Page 49 of The Marriage

You need to get away. Run.

That their paths should never have converged—the universe had gotten it all wrong.

No.

“No, no ... no!” Karine snapped. “Stop it right now!”

The thing was, well, the voice was wrong.

She couldn’t stop loving Roman, even though she didn’t understand him. Or entirely why he decided this was his only option for her.

He had kept her safe—a promise he hadn’t broken. Didn’t that mean something? Didn’t that count for anything?

Didn’t that prove it was real?

To her, yes.

For Katina ... not so much.

That was the hard part.

“Karine? Are you okay?”

It was Sylvia—again; she was never too far away from Karine, it seemed. Her calm disposition only rattled slightly as her tone of voice raised an octave when she came through the door of the private room to stand just beyond the threshold. Lines creased her brow when she added quietly, “I heard you yelling. I was just next door speaking to Miss Tanny.”

Oh.

Yeah.

The lady who’d apparently hoarded so many animals in her bungalow home that after an unfortunate incident with a five-foot pile of paper the old woman had been saving for forty years fell over ... Karine winced, still able to hear the women crying as she told the story from where she sat playing cards just outside of her room in the hallway the day before.

It was an unfortunate thing.

Her family decided to step in, then.

Didn’t really want to keep being here, just living, after that, the woman had admitted while she’d gathered her cards before leaving. But it was the way she’d spat out the words—just living. As though the idea was simply unthinkable.

And that ... well, Karine did understand.

Not that she’d engaged the woman.

She didn’t want to talk to anyone.

Nothing personal.

“Do you need some help?” Sylvia asked, moving towards her bed with careful, slow steps.

In her gaze, Karine could see the therapist expected rejection. For good reason because she’d offered nothing more and nothing less.

Still ...

“Maybe I do,” Karine replied.

*

“I don’t want to eat in my room today,” Karine told Sylvia.

She noticed the way the woman’s eyes brightened, but she kept outwardly calm.