Page 71 of Stay With Me

“I can’t do this. I need help. I’m going to stay with my mom for a while.”

“Sweetheart, I can help you. You just have to—”

“No, you can’t.”

And she didn’t come home for a month.

Blink.

Four months old. They hired a full-time nanny. Sammie went back to work. She was better for a while.

Blink.

Five months old. Sammie missed being with Ari and abruptly quit her job.

Blink.

Eleven months old. Sammie began acting like a cat in heat, which was nice—for a while. He eventually asked what was going on with her and she said she wanted another baby.

“I feel like this is what I was put on the earth to do,”she’d explained.

He tried to be gentle about it.“I don’t think that’s a good idea, sweetheart.”

She became instantly indignant.“Why not?”

“Sammie, after how hard it was to make it happen the first time, and then with your postpartum depression—”

Then she became furious.“How dare you throw that in my face! You have no idea—”

“I’m not throwing it in your face. I don’t think it’s a good—”

She left the room and a door slammed.

Blink.

Five years old. The nationwide recession had hit an all-time low and it finally closed in on Austin. The majority of small, local businesses began to close their doors, and the large tech companies in town had sent their operations overseas. Gone were the days of endless startups and venture capital funding. Local artists and musicians had packed up and left town in droves after music and art venues started shutting down left and right. Nick had read somewhere that most of them were heading to Denton, since it was a similar scene to the old Austin, with a much cheaper cost of living.

Ari’s first day of kindergarten. Sammie held it together until they both got back in the car. Then she exploded into heaving sobs. She cried into his shirt. He felt guilty delighting in her moment of sadness. He just missed the feeling of her wanting to be close to him.

Blink.

Ten years old. Austin hadn’t quite become a ghost town, but compared to what it used to be, that’s what it felt like. The local economy was worse. In the face of such circumstances, residents had become extremely thrifty, which meant they stopped frequenting restaurants, and Nick’s places were no exception. The combination of the cost of doing business and a lack of patrons forced him to close San Jac’s. Chapman’s was hanging in there. It had been on the map as a quintessential Austin treasure for a while so it still had its regulars, and when people happened to visit the city, it was regarded as a must see. But even it was precariously hanging in the balance.

A lot like his marriage.

There was a disconnect. Sammie became cold with him. Her world revolved solely around Ari. She was the best mother he could have hoped to have for his daughter, but somewhere along the line, she stopped being a wife to him.

Their marriage had become like a business partnership. He brought in the money, and she ran the ship.

Nick often found himself wondering what the point was, but it only lasted a moment or two because there was always another issue at work, another financial setback, another random problem that provided him an excuse to avoid what he was sure was the slow deterioration of his marriage.

* * *

It had been storming almost non-stop for two weeks, but this particular morning had arrived with clear skies. The sun had begun to peek above the downtown skyline as Nick jogged over the hillcrest and approached his front door. He paused on the porch for a moment, catching his breath, and then slipped through the door as quietly as possible.

The house was still silent. He kicked off his running shoes and tiptoed up the stairs and down the hall, then cracked open the master bedroom door. He cringed as it groaned a deepcree-eek. One more thing on his domestic to-do list that had been neglected for far too long.

His gaze scanned the room, looking for Sammie, but not finding her. She was probably awake by then so he braced himself for the impending shit storm, but still made a dash to get in the shower before she could unload on him about missing Ari’s dance recital the night before.