Disgrace

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay,” he replied.

  Chester, Georgia, was home to us. It was the small town where we grew up, fell in love, and promised one another forever. Finn had been down there for the past eight months since taking a resident position at the hospital. It was eight months ago when he asked me for a separation. It had been eight months since he said we should put the house on the market. It had been eight months since he walked out of my life, and I hadn’t heard from him until our house sold in Atlanta.

  He walked out on me and didn’t look back until he was forced to do so.

  But still, I loved him even though he didn’t feel the same.

  No one back home knew we had separated—not even my best friend, Autumn, or my sister, Judy. I told those two everything about my life except for the parts that made me cry at night. I didn’t have the nerve to tell anyone my husband hadn’t been mine for months now. If I told them, then that would’ve made me a failure, and all I ever wanted was for Finley to somehow begin to love me again.

  I oftentimes wondered when he’d stopped.

  Was it one singular day, or a string of moments that merged?

  Did love disappear because of heartache or boredom?

  Maybe a little bit due to a disconnect?

  Can something disconnected ever be plugged back in?

  “One more go-round?” I asked Finn as we stood in our empty living room. He’d driven back into town to sign the paperwork on the closing of our house, and he hadn’t truly said much of anything to me.

  My stomach had been in knots when he arrived. In my mind, I’d envisioned him showing up with flowers, some wine, and maybe telling me that he wanted me to be his again...but in reality, he showed up cranky, empty-handed, and fully ready to move on.

  “No, I think we’re good. Let’s go to the bank, sign the paperwork, and then call it a day. I have a five-hour drive back to Chester, plus I still have to work tomorrow,” he grumbled, running his hands through his hair.

  I didn’t have a clue why he seemed so annoyed.

  He hadn’t seen me in months, yet the moment he stood by my side, he was once again unhappy.

  He hardly even looked my way.

  What I’d give for him to look my way…

  “I’m just going to look around once more,” I told him, trying not to sound so heartbroken even though everything within me ached.

  “We already looked twice.”

  “Just once more for memories.” I smiled, slightly nudging him in the arm. He didn’t smile back, just glanced at his watch.

  “We don’t have time for this. I’ll meet you at the bank,” he told me, walking away. He never glanced back once as if leaving me was the easiest thing he’d ever had to do.

  I supposed after you walked away once, it only became easier.

  I stood there, still a bit heartbroken, but when I heard him clearing his throat, I turned around and stared his way.

  He looked up at me, and now I wished he hadn’t. His eyes held all the hurt I felt in my chest. “Look, I didn’t want it to end like this,” he told me.

  I sighed.

  I don’t want it to end at all.

  I didn’t reply. No matter what I said, it would still be over.

  He had made a choice, and it wasn’t me.

  “I…it’s just…after everything…” He cleared his throat once more, taking a few moments to search for words he couldn’t find. “You closed yourself off, Grace. You made it impossible for me to even come near you, and…I mean, Jesus! We hadn’t had sex in over a year.”

  “You had birthday sex.”

  “Yeah, sex only because I turned thirty-two—what kind of life is that? And you kept your socks and tank top on.”

  “I get cold.”

  “Grace.” His voice was stern and annoyed. I wondered when I’d started to annoy him. Had it just been lately, or had it been that way for years?

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t do that,” he groaned, running his hands through his hair again. “Don’t be sorry. I know what you went through was hard and impossible, but dammit, I was there for you, and you wouldn’t let me in.”

  He wasn’t wrong. I’d shut him out. I’d shut everyone out; it was the only way I knew how to avoid self-destruction.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated.

  He took one step toward me, and I prayed he’d take more. “Grace…say something, anything other than you’re sorry. See, this is what pisses me off. You’re so passive-aggressive with everything. You don’t talk; you just keep all your feelings in your head.”

  “That’s not true,” I argued. At least, it didn’t used to be true. There was a time when all I ever did was express my heart to Finn. Then there was a time it all became too much for him. He never said it, but his facial expressions revealed his truths. Whenever I cried, he’d roll his eyes. Whenever I voiced my pain, he’d tell me it was late, and we’d talk in the morning.

  Morning conversations never came, and then my voice slowly became mute.

  Maybe that was what love is, though: something that fades over time and then becomes hauntingly still.

  “It’s true,” he asserted confidently. Everything Finn did had a layer of confidence to it, and that was a major reason I’d fallen in love with him. He walked the earth as if he knew he belonged, and that was such a powerful trait. He was two years older than me, and when we first met at my parents’ annual summer gala, everyone’s eyes were on Finley James Braun. He was Chester’s finest. If you ended up with Finn, you ended up blessed.

  He was smart, handsome, and confident.

  All the girls were obsessed with him—every single one. If it weren’t for Mama pushing me into his arms when I was fifteen years old, I would’ve never had the nerve to talk to a boy like Finn on my own.

  Back then, I never thought I was good enough for him.

  I still didn’t.

  Finn pinched the bridge of his nose, obviously irritated with me. “You don’t open up. All you ever do is act passive-aggressive.”

  “Yes, well, all you ever do is cheat,” I barked back, the words rolling off my tongue as if I’d been waiting for the perfect moment to fire them off.

  Oh, that stung him and seeing him stung only hurt me.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. I wasn’t a mean person—not in the least. I hadn’t known I had a mean bone in my body, truly. My parents raised my sister and me to be kind, considerate, and filled with compassion. If someone described me, they’d never even consider the word cruel, but then again, when one’s heart is breaking, sometimes things are said out of character.

  An unnatural rigidness overtook his body. He took an unsteady step backward, and his eyes glassed over. Finn hated being reminded of his betrayal, and that was all I’d been doing for the past few months. Sometimes, I’d leave him voice messages when my anxiety was too high and ask him why he chose another woman. I’d ask him if she was better than me. I’d ask if her kisses ever tasted like mine.

  That bothered him so much and might have been the final straw for him in deciding to leave me: my inability to let the other woman leave my mind.

  My husband wasn’t a cheater except when it came to her.

  Her.

  I hated her even though I didn’t know who she was.

  I hated her in a way I hadn’t known I could hate a stranger.

  How dare she steal something from me that wasn’t hers to take? How dare she swallow my husband whole while I was still trying to breathe him in? How dare she break my heart and not even care about the shards of brokenness piercing through my soul?

  “Is that really what you want to say? Do you really want that to be the last thing you say to me?” he asked, still reeling from my words.

  Gosh, I hated his face because I still loved it.

  So many emotions coursed through my veins—so much confusion, so much internal struggle, so much aching. I felt lonely before he even walked away. My mind formed thoughts that m
ade no sense.

  Stay. Go. Don’t leave me. Walk away. Love me. Let me go. Breathe life into me. Let me die.

  Stay.

  Go…

  “I’m sorry,” I said softly. I knew he didn’t want to hear those words, but they were the only ones that came to my mind.

  “Come on.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t…I…”

  “Grace.” He stepped toward me, but I held my hand up, making him halt his movement. If he came any closer, I’d fall into his arms, and I was certain he’d drop me. He took a breath in through his mouth and whispered, “I made a mistake. She meant nothing to me.”

  She.

  “Say her name,” I demanded, knowing it was catty but not caring. I was tired of it. I was tired of Finn skirting around the subject of his infidelity. I hated how he pretended I was responsible for his mouth pressing against another woman’s lips, breasts, and hips…her neck, her stomach, her thighs…

  Stop.

  I hated my thoughts. I’d never imagined my brain could so clearly envision my husband’s mouth on another woman, but alas, the mind was a weapon of mass destruction.

  “What?” he asked, playing dumb. Finn was a lot of things, but dumb wasn’t one of them. He knew exactly what I was asking.

  “After all this time, you’ve never told me her name because if you did, that would make it real. That would make this final.”

  His mouth hovered opened for a second as debate swirled in his mind, considering how real he needed this to be, how real he wanted it to become. Then he spoke. “I can’t do that.”

  It was a whisper…his words, his guilt, his disgust.

  “If you’ve ever loved me, you’ll tell me.”

  “I…” He grimaced. “I can’t. I can’t do that, Grace. Besides, it’s over and done with anyway.”

  “It’s no big deal. I don’t care at all, really. I just hope she was ugly,” I joked, but he missed what was happening inside my chest, the fire that was burning me from the inside out.

  My heart…

  How could the broken pieces keep on shattering?

  I sniffled.

  He sighed. “We should get going.”

  “I’m just going to check the rooms one last time,” I told him.

  He parted his lips to scold me, but he didn’t argue. He was tired of arguments, as was I. There came a point when words became exhausting because neither side was truly listening. “I’ll just meet you at the bank, all right?”

  I listened to the front door close, then slowly moved through the house, allowing my fingers to softly glide along every surface, every doorframe, every wall. Once I reached the last emptied space, I walked inside and stared at the four walls, the walls I’d had so many plans for, the walls I’d thought my future belonged within.

  “Over here, we’ll put the dressers and the changing table, and the crib will go here! We can get the kind that turns into a bed down the line, and over it, I want to write the baby’s name in those big block letters with some kind of quote and—” I was out of breath with excitement, and Finn walked over to me, wrapping his arms around my body, pulling me close.

  He kept smiling as he shook his head back and forth. “Don’t you think we should wait until we’re actually pregnant before we plan the nursery?”

  “Yes,” I agreed, biting my bottom lip, “but after ten positive pregnancy tests over the past two days, I think we’re on the right path.”

  Finn’s eyes lit up faster than I’d ever seen. I loved how his blue eyes were always so stunningly blue. Those eyes still gave me butterflies, even after so much time.

  “You’re…?” he started.

  I nodded.

  “You mean, we’re…?”

  I nodded.

  “So we’re going to have…?”

  I nodded.

  His eyes watered over, and he lifted me, swinging me around in the air and planting kisses all over my face. When he lowered me back to the floor, he looked at me in such a way that, even without words, I could feel his love.

  “We’re going to have a baby,” he whispered, pressing his lips softly against mine.

  “Yes.” I brushed my lips against his, and when he exhaled, I took a deep breath. “We’re going to have a baby.”

  The room darkened as I flipped the switch to shut off the light, and as I walked away from the space, the memories still lingered.

  I’d thought those memories would be the ones I always cherished, but as the days and years passed by, those beautiful memories became my pain.

  After turning off all the lights, I picked up the last suitcase left in the house—a black one with pink flowers. It was from the time Finn and I brought back too many souvenirs from our honeymoon.

  I pulled the suitcase away from a place I’d thought would always be home, and I mourned the ideas of a future that was no longer mine.

  2

  Grace

  It only took a few minutes to sign the paperwork at the bank and turn our keys over to the banker. I sat directly beside Finn, but still, he felt miles and miles away. When we stood to leave, he walked to his car, and I walked to mine.

  “Finley,” I called out, uncertain why his name had even fallen from my mouth. He looked up and arched an eyebrow, waiting for me to speak. My lips parted, yet the words I wanted to come out stayed dancing in my mind. Let’s grab lunch and maybe a movie for now…until you love me again.

  “Nothing. Never mind.”

  He released a heavy sigh. “What is it, Grace?”

  “Nothing, really.” I rubbed my hand up and down my arm.

  “Here we go again,” he muttered, and my chest tightened.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re just doing that thing you always do.”

  “What thing I do?”

  “That thing where you start to express your feelings and then you pull them back, saying never mind. Do you know how impossible that makes it to communicate?”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “Of course, you are,” he replied. “Look, I have to go. When we get to Chester, we can tell our parents we’re splitting. We should probably do it separately. We’re gonna have to face these kinds of things on our own, so we might as well get used to it, okay?”

  Stay strong. Don’t cry.

  “Okay.”

  I was on my way to spend the summer in Chester, seeing how my apartment in Atlanta wouldn’t be ready for me to move into until August. On one note, moving back to Chester terrified me because it wouldn’t take long for people to realize Finn and I weren’t together anymore. On another note, I was secretly excited to be in the same place as Finn. On the same sidewalks where we first fell in love. Maybe having that connection would make him look at me the way he used to. I had a summer to make my husband fall in love with me again.

  I climbed into my car, and when I turned the key, the engine sputtered. Oh no. I turned it again, and it made a scratching noise. Finn cocked an eyebrow my way, but I tried to ignore his stare. My car was ancient, a little pink Buick I’d had since the day I left for college. The only thing I’d had in my life longer than that car was Finn, and now that he was on his way out, Rosie was the oldest thing that belonged to me.

  That late morning, she’d developed a cough.

  “Do you need me to look at the engine?” Finn asked, but I wouldn’t look at him. I couldn’t, not after he snapped at me and made me feel awful just for being me.

  “No. I’m fine,” I told him.

  “Will that thing even make it all the way to Chester? You should’ve gotten a rental car and trashed that piece of junk.”

  “It’s fine,” I told him, turning the key and hearing that nasty sound once more.

  “Gracelyn—” he started, and my nerves were at the edge of panic.

  “Just go, Finn. You made it perfectly clear that you don’t want to be here, okay? So, just go.” Unless you stayed…

  He frowned and stood a bit taller. “All right, I gu
ess I’ll go.”

  “Yes. You should.” Unless you stay…

  I was pathetic.

  His lips turned down. “Bye.” He left me there along with our history, closing the door on the chapter of our story, one I was still trying to rewrite.

  My chest tightened, and I called after him. “Finley,” I shouted, making him turn my way.

  “Yeah?”

  My fingers wrapped around the steering wheel. Those fighting words in my mind wanted to escape. They wanted my lips to be their battleground, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t beg my husband to stay with me, not after all we’d been through. “How did this happen? Where did we go wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” He grimaced. “Maybe some things just aren’t meant to be forever.”

  But what if we were meant to be, and instead of trying to pull our boat back to shore, we were willingly letting it slip away?

  Tears fell from my eyes, and I hated that he saw them, but at the same time, I needed him to witness my pain, to witness how he’d hurt me. I needed him to see me aching, and I needed to remind myself he was no longer the man who could comfort me.

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “Grace?”

  “Yes?”

  “I love you.”

  I nodded slowly. “I know.”

  I believed him, too. Judy would call me foolish to believe in my husband’s love, but I knew a few things about love that my little sister had never learned. Love was a messy emotion that didn’t walk a straight line. It worked in waves and loops of ups and downs. It was a screwy emotion that could somehow still exist amidst the ultimate heartbreak and betrayal.

  Finn loved me, and I loved him back in a twisted and painful way. I wished there was a way to stop it—to shut off the love faucet, and make my heart stop feeling.

  But still, it felt.

  Still, it burned.

  In the dark trunk of his car sat five pieces of mismatched luggage, all of which were tattered and torn, all of which held a part of me within them.

  I watched them all drive away.

  I sat there in the parking lot with only a wish and a prayer that my car would start, but luckily, my parents taught me that that was all one needed in life. You just needed faith the size of a mustard seed that no matter what, things would work out.