Broken Love Story
By Natasha
Madison
Release
Day- July 10th
Samantha:
I had the perfect life; a husband who loved me, and two
kids who were my world.
Until someone else answered his phone and my perfect life
shattered.
When he died, I was left with answers he couldn't give me
and a box full of lies.
He left me broken.
Blake:
I fell in love when I was fifteen, knowing she was the
one.
For five years, she was my everything—my every breath,
every heartbeat, every thought.
She made me promise to move on, promise to find love
again, but I broke those promises because I can't move on.
Two
broken souls brought together by tragedy and heartbreak.
Can
a broken love story be fixed?
EXCERPT
Samantha
Standing in front
of the full-length mirror in my room, I smooth down my black skirt. My blond
hair is tied up in a ponytail, my cheeks are sunken in more than normal, and
the blackness around my eyes indicates I haven’t slept well since this whole
thing happened. Since I found out that not only did my husband die, but that he
also married someone else.
I sit on the made
bed and look down at my wedding band. My thumb of my right hand touches it, and
the lone tear that falls out of my eye lands straight on it. “Mommy.” I look
back at Lizzie, who is standing in the doorway wearing a black one-piece dress
similar to mine with ballerina flats.
My mother-in-law
went shopping yesterday and bought us all new outfits for today. “We need to
put our best foot forward,” she said as I watched her walk in with the six
bags. “We can’t let people talk.”
I turned around
and walked out of the room, going upstairs. Shutting myself in my bathroom with
my back against the door, I cried quietly, trying to hide my sobs. “We can’t
let people talk,” I whispered to myself. The hatred I had begun feeling when I
remembered my husband.
Lizzie walks to
the side of my bed and sits next to me. “I hate this dress,” she says when I
put my hand around her shoulder and bring her to me, kissing her head.
“I know, baby,” I
whisper, “but after today, it’s going to be all over.”
“That’s what
Grandpa A said.” She mentions the name she calls my father-in-law. Grandpa A
because you can’t get better than an A.
“Is everyone
ready?” I hear Ethan yell from downstairs. “The limo is picking us up in
twenty.”
“Let’s go, baby,”
I tell her, getting up and holding her hand while we walk downstairs. My
in-laws are both sitting in the kitchen. My mother-in-law in a black skirt and
top while my father-in-law has on a black suit. “Where is Daisy?” I ask them.
“Elliot is
upstairs changing her. She spilled milk on her dress,” Judy tells me, looking
at Lizzie. “You look like such a big girl.” She blinks her tears away.
Elliot comes down
the stairs with Daisy on his hip, smiling at me when he walks in. “Okay, you
girls go sit in the living room while us grown-ups talk,” my father-in-law
says, and the girls both know to leave the room. When he knows they are both
out of earshot, he starts. “Today is going to be tough, tough for us all, but
we have to stand together. We have to be the family that we are.” I lean
against the counter while he talks. “The situation with the other one has been
taken care of, and she has been served papers.” I look at him and then at
Elliot and Ethan, both of them looking down when our eyes meet. It’s almost as
if they feel guilty for meeting this woman. My father-in-law continues, “After
all this is done today, we are meeting with the lawyers in person, so we can go
over the will, start the paperwork for the insurance, and make sure she doesn’t
touch a thing that belongs to him.” I stop listening at this point, turning to
look out the window at the backyard.
The swing set that
he built in one day to make sure the kids could use it when he left
the next day. The patio set he had delivered to us, so I could have somewhere
to sit while I watched the girls while he was living with another woman. I
shake my head, walking out of the room. I sit on the couch, and the girls come
to sit next to me, one on each side. “Today is going to be really hard,” I
whisper to them, “but we have to be strong for Daddy.” They both look at me,
their eyes exactly like their father’s. “But, if at any time, you need to leave
or you need me… I don’t care who is talking to me or who is around; you come
and get me.”
“Grandpa A said we
had to sit and wait,” Daisy whispers just as Elliot comes into the room and
kneels in front of us.
“What is this
meeting about?” he asks, smiling at us. The circles around his eyes are just as
black as ours. He hasn’t left our house since this happened.
“Mommy said if we
need her that we can go to her,” Daisy says, looking at him and then me, “even
if Grandpa A said no.”
He leans in,
whispering, “You can come to me too, and I’ll make sure that you get
Mommy.”
“Okay,” Lizzie and
Daisy both whisper at the same time, and then the doorbell rings.
We get up, put our
jackets on, and one by one file into the black limo that has come to take us to
the funeral home. We arrive before everyone else. “We get an hour with him, and
then they will open the door,” Adrian says as Judy grabs her tissue and dabs
her eyes.
I look around the
funeral home. I’m not sure what I’m looking for, not sure where he is. I
haven’t seen him since he kissed me goodbye four days earlier. His last words
to me were, “Call you when I can.” That phone call never came.
I follow my
in-laws to the big brown door that is closed. “I want to go in before the
girls.” Everyone turns to look at me.
“We can keep them
in the lobby,” says the lady who greeted us at the door. She told me her name,
but I just didn’t listen.
I nod at her as
she turns to ask the girls if they want hot chocolate. Daisy’s eyes get big as
Lizzie turns to look at me. I nod my head, giving her permission, so she can go
with the woman.
The doors open,
and I don’t even know what to expect. I’ve never been to a funeral. Never known
anyone well enough to pay my last respects. Judy and Adrian walk in first,
followed by Ethan, and Elliot waits with me. I step foot into the room, and
it’s so cold that I shiver. The smell of flowers hits me right away, making me
turn my head. The number of flowers and wreaths shocks me; the whole room is
almost full. Some wreaths blocking others. Rows and rows of brown chairs line
the room, all facing toward the front of the room. My eyes land on the brown
wooden casket at the front of the room. The open half showing you the white
satin inside. I walk down the aisle toward him, and then my eyes land on him.
Eric. I can’t take another step forward because my knees give out, and I fall.
Elliot isn’t fast enough to hold me up, and my knee lands with a thud. But the
pain doesn’t matter because nothing could take the place of the pain in my
heart. The sound of wailing fills the room as I look up at my dead
husband.
I feel arms around
me; I feel myself lifted; I feel myself almost floating. He isn’t the Eric who
kissed me goodbye; he isn’t the Eric who I made promises to; he isn’t the Eric
who made all my dreams come true. This isn’t him.
The man with
makeup caked on his face isn’t my Eric. My sobs overtake my body as I
look at him, expecting him to open his eyes. Expecting something, anything but
this. “I want the casket closed,” I say, my voice soft. “I want it closed.”
“Samantha,” my
father-in-law starts, “it’s—”
I shake my head.
“I don’t want the kids to see him like that,” I say softly. I know that for me
they wouldn’t even consider it, but for the girls, they would move heaven and
earth. “They need to remember him alive and smiling, not like that,” I say,
pointing at the casket.
“Dad,” Ethan says
after me, “I agree.”
“Me too,” Elliot
says from beside me. “Close it.”
He just nods at
us, then walks to the man standing in the corner. The man looks at him as they
have a hushed conversation and then just nods his head. “Do you need some
water?” Ethan says to me, and I nod. I don’t bother listening to what else he
says; instead, I get up and go to the casket. Standing before the brown box, I
look at him, really look at him. You see some bruising under the makeup, and
his nose is a little swollen. His hands are folded over his stomach, resting on
his black suit. The suit he wore when we got married. Why? I ask him in my own
head. Why did you do it? I ask him, hoping I can hear him whisper something to
me, whisper anything back. To answer my questions, to give me something; anything
to make me understand why he did what he did. Why he left me with so many
fucking questions and not one answer.
The man comes over
to close the casket. Eric’s face disappears slowly, the shadow filling his face
till the casket finally shuts. “I’m sorry for your loss,” the man says, nodding
at me. “If at any time you want it open, we can open it back up.” I turn around
now, looking at the chairs that will fill up as soon as the people start coming
in. Ethan consoles my mother-in-law, and Elliot stands where we were just
sitting, his hands in his pockets.
“I’m getting the
girls,” I tell them and then walk out with my head held high but my shoulders
slumped. Defeated is a word that you use so many times not really understanding
what can actually defeat you. I know now, my husband dying, him cheating on me,
my kids without a father, my dreams of growing old with him gone. Beaten
straight down to my core, straight down to my bones.
I walk over to
them as they look up. “Let’s go, girls,” I tell them as they both get up and
walk to me. Lizzie takes one hand, Daisy takes the other, and we walk back into
the room that holds a piece of our hearts. The room where their father lies,
with no answers and no tomorrow.
We stand in that
room for four hours while people come up to me and give me their condolences. I
nod my head and play the part of the grieving wife. I am the grieving wife, but
I’m also the wife whose husband didn’t love her enough to just be with her. The
wife who knew her husband was slipping away but couldn’t catch it in time. The
wife he said he would love and protect. The wife who stands here between his
girls wishing that for one second he suffered horribly. The wife who has to
pick up the fucking pieces and lie to her girls about what a great guy he was.
The wife who, at the end of the day, just wasn’t good enough.
We listen as
people tell us how amazing he was, how much he loved his family, and how much
he loved his girls. The whole time, I’m yelling on the inside, ready to stand
in the middle of the room, throw my head back, and yell at the top of my lungs.
But I don’t do what I want. I don’t tell them what a fraud my husband was. I
don’t tell them that it was almost all lies. I don’t tell them that the day he
died, they called his other wife and not me. I don’t tell them that I wasn’t
the one with him when he died.
I stand here
thinking about this other person—his other wife—and wonder how she would handle
this. How she would be with my in-laws. Would she just let them control her and
do everything for her? Would she want it to be open and weep for him beside the
casket instead of standing next to it?
I look around the
room at all the people who came to pay their respects, and my eyes find someone
I’ve never met before. Someone I’ve never seen before, and our eyes connect.
His green eyes stare into mine as I watch him nod to me and turn to walk out.
As he walks out of the crowded room, I strain my neck to watch his back. I
don’t have long to think because Elliot comes up and whispers, “It’s time.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
When her nose isn't buried in a book, or her fingers
flying across a keyboard writing, she's in the kitchen creating gourmet meals.
You can find her, in four inch heels no less, in the car chauffeuring kids, or
possibly with her husband scheduling his business trips. It's a good thing her
characters do what she says, because even her Labrador doesn't listen to her...
