Finding Redemption

She sits at their kitchen table, has been speaking with their friends, her lawyer too, she has caught him cheating, she is waiting for him to come in the door, their santuary has melted before her eyes, the cocoon they built, was it all lies, I trusted him with my happiness, and now it’s all about to disintegrate. Her life is over, she is barely forty. The time I invested in him, worse, the other men she gave up for him, the career she set aside, maybe that is an excuse, another reason to hate him, we all strecth the truth, sanctimonious, who isn’t. How she liked fixing their meals, the list gets bigger. So many things she overlooked, the stuff she put up with, inside she tells herself she is perfect, well, he was the one who thrashed the relationship. There is the sound of a car in the drive, she fills the wine glass before he comes in, she doesn’t want him to have one. She is angry.

I’m home he says, she hears his voice in the hall, he has no idea that she knows, or what is ahead of him. He drops the keys on the counter, I’ll open another one he says with a smile, he needs a friend, he is looking at the bottle, it’s empty, why the silence he says, he is full of himself, a great day at the office and two weeks off as a result. I know she says, what, they have told you already, that’s quick. He fetches a glass sits down beside her, why the gloom he says, she is prone to depression, he doesn’t rile her, she gets over it within an hour, she has been that way, since she lost the baby.

It’s only your imagination he says, when she confronts him, he understands, she has not been feeling well these last few months, it’s easy to understand. Compassion, he is a patient man.