He shakes his head, his face a mask of utter devastation.“By the time they got there, it was too late.He played the grieving husband.They called it an accident.Said her heart just gave out.Takotsubo cardiomyopathy.”He chokes on the medical term.“Broken heart syndrome.”
His hands come up to cover his face, his words muffled.“But I heard it, Amy.I heard him kill her.”He lets out another shuddering breath.“He didn’t need a weapon.He was the weapon.And I was here.Miles away.On this end of the phone.”He pauses, guilt heavy in the air.“Safe.”
He bows his head, his face still buried in his hands, body wracked by a silent sob.A single, ragged “Fuck!” rips through the stillness.
After a moment, he straightens, wiping his hands across his face, inhaling sharply.“Sorry.”
His scratchy apology and those red-rimmed eyes, brimming with hurt, tip me over the edge.My own eyes well up.
I shift slightly and pull him to me, wrapping my arms around his neck.“I’m sorry.”My own choked apology is more of a vow against his hair.I pull him closer, my arms a protective circle, tightening, trying to become a shield against the pain that’s just poured out of him.
He collapses into my embrace.He buries his face hard against my neck; his hands fist the fabric of the T-shirt at my back.His body is heavy, surrendering to the utter depletion.Surrendering to the release of a lifetime of dammed-up grief.
For a long moment, there’s only the sound of his breathing, gradually steadying against my neck.The frantic, broken rhythm of his heart begins to calm as my hand rubs steadfast circles on his back.
He doesn’t move beyond the occasional hitch in his breath.
He justis.
Broken and utterly present in my arms.
As if the boy who had to run and hide finally found a safe place to fall apart.
FORTY SIX
A FRAGILE PEACE has descended.Nestled in Matthew’s arms, I listen to his breathing, deep and even.The violent storm of his memories has given way to this shared calm.
My voice, when I find it, is a soft murmur.“Tell me about her.What was she like, your mother?”
I feel his chest expand with a deep breath beneath my ear, then a long exhale.For a moment, he’s silent, sifting through the years.
When he finally speaks, his voice is a husky murmur laced with the enduring ache of love.“She was…” He pauses, his gaze distant, looking at a ghost only he can see.“She was like sunshine.Even when everything was dark.”A faint, heartbreakingly sad smile touches his lips.“Yeah.She was my sunshine.”He nestles me a fraction closer, as though the memory itself makes him seek comfort.“She had this laugh.Not loud.More like… the sound of wind chimes.Delicate.It could make you forget for a minute how bad things were.”
“She sounds lovely,” I murmur, my head resting against his chest as his thumb begins a slow, absentminded caress on my arm.
“She was.I remember how she would always have music playing.When he wasn’t home, of course.She loved music.Always humming to herself while working around that place.”A touch of bitterness enters his tone.“Thathouse.Always trying to make it a home.But it never really was.”
He takes another deep breath, this one shakier.“Did you know my mother could coax these little flower miracles out of the worst soil?”
A soft, bittersweet smile touches my lips.“She loved gardening?”
“It was just a miserable little patch of dirt by the back steps,” he clarifies, a quiet venom in his voice.“He never liked her spending time on useless things like flowers.But she grew them anyway.Said it was her rebellion.”
“Did she ever think of leaving your—him?”I ask carefully.
“And go where?She’d always repeat to me:Better a familiar hell.”He sighs, the sound carrying years of resignation.“At least that was her excuse.But I overheard her once on the phone.She didn’t know I was listening.”His voice drops.“She said she would have left years ago, but she’d rather die than give him full custody of me.She knew he’d win that battle.”
He turns his head slightly, his breath stirring my hair.“She deserved an entire field of flowers.She deserved so much more.”
His final words.
Her sacrifice.
They are a testament to a love so profound it aches.
I see that familiar clench in his jaw.The way his gaze drifts again to that distant, haunted place where his ghosts live.
I can’t let him stay there.
