A Missing Heart(31)

“Why, Tori? Why do you feel this way? What’s making you think this?”

“I don’t know how to love him. No one has ever loved me the way I’m supposed to love him.”

“I love you, T. Your parents love you, so that’s not true,” I tell her. I still have a firm grip on her shoulders, hoping my words are doing something to calm her irrational thoughts.

“Those people are not my parents, AJ.”

“What?” I’m not sure my response came out in anything more than my breath, but suddenly the wind has been sucked from my lungs, and I’m not sure how I even form a sound. Of course they are her parents. Her dad walked her down the damn aisle at our wedding. Her mother cried happy tears that day. Tori speaks to her parents several times a week. Is she telling me a story or is she trying to come clean? I don’t know what to believe.

“Just because they look like parents, doesn’t mean they’re mine,” she snarls.

“So then, who are your parents?”

Tori tears her arms out of my grip and uses the wall as leverage to move away from me. “I will hurt myself before I tell you or any of those pieces of crap who call themselves therapists.” She’s gripping at the roots of her hair as she paces back and forth between the crib and the window on the opposite side of the room. Instinctually, I feel the need to place myself between Gavin and Tori—a feeling I should never have to have about the woman who gave birth to our son, but I’ve never seen this side of her. I’m not sure she’s even aware of what she’s doing. I’ve never had a panic attack, but I think that’s what happens.

“Please stop making threats,” I tell her calmly. “I thought your therapist knew everything about your past. Hours ago you told me you’ve had the same therapist since you were a kid.”

“He doesn’t know the truth, AJ.”

“Does he know he isn’t completely aware of the truth?” I ask calmly. Tori told me her therapist was a “she” earlier, so now I’m wondering if she even has a therapist. If she doesn’t, she needs one immediately. I clearly can’t give her the help she needs.

“No.”

“How can he not?” I press.

“The same way you thought you were marrying a woman without incredible baggage. You were so quick to agree to asking no questions about our pasts. We were on the same page for two very different reasons, but we were on the same f*cking page, AJ. The page that didn’t include children in our empty future plans.”

Empty future plans? “How many times can you say this, T?”

“As many times as it takes for you to understand how serious I was about it.”

“I think I get it,” I tell her, feeling the sarcasm seep through my words.

“No you don’t,” she says, stopping the action of pacing the room. Thankfully, during our back and forth discussion, Gavin fell back asleep.

Tori leaves the room and heads downstairs to the kitchen. I’m surprised she doesn’t trip down the steps with the way she’s carrying herself. I can’t let her out of my sight now after the shit she’s said throughout the past hour. I won’t be able to sleep tonight because of her, not Gavin. She turns on all of the lights in the kitchen and tears open the cabinet high above the stove, pulling down a bottle of vodka. I’m trying to be easy going with stopping her actions. She’s never drunk before with a purpose so if she needs a drink, she can have it, if that means she’ll calm down.

She reaches for a glass from the cabinet near the sink and pours the vodka into it, but I remain still, sitting and watching as a bystander. She’s drinking the cheapest vodka we have in the house and with nothing in it. She’s going to make herself sick.

I lean back against the wall and watch her take a couple of sips. Her nose crinkles and her eyes squeeze shut. “Feel better?” I ask.

“No,” she says coldly, as she opens another cabinet and pulls out a bottle of pills from the back of the bottom shelf. I’ve never seen these pills before. I’ve never really had a reason to go into that particular cabinet she’s in, since I thought it was full of crystal glasses we never use.

“What is that?” I ask her, taking a couple of steps closer.

“They were prescribed, don’t worry,” she says, quickly flashing the bottle in front of my face. I grab her wrist while she’s waving the pills in the air and steady my focus on the small print.

“Why do you have—” Never mind. I can assume why she has a bottle of Valium. I keep my words to myself as she drops a pill into her hand. I remain silent as she chases it with the vodka, mostly because I’m in shock and don’t know what to say.

I’ve never taken anything that strong before, but I can assume it works fairly quickly. “Do you need to see a doctor right now, Tori?”

She finishes the glass of vodka instead of answering me, then slides down the side of the cabinet until she hits the ground. Folding her head into her arms, I watch her back rise and fall at a slow, steady pace, telling me she’s coming down from the panic attack, if that’s what this is.

I sit down in front of her and wait for the next move. I close my eyes as I search my mind for any memory that might hint of her having issues like this. There was one time when her mother called her, asking her to do something, and Tori started to cry really hard, which was not what I would have expected in response to someone asking a favor. She locked herself in the bedroom for the afternoon and night before she came out and asked me to let it go. I let it go. Then, although I sometimes forget about it, there is the sequence of events that took place the day we found out she was pregnant. I think I blocked it out on purpose.