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He kissed me. “Thank you for forgiving me.” The thunder boomed again. “You have forgiven me, haven’t you, wife?”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation. “I have forgiven you.”
It was the truth. I had. But we weren’t out of the woods yet. That I knew.
twenty-two
Green Card
I washappy when I got the mail.
Not a foreign emotion for me. I was a generally happy person. Before this fucking rollercoaster.
I’d promised myself not to let Emmet have power over me and make me some kind of scarred, quiet woman paralyzed by fear. In fact, I’d kind of gone the other way. I’d lived a wild life since I arrived in the US. Diving into new places and new men with abandon. But I’d always kept men at arm’s length because of him. The fear he’d created in me.
It wasn’t Emmet now creating that fear. It was my now-bulging stomach. It was the human-looking sonogram picture on our fridge. It was our perfect nursery. It was Kip talking to my stomach every night. Our little girl had a whole lot of power. To create, to give me everything or take it all away.
It was a lot to handle.
Too much, at first.
But now, I’d let myself sink into it.
And Kip was, yes, maybe a small part of why I was damn near skipping to the letterbox that morning.
I was hoping it contained a package of Australian treats that my one remaining Australian friend had sent me. He was the only person I kept in touch with who I grew up with. He’d grown up in similar circumstances than me. Worse, really. With a drunk dad who also happened to be homophobic, so he beat the shit out of his son when it became clear he was gay.
Andrew never hid that he was gay, not even when his dad beat him up or the assholes at school gave him shit—a bunch of whom then secretly hooked up with him. He’d worked his way up at a PR company, basically ran the fucking place now, and was married.
We talked sporadically, and he was the only person who knew me from my childhood. Who knew my whole story.
And he still sent me care packages even though we hadn’t seen each other in years because I was too much of a coward to be reminded of my past.
It was not a care package.
Instead, it was an official-looking letter with a US government stamp on it.
My hand shook when I opened it, already knowing what it contained.
An approval.
A Green Card.
There it was. The thing I needed. The thing that had started this whole marriage and subsequent pregnancy.
The thing that gave me security—for a few years, at least. But our lawyer had assured me that no matter what our marital status was in a few years, me having a child and a business and a home in my name should all be points toward me maintaining my status.
Kip didn’t know I’d had that meeting. He didn’t need to know.
But this. This he needed to know.
Because this was the end of our marriage.
* * *
It was tempting, really fucking tempting, to shove the letter and the Green Card in the junk drawer and pretend I never got it. But that wasn’t really a good long-term plan. Avoiding problems only made them bigger.
Better to rip the Band-Aid off and all that.
