Page 87 of Just Ten Seconds

They are all grieving for someone they love and share their experiences of visiting their loved ones. Even the people who have anger for those in jail, that anger is driven by the passion they have for these people. Whether it’s their spouse, child, sibling … there is a relationship there that makes it difficult for them during this time.

I don’t feel any of that.

My feelings for Benjamin are … distant.

It was lies. All of it lies. The lying, cheating, stealing … It was a spiral, a sick obsession that got way out of control. I might have been able to look past it. I could have forgiven it; I loved him so much that I know I could have tried. It would have been hard, difficult even, but we’d have made it right.

He never gave me a chance. What he did to cover up his crimes—his greatest sin of all—is why I can’t stay in this room.

When I think of him, it’s of the man I knew the day before our life together ended. We were at dinner at an Indian restaurant, sitting on the floor and eating with our hands as I told him about a book I was reading. He found it interesting and said he’d read it too, and then we’d rent the movie version and pull it apart scene by scene because the book was always better than the movie. I had no idea that we’d never see that movie together.

I had no idea that the next day I’d walk into a room and witness the most horrific thing one could ever imagine.

I don’t care if he is eating candy at a vending machine or how he looks in his jumpsuit. I’m not worried about what people will think when he gets out or if he’s happy.

I grab my purse off the floor and slip out the door before the woman with the gray hair even thinks about asking if I want to talk. I don’t want to because I can’t. I don’t love Benjamin. I don’t even like him. I won’t visit him. I can’t answer his calls or respond to his letters.

Just as I did that first night, when I leave the room, I find myself with my back to the wall, desperate for an answer.

How can I get better if I can’t find my ability to speak up?

And, like the first night, I find myself being drawn down the hall. To the Instillation in Hope bereavement group. The place I found my voice and my ability to grieve.

“Mara,” Tracey says as I slowly pass by the open door.

I halt for a moment, wondering if I should just keep on moving and pretend I didn’t hear her call my name.

“Join us.”

My head falls to my chest. I turn to the room and walk inside. Kevin, Cynthia, Lauren, and Joey are the only ones here tonight. Tracey has her hands stretched out in that way that washes over you like a drink of hot cocoa.

I should come clean. Admit my lie of omission to the group and hopefully find the strength to tell Dean what I did. It’s so hard because I’m still in such shock. Three years later, I’m still stuck in the mud, clinging to a rope in hopes that I don’t get swallowed up.

“My husband wasn’t a good man.” My words have them looking at me in confusion. “He lied. He stole. He hurt. I guess”—I twist my fingers and suck in my lips as I try to hold back the emotions raging through me—“I’m still having a hard time separating the Benjamin I loved with the Benjamin he became.”

My mind is mush, and my heart is trembling in its cage. No one understands this feeling. They want you to be angry or numb. They don’t want you to be sad. Not when you were married to a monster.

I’m sad. So very sad because, in a moment, everything that I’d thought was true became a lie. One horrible thing after the other happened in a flash. It all happened within seconds.

Time is such a fickle bitch. It passes so quickly that when you look back, you realize how much happened when you weren’t looking.

“When we met, he’d just started a wealth management firm with his best friend. I had no idea what his job entailed because I was a wannabe-actress-slash-bartender. What the hell did I know about the finance world? I just knew that he was charismatic and fun, and he liked me. Or so I’d thought.

“When we got married, he convinced me to work for him. I wasn’t making any money as a bartender, and my acting career was falling flat. He was right. I could be more. So, I started working as his secretary. ‘Sign here, Mara,’ he’d say. ‘Put your John Hancock on this one, sweets.’ I would do what he said because I was an idiot. Dumb as a fucking doornail when it came to finances. But I just signed away. What I didn’t realize was that I was approving wire transfers to an account in my name where he siphoned funds from his clients. He ripped off hundreds of good, hardworking people, so we could live on Park Avenue. Medical research charities went belly up because I signed on a dotted line. People lost their pensions when it went under. I had no idea that we were stealing from people. Maybe that’s the part I can’t wrap my head around. How the person I knew was not the person who he really was.” I pull my coat in tighter even though it’s not cold in here at all.

“Now, he’s gone, so you can’t talk to him about it,” Tracey speaks in an understanding tone.

My mouth trembles. I spoke too much.

With widened, tear-filled eyes, I look at my friends. Yes, my friends. These kind people who opened their hearts to me, who I’ve lied to. I wait for someone to scream at me. Call me a fraud. A hustler. A criminal.

But they don’t.

They just stare at me with patient eyes.

I blink back at Tracey and answer her question, “No. No, I can’t talk to him about anything.” That part is my fault. I refuse to read his letters, let alone visit him in a state penitentiary. “How do you have this beautiful life with someone—laughter, tears, vacations, holidays, sex”—Kevin’s cheeks redden at the mention—“and then find out it wasn’t good? He kept so much from me, and as it all unfolded, I felt like the man I had known, the life I had known, had been made up.”

Lauren grips my hand. “It’s okay to be angry. We’ve all been there.”