Rough Edge (The Edge #1)(20)

“Fine. Good.” She shifted in her seat. She’d had a hard time sitting still since she got back.

“Did you sleep?”

“Some. The pills helped. Thank you.”

“But not entirely?”

“Nah.” She flipped it off as if it wasn’t a big deal, but her eyes were ringed in pink and purple.

“Did you have the dream again?”

“Yeah.”

The dream was a recounting of a child torn apart by an IED. She’d been eight and screaming in pain. When Leslie recalled the memory, she said she screamed for hours while she tried to find a medic, but on further investigation, it had been a minute and a half before the girl died in her arms.

In the dream, the girl was her daughter.

“Something this week… my wife got freaked out. She said I should tell you.”

“Should you?”

“Yeah, probably.”

I waited.

“When I woke up from it, I didn’t know Mindy.”

“How so?”

“I went into her room, and I knew the room and all the stuff. But the kid sleeping there? I was like, who is she? She was a stranger.”

“How long did that last?”

“A minute… maybe ten. Molly came into the kitchen and was like, ‘Are you going to wake her up for school or what?’ and then I came to.”

“So you’d describe it as a fugue state? Did you have the feeling you were half asleep?”

“I was… I forgot the entire thing after not knowing Mindy.” She shrugged, and that wasn’t a normal reaction for someone who’d lost a bunch of time.

“Is that the first time it happened?”

She looked away. “Yeah. I told Molly I really didn’t want to talk about this.”

I wasn’t letting her off the hook. We had four minutes, and it was hers to use to talk or not. Her decision, not mine.

“When I was a kid, I lost some stuff. Few hours here and there.” She shifted in her seat. “My dad used to come to my room and do things. It was… I knew he did it, but I would forget the actual thing if you know what I mean.” She made a nervous laugh, and I held onto a non-judgmental, non-enraged, almost inhuman detachment.

“I want to pause for a second. I heard both parts of that, and if you—”

“Is it time to go yet?”

“We have a couple of minutes”

“I don’t want to talk about this right now, okay?”

“Okay, but you’re safe here. Any time.”

She stood. “I should get going.”

I adjusted her sleeping pill dosage and asked her to keep a log of any more feelings that she wasn’t where she was supposed to be, or that she didn’t know the people around her. She agreed, apologized profusely, and left.

I hurt for the little girl she had been, and promised myself I’d do everything I could to help the woman who came to my office.

I briefly made the connection between Leslie Yarrow’s dissociation and my husband’s. It was a symptom of PTSD and needn’t be a personal betrayal.

That realization was my medicine for the rest of the day.



* * *



It was dark by the time I went back up to the house. Everything was perfect. He hadn’t left a crumb behind. Not a note or a rumpled sheet.

Calling got me his voice mail. I beeped him, but he didn’t call back right away. I heated up dinner. Got into my pajamas. Put on the TV. Shut it off. Listened to the traffic outside. Went to the bathroom.

His clothes were in the hamper. Underwear. Slacks. A pale blue shirt that brought out the depth of his eyes. I gathered it in my hands and pressed it to my face, expecting to smell fresh coffee grounds in stale sweat.

I got something much more floral.

Feminine.

This is not cologne.

My blood took a second to boil. In that pause, I checked again. Definitely perfume.

Oh, fuck no.

No no no.

I was out the door so fast I didn’t change out of my pajamas and almost forgot to put on shoes. I stuffed my feet into Keds, put on a long coat, and caught a cab at Columbus Circle.

Because, no. We had a deal and the deal included fidelity. Non-negotiable.

Deep breath.

People cheated for a reason. Either it was personal, and they were just cheating assholes. Or it was situational, and a cheating asshole was in a situation where it was easy to cheat. Or it was us. And that last option stuck in my craw, because even after years of talking to people about why they found themselves betraying or betrayed, it was now me. And if it was the relationship, it was me, my fault, what I delivered or didn’t deliver.

I’d come to a strange life in a strange city to be with him. Maybe that was the problem. Or maybe we didn’t work as a couple outside a war zone. Or maybe he liked it hotter than I was used to.

Fuck this. It wasn’t my fault.

He owed me better than touching another woman. Saying sweet things to her. Those were my kisses and sweet words.

Or maybe there was none of that. Maybe it was all warm holes and quick spurts.

The disloyalty was bad, but not knowing the exact terms of the betrayal was eating every brain cell not occupied with breathing.

My phone rang on the way. I flipped it open.

Him.

Was his dick wet with her? Or was he on his way there?