Yes, there were good, productive parts too. But all it took was one spark of negativity to ignite an inferno.
“Suze?” he prompted softly.
She exhaled, gentle, controlled. “This is one of my favorite places.” Tapping her fork to the slice of berry-topped decadence they were sharing, she added, “This delight is just a bonus.”
He set his fork aside and turned toward her fully, wrought-iron chair scraping slightly as he shifted his weight. He took her hand, his thumb brushing her knuckles in a quiet, grounding stroke. “The … ‘more’ has something to do with what happened earlier. Not so?”
“Partially.”
He didn’t press her, merely waited, his hand warm around hers while she gathered her thoughts.
“I met Braam the year I turned twelve,” she began quietly. “His parents had died in a car crash, leaving him completely alone. At the children’s home, it was the long-term kids who helped the new ones settle, so I was paired with him. Then he ended up in my class at school, and somehow we just … clicked. Music bound us. Friendship steadied us. He became …” Her throat tightened. “He became my everything.”
She paused, eyes drifting over the mountains. “He was diagnosed with Crohn’s at sixteen. It was a devastating blow. But Braam … he was a fighter. He handled that brutal disease with a kind of quiet determination that put adults to shame.”
She drew in a slow breath. “We got married right after school and moved to Stellenbosch. His parents had left him a decent inheritance, so Braam studied music, adding in a few theology electives. My marks weren’t good enough for a degree, so I took odd courses, eventually landed a bookkeeping job. We had asmall music gig, too. Weddings, church band. It was a good life. We were happy.”
A sigh pushed from her chest, soft but weighted, her fingers tracing invisible patterns on the table. “After Braam graduated, he was offered a position as the worship leader at our church. And that’s when things started to change.”
Even after all these years, those old feelings of not being good enough tightened her throat. She took several small sips of tea, willing it to settle the ache.
Justin didn’t move, just held her hand, his fingers woven through hers in a steady, anchoring pressure that should have comforted her. Instead, it only underscored the problem.
Another reminder that she was leaning on him far too easily.
She gently eased her hand from his and rubbed at the sudden chill prickling along her arms, gathering the courage to voice something she had never told a soul — not even Miem.
“The band, the church … it became his focus,” she said quietly. “Oh, I know Braam loved me.” A nervous laugh slipped out. “Truly. He did. He just loved the rest … more. And where we’d agreed to wait on having kids until he graduated, suddenly there were reasons. Excuses. Crohn’s is hereditary. We needed to focus on our calling. The music. Leading people to God. Everything else took priority.”
Her gaze dropped to her folded napkin. “And silly me … I pushed aside my own needs and desires and just followed his lead like a good little Christian wife. I even put up with the blame when his Crohn’s flared up — watch his diet, Suzette; pray harder for his healing, Suzette.”
Justin made a strangled sound in his throat. “Insensitive morons,” he ground out.
She lifted one shoulder in a small, resigned shrug. “Life.”
Justin’s jaw flexed. “And Esther?”
A faint smile tugged at her lips, softer than before. “Our church joined a new movement — a US-based one — and we were sent to the States to absorb their ethos. And that’s when Esther came into our lives,” she said softly. “Her real name was Mara, but Braam always called her his Esther. His shining star.”
“And you slipped even further down his priority list,” Justin said, a quiet edge threading through his voice.
She didn’t bother confirming. She didn’t need to. “It wasn’t hard to love Essie,” she said instead. “She was so timid, scared of her own shadow, and watching her bloom under his love was … a privilege. And I felt guilty, sometimes, for resenting her. I understood why she clung to him. How his attention helped her find her voice.”
She drew a slow breath, fingertips brushing the rim of her glass. “But there was this one night …” Her voice softened, thinned. “We were rehearsing for Sunday, and I was sitting at the back, sorting sheet music. I could hear them laughing on stage — proper, effortless laughter I hadn’t heard from him in months. She played a wrong chord, and he teased her, and she blushed so fiercely she practically glowed.”
Suzette swallowed. “I remember looking at them and realizing he hadn’t looked at me with that light, delighted manner in a very long time. And in that moment … it clicked. What I felt for him, what I thought he was to me, wasn’t the kind of love a marriage is built on. He was safety. Validation. A lifeline for a girl who’d been judged unworthy of love.”
*
Mixed emotions swirled through Justin: sadness, anger, a hollow sense of powerlessness. And fear. Because he wasn’t up against the memory of a long-lost husband, or even the strain of his own celebrity status. This went far deeper, down to the very core of Suzette, right into wounds carved by abandonment.
And no matter how many times he professed his love — and yes, he could finally admit it, for the first time in his life he had fallen in love — none of it would matter if she didn’t believe she was worthy of that love.
He reached for her hand again, enclosing it gently between both of his. “What happened after that?”
She let out a brittle laugh, thin and sharp around the edges. “Nothing. Everything. Braam died less than six months later. What we thought was a savage Crohn’s flare, mere weeks after my moment of clarity, turned out to be cancer.” Her voice wavered. “It was sudden. Brutal. Devastating.”
Her pain landed with the force of a blow. A clean tear through the center of his chest. “I’m so sorry, Suzette,” he murmured, the words rough with sincerity.
