“I just cannot believe this is happening.” Mama gasped, seeming completely stunned after learning about what happened between Finn and me. I’d never seen Mama so distraught. She kept shaking her head back and forth in disbelief.
“It’s really okay, Mama. You don’t have to be so heartbroken,” I told her, pushing my food around on my plate.
“You can’t just give up, though, Grace. You can’t walk away from your marriage. Your vows!” she cried. “Didn’t your vows mean anything to you?” I doubt she meant for her words to hurt me so much, but lately, hurting was all that my heart did.
“Mom, come on,” Judy cut in, trying to protect me.
“Of course, they meant something to me,” I whispered, my stomach in knots from her words. Those vows meant everything to me.
“Through sickness and health, Grace. Obviously, Finn is dealing with a demon of the mind. He’s not himself. He wouldn’t ever willingly hurt you, and our family has never had a divorce—ever.” Her overly dramatic reaction was exactly what I expected because everything about my mother was over the top. “What will people say?”
What will people say?
That was her concern?
I couldn’t even reply.
I was currently dealing with my breaking heart pains.
“Grace, it’s like you’re not even fighting for him,” Mom said.
“I’m not,” I told her.
“Don’t you love him?”
I wouldn’t answer her.
“Don’t you care?”
Still, I couldn’t voice my feelings.
“How can you be so selfish?” she asked me, and I giggled. I giggled because she was so serious. I giggled because sometimes laughter was the only thing that kept me from falling apart.
“Selfish? How am I being selfish?” I asked, passing the bread bowl to Judy. She gave me the sincerest frown, and I was so thankful she was my person. Without her there, I would’ve shattered.
“Our family has generations of marriages, long-lasting marriages, and not a single divorce, not ever. Now you want to be the one to soil that? To ruin your family name?”
I rolled my eyes. “Mom, you and Dad don’t even share a bedroom.”
“He snores.”
“And probably can’t put up with you,” I muttered under my breath.
“Please speak up, Grace. I hate when you mumble,” she scolded. “You always do that, get so mumbly. Pronunciation is important when you speak. As a teacher, I’d think you’d know this.”
“Sorry. But, look, Finley and I both agree that a divorce is the best idea for us.” That was a lie. A part of me still wanted my husband to love me, but he hadn’t chosen me. He’d chosen her, and I was certain he didn’t have any plans to change his mind.
“He’s agreeing to please you, Grace. He doesn’t want a divorce. He just thinks that will make you happy. All he ever did was try to make you happy.”
“Make me happy?” I questioned, shoveling bread into my mouth. I ate carbs at an unattractive rate when I was nervous, or irritated, or happy—heck, I ate carbohydrates for a living. My hips were living proof of that. “He slept with my best friend, Mom, okay? So, please, tell me how he only wanted to make me happy.”
“He slept with Autumn?” she asked, stunned.
“Yes.”
“Oh my gosh,” Mom said, bearing the same grimace my sister did when she found out about Autumn, but her next words were nothing like Judy’s. “How could you let this happen?”
My jaw hit the floor. “What?”
“That came out wrong, but don’t you see?” Mom exclaimed. “You pushed him into the arms of another woman, Grace.”
“Please tell me that came out wrong, too,” I begged.
“You see it, though, right? Don’t you see that? After the last incident—”
“Miscarriage,” I corrected her. She flinched. She always called it an incident because the actual word brought her discomfort. Too bad. I’d lived a lot more discomfort with the word than she had.
“Yes, after that. After the last one, you shut down. I even gave you all those articles on adoption and surrogacy, and still, you wouldn’t even try for Finley. The church offered you a prayer circle, and you wouldn’t even show up.”
“Maybe praying doesn’t fix what’s broken,” I barked her way, feeling my blood pressure rising. I could hardly believe what she was saying, but then again, I could. I knew my mother and how she believed so strongly in my flaws.
Her eyes watered, but she didn’t cry. “You don’t mean that. You’re just hurting right now. Prayer changes everything.”
“Everything but this,” I told her. I prayed for a child. Every single day, I prayed, and the prayers went unanswered. Then I prayed for my husband, and those, too, were received with silence.
“You didn’t even try, Grace,” she said, her disappointment loud and clear.
She spoke her words as if she didn’t know how cruel she sounded. I hadn’t even tried? If only she knew how much my body knew of my failed attempts. If only she knew how looking in the mirror each morning, knowing you couldn’t give your husband what he’d always wanted made one feel. If only she recognized how, for years, the only word I knew was “try,” second only to “fail.”
“And I think that’s my breaking point,” I blurted out, tired of talking about my marriage, my faults, my disappointments. I had no words left for her. I pushed my chair away from the table, stood, then walked to the spare bedroom and closed the door behind me.
I lay on the queen-size bed as I listened to Judy try to tell our mother why she was wrong in every fashion. Mom wasn’t hearing it, though. She had her way of life and never understood that others’ lives didn’t need to mirror it.
“Judith, you cannot always protect your sister and her actions, and she is your older sister, after all—it’s not your job to make excuses for her,” Mom barked.
“I’m not making excuses,” Judy replied. “I’m trying to show you a different side. She’s your daughter, and she was betrayed in the worst way possible. By the two people who she thought truly cared about her. I mean no disrespect, but maybe now’s not the time to come down so hard on her, Mama.”
“Yes, well, I’m going to go speak to her one last time before I leave.”
I sat up on my bed and cussed under my breath.
Her footsteps were growing closer, which made my stomach knot up more and more.
“Grace?” she asked, not waiting for a reply before opening the door. She looked my way as I sat with a pillow in my lap, staring at her. “I’m sorry you got upset.”
That was how she always apologized—a non-apology. Not, I’m sorry I upset you, but I’m sorry you got upset.
There was a big difference. She never took the blame for her actions, only apologized for others taking offense.
“It’s fine. No big deal.”
“But”—she shook her head—“it is a big deal. This is your life, Grace. Do you really want to ruin it at this point? You’re almost forty. Do you really want to start all over?”
I was thirty—how was that almost forty?
Even if I was forty—what was so terrifying about starting over?
I’d rather start over at forty than stay somewhere miserable for the next forty years.
“Mom, no offense, but can we not do this tonight? I’m tired and mentally checked out.”
She nodded. “Okay, but we should talk about this later. Maybe we can look into therapy.” That was Mama’s fix to everything—first prayer, then therapy. She walked over to me and kissed my forehead. “I’m only this way because I love you, Grace. I hope you know that.”
“I love you, too, Mom.” That wasn’t a lie.
I loved my mother, but oftentimes, I wondered if I liked her. I wondered if she wasn’t my mom if I’d like her as a fellow human. Most signs pointed to no, but still, I loved her as the woman who gave me life even when she told me I needed Jesus’s help to fix my womb.
I liste
ned to Judy say goodbye to Mom, and when the front door closed, I let out a sigh of relief.
It only took a few seconds for my sister to pop into my room, the palms of her hands rubbing against her eyes as she groaned. “That was fifty million times worse than I thought it would be, and I thought it would be awful.” I scooted over on the bed and patted a spot beside me. She gladly took it and leaned her head on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Grace. If I’d known she would be that bad—”
“You’d what? Tell her not to come over? Let’s face it, this night would happen regardless. It’s fine.”
“Ugh, yeah, but she’s just so…so…ugh! She’s so mean to you. I couldn’t imagine ever saying the things she said to another person, let alone to my own daughter. It just pisses me off.”
Her face was bright red, and I felt her body shaking as she grew more and more upset about the things Mama had said to me. I almost laughed out loud because seeing Judy so angry was such the opposite of who she was ninety-nine percent of the time. Her version of cursing was saying “pisses me off,” and it took a lot for her to get to that point. Mainly, she only grew angry if someone attacked the people she loved the most.
“You’re my favorite person,” I told her.
“You’re my favorite person,” she replied. “I’m just shocked neither of us picked up smoking to deal with her stressful ways over the years.”
I laughed. “Or cocaine.”
Judy smiled my way and shrugged. “I have no idea how Dad has spent so many years with her dramatics.”
“A separate bedroom helps.”
Judy looked up at me and clasped her hands together. “This is going to be good for you, Grace—a reset to your life, a rebirth. Please do me a favor and don’t let Mom get too much into your head. I know you overthink things, but this is good. You made the right choice. Finn is a piece of crap, and don’t even get me started on Autumn. I knew something was off with her from the first day I met her. I hate her. I hate him. I hate them.”
“I appreciate the hate.”
“I’ll always hate for you. I love you, sister.”
“I love you, too.”
“What can I do? How can I make you feel better?”
I shrugged. “I think I need some time alone.”
She frowned. “Not to overthink, though, right?”
“I think overthinking is the only thing my mind can do right now.”
“Grace…”
“I’m okay, Judy, I swear. I just need some time.”
Judy agreed even though she didn’t want to do such a thing. She left the room, and I lay there in the bed with only my thoughts.
That was the worst companion I could’ve had that night.
After a while, my phone began to ring, and Finn’s name flashed across the screen. I didn’t answer because I knew if I did, he might’ve lied to me, and I stupidly might have believed him. He called me three times after that and left a voice message every single time.
Like a fool, I listened to them.
He asked me if we could talk. He begged me to hear him out.
Yet I didn’t have any desire to see him anytime soon, so in the darker room, I sat as my anxiety began to build. Anxiety was a wild beast. It attacked me most in the quiet moments when the world was calm and I, too, should’ve been calm. Yet that was when my mind began to spin. I stayed in bed, overthinking every aspect of my life. My heart and my mind were at war.
There was no way I’d be able to sleep. My body was exhausted, yet whenever I closed my eyes, Finn popped in my head. Right after his image, I’d see Autumn and her beautiful tears and her perfectly perfect body.
Walking over to the full-length mirror in the corner, I inhaled deeply and exhaled it slowly. There were purplish bags beneath my eyes, my T-shirt was tucked into only one side of my jeans, and my hair looked awful.
I couldn’t blame Finn, really. I hadn’t put a lot into myself over the past few years. Even though it hurt me, I understood why his eyes wandered. Maybe Mama was right. Maybe part of the flawed marriage had to do with me.
Unable to shake off my hurts and Mama’s insults, I did the only thing I could think of that would make me feel better.
I went to visit Dad at the church. If anyone in the world knew how to soothe sad hearts, it was the first man who ever loved me.
* * *
Walking into the church, I felt the emptiness of the space that was recently packed with individuals full of belief or searching for hope. I couldn’t help but smile as I saw Dad standing at the podium, wearing his thick-framed glasses and staring down at his upcoming sermon. He was such a handsome man. He had a head full of hair peppered with gray, crystal blue eyes like the sea, and a smile that could make the saddest soul feel whole.
Judy always said I had his eyes, and I always noted that she had his smile.
As he spoke into the microphone, his voice would echo throughout the space, bouncing off the walls. Then he’d grimace, shake his head back and forth, and mark up his sheets of paper.
“No, no, no, that’s not it,” he murmured into the microphone, displeased with his delivery.
“It doesn’t sound that bad to me,” I shouted, making him look up from his papers. I started walking down the aisle toward the front of the church, and as I drew closer, his smile grew brighter.
“Tell me I’m not seeing a ghost and my daughter really is back in town,” he said, removing his glasses and placing them on top of his head.
“Not a ghost yet,” I replied, walking up to him. It only took seconds for him to wrap me in an embrace.
“It’s been too long, ya know,” he told me, holding me tighter. “We missed you at service this morning.”
“I know. Sorry about that. I wish I could’ve made it.”
As he let me go, he took a step back and smiled my way. “You look beautiful.”
I laughed. “Makeup works wonders.”
He shook his head. “No, it’s not makeup.” He linked his arm through mine and walked us down to the front pew. We sat, and he kept smiling his bright smile my way. “Not that I’m not happy for the sweet reunion, but what brings you back to Chester, baby girl?”
I raised an eyebrow, bewildered. “Mama didn’t tell you? I was certain she would have after our falling-out tonight.”
“Falling-out?” he asked, baffled. His thick eyebrows knitted, and he rubbed the nape of his neck. “I haven’t heard a word from her. So what’s going on?”
My chest tightened. A big part of me hoped Mama had already gotten to Dad so I wouldn’t have to watch the disappointment hit him as he learned about the failure of my marriage. As I swallowed my pride, I proceeded to tell him everything that had happened with Finn. I couldn’t look him in the eyes as I told him, though. The guilt and embarrassment were too difficult for me, so my stare stayed focused on my shaking hands.
As I finished, I closed my eyes, waiting to hear his thoughts.
“Hmm…” He let out a deep sigh and placed a hand on my knee. “Marriage is hard.”
“Harder than I ever thought,” I agreed.
“Is it completely over?”
I snickered. “He’s with my best friend, Dad. I think it’s as over as it could ever be.”
“No, I get that, but your heart…is your heart completely over it? Is there any part that wants him back?”
I grew quiet because the answer was yes, and that embarrassed me.
I was ashamed that parts of me still longed for him.
“There’s nothing to be ashamed of, Grace,” he said as if he could read my mind. “It’s okay to love someone even though they wronged you. You can’t pretend your feelings don’t exist because you’re afraid of what those feelings might mean. Sometimes, the hardest thing in the world is to love someone who broke your heart.”
“I do love him,” I whispered, my throat painfully raw. “I hate him, too, though. How is that possible?”
“We were created to feel, Grace. It just so happens that sometimes our feeli
ngs come out of order. It’s amazing how one second, your heart can beat for love, and in the next, hate can sneak in. You’re not in the wrong for anything you’re feeling.”
“Mama disagrees. She thinks I’m making a mistake by not fighting for our marriage.”
“What do you think?”
I shrugged. “I’m really not sure. Everything spiraled so fast. I feel so lost.”
“You’re not lost; you’re just figuring things out. And now you’re home for a while, which is good. You need to be surrounded by familiar things and people. You just need to find your footing is all. Home is healing.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I said sincerely, resting my head on his shoulder.
“Always and always,” he replied.
“Your advice was a lot better than Mama’s.”
“And what was her advice?”
“Therapy.”
He laughed and nodded slowly. “Sounds about right.”
10
Grace
“Hey, Grace, it’s Alex from the auto shop. I wanted to call and let you know you can stop by any time today to check on your car. Thanks, and hopefully we’ll see you soon!”
A few days had passed since I’d arrived in Chester. I hadn’t really left Judy’s house much since I’d come into town, and when I did, I ended up in The Silent Bookshop. Staying in one of those two places was the easiest way to avoid running into people.
I was making it my mission to avoid Autumn and Finn like the plague.
Yet now that Alex called, I had to force myself to leave my two havens and head over to the auto shop. After I slipped on my shoes, I headed outside and felt the summer breeze brushing against my face. There was nothing like the hot summers of Georgia and the way the trees exploded with the brightest shades of green.
Chester was the perfect sized town because everything was within walking distance. Though Mike’s Auto Shop seemed a bit off the pathway because it was right on the edge of town. The Emery men owned a lot of acreage—nowhere near as much as my family, but they had a lot more land than most people in town did. On the far-right side of their property sat a beautiful two-level home, and in the middle was the auto shop. In front of the shop, a few broken-down and rusted vehicles placed on top of spare tires were used as decoration. It was…cute.
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