My Biggest Mistake

by Leddy Harper

  “I’m just asking that you think of them.” My voice had turned into a wounded whisper, deep and shaky.

  “Yeah…you see, that’s what I’ve been doing while you’ve been enjoying the single life. I’ve been thinking about them. In fact, I’m thinking about them now, which is why I’m asking you to back away.”

  “No. You’re asking me to back away because you’re angry with me. You want to get back at me for what I did. You want me to hurt. Congratulations, Donnie, I’m hurting. You can be mad at me all you want, but by keeping them from me, you’re only hurting them in the long run.”

  “Mad at you? Is that what you think? You think I’m mad at you and that’s why I’m acting this way? You have no fucking clue how I feel. You don’t know the first thing about how I feel.”

  “Then tell me,” I pressed.

  Our conversation was heated yet quiet, both of us needing to spare the kids from hearing our words. They weren’t paying a single bit of attention, anyway. They were fighting in the back of the van over which movie to watch on the built-in DVD player.

  Donnie shook his head, seeming exasperated. “We’re leaving.”

  “Let me go with you,” I pleaded again.

  “We’re going to a family barbecue, not really sure you’d fit in.”

  Another low blow by Donovan Leery, knocking the wind out of me. “Whose? Your family? I’d love to see your parents. It would give me a chance to apologize and explain it to them since you’re too stubborn to listen to me.” That had been somewhat of a lie. The idea of confronting his parents frightened me, but I knew there would be no way around it. If I were to give this my all, reconnecting with my in-laws was a must, no matter how hard it would be.

  His eyes turned to mine and conveyed a deep sadness in his narrowed eyebrows and laxed jaw. Except, I didn’t know what the sadness meant. Did he feel sorry for me? Was he trying to spare me the pain of facing his family after what I had done? I was sure they were just as disappointed in me as everyone else, but they had loved me since I was fifteen. They never treated me any differently than they did their own children. I’m sure that counted for something.

  “No. It’s not with my family. It’s with Beth’s.”

  His words cut through me like a large, sharp knife, digging deeper and deeper into my heart. They sliced me open and left me bare, bleeding out in front of him. I had nothing to say. The dry knot in my throat would’ve kept me from speaking even if I’d had a response. I could only stare at him, trying to control my expression to keep him from knowing just how badly he had hurt me. I didn’t want him to have that satisfaction.

  “So, I take it the two of you are serious?”

  “You should really quit trying to win me over. If you seriously want to have the kids in your life and be a mother to them, focus on that. Focus on them and regaining their trust. Forget about me. It shouldn’t be that difficult, you did it two years ago.”

  Without thought, I shoved him in his chest, not hard, but enough to make him step back to regain his balance. “That’s what I’m talking about, Donnie. You say I have no idea how you feel…well, guess what? You have no idea what I went through. You have no idea how I’ve been feeling for years now. But you won’t hear me out.”

  “If you really wanted me to hear you out, you would have stayed and talked about it with me. You wouldn’t have left me a fucking note that didn’t explain shit. That was your opportunity to talk to me and you didn’t take it. Sometimes in life, you miss out on things and the opportunity never arises again. This would be one of those times.”

  “Yeah…you’re absolutely right.” I conceded and turned to head back to my new house—the rental that would probably become more of a permanent residence than I had originally expected. Donnie was right, I had to give up on him for the moment. I had to focus primarily on my children, and that was exactly what I’d do.

  When I made it back to the front yard of my rental, I picked up my screwdriver from the front flowerbed and began digging away at the window track again, this time with purpose, taking out my frustrations on the broken window.

  “What are you doing?” Donnie yelled from behind me.

  I turned and noticed that he’d pulled the van up in front of the house and had the window rolled down. He leaned the top half of his body out of it with his arm resting against the door.

  “Fixing the window,” I answered, wondering why he even cared.

  “You won’t fix it that way. It’s broken, needs to be replaced.”

  “How do you know?” I shouted back to him, covering my eyes from the sun.

  He smirked and shook his head. “It’s what I do, Edie. I took a look at it a while ago for Nancy. The track is bad. The whole thing needs to be replaced. Measure it out and give me the dimensions. I’ll pick up a new one for you.” He paused and his expression changed, hardened almost. “If you want, I mean. But if you’d rather waste your time digging away at it and making it worse, then by all means…”

  He didn’t give me a chance to respond before he rolled his window up and continued down the road.

  I could feel the smile spread on my face and the acceleration of my heart.

  I held on to the tiny piece of paper in my hands, listening to it crinkle as I flexed my fingers and peered anxiously through the window to the empty house across the street. I had done as he’d asked and measured all three broken windows. Now, all I had to do was wait for Donnie to return from his family barbecue where he was with Beth.

  The longer I sat on my suitcase, the more I realized I needed furniture. At least a couch. And I probably needed a television set, too. I knew I couldn’t spend my days looking out the window, waiting for Donnie to come home. It just wasn’t healthy.

  When he finally pulled into the driveway hours later, I summoned up the courage to walk over there. My heart raced in my chest with each step I took, worried at how his demeanor would be. He had the tendency to be very cold to me, talked to me as though he hated me, which he probably did. But all I could think about was the look on his face as he pulled up in front of the house and told me about the window. It seemed almost nervous, maybe a little shy. He didn’t show any sign of anger toward me, and I only hoped that was the side of him I’d see again as I took him the measurements.

  Donnie was in the middle of helping the kids out of the van as I approached. He looked over at me, but then he turned his attention back to the task at hand, ignoring my presence.

  “Daddy, who’s that?” Mikey—or maybe it was Gavin—asked, pointing a finger at me as he climbed out of the van. It tore me up that I still couldn’t tell them apart. I wanted to wrap my arms around them and hold them until I could tell who was who.

  “That’s our new neighbor, son. She lives across the street.” He closed the sliding side door and turned to me. “Let me get them inside and I’ll be right out.” Without waiting for my response, he turned and hurried the kids to the front door, leaving me standing alone in the middle of the driveway.

  While I waited, I began to move closer to the front door, not wanting to be the odd neighbor that just hung around in the open for all to see. I took a look around, noticing the front yard and how well he had kept it up. The shrubbery was trimmed, the grass perfectly cut, and the rocks in the beds were neat. That was something he didn’t do much of when I was there. It made me wonder if he had somehow found the time to do it or if he had hired someone.

  Or maybe Beth tended to it…

  The front door interrupted my thoughts as it opened. Donnie stepped out and ran a hand through his wavy hair as he walked toward me. I couldn’t discern the look on his face, though. Was he irritated? Stressed? Mad? I didn’t know, but I knew he wasn’t happy. I only hoped it wasn’t because of my presence…even though that was a given by that point.

  “I took the measurements for the windows that need to be replaced,” I stated to let him know I hadn’t come over to hang out. I held out the piece of paper as my proof and he took it from me without ever loo
king up.

  He glanced over it and nodded to himself. “So, three windows, right?”

  “Yes, that’s correct. The front window, the bedroom window, and the small one is for the kitchen window above the sink,” I explained to the top of his head since he still hadn’t looked at me.

  “That’s no problem. I’ll go sometime this week and pick them up. I’ll call Nancy to make sure they’re good with her first, though. And then I can install them over the weekend. Is that fine?”

  He finally raised his head and regarded me with a soft expression. I noticed the deep pain in his eyes and it made me want to reach out and touch him, to offer him comfort the way I used to. But I knew I couldn’t. He wasn’t ready to let me back in. He had been adamant about that.

  I twirled my rings around my left finger, keeping my hands occupied so that I wouldn’t touch him. The urge to reach out was strong and I knew I had to do something to keep from acting upon it. The second I opened my mouth to answer him, he grabbed my hand, essentially stopping the words on my tongue.

  His fingers lightly touched the rings, running a fingertip over the center diamond and spinning the plain gold band behind it. He wore a perplexed expression, eyebrows drawn tight and his lips slightly parted. Once his eyes met mine again, confusion and questions shot through me with his intense gaze.

  “When did you put these back on?” he asked, not letting go of my hand.

  “Two weeks shy of eight years ago.”

  His dark eyes bounced between mine and the rings he continued to touch. “You’ve never taken them off?”

  “No,” I said softly, shaking my head for emphasis. “I’ve worn them every day since you put them there.” I suddenly found myself feeling insecure. With a deep breath, I allowed my attention to move to his left hand.

  My heart stopped beating and weakness took hold of my body. His finger was bare, not even a faint tan line present, symbolizing his ring had been off for a while. I had no right to ask, nor did I want to hear the answer, so I kept my mouth closed and tried to focus on my breathing.

  He dropped my hand and shoved his in his pocket, but it was too late. The damage had been done because I had already seen it. He didn’t need to hide it from me, but I appreciated the gesture nonetheless. It was as though he’d tried to spare me my feelings. It was evident that he had moved on and I hadn’t.

  “Did you leave me for someone?” he asked in the faintest, most desolate voice I had ever heard come from him. Like the question had been on his mind for a while and he had finally found the courage to ask.

  I shook my head adamantly, but I didn’t think that was enough of an answer. “No. Never.”

  “I thought you might’ve met someone and ran off with him.”

  “No. That wasn’t it. There was never anyone else,” I answered honestly. “I’ve only ever loved you.”

  “So you were just stressed?”

  I wasn’t sure if that had been his way of discussing things, or simply getting the answers to the questions he had been left with for years. I didn’t want to push too hard, fearing he would give up and end the conversation, so I answered the questions he’d asked and didn’t embellish.

  “Yeah, I was really stressed.” I stopped myself from saying anything else, knowing that if he knew the truth, he would never give me another chance. He would never forgive me and that would be the end of it.

  A long exhale passed through his lips as he scratched his jaw. It made me yearn to feel what it was like to have his facial hair beneath my fingernails. His hand ran from his jawline to his hair and then down the back of his neck. The muscles in his arm flexed next to his ear and I realized I’d been paying far too much attention to what he was doing. I needed to snap out of it if I had any hope of finishing this topic in one piece.

  “Why didn’t you just come to me, Edie? Why couldn’t you talk to me about it? That’s the part I don’t understand. I was always there for you, anytime you needed me. I would have done anything for you, but instead, you just left. You never even gave me the chance to understand.” His voice broke me. The desperation in his tone made it very clear how painful my departure had been. I’d always known he wouldn’t have been fine after I left, but I guess I never realized how much it would have broken him.

  “I’m pretty sure I was suffering from post-partum depression. I was twenty-three years old and had three babies. I didn’t have a mom to turn to, and your mom never did anything other than point out every single mistake I made. I love her to death, but one can only take so much before they snap. I worried most of the time that you thought the same as she did. So in my mind, if I went to you, you would have told me the same things she did. I couldn’t handle hearing you tell me in a nice way how much of a piece of shit I was. All of that made me depressed…and sad…all the time. You know that I never left the house unless I didn’t have a choice. You knew I wasn’t okay—you used to ask me all the time what was wrong—”

  “That’s what I’m saying, Edie,” he interrupted me. “I asked you all the time to talk to me. Instead, you closed up and chose not to. You chose to tell me everything was fine. You were just tired. You had a headache, you had a stomach bug, you had this or that. Not once did you tell me you were feeling depressed. You shut me out. You closed yourself off until you couldn’t take it anymore and then you left. I was in the dark for everything…because you put me there.”

  “I know,” I admitted quietly, reaching out to touch him.

  He took a step back, rejecting my affection.

  “I fucked up, Donnie.” I raised my voice, needing him to hear me. “I made a mistake and I know that what I did was wrong. I know I can’t go back in time and change anything. But I’m here now. I’m trying to make it right. I’m trying to do the right thing now. My head was in the wrong place two years ago. I was living in a fog—I was tired, I was stressed, and I was scared. Think about it for two seconds, please. I was young and going through things I had never experienced before. Other than you, I didn’t have a support system. All of my friends were just as young as I was, and most of them were single and busy with college. I cried every night in the shower to myself because I was too scared to talk to anyone. My fear was that someone would think I was crazy and then take my kids away—”

  “It couldn’t have been that big of a fear if you just walked away from them.”

  I shook my head, hoping to dispel the tears that were forming behind my eyes. The stabbing sensation had become a nuisance to me and I needed to get through this without losing it.

  “I told you, I wasn’t thinking clearly. In my fucked-up brain, leaving them was better than having them taken from me. I thought if I gave myself some time, I would be able to clear my head and come back.” My voice had raised so much I had begun to yell. How did this conversation turn so quickly? It began as a mature discussion but was now an argument, one I didn’t want to have.

  “And it took you two damn years to rid yourself of the stress?” he asked, making it sound as if I’d been lying. His tone was disbelieving and harsh, coming at me with enough power to knock me over.

  “No.” My answer came out breathy, and I had to steady my emotions before I continued. “I found myself in a worse depression. Most days, I didn’t know if I’d make it through. I got your emails and messages, and it only made things worse for me. That’s why I deleted everything. It wasn’t because I was trying to cut you out…I was only trying to stop hating myself.

  “I’d had this neighbor who was fucking persistent. I didn’t know it at the time, but she was a retired psychologist. I opened up to her after a while and she helped me through a lot of it. Without her, I don’t even want to think about what would’ve happened to me. It took a lot of time, but I was finally able to see things clearer. I wanted to come home. I regretted what I did and wanted to make it right. But I was so scared of what I’d come home to find. I was scared of how you’d react, how the kids would treat me, what our friends and family would do. That’s why I stayed away.
I was ready to come back a year ago.”

  “What’s the difference now? If you were too scared a year ago, why weren’t you too scared this time? Did you run out of money? Is that what it is? You came back because you needed something?” What had started out as a sincere question, quickly turned into an ugly accusation, and it both hurt and pissed me off.

  “I don’t need money. I had a job while I was gone and lived well below my means. I didn’t come back because I needed anything from you.” My tone was hard as I spoke the words through clenched teeth. “I came back because I no longer give a fuck what anyone else thinks. I only care about making things right and getting my kids back.” I took one step in his direction. “That’s all I care about. You and our kids.”

  I thought he would have moved away when I came toward him, but he didn’t. Instead, he took a step toward me as well. We ended up standing only a foot apart from one another. Donnie was much taller than I was—his chin could rest easily on the top of my head—so I had to stare at his chest. My emotions were all over the place and I couldn’t decipher if I wanted to shove him or lean into him. I didn’t know if I wanted to walk away from him or hug him. And as soon as I lifted my chin to look at his face, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to yell at him or kiss him.

  His callused hands held my face in front of his, forcing my attention to his pained eyes as he spoke softly to me. His words were filled with agony and the way our faces lined up, it was as if they left his lips and landed on mine. I breathed them all in, absorbing them. “Why didn’t you just talk to me? If you would have come to me… If you had only given me the chance to help you, things would be…”

  I held my breath as I waited for him to finish his sentence, but he never did. He left it hanging in the air between us, a piece of candy on a string in front of a baby. “Things would be what?” I anxiously asked in short pants, needing to know what he’d been about to say.