Page 109 of Just Ten Seconds

While she used those ten seconds to prove Benjamin’s heartless ways, it only alerted me to the vast amount of time there was for me to do something. To scream, to shout, to leap for the gun.

I did nothing then. Now, it’s time for me to start acting.

“Cut the bullshit, Benjamin. You tried that ploy in the first trial. There was only Michael begging you to put the gun down.” My blood heats now, and that little lamb who walked in here now feels more like a lion. “I don’t want to be here, but I am, and it’s the only time I will ever be here. So, do me a favor—one you so desperately owe me—and tell the truth. Everything. You might be a con artist, but you were my husband. Drop the act for the three minutes you have left before I walk out of here and tell me if I was part of the plan from the beginning.”

He leans forward and holds his hands together in prayer. His right knee is shaking with nervous energy. “No,” he answers quickly.

The way he looks around the room is as if he needs to assure himself that no one is listening in. He levels his dark eyes with mine. The seriousness of them makes me believe him.

“You weren’t part of … anything. All this just happened. I started skimming a little here and there, and it was just easy. Having all of that cash at my disposal. All I had to do was make sure I had enough money available if someone needed to withdraw. No one liquefies those kinds of accounts. It would have been fine. We could have lived like that for decades but you …” He trails off, looking around again. When he’s sure no one is listening, he gives me his attention back. “I thought hiring you as my assistant was a safe bet. Even if you found out, you’d never rat us out.”

“Us? Michael was in on it?”

“Of course he was. That’s why he came to the office. He was pissed. Panicking. He was going to do something rash. I was worried he’d pin it on me alone. That’s when I panicked.”

“You were going to pin it on him,” I surmise.

“I didn’t think I had another option. Not in that moment. But what I did, all of it, I swear, I did for you.”

“You’re wrong,” I say with a controlled tone. “The money was to make you happy, not me. I never wanted that life, and you knew it. I had gone to a public high school for the arts because I wanted to be free and creative. You’re the one who thought we should have fancy homes and brought home expensive gifts for no reason. That was your life. Not mine.”

“I wouldn’t be in this hellhole if you had gone straight home like you were supposed to. You weren’t supposed to be at the office. Why were you there?”

“I was surprising you,” I state.

He knows this. I said it in my testimony. There is one thing he doesn’t know. A fact that I kept from him because I didn’t think he had the right to know. He doesn’t, but it’s quite possibly the reason I haven’t moved on in three years. Why my time has stopped.

“The pocket watch was engraved. It had a special saying on it for you. I thought you’d look at it in years to come and smile. I was going to tell you that day that I was pregnant. We were going to have a baby.”

For the first time in three years, I see the softening of Benjamin’s face. The man I thought I knew. The one I fell in love with.

“A baby?”

This part … this part is … I try to hold back the tears, but they spill. “I had a miscarriage. As I knelt over Michael’s body, holding his hand and praying for him, I bled out. My baby died alongside Michael. I died too.”

He leans back in his chair and holds his hand to his mouth, his eyes showing remorse in them. A look I never thought I’d see again.

While he’s in shock, I’m steadfast in reality.

“I guess it’s for the best that it never happened.”

His words are like a dagger to my chest. Even on the days I’ve hated Benjamin the most, I know for a fact that even if we’d had a child, I would never have looked at him or her any differently. I would’ve raised the baby with love, not resentment. And I wouldn’t have cared if our child went to fancy schools or had designer clothes. We’d have been at Target and eating ham sandwiches, and that would have been perfect for me. It would have been …

“Why didn’t you say something at the trial? You took that deal too easily. You could have gained sympathy or … why didn’t you fight?”

“One moment, I was on cloud fucking nine, and the next, everything—and I mean, everything—about my life was in a downward spiral. I’d lost my child. I’d held a dying man. I listened to the media depict me as a money-hungry socialite. My friends wouldn’t talk to me. My mother told me my miscarriage was a blessing in disguise. My attorney urged me to take a plea deal, and I couldn’t fight him on it. I was a criminal. I was nothing. I hadn’t gotten a chance to love the life inside me long enough to mourn it. I was depressed and broken.” I bite on my cheek. “I tried to end it. Once. I swallowed a bunch of pills and prayed for it to be over. I woke up on a bathroom floor, clutching a teddy bear, staring at a pocket watch that doesn’t tick, waiting for my time to be up. That’s when Jackie rescued me. She brought me to her home to start over, and I’ve been walking around with this hurt ever since.”

All the words—the ones I’ve been holding close to my chest, guarding them, for fear I’d break—have now been said out loud to the one person I never thought I’d tell them to. Instead of feeling terrible, I feel oddly at peace with speaking my truth. I needed to tell him what he had done to me. Not to make him feel bad about himself, which he rightly deserves. But because I needed to simmer it in reality instead of reliving it as a nightmare.

The first step in overcoming grief is to be patient with yourself. Give yourself time to accept what has happened. I learned that in one of those pamphlets I had taken after the first bereavement session.

Next is acceptance. To accept your emotions as a natural part of the grieving process. Then, you need to accept the things you cannot change.

The iconic song from The Greatest Showman plays in my head. This is me. All of my broken parts that were hiding away in the dark have come out in the daylight. I mean, don’t get me wrong; I’m not healed in any way. What Benjamin did will most likely haunt me for the rest of my life. I won’t be marching down Main Street, declaring myself brave and glorious ever. But I do feel … better.

He leans back in his chair and looks up at the ceiling. His legs bounce as he grimaces. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be.”