Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 116708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
I didn’t remember when I stopped CPR.
I didn’t remember when I released her.
I didn’t remember when my brain decided I needed to take cover to protect myself.
The first thing I remembered of the events that followed was that a river of blood carved a path at my feet as I sat frozen—my ass on the tile, my back to an overturned table, the past melding into the terrifying present.
Gwen
It was a scene right out of The Twilight Zone. Though sadder.
Exponentially sadder.
It had been eighteen years since I’d moved out of that house and everything was exactly the same. The day he’d presented me with divorce papers, only a month after Nathanial died, I’d stormed out of that house, taking nothing more than the clothes on my back and our daughter. There was no discussion or explanation. Just Truett sitting on that same brown couch, staring off into space as my entire world crumbled.
I’d taken Kaitlyn and gone to stay at my parents’ for a while. Everyone assured me that he still loved me and he was just struggling with everything that had happened overseas. That only pissed me off more, because I was struggling too and all I wanted was to curl into his lap and grieve together.
After a while, I took a job managing a restaurant a few towns over in Watersedge. He wouldn’t talk to me, but I worked with his attorney to set up a custody schedule. He got Kaitlyn every other Wednesday and alternating weekends. Despite everything he was going through, he was still such an incredible dad. She loved going over there. She didn’t understand why he never left the house, but she was just happy to be with him.
Out of the blue, a week before her sixth birthday, Truett checked himself into an out-of-state VA rehabilitation facility. I’d never been so happy in my life. For the first time in months, I had hope that maybe we could be a family again. During that time, Kaitlyn missed him so much she insisted on emailing him videos practically every morning before school. When he’d reply with a video of his own, it came to my email, but he never even acknowledged me with a “hi” or “hello.”
Give it time, everyone had said.
But as it turned out, that was the one thing we didn’t have.
I lost myself after Kaitlyn died. In a span of six months, I’d lost my brother, my husband, and my daughter. The pain was so deep my bones ached. I fell into a darkness only one other human would understand—and he wouldn’t speak to me. Alone, the grief ravaged me to the point I didn’t recognize myself anymore. I became so vile and hateful—angry at the whole fucking world for taking my baby away from me.
It wasn’t until I found Truett passed out drunk on the front lawn on the Fourth of July that I started to heal. He was gone, and there was nothing I could do to save him. But I still had an entire life in front of me. I had no idea what I was going to do. Or how I could ever move on without her, but I knew with an absolute certainty that I didn’t want to end up like him.
I fought every single day, clawing my way out of the darkness, to create a life worth living—a life that had been stolen from my daughter. I’d made a lot of mistakes along the way, but at least I’d tried.
At least I’d left the fucking house.
With my hands shaking, I walked back to the living room.
He watched my every step from the doorway as I walked over to him, my heart breaking in my chest.
I stopped in front of him, tears leaking from my eyes. “Tell me you don’t seriously live like this, Truett!” I shouted even though he was standing right in front of me. “Please God. Tell me you don’t live like this.”
“It’s not that bad,” he defended, but it held no conviction. “The house, I mean. It’s comfortable, ya know? No need to fix something that’s not broken.”
I blinked at him so hard my lashes could have fueled the winds of a hurricane. “It’s not the house that’s broken here. It’s you. What the hell are you doing? It’s been eighteen years. You couldn’t even come to her funeral, but you’ve locked yourself in this house for the last two decades like some kind of time capsule? Make this make sense.”
“Funerals are for dead people.”
It was an odd response, which on any other day I would have questioned if I’d heard him correctly. On that day, with the scars of the past ripping open faster than I could mentally stitch them shut, I shot back, “Oh, I know. Because unlike you, I was there. I buried her alone. I kissed her goodbye alone. I watched them lower her into the ground alone. You don’t need to explain funerals to me. I’m very well versed.”