guess the last thing I remember is being on the patio. How much time has passed? I don’t even know when or how I got in bed, and it scares me. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I do these things, I’m sorry I was a jerk, and I feel really bad for Max. He didn’t deserve to have Gretchen leave. He’s a good person. But I’m not. I’m a horrible person, but I don’t mean to be. I don’t deserve you. Max didn’t deserve this to happen to him. Oh, Reese…” He stopped.
As confused and hurt as Reese had been, she was too tired and hurting for Max to continue to fight with Isaac. She took him in her arms, and the moment she did, Isaac pressed against her. Reese let herself succumb to the moment, and she cried while Isaac rubbed her back and stroked her hair. Briefly, she wondered how Isaac could possibly transform from nice guy to asshole and back to nice guy, and not only do it but claim to not remember doing it. But she was tired and overwhelmed, and it felt good to be in her husband’s arms. She let the thought drift away and gave in to the moment.
As her tears subsided, Reese ran her hands down Isaac’s arms. He cried out in pain.
“Isaac! What’s the matter?”
He winced. “My arms hurt. I don’t know why. They’ve been hurting since I got in bed, but I didn’t want to say anything. I’m sorry for yelping just now. I didn’t mean to.”
“Lemme see.” She began to scoot up his sleeves, but she stopped when he winced again and inhaled sharply. “Okay. Can you slip your arms out of your shirt?” As he slowly complied, she saw his forearms and what was causing him pain. “Oh my God, Isaac! What did you do to yourself?”
Together, they studied his arms. Neither spoke until Reese asked, “You really don’t remember anything, honey? I saw you smoke. You have cigarette burns from wrist to elbow on each arm. You don’t remember burning yourself like this?”
Isaac shook his head. When Reese looked into his eyes, she saw pain and confusion and fright. She ran her hand along his face, felt the ever present stubble that drove her wild. She leaned forward and kissed him gently. When she pulled back, she kept her hands on his face. “Okay. I believe you. Let’s not worry about how these got there right now, okay? Let’s just take care of it. I suppose an advantage of having an over-active, rather clumsy five-year-old is that we always have a stocked first aid kit. I’ll be right back with it.”
Isaac called to her, and she stopped in the doorway of their room. When she turned to look at him, he said, “I want you to know that despite the way I am, despite being such an awful person, I love you with all my heart and soul.”
She returned to his side and kissed him. “You are so not awful, Isaac. Confusing as hell, yes. Awful, no. I really love you, too.”
As she left the room to fetch the supplies to bandage her husband’s mysterious burns, she pondered her feelings. It was true. She loved Isaac deeply. His various episodes, as she privately referred to them, were bothersome and bewildering, but until now hadn’t been all that harmful or disruptive. When she thought of his behavior at Dominic’s party yesterday and tonight with Gretchen and in the garage, she frowned. Was this bizarre aspect of his personality going to become more pronounced? If it did, it would certainly become more difficult to ignore.
Chapter 3
Isaac listened to Reese shift in her sleep. Because he had been staring at the ceiling all night, he noticed that the color was lightening slightly, but not enough yet to illuminate the thin layer of dust on the blades of their ceiling fan. He hadn’t slept a wink. His burned arms were part of the reason. They felt like they were on fire, and they stung like hell. But even worse than the physical pain, which was extreme, was the anguish of not knowing how they got there. In searching his brain to try to figure it out, he continued to come up empty. Just as with some of the old scars bedecking his body, he didn’t know how they got there, but he knew one thing: they were there as a punishment, and he deserved it. That he was resigned to it didn’t mean that he was happy about it, though. What must Reese think? What if she decided, rightfully so, that she could no longer stand him and she did what Gretchen did to Max? The difference would be that Reese would take Dominic. The mere thought of this was crushing. If he were a man capable of crying, he probably would be doing so now. Tears never flowed, though, and they didn’t tonight, either. Nonetheless, he was in agony because of the pain and the fear of what could happen.
What Gretchen did to Max was the other, related, source of his agony. How could someone abandon her family like that? He and Reese had been friends with Gretchen and Max for nearly a decade. Max and Gretchen were already living in the house next door when Isaac and Reese bought this house. They all had hit it off immediately. Isaac had always thought Gretchen was rather cool and aloof, but that didn’t explain why she left her family. Max and Elise didn’t deserve this. Max was a good guy. Better than Isaac. Far better. If either of them deserved his wife taking off, it was Isaac.
He bolted upright. He had had that thought over and over again throughout the night, a recurring, waking nightmare. Rather than becoming desensitized to the thought, he had grown increasingly agitated by it and by now wanted to wake up Reese, grab onto her, beg her to stay, and never let go. That probably wouldn’t go over well, given that she was sleeping peacefully after an exhausting weekend. He sighed and squinted at the clock, leaning closer to compensate for the glasses that rested on the table rather than on his face. Almost five thirty. The alarm would ring soon. Reese liked to wake up before him and beat him into the shower. She claimed that if she didn’t shower early, Dominic would wake up at his usual early hour, and it could be hours before she had a chance again. Isaac looked at her and smiled. He and Dominic were so lucky to have her in their lives. He thought of the way she was with Dominic. She was a terrific mother, patient and playful and always there watching over him, protecting him from harm. Not every mom was like that. Not even close.
He leaned over and kissed her head lightly. He didn’t want to wake her up. She deserved all the sleep she could get. She deserved a nice wake-up, too, to start off her Monday well to counter the horrible way Sunday had ended. He quietly slid out of bed and padded to the kitchen. Moving slowly, in part to remain quiet and in part to avoid increasing the pain in his arms, he started the coffee maker. Before putting away the bag of coffee grounds, he indulged in the pleasure of closing his eyes and breathing deeply, reveling in the fresh, earthy smell. Chastising himself for being selfish when he was supposed to be doing something nice for his beautiful wife, he rolled the bag, pinched it shut, and put the coffee back in the cupboard where it belonged. He wanted to give her something, in addition to the coffee, that would make her smile. But what? He closed his eyes and thought about it. When he opened them, a satisfied grin spread across his face. He had a silly little idea that would likely amuse Reese.
He rummaged through the fridge and found the containers of strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries. Now whistling softly and cheerfully, he grabbed a piece of bread and cut it in half diagonally. He kept one of the diagonal halves as-is but trimmed and shaped the other into a rounded triangle. From the remnants, he fashioned a crescent. Next, he placed the segments of bread together just so, added slices of strawberries for scales, and voila! He had an angel fish, perfect for Reese, his personal angel. He added final artistic touches: a blueberry for an eye, eight for a vertical row of bubbles rising from the fish’s mouth, and raspberries for a rock bed. He tilted his head and considered it. It needed one more thing to complete the effect. He stepped outside, plucked a leaf from the rhododendron bush just off the deck, returned to the kitchen, and cut it into strips to place among the “rocks” as seaweed. He smiled in satisfaction at his creation.
The last thing he wanted to do was to leave a mess, even a small one, for Reese. He put everything away. As he was wiping down the knife he had used for the strawberries, he muttered, “Yeah, this needs to be put away, not left out in the open where you could easily get at it to hurt us.”
Satisfied
