Page 9 of Her Unending Horizon

This time it was my turn to pause. This was the first time I understood why she left.

“Are you there?”

“I’m here,” I whispered. Then something occurred to me.

“Baby, you’re talking in the past tense.”

“I guess I am, aren’t I?” There was a lilt of humor in her voice. I clung to that like a drowning man would grab a life preserver.

“But I still have work to do. What about you, Zarek? How are you really doing?”

How did I tell my wife that where she had felt crushed, I felt an unimaginable rage? Something that burned my insides like lava.

“I’m working through things.”

Another lie. Or maybe not. I had an outlet.

“Are you sleeping?”

“Yep. Enough about me. Tell me more about what’s going on with you.”

“Trenda came by today with Bella and Drake.”

My heart lifted and twisted all at once.

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah?”

“Trenda was Trenda. Taking my emotional temperature. She went to my fridge like it was her house and fed us.”

“Sounds like her.”

“Bella?”

“Bella says your sad.”

Fuck me.

“Where did she get that idea?”

“She says when you come over you never stay long, and she can just tell.”

At least the kid hadn’t picked up on the fact that I was mad.

“She came out of the womb thirty-five years old,” I said.

Chloe chuckled. She actually chuckled! “You can say that again. Wait til she starts to date—she is going to give Simon a heart attack.”

“What else happened?” I asked, avoiding Bella’s comments.

“Drake was fussing. I-I…I picked him up, Zarek. I held him in my arms.”

Something sharp punched straight through my chest.

I didn’t know why it hurt so much. I didn’t understand the sudden wave of anger, the tight, irrational sense of betrayal that flooded me.

She held the baby.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Chloe said carefully, as if she could hear the shift in me through the phone.