Do Not Disturb(20)
“Like I said, my wife was the cook.” Again, he’s talking about her in the past tense. “It’s just hard for her now.”
Despite the cold, I wipe some sweat off my brow. Shoveling is hard work. On top of everything else, I’m going to be sore in all my muscles tomorrow. “So… this was her restaurant?”
Nick glances behind him at the boarded up building. “Yeah, it was. That was always her dream. To have her own restaurant. And for a while, it was doing really well. Really really well, considering it’s just a tiny rest stop on the side of the road.”
“What happened?” I blurt out.
He looks surprised by my question. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked, but we’ve been shoveling for over an hour. We’ve bonded through our manual labor.
“Well,” he says, “she got sick.” He hesitates a moment. “She has MS. Multiple sclerosis. She has this progressive subtype, and it’s just been downhill the last five years. She can’t even walk anymore, and I’ve been mostly taking care of her.”
“Oh no,” I murmur. “That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.” But there’s a part of me that’s relieved he didn’t confess his wife has paranoid schizophrenia. Instead, she is too impaired to even leave her house. It doesn’t sound like there’s any reason to be afraid of her, even if she’s the jealous type.
“I wanted her to keep running the restaurant,” he says. “I said we could pay to modify the kitchen so she could use it in a wheelchair. But she never wanted to. She’s just stuck on wanting to do things the way she’s always done them, and if she can’t…”
“People can be stubborn.”
He nods. “I get that it’s hard for her. I’m not saying I would’ve taken it well if the same thing happened to me. But she could still do everything she used to do if she wanted to. Instead, she doesn’t want to do anything anymore. She just stays in the house all day, even though she’s going crazy in there. It’s driving me crazy.”
I flash him a sympathetic look, thinking of Derek. “We all go a little crazy sometimes.”
“Right, but…” He puts down the shovel for a moment and looks off in the distance, at his small house. “It’s a lot. On me. It’s hard.”
“I get it.” I bite my lip. “Have you ever thought maybe she would be better off… at another place somewhere?”
There’s a sudden flash of anger in his mild brown eyes. “Another place? You mean like a nursing home?”
“Well…”
“She’s my fucking wife.” His gloved hand turns into a fist. “She’s only thirty-five. I’m not sticking her in a nursing home. Are you kidding me? What kind of person do you think I am?”
I take a step back, my grip tightening around the shovel. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I was just…”
I didn’t even realize I was holding my breath until Nick’s shoulders sag. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have jumped on you. You didn’t mean any harm. I shouldn’t have been complaining. It’s my fault.”
I’m shocked how quickly the fight went out of him. If this were Derek, it would have been the start of him screaming at me for hours and mentally torturing me for days. When I dared tell him once that his mother’s casserole was too salty, he changed the locks on the front door so I couldn’t get in the next day. (And believe me, that casserole was essentially a salt lick.)
“It’s okay,” I say. “You probably don’t get to talk to people much out here.”
“That’s for sure.” He smiles crookedly. “Anyway, thanks for listening. We’re relatively happy out here. I mean, things could be better. But it could be worse too, right?”
“Sure,” I say. You could be on the run after killing your husband. Or maybe you didn’t kill him, and he’s coming after you. So yes, things could be worse.
“Oh hey,” he says. “I think that’s my phone ringing.”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“It’s on silent. I feel it buzzing.” He pulls off his right glove, revealing pink fingers. He digs around in his pocket and pulls out his phone. “Hey, Rosie. What’s wrong?”
I watch his expression change as his wife speaks to him. He turns and takes a few steps away from the car. His voice is lower this time but I can still barely make it out. “I’m just helping her dig out her car,” he murmurs. “She’s stuck in the…” He ducks his head down. “No……… Rosie, come on, that’s not...” He lets out a long sigh. “What do you want me to do? I have to help.”
I wince. Greta was right—it looks like I’ve gotten him into trouble with his wife.
He lowers his voice a few more notches, and now I’m having trouble hearing him. Finally, he hangs up the phone. For a moment, he looks annoyed, but then he shakes it off.
“Sorry if I got you in trouble,” I say.
He waves his hand. “It’s fine. Do you want to try the car? See if you can get it going?”
I look doubtfully at my Corolla. We have gotten all the snow off of the car, but we’re still basically sitting in an ocean of snow. How am I supposed to drive out of here? But I’m willing to give it a try. I don’t have to get that far.