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She laughed then, shaking that unbearable wretchedness she’d felt away, as though it never truly existed. “It sounds stupid, right?” She lifted her eyes to mine. “But the suffering is too intense that I just want death to take me under. It makes no sense. It’s just a dream.” Her eyes flittered to something over my shoulder. “I think it just keeps happening because I can’t swim.”
I didn’t answer because something inside of me, that gift I had of reading people, told me that this recurring nightmare went deeper than what she was leading me to believe.
“You can’t swim?” I knew how this worked. I knew the power of deflection, of asking a different question to get to the bottom of what you really wanted to know.
She shook her head, and my thumb moved in lazy circles on top of her fist.
“I can’t. I almost drowned, and that’s why I’m deathly afraid of water.” She took a sip of her drink. “If I never had to take a shower, I wouldn’t.”
I registered the lightness in her tone, the words she’d uttered that was meant as a joke but I didn’t laugh. I wanted to know more. I needed to know more. “When did it happen? When you were a kid?”
Her eyes flipped to mine, her smile slipping, most likely at the seriousness of my tone. She shook her head, pulling her hand from under mine. “When I was twenty-one.”
The change in her demeanor told me I shouldn’t ask any further questions, so I gave a little. A little of myself.
“My nightmare is from the day Nat died, which weirdly was supposed to be one of the best days of my life—because it was the day Mary was born.” My heartbeat picked up in my chest. It always did when I spoke about Nat and the tragedy that had taken her life. I never spoke about her death to the kids, to my brothers. I wanted my girls and everyone around me to remember how she’d lived, not how she’d died.
“I’m sorry, Charles. I know that must have been hard.” Sympathy shone through her eyes. “And to live through it again in your nightmares.”
My eyes focused back on my glass, half-empty now. “But I get it—you wanting to just give in to the darkness.”
There were times that I just wanted to lie in bed, take a sabbatical from work, from life. No one would fault me from wanting to. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not when the weight of the company and my girls’ lives were on my shoulders.
“Because it’s easier … it’s easier to give in to the darkness than wake up.” Her voice was so quiet, as though she were only speaking to herself.
In that moment of silence, where my brown eyes locked with her sparkling green ones, I felt close to her. I hadn’t felt a closeness like this with anyone in a long time. I understood her on an intimate level because those were the same exact words I’d almost said before she said it first—that sometimes, it would be easier to just let the darkness swallow you whole.
Chapter 15
Becky
During the weekdays, we fell into the motions of almost domestic bliss, where I made breakfast and he made the girls’ lunches. The other men of the house would file downstairs just as Mary and Sarah were at the table, and we’d have breakfast together, as a family.
Brad and Mason weren’t there often, but they were there enough that when one was missing, it was noticed.
I enjoyed my busy day, but what I looked forward to the most was the evenings … when the house was dark and I’d tiptoe downstairs and Charles would be waiting for me with my glass of water already on my side of the table.
We’d been doing this for the past week. It was like our secret time together, kinda like a date but not really.
Was it crazy that I looked forward to us talking this way, meeting this way, connecting in the darkness?
I slipped into my regular spot, and tonight, there was a ghost of a smile on his face. It was refreshing, and it put me at ease.
“What?” Now, I was smiling like an idiot.
“It’s like we’re sneaking out like teenagers, but we’re really sneaking downstairs to get water.”
“Yeah.” I laughed softly so as not to wake anyone else. “It feels forbidden in the same way, but there is no way we can get in trouble with parents.”
“Did you do that?” he asked, his voice light. “Sneak out of the house?”
My gaze dropped to the table. “No.” I placed the glass to my lips and took a gulp. “If I was missing, no one would look for me. I’ve been on my own since I was fifteen.”
He rubbed at his brow. “You said you were in and out of the foster system.”
I’d given him little tidbits on our evening dates, but I’d never given him the whole story. “I was. But I didn’t stay in the system.” My fingers tapped against the glass. “Let’s just say, my last foster home was a bad experience. Tim … yeah … he was a handsy guy.”
The muscle in his jaw twitched, and his one hand formed a fist on the table.
