My Biggest Mistake

by Leddy Harper

  I closed the garage door quickly, hoping to avoid bringing too much attention to myself, and then made my way inside. It was dark and empty, reflecting my own life. The air in the house smelled stale, reaffirming that it’d been a while since anyone had lived here. I took a moment to absorb it, standing in the empty living room in the dark. The sun had been long gone by that point and the only light I had was from the lampposts outside, shining through the windows.

  The blinds were open so I moved to them, looking out at the street—at the house across the street. I could see the lights on inside through the front windows, but that was all I could see. The van—my van that I had abandoned along with my kids—and another car were parked in the driveway. It was the same car that had been there when I’d shown up that morning. I didn’t know whom it belonged to since I’d never seen it before, but had assumed it belonged to Donnie. I didn’t want to think what it would mean if it belonged to Beth.

  The more I allowed that thought to cross my mind—the idea that Beth could’ve still been there—the more miserable I became. Images began filling my mind’s eye with the two of them playing house…in what had been my house. My husband and my best friend playing the happily married couple, and my best friend playing the doting mother to my kids.

  I moved my suitcase against the wall beneath the window, using it as a stool while I stared out across the street. It was beyond torture and probably on the cusp of insanity, but I didn’t care. I needed to know what was going on, what I was up against. I needed to compile all the information before I went at this full speed ahead. Nothing would discourage me from fighting for my family, but I needed to have all the pieces of the puzzle first.

  Emotions ran through me as the time slowly ticked by. At first, I felt betrayed. How could Beth do this to me? How could Donnie do this to me? I forced myself to stop asking those questions and began lecturing myself. They didn’t do anything to me…I did this. I’d been the one that left—chose to leave—giving them my unspoken blessing to lean on each other. Except, I hadn’t died.

  And we weren’t divorced.

  By nine o’clock, the upstairs lights turned off. The windows over the garage went black and I knew that meant the kids had gone to bed. That’s when I became encompassed by complete and utter pain. It consumed me until I’d been left feeling an ache worse than any physical pain I had ever experienced. My heart felt literally broken like shards of glass, slicing me open from the inside out. The worst part was that I couldn’t blame anyone for the pain but myself. At that moment, I hated myself and what I had caused. I couldn’t help but think about all of the bedtimes I had missed. All of the baths I wasn’t there for. All of the stories I didn’t get to tell them, and all of the snuggles I had given up. I was the worst human being alive. I never would have labeled myself as a selfish person, but the reality of how selfish I had been was oppressive.

  The downstairs lights were still on, and I could see them through the dining room window to the right of the front door. There was no movement from what I could tell, but the lights were on, meaning he was still awake. Or they…but I couldn’t think about that. Instead, I tried to imagine what he was doing behind that closed brown door. Was he watching television? Was he getting ready for bed? Was he having a drink to relax from his day? Was he with her…no, I didn’t want to imagine that.

  I wondered if he’d thought about me, about seeing me earlier. I wanted to know how he felt, other than the anger that I already knew consumed him. It killed me to know he was a stone’s throw away, yet I couldn’t reach him. I could call him, but he would only hang up on me. I could knock on his door, but he’d close it in my face. That’s when the self-hatred overtook my emotions.

  I had reasons for why I left…real reasons. They were sucky ones, and I was sure no one would understand them, but regardless, I had them. They weren’t excuses and, at the time, I didn’t feel I had any other options. However, over the time I’d been gone, I was able to see my choices more clearly. But by that point, it was already too late—the damage was done. I could have come back then, but I allowed my cowardice thoughts to prevent me from it. Being a coward made me leave…being a coward kept me away. I would not be a coward any longer. Yet there I was, sitting on my suitcase and staring out the window at my old life, cowering away in the darkness.

  I was just about to give up when I saw the front porch light come on.

  I stood up and parted the blinds further with my fingers. Two bodies stepped out through the door, coming into view under the yellow light. One was Donnie, wearing a T-shirt and jeans slung low on his hips, the way I used to love seeing him dressed—relaxed. The other was a woman, standing in front of him with her hands in his. I sucked in my breath and held it—it was Beth. I didn’t need to see her face to know it.

  He held on to one of her hands and then walked her to the other car in the driveway. The car I had been scared to admit was hers. In the light from the lamppost only a few feet from where they stood, I could see him hold her face in his hands as she leaned her back against the car door. I didn’t want to watch what I knew would come next, but my eyes wouldn’t close. My head wouldn’t turn, and my feet wouldn’t move. I stared out the window like some nosy neighbor and waited for the moment that I knew would decimate my already shattered heart.

  My hands shook as I tried to keep the blinds open, fear and pain wracking my body. I could feel my face burn and my eyes swell with tears. My throat closed and each time I swallowed, it felt like I was choking down shards of glass, followed by pure acid. I was glutton for punishment by sitting there and watching their romantic exchange.

  However, even though I knew in my gut what was coming, nothing could have prepared me for the moment when he bent down and kissed her. Luckily, a shadow crossed their faces and kept the intimate moment hidden from my eyes, but knowing what they were doing was just as bad. It was no different than standing in front of them and seeing it up close.

  All of the emotions I had felt for those few hours I’d sat and watched through the window came rushing back at me. Betrayal, regret, self-loathing, pain, resentment…all of it filled me at once, wreaking havoc on my nervous system and leaving me feeling like an empty shell. My stomach was knotted and my esophagus burned as if I could’ve thrown up on the spot, but nothing happened, which was even worse. I was stuck with that feeling as I just stood there, watching my husband kiss my best friend in front of our house while our kids were asleep upstairs.

  After what felt like an eternity, Donnie finally pulled away from her, grabbing something out of his pocket. It lit up in front of him and I realized it must’ve been his phone. He waited in the driveway and watched her pull out into the street, waving at her as she drove off with the phone to his ear. I thought he’d go inside once Beth’s taillights were no longer visible, but he didn’t. Instead, he stood in the driveway alone, talking on his phone from what I could see.

  He looked over his shoulder at the front of my new house. I quickly closed the blinds enough to stay hidden, but still kept it open enough to see him. He only glanced, though, and turned back to the house.

  After one faltering step, he turned back and squared his shoulders at the window I’d been looking out of. His stature hardened as he stood stoically still, realization becoming apparent in his stance. Suddenly, he began marching down the driveway and into the road, one bare foot in front of the other in long strides, carrying him across the street.

  I flipped on the light to the front porch and opened the door, closing it loudly behind me. The harsh sound cut through the quietness of the late night air, startling me, yet it seemed to have no impact on Donnie.

  He stalked toward me and didn’t stop until he was two feet away from where I stood against the closed door.

  The very first thing I noticed about him was his hard posture squaring off with mine. He had his arms crossed with his hands tucked under his biceps, causing the muscles to bulge beneath the sleeves of his T-shirt. Distant memories of touching those
arms and feeling them wrapped around me flooded my mind. My eyes roamed up his chest and to his face, that’s when my posture softened, giving way to what I’d witnessed.

  His lips—thinner top lip with a perfect cupid’s arrow and slightly fuller bottom lip that used to naturally curl up into a smile—were stiff and pressed into a hard line. His eyebrows were drawn, leaving deep creases in his forehead. To anyone else, he would look menacing, angry, but to me, he looked torn, distraught. His heavy breathing caused his chest to rise and fall rapidly as he blinked questioningly at me.

  No words came to me, leaving me with nothing but a blank stare to give. Inside, though, my heart squeezed tight and my stomach had moved up into a constricted ball in the center of my ribcage. All of my nerves were fried, shaking frantically as if I had just been shot with a Taser gun.

  Donnie dropped his arms, taking in a deep breath and releasing it as his head hung. With his chin to his chest, he shook his head, raised his hands in the air as a gesture of his giving up, and then turned around without a single word spoken.

  “Donovan,” I called out, my breath catching at the end.

  He didn’t turn around, but he did stop, pressing his hand to the wall next to him as if he needed it to keep him from falling over. His still hadn’t lifted his head, and beneath the light, it made his back look larger than I’d remembered. Had he been working out? It’d been something he had always talked about doing, but never made the time. Seeing him in front of me proved that without me in his life, he had found the time.

  I reached out and placed my palm on the back of his broad shoulder, feeling the hard muscle quiver beneath my touch. It was only for a split second, though, because he shook my hand off. I had expected him to move away, but he didn’t.

  “Talk to me, Donnie…please,” I begged, no longer caring how desperate I sounded. And I did sound desperate, that was evident enough to my own ears. My tone made it obvious that I was on the verge of more tears, but I had promised myself I wouldn’t cry anymore. I would fight instead.

  He spun around, looking at me with a shocked expression. “Talk to you?” He sounded out of breath and it was enough to make my own breathing accelerate. “Edie, I tried to talk to you. I tried for a very long time to talk to you, but you made that a little impossible. You shut off your phone, changed your number, deleted your email accounts. I had no forwarding address, no clue as to where you ran off to. I called your mom, yet she had no idea you had even left. All I had was a fucking letter that you left me. There’s only so much talking I can do to a piece of paper. And now you come back and want me to talk?” He raised his voice, and it only got louder the more he spoke.

  “Yes, Donovan. I want you to talk to me. I want us to talk—me and you. I know the things I did and can’t begin to imagine the pain I’ve caused you. I know that showing up here after disappearing for so long won’t make things right…but talking will. We need to talk, it’s the first step to making this right.” I sounded so confident, so sure of myself—however, inside, I was anything but. I was weak and afraid, desperate and alone.

  “You want to talk? Fine, I’ll talk. I’ll talk and you’ll listen. And you better hear every word I say because I won’t repeat myself,” he growled angrily, moving his face closer to mine in the process until I could feel his hatred on my skin. His dark eyes blazed with fire and I longed for the soft blue pools that used to be. “You left. You packed up your shit, withdrew money from our account, sent the kids off to the sitter, and wrote me a bunch of bullshit on stationary I bought you for our fucking anniversary. You waited until I was gone at work, working my ass off to give you the world, and then you slipped away. Gone. Poof. Never to be heard from again.

  “I tried to be sympathetic with you. I tried to understand where you were coming from. I would have done anything for you—anything! Your fucking bullshit letter said you needed a break. Let me explain something to you…a break is going to the salon. It’s getting your hair done. Your nails. It’s going out with your girlfriends to the movies or doing some shopping. You know I have never stopped you from doing any of those things. A break is getting away for a few hours, taking a breather—I get that. I know exactly what it’s like to have three small children…I also know what it’s like to have three small children and work fifty hours a week. Walking away from them is not a break. Running away from the only people in the world that will love you unconditionally is not a break.”

  “I know—”

  He slapped his palm against the door behind my head, interrupting me and causing me to flinch. He boxed me in with the door to my back and his solid form in front. His forearm was so close to my face I could feel the heat radiating off it. My already clenched heart grew even tighter in my chest and I had a hard time breathing, as if the world had lost its supply of oxygen and I had to fight in order to find some. I’d never seen Donnie like this before and it both scared and saddened me.

  “No…you don’t know, Edie. You don’t know a damn thing. I thought maybe you’d be gone a day and then come back. That didn’t happen and so I thought maybe a week. After a week, you’d surely come to your senses and be ready to come home. A week came and went and you were still gone. You were still not answering my calls, my messages, or my emails. So, okay…a month. A month is a really long break, but who knows, maybe you just really needed it.

  “The kids asked about you every single day for that month. Every. Fucking. Day. I tried like hell to spare them from knowing you had abandoned them because the last thing I wanted was for you to come home and have them look at you differently. Yeah…I’m that fucking pathetic that after you ran away, I still tried to spare your feelings. Shortly after a month, they’d go a day or two without talking about you or asking where you were. I’d lie in bed at night and realize they hadn’t mentioned you, and it broke my heart. But do you know the moment in time when my heart stopped beating? When it ceased to beat in my chest? When my life went from falling apart to being completely obliterated?” he asked through tight lips that only grew tighter with each following question.

  I shook my head, unable to answer. I didn’t want to hear it, the truth. I had asked him to talk, but I hadn’t been prepared for what he’d say. I wasn’t ready to hear about the pain and anguish I had inflicted upon the people I loved more than anything. But I’d asked for it, so the only thing I could do was stand there and bear it.

  “Mikey was at the kitchen table coloring while I was making dinner. This was somewhere between month one and month two. Livvy was helping me, watching the water to let me know when it started to boil. Mikey brought over his piece of paper with random marks of green crayon and held it out to me. He was so proud of it.” Donnie’s voice had grown quiet yet remained hard as he retold a story I was sure I didn’t want to hear. “As always, I asked him what it was, preparing to give him my usual praise about how amazing it was and how I had a little artist on my hands. He pointed to a particular line and said, ‘me’ and then pointed to another one and said ‘mama.’ I hesitated for a moment since I hadn’t expected that—his usual art at the time had been unrecognizable doggies and trucks. Nothing more than scribbles of crayon that he believed to be something else. In the time I hesitated, Livvy decided to tell him that his mama was gone. She told him that his mama didn’t love him anymore because she left and wasn’t coming back. She was two and a half, Edie! Two years old, telling her little brother that their mother didn’t love them anymore!”

  I gave in and succumbed to the grief that his words inflicted. Without moving, I allowed my tears to run free, to flow without a fight. I couldn’t help the feeling of complete inadequacy that filled me and poured out of me with every tear that made its way down my face.

  “So now that I’ve talked to you, is there anything you want to say? Because once I turn around and walk away from you, there won’t be any more talking.”

  If this was my only chance to say something, I’d make it count. I’d ask the question that had been eating at me since earlier
that morning. But I recognized how potentially damaging his answer could be. I had so many questions bubble up to the surface and my nerves couldn’t decipher one from the next.

  “The kids,” I finally stumbled out. “Can you tell me about them?” I felt new tears fill my eyes, replacing the ones I had just wiped away, but I refused to give them permission to spill over. I didn’t want to keep crying. I wanted to concentrate on every single word that he’d say.

  “I don’t feel comfortable talking to you about the details of their lives at this moment. You gave up that right.” He said the words as if he’d expelled poison from his body, and it made me wonder if we could ever have a normal conversation again.

  “Please,” I whispered, desperate for anything. Even just to know that they were okay. I had seen them briefly with my own eyes, but I just wanted to hear it.

  “They’re fine. They’ve been developing normally and love the preschool they attend. Beth has really helped them adjust. She stepped in where you left off.”

  My heart stopped beating at the mention of Beth stepping effortlessly into my shoes.

  “Are you with Beth?” I whispered, scared of the answer yet frantic to know the truth. It had haunted me since I’d seen them together earlier.

  He pulled away from me and stood up straight, looking me in the eyes. His jaw clenched and for the second time that day, I watched the muscles in his cheek flex. It seemed to be more than an anger issue…it was almost as if he were holding something back, something he didn’t want to tell me.