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Christ, where the hell is she?
The doorbell rings. Zara is on the front porch, along with my brothers and Emily. Emily appears beyond distraught, her face pale.
It’s Thursday. They’re a day early for game night. Jerome and Kim aren’t with them, which is a good thing judging from everyone’s expressions.
“Where’s Simone?” My grit-rough voice doesn’t sound pained to my ears. It sounds destroyed. “Has something happened to her?”
The exhaustion, frustration, failure from the last four days builds to a crescendo, and all kinds of horrifying fates flash in my brain. I snatch up my keys from the hallway table.
Zara places her hand on my chest, not giving me a chance to push past her. “Slow down, Marine boy. We need to talk. As for your question? You know better than anyone what happened.”
“Do you know where she is?”
Zara nods.
“Where?” The word fires with the force of an M240.
Garrett glares at me. “Hey. Don’t shoot the messenger.”
“You’re all here because of what happened this afternoon?” I ask.
“No,” Troy says. “Garrett, Kellan, and I are here because you texted that you needed to talk to us. These two”—he gestures to Zara and Emily with a jerk of his head—“are probably here to knee you in the package. And frankly, you’re on your own there.”
I vaguely remember texting my brothers from the lake. I’d forgotten about it after discovering Simone was gone.
“How long have you been out there catching up on everything that’s been going on in my life for the past decade?” My tone is no longer pained or abrupt. It’s weary and wary and wane.
“Long enough,” Troy replies.
I open the door to let them into the house.
Zara walks past me. “God, you look like dog shit.”
“Love you, too,” I grumble.
They remove their shoes and relocate to the living room. Everyone takes a seat. Everyone except for Zara and me. Like a pack of meerkats, their heads turn to her.
She fists her hands on her hips. She might be eight inches shorter than me, but she still manages to look me down. “Simone tells you what happened to her baby, and you act like a toddler and throw a tantrum. For the past ten years, she’s carried the weight of losing her baby and has had to do it alone.”
I let each word strike me without daring to open my mouth. I know everything that she’s telling me.
And now, I want to find Simone and spend an eternity making everything up to her.
Doing whatever I can to absorb or end her pain.
“I know. I fucked up—”
“And not only that. She’s dealing with the physical and psychological ramifications of having a hysterectomy.”
At the last part, my body turns cold and brittle and ready to crack. Simone’s words—about the damage being severe—rush in with the power to drown.
That’s what Simone had meant. She’d had a hysterectomy.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Goddamn. Shit.
People have been speculating that she’s pregnant. I’ve been talking about us having kids one day. She never said anything. She always became quiet. Like she wanted to be invisible, to disappear into the wall.
And I didn’t clue in that something was wrong. Me. Her husband.
