In the Stillness(54)

Tosha stays in my car and we make the 45 second journey to the ugliest building on Amity Street, in my opinion. Eric’s car isn’t there, so Tosha and I work quickly to load all of my clothes and toiletries into as few garbage bags as possible. Despite my desire to give Eric the full brunt of my emotions, I’m praying he stays away from here until I’m gone. I know myself well enough to know I need time to cool down or I’ll likely make things worse.

On our second trip from the car, Eric pulls in and follows us up the stairs. I’m doing my best to ignore him. Tosha goes into my bedroom ahead of me, stuffing sweaters into a bag.

“Natalie, wait! Listen. What the hell are you doing?” Eric is inches behind me. He slams into me when I stop abruptly.

“I’m leaving you,” I say as I turn around.

He throws his arms in the air. “Just like that? That’s it?”

“No,” I scoff, “not just like that. I left a long time ago, Eric. Now, I’m just bringing my body and my stuff.”

Tosha sneaks past me with a bag in her hands, not making eye contact with Eric, when he grabs the bag from her.

“Stop this, Natalie. Just take a breath—” He’s cut off when Tosha takes the bag back. “Jesus, Tosha, get the f*ck out. This is none of your business.”

“I beg your pardon?” Fearlessly, she squares off to him. “It most certainly is my business when my best friend of more than ten years is put at risk by her man-whore of a husband. You’re such a piece of shit, you know that?” She takes the bag back from him and storms toward the door.

He calls after her. “Get the f*ck out of my house, you nosy bitch!”

“Don’t speak to her that way.” I spin for the bedroom, but he grabs my arm. “Let go of me, or I’ll start screaming for help.” I speak just slowly enough that he knows I’m serious.

“Can’t we just talk about this, Natalie? You don’t even know—”

“What?” I cut him off. “The facts? Got ‘em. The details? Don’t want ‘em. You toted me and the boys along for the last five years so you could look like the darling dad, dashing husband, and perfect doctoral student. My gosh, how does he do it? All along you’re f*cking some coworker over your desk.” My voice cracks over the last sentence.

Eric grabs my shoulders. “You wouldn’t touch me unless I begged, Nata—”

“No!” I scream. “Do not blame this on me. I’ve been horrifically depressed for the last year, and you think I’m just tired of being a mom. I have issues, Eric, and I’ve tried to ignore them to support some * who, as it turns out, didn’t give a shit about me.” I shake free from his hold. “If I wasn’t doing it for you then you man up and leave me before you start screwing someone else. It’s the least you can do. Instead you made me look like a fool and feel even worse. Excuse me. I’m leaving.” I grab the last of my things and clumsily carry them down the stairs

I watch the fight slowly leave his face as he sits on the front stair and watches us drive away. Tosh and I pull away and drive to the storage unit. After a few wrong turns, I find my unit and shakily open the door.

It’s rather lackluster, staring at the things that used to highlight who I was. A wing-backed chair I picked up at an antique store and put in here when I decided I didn’t want kids wiping things on it, and bookshelves and boxes of books that wouldn’t fit amongst the wall space Eric claimed as his. I never argued it. What would have been the point?

I walk to the back to stack a few garbage bags of my winter clothes on top of some other clothes when I see it. A box labeled “Ryker.” I can’t pretend I wasn’t keeping my eye out for it, but now I’m unsure if I even want to touch it.

“Whatcha looking at?” Tosha asks as she steps over a few boxes and meets me in the back.

“Oh . . . you know . . . a box of Ryker’s letters from war.” I roll my eyes as I sardonically pour the words from my mouth.

“Of course,” she deadpans. “Well, you can ignore those . . . or take them back to my place and we can get piss-drunk while reading about the last guy who deserved you.”

Her words shock me. “What? I thought you hated Ryker.”

She puts her arm around my waist. “No. I hate Eric. Always have. What I hated about Ryker was that he wasn’t getting help, and you were self-medicating with a razor blade. And that wasn’t even his fault, or yours. You two had something special—it’s the circumstances that were shitty.”

Her revelation—opposite of what I’ve spent the last ten years thinking—has me reaching for the box.

“We’re gonna need a huge bottle of vodka.” I brush past her and put the box in the back of her car.

“I’ve got you covered.”

“Did you ever think of getting rid of these?” Tosha asks as we neatly unpack the box forty-five minutes later.

Pouring our vodka tonics, I don’t look up. “Not ever.”

“Not even once?” She crooks her eyebrow.

“Not even once.” I add a little more vodka to my glass.

Despite everything that went down, I held on to those letters for dear life. They were the only things that reminded me that the good times were real and the bad times were the nightmare, not the norm. I smuggled them home with me when my dad brought me home from the hospital, and begged him to put them somewhere my mom would never find them; she would have trashed them for sure. So, my dad hid them where he hid his cigars in the garage. I took them with me when I returned to school.