Vivienne's Guilt

by Heather M. Orgeron

  Reid lowers himself to his knees and reaches out a hand to AJ. “Come here, buddy, and shake your cousin’s hand.”

  AJ walks over timidly and takes Reid’s hand. Reid pulls him in for a hug, and I know it must have taken all of the strength he possesses not to show the deep emotion he feels. “How old are you, AJ?”

  “I’m this many,” he says, holding up four fingers excitedly.

  “Yeah, I thought so, buddy,” Reid answers, clearing his throat. “I’m so glad to meet you. Maybe we can hang out sometime, huh?”

  My son’s face lights up. “Do you like to go fishing? We have a lake and a boat!” AJ volunteers.

  “I do. I love to fish.” Reid forces another smile. “I’ve been to the lake house. I actually worked at the camp the summer before I started college. I’ll come by really soon to take you and your sister fishing, okay?” he offers to our son, ruffling his hair as he looks pointedly at me.

  I do the only thing that I can. I nod, and I smile. “We would love to have you guys over anytime.” What I really wish I could say is: Take your hands off of my son. I wish that I could erase this entire meeting. Because as wonderful as it was to see Reid settled and happy...as much as it warmed my heart to see he and Tillie reunited, none of that is worth the fear of not knowing what Reid is going to do. Will he respect my decision or is my entire world about to fall apart again?

  Reid nods. “Great.”

  “Reid, we really have to be going. We’re having company tonight. Julia, it was a pleasure to meet you. You have a beautiful baby,” I say, trying to get out of this awkward situation as quickly as possible.

  “Likewise,” she answers, completely oblivious to the havoc unfolding around her. “It’s exciting to have cousins nearby for Amelia to grow up with.”

  Reid walks over and leans in for a hug. “How could you?” he whispers, and I can’t stop the tears that spill over.

  “I’m really sorry, Reid.” I murmur, squeezing him extra tight for support, hoping for some sign of forgiveness.

  Reid pulls away. “I’m so glad we bumped into each other today. I’ll be seeing you soon.”

  I gather my children and head to the check out without even finishing my grocery shopping. We will just have to make do with what we have.

  After getting Tillie and AJ situated in their seatbelts, I round the car to the trunk and begin loading my groceries inside. I feel him before I see him. If hatred had a form, it would look exactly like the beast of a man standing beside me. I look up from the trunk to face my consequences. “Reid.”

  He stares at me for a moment, unable to speak. He asks a million questions with that look alone, and I’m not going to make him drag it out of me. He’s going through enough.

  “He’s yours...” I whisper while staring into blazing blue eyes.

  “How?” he asks. “Why, Vivienne? Goddamn it! Why would you keep him from me?”

  “Reid...”

  “I know my name, Vivienne. Start fucking talking,” he fumes. All happy pretenses are now gone.

  “Please lower your voice...the kids...” I say, motioning to the back seat.

  He purses his lips, clearly done with my stalling. “Just tell me,” he says quietly.

  “There were two,” I whisper, staring down at my feet.

  “Two what? You aren’t making any sense.”

  “There were two...babies. I...we lost one at the hospital, and I didn’t find out about the other baby until after you were already gone. I didn’t know what to do. I’m sorry, Reid. I’m so sorry, more than you will ever know. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I hope you can at least try to understand what a difficult decision I was faced with. I’m sorry for hurting you, and I’m sorry for not telling you about AJ, but I don’t regret my decision,” I say with finality. As hard as it is, he has to know that hasn’t changed.

  “You don’t regret your...” Reid shakes his head. “You are a piece of work, you know that?”

  “Just hear me out, Reid. You were just a child, and I was sick and so confused. I didn’t even see what was happening in my own home...what I was doing to you. I hurt you. I unknowingly led you on, my husband’s nephew, and for that I will forever be ashamed. But you have to know that I made this decision as much for you as I did for myself and my children.”

  Reid scoffs, “You named my kid after your dead husband, Vivienne. Who were you trying to fool?”

  “Everyone!” I shout, finally breaking. “I was trying to fool everyone. What other choice did I have, Reid? Can you imagine what the truth would have done to Tillie, to AJ, to you, to all of us? Have you thought about that for even a second? Because I did! My God, that’s all I thought about for months and months. Not only would it have humiliated us and our families but our children. How would I explain to my daughter that her baby brother’s daddy is her cousin? It would have completely derailed your life, too. You had already convinced yourself that you were in love with me. This would have made it that much harder for you to ever move on, and look...” I say, glancing across the parking lot, “you have a beautiful family...a wife...a child...”

  He shakes his head. “I have children, Vivienne. A son. A son I don’t even know! A son who I never held as a baby. Who I never was able to feed or change or rock to sleep. A son who is mine! And it was my decision too.”

  “Maybe I was wrong, maybe I...”

  “Maybe you were wrong?” he interjects.

  “Yes, Reid, maybe because maybe I was right and maybe if you had known about AJ, you never would have gone to college and met Julia, and you never would have had that beautiful baby. Maybe you would have kept trying to create something with me, and that would have never happened. Don’t you see, Reid? I could never have been what you needed. My heart is dead and gone. It was buried with Abbott, and I’m finally okay with that. It took me years of therapy to feel confident in the choices I’ve made, and I know that you need time, too. I hope that with that time you will see that I did what was best for all of us. That I had all of our best interests at heart...including yours.”

  “You have no idea how much I loathe you right now, Vivienne,” he hisses.

  As if he slapped me in the face, I recoil, trembling with barely contained emotion.

  “Don’t worry,” he says spitefully. “I’ll keep your secret because now it’s too late for me to change anything. But you listen to me and listen to me good. I will be a part of my son’s life, so if seeing my face is too hard for you, well, that’s just too damn bad...Get over it.”

  “Okay, Reid. I’ll deal with it. Whatever you need.”

  “We’re going to be one big happy family. You will have us over for dinner regularly. I’m going to be the best damn cousin those kids could ever dream of.”

  “Okay...” I nod, ready to agree to just about anything if it means that our secret stays hidden.

  “Starting this weekend. Saturday. I’m going to tell Julia that you’ve invited us over for a barbecue. We’ll be there at six o’clock.”

  “Okay,” I whisper through tears.

  “I wish that you’d had just a little more faith in me, Vivienne. It hurts. I’ll get over it...eventually, but it fucking hurts.”

  “I’m so sorry, Reid.”

  “I know you are,” he says calmly—almost too calmly.

  He slams his fist down on the trunk of my car. Gasping, I jerk back in surprise, but I don’t utter a word as he hangs his head in defeat. There is nothing that I could ever say to make this easier for him. So, I stand there in the crowded parking lot, crying like a fool. I just...stand there...watching this man’s heart break for the second time. All these years later, it’s still just as brutal.

  Reid

  “Reid, does this look okay?” Julia asks while adjusting her top in the bathroom mirror. “I feel fat,” she huffs, frowning at her reflection. Julia was never self-conscious before having Amelia, and I wish there were some way to erase this negative self-image she’s developed over her post-baby body.


  Walking up behind her, I brush her hair aside and snake my arms around her waist. I nibble down the curve of her neck, and just like I knew she would, Julia melts into me. “You look beautiful, babe.”

  “Thank you,” she says, whimpering. “I just...I just wish everything would go back to the way it was before.”

  “Jules, you just had a baby...not even two months ago. Cut yourself some slack. You were beautiful before, and you’re beautiful now. These are quite nice,” I tease, cupping her swollen breasts in my hands.

  She squirms in my arms, giggling. “You like those, do ya?”

  “Mmmm,” I say, rubbing my thumbs over her pert nipples. “I like these very, very much.”

  She moans, grinding her ass into my crotch. “That didn’t take long...Little Reid seems to like them as well.”

  “Hey, we’re just coming off of a six-week dry spell, and you are sportin’ some major ta-tas. Give Ginormous Reid a break,” I retort, laughing.

  “How much time do we have?”

  I glance over at the clock. “About ten minutes, fifteen if we’re fashionably late.”

  Julia turns in my arms, wrapping her own around my neck. She presses kisses across my bare chest. “That’s plenty of time, right?”

  “Damn, Jules...”

  She trails her fingers down to my waist, playing with the band of my boxer briefs. “I didn’t mean it like that...I just meant that maybe we could be quick or...fashionably late.”

  “Hmmm.” I pretend to mull it over while pulling her shirt over her head. “I think you’ve just challenged my manhood.” I slip my hands into the waist of her skirt, pulling it down past her butt and letting it fall to the floor. “Challenge accepted.”

  We’re making the forty minute drive to the lake house—fashionably-fashionably late—and Jules is out cold. Guess we showed her, didn’t we, Gargantuweenie.

  I feel bad about the fact that we’re running late to our first visit, but it’s only a few minutes in the grand scheme of things. And, Julia needed me. If I’m being honest, I needed her just as badly. There is nothing more healing or more invigorating than being inside of that woman. A connection so deep, no words are needed. It’s the only place that I can apologize, and the only way to seek forgiveness for this guilt that is eating away at me.

  It’s been so damned hard keeping this secret from Julia. I swore I’d never lie to her, but I also swore that I’d never intentionally hurt her, and this...this would destroy my wife. So, I’m going to do it. I’m going to keep this secret until I draw my last breath because I would rather live with this pain than to inflict it upon the lives of everyone that I love. I will live each day with the shame of knowing that every time I look into my wife’s trusting eyes, I’m lying through omission. I will bear the guilt that comes with allowing my son to go through life believing that his father is dead when I am very much alive.

  My gut reaction was to blame Vivienne. If she hadn’t taken those pills and led me on...if she hadn’t lied to me...if she hadn’t hidden my child away for all of these years...I walked around for days pissed off at this woman all over again, and then something clicked, and I realized that none of this is her fault, either.

  Vivienne and I are victims of circumstance. Shitty fucking circumstance. The product of two people thrown into each other’s paths when we were most vulnerable. Viv didn’t ask for her husband to die. She didn’t choose to fall so deeply into a depression that she felt the only way to survive was by taking those damn pills. She didn’t ask to become pregnant or to miscarry. Vivienne didn’t intentionally hurt me, and that’s the biggest revelation of all. Because it’s easier to have someone else to blame.

  I was young and impressionable. A horny kid, who’d never been exposed to anyone genuine in his entire life. I was raised in a place where love is superficial, and marriage is of convenience. And then I met Vivienne. A woman who loved with every fiber of her being. Her unwavering devotion to Abbott made me long for something more. I wanted it so badly that I wore blinders, only seeing the things that I wanted to see. I misread Vivienne’s signals and saw something that wasn’t ever really there.

  The love I felt for her was real. I fell fast, and I fell hard. I went off to college with a broken heart, fucking anything in a skirt. I cursed her name for years. God, I hated Vivienne for showing me what was possible and then crushing any chance I had at finding it. No one made me feel even a fraction of what I felt for her that summer.

  And then, halfway through my junior year, I met Julia and everything changed. From our very first meeting, I knew that something was different. She had a confident air that not many girls possessed at our age, and I found her maturity refreshing and so fucking sexy. For the first time since Vivienne, I wanted more. I wasted no time in making my intentions known, and for reasons I still can’t comprehend, that feisty Italian girl saw something in me as well. Every moment we spent together only made us yearn for more. We fell in love quickly and effortlessly. Loving this woman was as easy as breathing. She filled my heart so completely that there was no room for resentment. Loving Julia made me realize that what I felt for Vivienne was only scratching the surface. I stopped thinking of her as the woman who broke my heart and instead became thankful to her for saving me from the path that I was headed down.

  I’ve thought of her and Tillie often, and when we literally bumped into each other at the supermarket, I can’t even explain the level of happiness I felt. It was like returning home after being away for five years. I didn’t realize how much I still missed them.

  But when I looked up and saw him...my son, all of that hatred for her came rushing back tenfold. It’s never easy to learn that someone you love has been lying to you, but this was more than just a lie. This was an outright betrayal. Vivienne robbed me of a relationship with my child. She stole years that I can never get back. I felt cheated.

  Nearly a week has gone by and the choice that I’m making to keep this secret from my wife, the woman I would lay down my life for, has forced me to consider the situation from Vivienne’s perspective. On some level...I get it. Whatever pain I felt that night in the hospital, Vivienne felt it so much worse. I understand all of her reasons, and I know that the truth would have been messy and painful. Selfishly, I still wish that she had chosen differently.

  I flick on my blinker and turn down Vivienne’s long driveway, and while passing beneath the canopy of oaks, a feeling of nostalgia hits me. This is my family...my home. I glance over at my Jules sleeping so peacefully, and I know in my heart that I would do anything to protect her. I would shelter that woman from pain at all costs.

  As I pull up next to the house and shift the car into park, I realize that Vivienne was only trying to protect me. She shouldered all of the responsibility so that I wouldn’t get hurt. While on the surface it seems wrong and selfish, she did the most selfless thing that she could. She tried to shelter me from the pain of having to make the most difficult decision of my life. Because there was only ever one way that this could end.

  I have to let him go.

  12 Years Later

  Vivienne

  This isn’t happening. It’s too soon. I’m not ready...

  I pace the hall, listening to the clicking of my heels echo throughout the wide open space. Taking slow, measured breaths, I try desperately to ward off the panic that’s growing rampant in my chest.

  The bitch with anxiety is that the harder you work to get it under control, the worse it seems to get. Stressing over the anxiety just leads to...yep, more anxiety. Heat floods my cheeks, and I don’t even need to see my reflection to know that my face is beet red. I walk over to stand beneath the air vent, hoping that it will cool my skin enough to bring it back to its natural shade of tan. The ceremony is going to be starting any minute now, and I’m a complete fucking mess. Lovely.

  I lay my head against the wall and shut my eyes, trying to calm my nerves and clear my head. I breathe in and out slowly, and after a couple of minutes, my frantic heart slows t
o match the rhythm I’ve set. Feeling slightly more in control and realizing that I don’t have much time left, I lift my head and open my eyes. “Holy shit!” Where the hell did he come from?

  Reid chuckles, standing only a foot or so away. “Hey, beautiful...been looking for you everywhere. It’s just about showtime.” He takes my hand into his own, squeezing it gently. “It’s okay, Viv. Breathe.” Then, he lifts his other hand and begins righting my flyaway hairs without even giving it a second thought. After all these years, he’s still taking care of me.

  I swat his arm playfully. “Don’t sneak up on me like that. Jesus, Reid...you made me curse in church!”

  “Whoa, I didn’t make you do shit.” He laughs, shaking his head. “I walked right up to you and even called your name a few times...”

  “Liar,” I say, rolling my eyes. “And you can’t curse in here.”

  “Shit, my bad.”

  “Ugh.” I look around, making sure that no one was listening, and narrow my eyes at him. “Stop it...I mean it.” That Catholic guilt is in full effect.

  Reid throws his hands up in surrender. “All right, all right. I quit. You know I just like fuckin’ with ya.”

  “Oh my God!” I suck in my cheeks, trying not to laugh. “I cannot believe you just said that.”

  He smirks. “You can’t believe I said what? Fuck? I say fuck all the time, Viv. It’s like you don’t know me at all.”

  This time, I can’t hold it in. I bust out laughing. “You are terrible!”

  “Sometimes,” he admits with a shrug. “Seriously, though, are you all right? We got worried when we couldn’t find you.”

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Just needed a minute to regroup.”

  Reid pulls out his phone and starts typing. “Gimme a sec,” he says, holding up his finger. “I need to call off the search party.”

  Whoops! “Search party? Who’s all looking for me?”

  “Just Julia and your mother,” he says, shoving his phone back into his pocket.