Page 42 of The Wife

That’s not enough.

Not hungry.

Right. Because he felt bad. Over me.

I’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll shop and cook.

…

…

…

He was struggling again.

Okay

Okay. It was strange, but the simple word made me feel better. Like we were actually going to be okay.

I didn’t type anything after that. Just set the phone aside and thought about what I was going to make tomorrow for dinner. Simple. Routine.

It helped.

Eleven

Jake

October (Or as I liked to refer to it, the suckiest month ever.)

Istareddown at the phone and waited. No more dots. She was done talking. That was okay. Because she had answered and she had seemed… normal. Yes, I wanted to know what she meant by fixing this. There wasn’t anything to fix. What happened, happened and there was no changing the past.

No, that wasn’t entirely true. There was one thing I had to fix.

Carol.

I had been thinking about it and thinking about it and truth was I didn’t know if I was really that into her. It felt more like I was going through the motions to prove something to myself. Or worse, I was using her as a distraction from Ellie.

That wasn’t fair to Carol.

It certainly wasn’t fair to Ellie. Because I had seen the look on Ellie’s face when she found us. I knew the level of pain I had inflicted on her. That I had been inflicting on her since I started seeing Carol.

I looked at my phone again. It was just after eight. Plenty of time to drive into town and do what I had to do and get home.

I typed in Carol’s name.

Hey, can I come see u so we can talk?

A few seconds later she responded.

Yes. We should definitely talk.

She gave me her address, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. I knew she lived close to town so I headed out, figuring as I got closer I would worry about getting to her actual home.

It wasn’t until I was pulling up to the house that it dawned on me where I was.

This was the MacPherson place.

I got out of my truck, and to be certain checked the address against the number on the house. It was the same.