Page 16 of Regretting You

I’m sitting in Jonah’s car. We’re parked next to Chris’s SUV.

Jonah got a key from the front desk and went inside the hotel room to find Chris’s car key.

He’s been in there for five minutes. I lean my head back and close my eyes, saying a silent prayer.

Hoping he’ll come tell me that whatever he found proved we’re way off base.

But I already know. In my heart, I know that I’ve been betrayed in the worst way possible by the one person I never thought would hurt me.

My sister. My best friend.

Chris doing something like this was a knife to my heart.

But Jenny? That’s an obliteration of my soul.

When Jonah is back in the driver’s seat, he tosses Jenny’s duffel bag into the back. The one Chris and I bought her for Christmas last year. He hands me the keys to Chris’s car.

I’m staring at the bag, wondering why she would have needed it. She left her house that morning for a twelve-hour shift—not for an overnight trip. Why would she need an overnight bag?

“Why was her bag in there?”

Jonah doesn’t respond. His jaw is like concrete as he stares forward.

“Why did she need a bag, Jonah? She told you she was going to work, right? She wasn’t staying the night anywhere.”

“Her scrubs were in there,” he says. But the way he says it makes me think he’s lying.

She had an overnight bag so she could change out of her scrubs after leaving my house. But what was she changing into?

I reach to the back seat, and he grabs my wrist and stops me.

I pull away from him and turn around in my seat, attempting to reach for the duffel bag again.

He blocks me with his arm, so we spend the next several seconds scuffling in the car until he has both arms around me, trying to pull me back into my seat, but I’ve already unzipped it.

As soon as I see the black lace trim edging a piece of dainty lingerie, I fall back into the front seat.

I stare ahead. Motionless. I try not to let the images flash through my mind, but knowing my sister was planning to wear lingerie for my husband is quite possibly one of the worst things imaginable.

Jonah is also immobile.

We each silently grapple with the reality of what this means. My doubt is devoured by our new grim reality. I curl into myself, pulling my knees to my chest.

“Why?” My voice strains against the walls of my throat. Jonah reaches a comforting arm out, but I push him away. “Take me home.”

He doesn’t move for a moment. “But ... Chris’s car.”

“I don’t want that fucking car!”

Jonah eyes me for a beat, then nods once. He cranks his car and reverses out of our parking spot, leaving Chris’s car where it’s sat untouched for the past week.

I hope the car gets towed. It’s in Chris’s name—not mine. I don’t want to see the car at my house. The bank can repossess it as far as I’m concerned.

As soon as Jonah pulls back up in my driveway, I swing open the passenger door. It feels like I’ve been holding my breath since we left the Langford, but stepping out of the car and into the fresh night air does nothing to refill my lungs.

I don’t expect Jonah to get out, but he does. He begins to follow me across my yard, but before I open my front door, I turn around to face him. “Did you know about their affair?”

He shakes his head. “Of course not.”

My chest is heaving. I’m angry, but not at Jonah.

I don’t think. I’m angry at everything. Chris, Jenny, every single memory I have of them together.

I’m angry because I know this is now my new obsession.

I’ll be constantly wondering when it started, what every look meant, what every conversation between them meant.

Did they have inside jokes? Did they say them in front of me?

Did they laugh at my inability to sense what was happening between them?

Jonah takes a hesitant step forward. I’m crying now, but these tears weren’t born from the grief I’ve been grappling with this entire past week. These tears are born from a more innate anguish, if that’s even possible.

I attempt to inhale a breath, but my lungs feel clogged. Jonah’s concern grows as he watches me, so he moves even closer, invading my personal space, making it even harder for me to catch a breath.

“I’m sorry,” he says, attempting to soothe the panic within me. I push him away, but I don’t go inside yet. I don’t want Clara to see me like this. I’m audibly gasping now, and it’s not helping that I’m trying to stop the tears. Jonah leads me to a chair on the front patio and forces me to sit.

“I can’t ...” I’m winded. “I can’t breathe.”

“I’ll go get you some water.” He heads inside the house, and as soon as the door closes, I burst into sobs. I cover my mouth with both hands, wanting it to stop. I don’t want to be sad. Or angry. I just want to be numb.

I see something out of the corner of my eye, so I look at the house next door. Mrs. Nettle is peeking out at me from behind her living room curtains, watching me as I cry.

She’s the nosiest neighbor we’ve ever had. It makes me angry that she’s watching me right now, probably getting pleasure from seeing me in the middle of a panic attack.

When she moved in three years ago, she didn’t like the color of grass in our yard because it didn’t match the grass in her yard. She tried to petition the homeowner’s association to force us to replant our yard with alfalfa rather than Saint Augustine.

And that was just the first month she lived here. She’s gotten so much worse since then.

God, my random anger at my eighty-year-old neighbor is making it even harder to breathe.

My heart rate is so fast right now I can feel it pounding in my neck. I put a hand on my chest just as Jonah returns with the water. He takes a seat next to me, ensuring I take a sip. Then another. He places the glass on the table between us.

“Lean forward and put your head between your knees,” he says.

I do it without question.

Jonah inhales a slow breath, intending for me to mimic it.

I do. He repeats it about ten times, until my heart rate has slowed down significantly.

When I feel less on the verge of a heart attack, I lift my head and lean back in the patio chair, attempting to refill my lungs with air.

I let out a long sigh, then glance next door.

Mrs. Nettle is still staring at us from behind her curtain.

She doesn’t even try to hide her nosiness. I flip her off, which works. She snatches the curtains shut and turns off her living room light.

Jonah makes a small sound in his throat, like he wants to laugh. Maybe it is funny, seeing me flip off an eighty-year-old. But there’s no way I could possibly find it in me to muster up even a modicum of laughter right now.

“How are you so calm?” I ask him.

Jonah leans back in his chair with a sidelong look in my direction. “I’m not calm,” he says. “I’m hurt. I’m angry. But I’m also not as invested as you, so I think it’s natural for us to have different reactions.”

“Not as invested as me?”

“Chris wasn’t my brother,” he says, matter-of-factly. “Jenny wasn’t someone I’ve been married to for half my life. They’ve cut you deeper than they’ve cut me.”

I look away from Jonah because his words make me want to wince. I don’t like that description. “ They’ve cut you ... ”

It’s the perfect explanation for how I feel, but I never imagined Jenny and Chris would be the ones to make me feel it.

Jonah and I don’t speak for a while after that.

I’m no longer crying, so I should probably go inside now that I’m in the clear.

I’ve been trying to hide my emotions from Clara.

Not the grief. The grief is natural. I don’t mind being sad in front of her.

But I don’t want her to sense my anger. What Jenny and Chris did is something I never want Clara to find out. She’s gone through enough.

No telling how she’d lash out if she uncovered the truth about them. She’s already lashed out enough with behavior that is so unlike her.

“Clara left Chris’s funeral early. I found her at the movie theater getting high with that guy. Miller Adams. The one you claimed was a good kid?” I don’t know why I threw in that last part, like it’s somehow Jonah’s fault.

Jonah releases a sigh. “Wow.”

“I know. And the worst part is I don’t even know how to deal with it. Or how long I should ground her for.”

Jonah pushes himself out of the chair, coming to a stand. “She’s suffering. We all are. I doubt it’s something she’d have done if it were under different circumstances. Maybe give her a pass on her behavior this week.”

I nod, but I disagree with him. A free pass would be appropriate for something milder than doing drugs.

It’s more appropriate for something like breaking curfew.

I can’t just let it slide that she left Chris’s funeral to get high.

Not to mention she was with the one guy her father told her not to spend time with.

If I let either of those things slide, what will that leniency lead to?

I stand up, ready to go inside. I open the front door and turn to face Jonah.

He’s in the doorway now, staring at his feet, when he says, “I need to pick up Elijah.” He lifts his eyes, and I can’t tell if he’s holding back tears or if I just forgot that when you’re this close to Jonah Sullivan, the blue in his eyes looks liquefied. “Will you be okay?”

I let out a half-hearted laugh. I still have tears on my cheeks that haven’t even dried, and he’s asking me if I’ll be okay?

I haven’t been okay for a week. I’m not okay now. But I shrug and say, “I’ll survive.”

He hesitates like he wants to say more. But he doesn’t. He walks back to his car, and I close my front door.

“What was that about?”

I spin around to find Clara standing at the entrance to the hallway. “Nothing,” I say, almost too quickly.

“Is he okay?”

“Yeah, he just ... he’s struggling. Raising Elijah on his own. He had questions.”

I’m not the good liar in this family, but that technically wasn’t a lie.

I’m sure Jonah is struggling. It’s his first child.

He just lost Jenny. I remember when Clara was a baby and Chris was a full-time student and worked all the days he didn’t have class.

I know how hard it is to do everything on your own. I’ve been there.

Granted, Elijah is an easier baby than Clara. They look like they could be twins, but their personalities are nothing alike.

“Who has Elijah?” Clara asks.

I hear that question come from Clara, but I can’t answer it because my thoughts aren’t moving forward. They’re stuck on the last thing that went through my head.

They look like they could be twins.

I grip the wall after being hit by what feels like a ten-thousand-pound realization.

“Why did you leave the house with Jonah?” Clara asks. “Where did y’all go?”

Elijah doesn’t look anything like Jonah. He looks just like Clara.

“Mom,” Clara says with more emphasis, trying to get a response from me.

And Clara looks just like Chris.

The walls in front of me begin to pulsate. I wave Clara off because I know what a terrible liar I am, and I feel like she can see right through me. “You’re still grounded. Go back to your room.”

“I’m grounded from the living room?” she asks, puzzled.

“Clara, go ,” I say firmly, needing her to leave the room before I completely break down right in front of her.

Clara storms off.

I rush to my own bedroom and slam the door.

As if their deaths weren’t enough, the blows just keep coming, and they’re getting more and more severe.