Page 38 of From the Embers
“Why? I mean…what the fuck, Eason?”
“I have no idea,” he snapped. “I just know, for three months, my best friend gave me advice on my failing marriage—all the while telling my wife he loves her behind my back.”
And with that, the dagger in my back plunged right through to my heart. On unsteady legs, I stumbled, my calves hitting the couch and forcing me down to sitting. “H-he loved her?”
He let out a loud groan. “I gotta get out of here. I can’t be here tonight.”
My head snapped up, a wave of anxiety which had nothing to do with my cheating husband crashing over me. “Where are you going?”
“Anywhere.” He threw his hands out to his sides. “Being here. His house. His yard. I can’t sleep in a bed under his roof, wondering if he ever fucked my wife in it.” He leaned forward to grab the phone, but I moved it out of his reach.
“No, I want to see everything.”
“You don’t need to read that shit, Bree. Take my word for it. You know enough.”
But he was wrong.
“No. You can go, take some time for yourself, do whatever you have to. But I need to know every single word of it backwards and forwards, over and over, until something finally makes me understand how they could do this to me—to us.”
His jaw ticked. “It’s not going to make it hurt any less.”
“Yeah, well, neither is a vacation and you don’t hear me trying to stop you.”
He glared at me for a long beat, but eventually, his shoulders fell. “The passcode is nineteen ninety-two.”
Oh my God. What the actual fuck, Rob?
Unable to hide it, I blanched.
“Yeah,” Eason huffed. “I guess that van wasn’t the only thing he and I shared.” Dipping his head as he backed away, he added, “I’ll let you know where we end up.”
I nodded, but my already broken heart shattered as I watched him walk away. It was just like my dream. He was leaving and I had no way to stop him.
There was no sleep to be found that night. The very first thing I did was strip my bed, cramming the sheets and blankets into a garbage bag and then shoving them out the window. It was a tad dramatic when I could have just carried them out to the trash bins, but banging my fist against his empty side of the bed was only so therapeutic. I considered throwing my wedding and engagement rings in the same bag, but I did have children who might one day want them, so I put them in the safe, hoping I threw them hard enough for them to shatter—just like our vows.
Once I got settled in the guest room, I read every text at least a dozen times. Like a masochist, I zoomed in on every picture, memorized every detail. When I ran out of material, I called the head of Prism IT at five in the morning and requested a record of every text or call Rob had ever made from his work phone. I did the same with our personal cell phone provider as soon as their offices opened, but my search didn’t end there.
After we’d lost Rob, I’d used an old backup from the Cloud to download the contents of his personal phone so we wouldn’t lose all the pictures he’d taken over the years. I spent many gut-wrenching nights going through his pictures and dreaming of the past. Jessica had never been naked in his photos, but finding her on his cameral roll wasn’t unusual. At the time, I hadn’t given it much thought. We often made Rob or Eason take pictures when the four of us were together. However, now, with the wool out of my eyes, I had a big day of scrutinizing ahead of me.
It was Monday morning, and as soon as the kids woke up, they asked about Eason and Luna. I didn’t have much to tell them. He’d texted me an address somewhere in Tennessee shortly after midnight but offered no specifics on when they were coming back. It stung—a lot. Eason and I were no strangers to emotional upheaval, but this time, he’d wanted to deal with it alone.
I, on the other hand, wanted him to come walking through my kitchen door with a smile on his face, Luna on his hip, and tell me everything was going to be okay. Because, somehow, someway, everything was okay when I was with Eason. And yes, I knew exactly how wildly selfish it sounded, but it didn’t change the fact that I already missed him like crazy.
I called in to work to let them know I wouldn’t be at the office for a few days. With the IRS audit in full swing and Prism gearing up for the new fall line, it wasn’t a good time for me to take personal days. Then again, was there ever truly a convenient time to find out your dead husband had been in love with your dead best friend?
