Page 35 of Right the Wrongs (Broken Vows #5)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Griffin - Present

A receptionist shows us into Dr. Manning’s office. “She will be with you in just a moment,” she says before going back to the reception area.

Things have been better between Wren and me for the last couple of weeks. Better, but not great. We’re talking, and she has come back to our bed, but we’re both walking on eggshells, trying not to fracture this fragile truce.

Liam hasn’t stopped by the house. He’s gone so far as to avoid the side of his yard that borders ours.

I know he’s not avoiding me, but I haven’t reached out to him either.

I understand that he’s going through a lot right now.

I have no idea what is going on with him and Claudia, but I can’t save him if I’m also drowning.

He’s going to have to figure this out on his own for now.

Dr. Manning’s office is comfortable. Almost too comfortable if there is such a thing.

There is the proverbial couch, a couple of upholstered chairs, and then, what I assume is the Doctor’s chair.

I think I was expecting an imposing desk and some kind of uncomfortable leather couch.

It’s odd that the presence of more comfortable furniture makes me feel somehow less comfortable.

Wren doesn’t hesitate to take one of the two chairs. I waffle back and forth between the couch and the chair. I’m still in the middle of my indecision loop when the doctor comes in.

She makes a sweeping gesture between the available seats. “Please take a seat. I’m Dr. Manning. My job is to help the two of you speak to each other. I won’t be telling you what to do, and it isn’t my place to judge you. We can start wherever you need to.”

I wait until she’s seated, which somehow feels like the only way not to make it weird that I’m still standing here staring at the chair as if its existence is one of the world’s greatest mysteries.

“Let’s see if you can hang on to that promise of not judging,” I begin.

Over the next twenty minutes, I give her the most condensed version I can of my efforts to drive Wren away, finding Liam cheating on her, learning about his embezzlement and addictions, and finally giving in to my feelings for her.

Dr. Manning sits speechless for a very long moment, clicks her pen closed, and sets it down.

She laughs a little. “That is a lot. Still not judging, but you sound at ease with most of that. I can hear there’s still some self-blaming over the things your son has done, and we can talk about that, but I am sensing that isn’t what is bringing the two of you in here today. ”

Wren shakes her head. “No, the problems started recently. Liam relapsed, his wife has taken the kids and gone to her parents’ house, and?—”

She stops talking, but thanks to Scott’s advice from the other day, I don’t try to supply the answers for her.

Not that I could, because I don’t really know what the issue is.

I know that it has to do with how I often jump to help Liam.

That can’t be the only reason, though, because she was already having issues with him without me even having to be involved.

Dr. Manning clicks her pen again and this time scribbles down some notes. When she stops, she focuses back on Wren. “If you are comfortable talking about your marriage to Liam in front of Griffin, I’d like to hear what you experienced.”

She shifts uncomfortably in her seat and casts a side glance at me. “If you need me to step out, I will,” I offer her.

Wren shakes her head. “How do you condense five years into a few words?”

Dr. Manning gives her an understanding look. “Who said it has to be a few words?”

Wren swallows. “I have actually been thinking a lot about those years lately.”

I squeeze the arms of my chair, but try my best to keep my face blank.

This is news to me, but it’s probably why I was feeling like she had lingering feelings for him.

I bite the inside of my cheek to keep myself from interrupting her.

I feel the weight of this moment, and sense that what I’m about to hear will change everything.

Wren hasn’t looked back at me, so she continues without knowing that I’m fighting against myself to stay in the moment. “I started seeing the signs of Liam’s relapse. I’m not sure about Claudia, we’re not super close. I wasn’t surprised when she left. I’d been seeing him come back home later.”

The doctor’s brows knit together. “I’m missing some details. How is it you know when he comes home?”

“We have a compound of sorts. Our family, I guess you’d call us a found family, purchased all the lots on a cul-de-sac in town. Liam and his wife, Wren’s aunt, my best friend, two other close couple friends of ours, and our family all live in homes built on those lots,” I explain.

Dr. Manning’s face turns more somber. I honestly thought we’d have lost her at the “I married my daughter-in-law” portion of the story, not the part where my son is our neighbor.

“So, not only is your ex-husband in your life as your husband’s son, but he’s also your neighbor?” she asks Wren.

“And he is a mechanic at the garage we own,” Wren supplies.

She looks over at me, and I see a tiny bit of judgment. Still way less than I anticipated.

Her focus returns to Wren, and she asks, “So, no matter what you do, no matter where you go, you can’t get away from your ex-husband?”

“Pretty much,” Wren confirms.

“So, when did you get a chance to heal from your marriage? It sounds like there’s not much time between that relationship and this marriage. I’m not judging, just wondering what you’ve done to let yourself recover from being married to an addict?” Dr. Manning asks.

“That’s the thing. I thought I had. I left him, made a new life for myself, a better one.

That’s healing, right? I thought for sure that was what it was, at least, until I started realizing Liam was using again.

I brought it up, but both Griffin and Charlie thought he was fine.

I let it go, because frankly, taking care of him isn’t my job anymore,” Wren responds.

Dr. Manning nods her agreement, but stays silent so Wren will keep talking.

“I don’t know what happened, but every time I’d see signs that he was using, I kept remembering things that had happened before.

The times he’d come home ready to fight and accused me of every sin under the sun.

He’d tear apart the apartment, thinking I hid things from him.

He’d throw things when he got mad, and he was always mad.

I was withering right in front of him, and he didn’t care.

I’m ashamed to admit that there were times when I didn’t think I could make it.

Leaving him wasn’t an option, not at that time, at least, because I had no one else. ”

Shame blankets me. I remember watching her shrink right in front of me, but I just chalked it up to my behavior, not my son’s.

Charlie told me once that I had a blind spot for Liam, and he’s right.

I have overlooked his bad behavior for way too long.

The only time I let myself see it was when it suited me, meaning when I fell in love with Wren.

Wren’s thumb traces over the scars that I’ve never been able to forget about. We’ve talked about that time, but more about her and not the events that drove her there. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, hating my son, and I do even if just for a second.

“Anyway,” Wren’s voice pulls me from my inner thoughts, “I held on too tight to something that never should have been. I didn’t really get that until recently. My friend took me to visit my childhood home, and I spent time with the ghosts there.”

Another look of confusion comes across the doctor’s face. “Explain that to me.”

Wren shrugs. “I don’t mean real ghosts, just that when I was there, it was as if I could hear my mom.

I felt them there in the house. Then, when I stopped fighting the memories, I relived that last conversation I had with my mom.

I felt the feelings I felt back then. Had my parents lived, I think Liam and I would have broken up.

Maybe even before the end of my senior year.

I would have gone off to college like my mom and I had planned.

Instead, I ended up alone, and I held on to the one person who stuck around.

Now I know that what I had with Liam was never love.

At least not the way it should have been for us to be married. ”

The pain in her words cuts me. Her pain has always hurt me, even when I was one of the causes of it.

For the first time, I wonder what it would have felt like if I’d had to co-parent with Melinda.

What would it have been like to watch her fall in love with someone else, make a life with someone else, and have to watch it play out day in and day out?

Like Wren, I didn’t love Melinda the way I should have to have married her.

But we were having a baby, and I wanted to be a better parent than mine were.

There was love in my marriage, the love I had for my son.

It made living with a woman who resented me tolerable.

Then, when Liam was two, she left. I have heard about her from time to time.

I know she’s with some older man who has money.

Not yacht kind of money, but something that would have felt like a lot growing up in Harriston.

She doesn’t have any more kids, from what I have heard, but I don’t know if that’s true.

I’m still pretty sure that she gets to live out her days in her self-centered bubble like she had always wanted.