Absolution (Disenchanted Book 3)

by L. D. Davis

  The first thing I picked up was a pair of his sunglasses. They were one of many he’d had at one time. Every time we went to one of those flea markets, he bought some. A red tie with blue stripes was the next item. I let it slide through my fingers and brought it to my nose, gratified and heartbroken to smell more of him. I set the glasses and tie aside and picked up a baseball he and Gavin Jr. used to play with in the back yard and at the park. Our son would be happy to have it back.

  Then I found it, the diamond pendant Gavin had given me eons ago, the same one that I’d worn the day of the accident. The chain was gone, but the pendant gleamed. One would never know it had been in a bloody crash. My chest felt like someone was cracking it open, but I breathed through it and didn’t succumb to the pain. I decided I’d eventually give Gavin the sunglasses and take the pendant to a jeweler and have it split in half so each of my girls could have a piece of their father.

  For a couple minutes, I just picked through the box, found many familiar items, and some I didn’t remember seeing before. Halfway through my perusal, I discovered Gavin’s cell phone, the same phone he’d had the day of the accident. Our vehicle had been destroyed, as were our lives from that point, but the phone had survived with barely a scratch on it. It was so bizarre. I wondered who even found it.

  I looked up at Cliff, who stood by, silently watching me with pain in his eyes. I put the phone down and went to him, my arms open. We embraced each other for a long time.

  “I’m ready,” I murmured into his broad chest. “But we should do it together, the three of us.”

  “Okay,” he choked out.

  I didn’t want to leave the box in the house when Sofia and I left for the night. For some reason, I just wanted it close. Cliff was going to bring more when I requested it, not wanting to overwhelm me or him and his wife. They’d already gone through a similar process when they packed up their own home.

  When Marco called later to see how things were going, I didn’t tell him about Gavin’s stuff. It was personal, and I didn’t get personal with Marco Mangini anymore.

  “Everything is fine.” I sighed, annoyed that I had to have this conversation. “The packing is tedious, but we’ve made good headway.”

  “Good, good. Gavin’s room is almost done here. The paint looks very nice. Dara has been joyously decorating the girls’ room. She is extremely excited about the move.”

  My smile was real as I thought about the older woman and her husband who lived on and cared for the property and the animals. They’d been the original owners, but Marco had clicked well with them and they’d stayed.

  “There is something I would like to talk to you about,” Marco said carefully.

  I was about to tell him again that I wasn’t going to talk to him about what happened in Lecco, or about our conversation after the doctor’s visit, but that wasn’t what he brought up.

  “I didn’t realize until recently that I missed Cora’s Snowflake dance. I would like to make it up to her.”

  The Snowflake dance was an annual father-daughter dance at the school. Marco had volunteered to take Cora, but on the day of the dance, he’d been thousands of miles away in Italy.

  “You don’t have to,” I said quickly. “Cliff took her.”

  He paused. “I know that, but…I owe her this, Lydia. There is a father-daughter event coming up in Columbus in a couple weeks. I want to come out and take her to that, but I want it to be a surprise. Do you think you can handle that for me?”

  I sighed deeply. Cora would be way more forgiving than me. “Yeah, sure.”

  “Great. Thank you. So…are you okay? Have you been sick? Are you eating and getting enough sleep?”

  I ended things curtly. “I’m fine. Look, I have to go. Keep me posted about the father-daughter thing.” I hung up before he could respond, knowing that wouldn’t be the last time I heard from him.

  Later in the night, like clockwork, he texted me. He’d been sending similar messages since the day I got back to Ohio. He said goodnight, and that he loved me. I never answered.

  As I gazed at his message, a thought occurred to me. I wondered if Gavin’s phone would work after all this time. I got up and went to the living room where I’d left the box. When I tried to turn it on, nothing happened, which was expected. I sifted through the box in search of a charger, thinking there wouldn’t be one in there, because why would anyone save that, but that was exactly what I found at the bottom. Interestingly, I also discovered a small plastic baggie with SD cards in it. I gazed at it for a moment before deciding to take it back to my room where I plugged the phone in to charge.

  My stomach growled, as if I hadn’t just eaten half a pizza by myself a few hours ago. Thankfully, the morning sickness had abated. There were still some smells that made me want to upchuck, but for the most part, I had it under control. My strange addiction to mushrooms hadn’t gone away, though. I imagined that would be with me throughout the pregnancy.

  Standing before the mirror in my room, I pulled my shirt up and looked down at my belly.

  “You little monsters are hungry again?”

  I was really showing now. My belly popped out like a little ball, and if my old pants didn’t stretch, I couldn’t wear them. Even the stretchy ones were getting pushed to the limit. Eventually, I would have to get some maternity clothes, but lately, I’d been wearing Marco’s sweats he’d had at the house.

  “Let’s go get something eat. You kids are going to make me bust out of these pants next.”

  Sofia was in the living room when I went back out. She sat on the couch with the TV remote, changing channels even though her eyes looked unfocused.

  “Hi,” I said as I went into the kitchen. “How’s it going?”

  She shrugged and didn’t look at me. “Fine.”

  It wasn’t fine. I studied her a little more closely and saw that her nose was red. She’d been crying again. I knew she was homesick, and her experiences in America hadn’t exactly been nice.

  “Sofia,” I said her name softly, making her look at me. “You know if you want to go home, you can. We would all understand.”

  She shook her head. “No. I do no want that. I just…I miss Mamma e Papà. I miss lot of things. I be okay. When we move, I be okay. I will be with Marcello.”

  I nodded slowly, unconvinced that she would be okay. Part of the problem was that she spent most of her time helping me with the kids and the move. She had no friends stateside, nor had she’d the chance to meet any. I felt like the worse kind of person, like I was keeping her hostage. It would have to be discussed with Marco, but I decided that I didn’t want Sofia to be my live-in babysitter. We could hire someone for that, if necessary. She was nineteen years old and should have a life, friends, and perspective boyfriends. When the move was done, I was going to make sure she lived her life to the fullest.

  For about an hour, I kept her company. We shared a plate of fruit and cheese and I let her tell me about her friends back home. She talked a lot about Laura and Lucia. I suggested both girls come out for a visit when school let out in a few months. That seemed to cheer her up, along with the food and the conversation. When I left her alone, she was in better spirits.

  In my bedroom, I checked the phone and saw that it was charged enough to turn on. It took me a few tries to guess the code. Surprisingly, it was our wedding date. Once inside the phone, I flicked through his messages, holding my breath, hoping I wouldn’t find anything bad, but most of his messages were from people he worked with and me. My number was saved under Wifey, which was also surprising. It wasn’t like he ever referred to me as such. I wondered if that had always been my name in his phone, or if it was something he’d changed closer to his death.

  With a heavy heart, I pieced together his last day through his text messages and phone calls. The internet search history had cleared, but there were still bookmarks. They confused me, though. There were several saved under the heading Romantic Getaways. Irrationally, I began to panic at the idea that he’d be
en having an affair before he died. That thought hurt more than I would have expected. As I went through the saved pages, that pain expanded, seeing that many of those destinations were places I’d always wanted to visit. Had he planned to take someone else on one of these romantic getaways while telling me he was away for business? Was it something he’d already done?

  Digging deeper, I searched through his emails, but there wasn’t much of interest there. A lot of junk mail and automated reports on sports teams and things like that. I found an email from a person named Brenda Yulmay, MD, but it was a short correspondence about a rescheduled appointment. I found that strange. Gavin and I had the same doctor the whole time we were together, and it had been a man. Was this Brenda person really a doctor, or was this code for something?

  I went into his calendar next, but all the past schedules and appointments were gone. It was strange there weren’t any pictures or videos, but then I realized the phone was missing the SD card. I reached for the bag of sim cards and dumped it on the bed. Randomly, I picked one up and put it in the phone.

  There were a few pictures and a couple videos of the kids, but mostly I saw pictures and files for his job. I had just decided to take the SD card out and try another when I came across an unnamed file. Just for the hell of it, I opened it, and a moment later, my mouth hung open in shock. There were a few pictures of me with the kids, but most of them were of me alone. I was asleep in many, or otherwise unaware of being photographed. There were some of me in the car, or just coming back from a run, my hair out of place and my face pink from exertion. I almost choked when I saw there were even a couple of me seminude in our bedroom. I even found videos of me, some of them were me with the kids, but many were without them.

  Hearing Gavin’s voice did something to me, ripped me open and comforted me simultaneously. I would never hear it again, not in real time, and that was just so fucking sad.

  I had to stop for a few minutes to get my emotions under control. It didn’t matter that our marriage hadn’t been what everyone thought, but his death was still devastating on many levels.

  After a few deep breaths, I went back into the phone. When I came to a video of Gavin, I hesitated before playing it. I was afraid of what he would say or do, which was just ridiculous. From the look of things, he’d been in our bedroom. After another minute of reluctance, I pushed play. He spoke quietly, like he was recording in secret.

  “You’re in the shower now. You always go right to the shower after we have sex, like you can’t wait to wash me off you and out of you.”

  He looked down, swiped a hand over his face, and when he looked back at the camera, there were tears in his eyes.

  “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to fix us. I thought therapy was helping, but then this happens. I’m really trying to be better, but…I don’t know how to fix us, babe.”

  Gavin Jr. or Cora came in the door right then, and the video ended abruptly. I frantically looked at all the memory cards and realized they were dated in Gavin’s handwriting, with the year and month. I popped out the one in the phone and saw that it was the last one. Deciding to start from the beginning, I switched it out with the oldest card.

  What I found changed everything.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Lydia

  The first video on the first SD card was recorded when I was still pregnant with Mandy. Gavin seemed awkward with the camera, but he didn’t let that stop him from talking.

  “This is my first official video. It’s been approximately five weeks since you tried to leave me.”

  His head dropped, but only for a moment before he lifted it again. He didn’t look directly into the camera. When he tried, it seemed to make him more nervous.

  “Lydia, when you tried to leave, it hurt me really bad. I told you I loved you and didn’t want you to leave, and even though it came out all wrong, I really meant it, and I still do. You know I’ve had difficulty with expressing my emotions for years, since Anna.”

  That had been true. When his first daughter died, Gavin had shut down emotionally. It was necessary in order to care for my sister.

  “I haven’t been the best husband. I’ve been inattentive and moody, and I’ve taken it out on you at times, but you aren’t the cause, Lydia. You’ve never been the cause, but after what happened last month, I know you think differently. Maybe I should’ve done it years ago, but after you almost left, I knew I needed to get some help, because I am so fucking afraid to lose you.”

  He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. I could tell he was struggling, but still he powered forward.

  “I’ve been going to therapy once a week for the past month. My therapist recommended I try to record myself saying the things I struggle to say out loud. Honestly, I don’t know if it’s going to work, if I will get any better, but I have to try. I love you, Lydia, and I’m doing this for you, for us, and I hope you see that.”

  The first video ended, and I felt like the breath was knocked out of me. I couldn’t decide how to feel. My emotions were all over the place. I thought hard about what he said about expressing himself. I considered what he was like after Anna passed. Even though he sometimes talked to me about the things going on in his head, he’d mostly been silent about his feelings.

  Those thoughts only left me more confused and a little angry. Admitting he had issues discussing his feelings wasn’t good enough for all he’d put me through.

  I scanned through more videos before I came to another confession. This one was about two weeks after the first.

  “My therapist told me I should talk to you—in video—about our past. She thinks it will be easier for me to get everything out all at once. Then I can show you at some point, and we can talk about it. I know it seems stupid, but it does feel easier, less pressure to talk this way. I know I can’t go on talking to you through this stupid phone, but this is just a start for me to be able to communicate better with you. I don’t know where to start, and I don’t know how to tell you all this without being considered an asshole and a bad person.”

  A deep breath, and then he tried to look at the camera but still couldn’t quite do it.

  “Before Lily got pregnant with Anna, I was going to break up with her,” he admitted. “I loved her, but it wasn’t enough. I always had this awful pressure in my chest, an uncomfortable feeling when I was with her. It didn’t feel right. The pregnancy surprised me because she was supposed to be on birth control. She freaked out when we found out; she was really upset. So, I knew by her reaction that it wasn’t something she’d done on purpose. I know it’s horrible for me to say that, but it had crossed my mind. I didn’t feel right breaking it off at that point and thought maybe my discomfort was just anxiety from school and just trying to survive.

  “When Anna died, I was devastated. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, and when Lily went into that deep depression, that feeling in my chest increased. I couldn’t even deal with my own feelings from losing my daughter because I had to be there for Lily, but…there was no one there for me.” His voice broke on the last word, and he took a steadying breath and continued. “No one was there for me except for you. You called constantly to check on me, and when you came out for a visit, you really helped me feel better. There was no pressure to be…to be strong around you. Even then, I couldn’t really talk about how I felt, but you let me feel it anyway, even though I couldn’t verbally express it.

  “When I moved back to Ohio, I was considering how to end things with your sister without sending her back into that spiral. I did love and care for her. I didn’t want to see her in that dark place again, but I knew I couldn’t be with her. For the first time in years, I felt like I could breathe, especially when I was with you. The more time you and I spent together, the better I felt.”

  He finally looked into the camera. Even though I knew he’d been talking to me all along, it felt like he could see me as easily as I now saw him.

  “You made me laugh. You kept me on my toes. I loved h
ow you were unapologetically yourself. You cursed like a sailor, smoked too much weed, and you were crude and a little slutty. Lyd, you were a fucking mess, and I loved all of that about you.”

  His soft laughter was like a caress, like a nice feeling from an unexpected source.

  “By the time we slept together, I’d already fallen hard for you. I just hadn’t been able to admit it to myself. I felt so guilty that night. I didn’t want to be with Lily, but I didn’t want to betray her. And as for you, I knew you’d been with a lot of other guys, but I didn’t want to treat you like that. I didn’t want to treat you like a quick fuck. Not you, and never from me.

  “I don’t know how to explain how I felt during those weeks apart. I regretted doing something that would hurt Lily, and I regretted possibly making you feel like I’d been using you. I had a lot of regrets, but Lydia, I’m not going to lie here. I had zero regrets being with you that night. I wanted more—not just more sex, but more from you. We needed that time apart, though. I needed to think. I didn’t know how to break things off with Lily with minimal damage and retain our friendship. I wanted to be with you and didn’t know how to go about that, either. Everything was so complicated. Then you showed up that day…and everything went down with Lily and…”

  Gavin looked away, and even though his eyes were averted, I saw the shame in his face, the glistening of his eyes. When he spoke again, his voice quavered.

  “I fucked up. I never meant to make her do that. I didn’t mean it. It really messed with me. Part of me still wanted you, but after what happened with Lily, after all that blood…and almost losing her…the worst thing I could do after that was come to you. I felt so fucking guilty.”

  He wiped his eyes, and I wiped mine.

  “I never told you this. No one knows but my parents, but before you came to tell me about our baby, I was planning to…I was going to…” He covered his face, and his words came out muffled. “I was going to die, and I mean that literally.”