very romantic when you say it like that.”
“All I can say is if Megan is your Dana, then forgiving her might be in your best interests, too,” Mel said. “But only you can say whether that is true or not.”
I wasn’t a big believer in fate, but just after that conversation with Mel, I got a message on my phone. When I glanced down, I saw Megan’s name; I froze as I read her text. She wanted to talk and had asked to meet me at the park where we had ended up after our first failed attempt at a date. I stared at her message for a while, wondering if this was my big choice… But I knew it couldn’t be.
I agreed to meet her and then I spent the rest of my shift obsessing over the coming meeting. As soon as I hung up my uniform, I showered, put on fresh jeans and a t-shirt, and drove down to the park. Everything about it was familiar and nostalgic, and I felt a pang in my heart that was a cross between happiness and pain. I walked into the large park. Megan hadn’t mentioned exactly where she would be, but she didn’t have to. I knew exactly where to find her.
She was sitting on the same swing she had been sitting on the first time I had approached her. She was wearing a lily-white dress with soft, billowy sleeves and a cinched waist. Her hair fluttered gently in the wind, hiding half her face from sight. The other half looked beautiful and sad. There was something strangely poetic about approaching a beautiful woman in a white dress.
I imagined that we were strangers, and this was nothing more than a new beginning filled with hope. I would say hello, and she would turn to me and smile. I would ask if I could sit down next to her and she would nod. We would spend the next hour talking and slowly, we would both come to realize that we were meant to be together. We would be inseparable for the next few months and then slowly the new romance would fade into solid commitment. We would go from star-crossed lovers to newlyweds, from newlyweds to young parents, and from parents to grandparents.
I almost didn’t want to call out her name because then the fantasy would fade, and we would be back to reality. It was a reality that hurt because I wasn’t sure I could forgive her yet. I hoped this conversation would help in some small way, but I wasn’t sure if it would give me clarity or confusion.
Before I called her name, Megan looked up and caught sight of me. She didn’t smile. She didn’t say anything. She just sat there, so I walked over and sat down on the swing next to hers. She looked me directly in the eye, and I could see how sad she was. It looked as though she had been crying by herself in this lonely park for some time now. A part of me wanted to reach out and touch her face and wipe away her tears, but another part of me bristled at the thought of comforting her when I was the one who was hurt.
“How are you?” she asked, at last breaking the silence.
“I’m…okay?” It sounded like a question.
“I know I hurt you,” she said softly, turning her face down towards our shadows. “I know I was wrong to have believed Brent… I know I was wrong to suspect you even for a minute. All I can say is that I was wrong, I’m so unbelievably sorry and I hope that you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”
I didn’t know how to respond. Could I forgive her? I wasn’t even sure. One thing I knew for certain was that I didn’t want to hurt Megan either. I just wasn’t sure I could be with someone who didn’t believe in the best version of myself.
“I know you’re sorry,” I said at last because I couldn’t just leave it like that.
“But you don’t know whether you can forgive me, do you?” she asked.
I could tell she was trying really hard not to cry. I wanted to reach out for her, but my pride kept me from moving. “No… I don’t.”
I saw one pearly tear fall from her eyes and then she looked away from me as more started to fall. I just sat there and let her cry, but I did reach out to take her hand. She gripped my hand tightly and returned the pressure, as though I had just offered her a lifeline. We sat like that for several minutes, until Megan’s sobbing finally faded, and the tears began to dry on her face.
“I know what I did broke our relationship,” Megan said, and the crying seemed to have given her voice strength. “I know that I broke your trust in me. I know you must hate me now.”
“I don’t hate you,” I said firmly. “I could never hate you.”
“After what my brother did—”
“Brent’s actions have nothing to do with you,” I said firmly. “I don’t blame you for the fact that your brother framed me.”
“But you do blame me…”
“It’s not blame, Megan,” I said. “It’s hurt. My life…it’s been hard, and I haven’t always had a lot of people to turn to. But the people I do have in my life… I need them to trust me. I need them to believe in me. Because there might be days when my past comes up to haunt me and I need support from the people closest to me.”
“I know,” Megan said. “I realize that now and I see what a huge mistake I made. The truly awful part is that I didn’t think you were capable of doing what you were being accused of. It’s just that…”
“You chose your brother—”
“Yes,” she said passionately. “Only, it was the wrong decision. I meant what I said on that stand in the courtroom the other day, Phil. Brent may be my brother, I have parents who I lived with for eighteen years of my life…but you are my family. It just took all this insanity to help me see that. And I promise you; it will never happen again.”
I was silent for a long time, and I could feel Megan’s fingers tense in my palm. I let go of her hand, and she withdrew it without a fight.
“Is there any hope for us?” she asked quietly.
“I don’t know right now, Megan,” I said honestly.
“I love you,” she said softly and earnestly. “Do you still love me?”
“Of course, I do.” I nodded, unable to meet her eyes. “But… I need time.”
“Then take all the time you need,” she told me. “I’ll wait.”