“I…” Tears threatened to well up again.
“Please?”
She looked away from him, embarrassed and feeling confined in the cramped space of the car. His face at her window and the burning heat made everything feel small, claustrophobically small.
“I need to go,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry about this.” She eased the handbrake off, and gave him an apologetic smile. “Thank you for the awful coffee.”
She pulled away as tears slid down her cheeks again. She had wanted to go for a drink with him, but the dead would only wait for so long.
Chapter Nine
Elijah
She’d been gone two days.
For two days he’d called her, and she hadn’t picked up.
For two days he’d texted her, and she hadn’t replied.
For two days he’d gone totheirplace, but she hadn’t turned up.
For two days he’d contemplated going to her house and trying to speak to her. But he hadn’t yet. She’d said to give her space to talk to him. But he wondered at what point did he stop giving her space and just go and get her.
Elijah swallowed down the mouthful of whisky and paced the floor some more. Pretty soon he’d wear a hole in the wood if she didn’t come and put him out of his misery. He swallowed the last of the whiskey and stopped pacing, choosing to stare out of the window and into the night sky beyond.
“Where are you, Delores?” he murmured to himself, his heavy heart beating frantically in his chest.
Something was wrong. He knew it. He didn’t know how, but he knew it. She had never gone off the grid like this. Never.
A part of him worried that she had changed her mind. That she had decided to stay with her husband after everything. He couldn’t deny her that, if that was what she wanted after everything. It was her choice, and he would respect that.
He would hate it, but he would respect it.
His gaze dropped to his feet, the soft hum of the television in the background breaking up the silence of the room.
She hated Michael, but not as much as he did.
Michael was the sort of man who had always gotten everything that he wanted. He went through his life being handed things. He was the sort of man that Elijah had hated in high school, and still did now. Rich parents and even richer family. Great prospects no matter what happened when he left school. He got all the girls—cheerleaders mostly. He was quarterback for the football team. He was popular and handsome. And he was a bully, as these sorts of people no doubt always were.
Elijah turned away from the window and moved to the small sofa, where he sat down. He placed his empty glass on the table in front of him, letting his head fall back and his neck rest on the rough back cushion. He closed his eyes, the warm fuzz of too much whisky in his system making him sleepy.
Elijah was a good man. He followed rules and was always polite. He’d been raised by his mom and grandma, and had always respected women. Having an affair with Delores was the worst thing he had ever done, but once it had started he had known that there was no going back from it. There was no way he was giving up the woman he loved.
Delores was everything that he’d always wanted and desired. She was beautiful and smart, funny but not crude. She was gentle, timid almost, but she had spirit and determination. Her illness had held her back in life, or so she had first thought.
As a teenager, she’d struggled with her moods. Her parents had at first put it down to her twin brother dying when he was only twelve. She’d gone off the rails at first, looking for the other half of herself. She was traumatised by the loss of him. Delores had told Elijah that she hadn’t been the same after that.
Her moods had changed at first. Extremely low lows, and extremely high highs. Good days and bad days were a thing of the past and her moods could flip in minutes. She’d feel like superwoman; achieving anything and everything and then she’d feel so low all she wanted to do was drift into oblivion. Eventually after college, she’d been diagnosed, medicated and she’d learned to look for the symptoms. She was happy and coping. She was living.
However, the longer Elijah and Delores’s affair went on, the more they realised that it wasn’t her illness but her husband that had been the problem.
Her illness was manageable, her husband was not.
Delores was frightened of him, that much was apparent, though a part of her loved him. They had built a life and a home, brought children into this world. That wasn’t something she would walk away from so easily. Yet, as the weeks turned to months, Delores had become more of the woman she should have been, rather than what her husband had made her.
She became stronger, her spirits lifted. And no longer was she happy to sit back and let her life drift past her. She wanted to be more than a Stepford Wife. She wanted to prove to her children that a mental illness didn’t have to hold you back. She craved excitement and thrills.
Until she didn’t.
