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Part Three
Nineteen
Past
Lena
“You doing okay, Lena?”
From the backseat of the Jaguar, huddled in my coat, I grumbled, “What do you think, Michael? I’m casing the joint of a woman whom I think my husband had an affair with. Whom he had a child with. Do you think I’m having a great time?”
“Sorry, Lena.”
I heaved a sigh as guilt hit me. It wasn’t Michael’s fault that we were sitting here on this miserable as hell day.
It was unseasonably cold, enough that the rain kept showering on and off, which made it even harder to keep an eye on the tearoom where Michelle Keegan worked.
My hands shook from where they were buried in my pockets. It was a combination of the tremors that struck when I was off my meds, the desire to ring Aidan’s neck, and the cold that I was hypersensitive to.
Still feeling mean for snapping at him, I muttered, “It’s not your fault my husband couldn’t keep it in his pants.”
“No,” he conceded. “But I can still wish it hadn’t happened on your behalf.”
I heard his sincerity, and that made me feel guiltier. “Thank you, Michael.”
After another five minutes of staring at the front door of the establishment, he cleared his throat. “You wanna take your meds? I got them here.”
“I took them when you went to go find a restroom,” I lied.
When he heaved a sigh, I knew he was going to let the matter drop even if he didn’t believe me. Michael knew me well enough by now to know what I was like on and off my medication, but he also knew not to push his luck.
Back before I’d used them, I’d seen TV shows with characters who didn’t take their prescription medication and I’d wondered why they did that.
But what doctors didn’t tell you when they loaded you down with your own physical pharmacy, was about the side effects. Sure, they told you to read the fine print, but experiencing it was different than reading it.
When you had to take metformin because your antidepressant made you borderline diabetic, and when your anti-psychotics screwed with your thought processes, dulled them, sometimes it was better to have suicidal thoughts.
Sometimes, it was better to let the PTSD mess with you, to allow the past to swallow you whole just to be able to think without chemicals clouding your mind.
“You want anything to eat?”
“No, but thank you,” I choked out.
“We should go.”
“No.”
“We’ve been here for three hours, Lena.”
“So? We were here for three hours yesterday morning and another three hours yesterday evening. You got someplace else to be?”
He sighed. “No.”
“Well then.” I pursed my lips, uncaring that I’d been staring at the façade of the tearoom for over ten days now.
I knew he was bored. I wasn’t exactly having a hoot of a time, but when I was here, I felt like I was doing something productive.
Getting the news that Aidan suspected he had testicular cancer was one thing. His confession that he’d cheated on me and a child had been born from that relationship was another.
