“I’m sorry,” I say into the downpour from the shower head, letting the water pull my words down the drain with it.
I’m sorry for hurting you both.
I’m sorry for pushing you further away from each other.
I’m sorry I made such a mess of everything.
Chapter 17
JULIA
Forty-seven missed calls.
Fifty-three unanswered text messages.
My dribbling nose pulls in a sharp sniff as I scroll through the desperate messages I’ve sent to my husband, finally landing on the last one that he sent to me. We were going to try to make dinner together, and he wanted to know if I’d rather put together a pasta dish or something new that we hadn’t tried before.
It was so simple.
I startle at the sound of the doorbell, pushing the fluffy duvet off of my body and onto the couch before moving to the door to pull it open.
“You look like a big bowl of boiled crap,” Aislin tells me, pulling a mahogany strand of hair behind her ear.
“I feel even worse,” I mumble.
The two of us walk toward the coffee table, and I drop back onto the couch before reaching for my appointment book to offer it to her. She thumbs through the pages, clicking her tongue with a thoughtful purse of her lips.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I know it’s a lot to ask.”
“Oh, shut up,” she says, flipping the book closed and tossing it onto the table, next to a nearly-empty box of tissues. “There are five of us, and you never ask for help. We’ll make it work.”
As I pull the duvet over my body once again, she trots into the kitchen, reaching for a sauce pan to fill it with water and crank the heat on the stove. She watches me while she waits for her water to come to a boil, as if waiting for me to combust, or implode, or otherwise fall to pieces – which I feel like I might just do.
Finally making her way back toward me with a bowl in hand, she rests it on my lap, dropping a spoon into the waiting serving of ramen noodles.
“You’re gonna eat, and then you’re gonna tell me what’s going on with you,” she says.
I shake my head.
Using the spoon, I push the noodles around, swirling the broth as my chest burns.
“I can’t,” I tell her.
You’ll think I’m horrible.
The spoon’s handle clinks against the ceramic, and I rest the bowl onto the coffee table as a wave of harsh sobs crash through me, like they have been doing all day. Aislin’s arms envelop me, holding me tightly as I cry against her body. Rocking me back and forth, her hand strokes through my hair.
I try to stop the tears from flowing, but I can’t.
My entire body screams through every sob, my heart unleashing a torrent of agony to flood my veins.
We were supposed to live our dreams here, but in this house, I’ve now lost my son, my husband, and even my cat.
The worst part about it is that this is my fault. I have no one to blame but myself. This wasn’t an ‘inexplicable tragedy.’ This didn’t ‘just happen.’Icaused it.
Aislin’s thumbs draw beneath my eyes to wipe away my still-falling tears before she reaches for my bowl of ramen to put it back into my lap.
“Eat your crappy dollar twenty-five soup,” she orders.
