“What?”
I can’t let you go.
He had to let her go.
He loved her too much to force her to watch him deteriorate. She’d feel obligated to stay with him and care for him. He couldn’t ask her to sacrifice her life for him. He was supposed to protect her. Her happiness was his responsibility. She’d nurse him to the end, never complaining, but being miserable. He couldn’t stand it if she looked at him with regrets.
His ringing cell phone gave him the reprieve he needed to pause and put the conversation back on track. “It’s not me,” he announced, sliding the phone back into his suit jacket.
Erika hesitated, but the incessant ring made her answer. He watched her closely, checking her reaction when she saw the caller’s identification on the screen.
“I can’t talk now,” she said. A few “um-hmm’s” and she hung up the phone, finding it difficult to look him in the eye.
“The hospital?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Is something wrong?”
“No.”
He suspected he knew the caller, but he didn’t ask right out. He penetrated her with a stern narrowing of his eyes. He wanted to snatch the phone and return the call, getting indisputable evidence that Erika had moved on and was seeing another man. He’d suspected it for months but hadn’t been able to catch her outright.
“It sounded as if you were trying to be cryptic.”
“We were in the middle of an important conversation. Should I not have taken the call?”
He studied his brilliant wife, who was answering without answering, and throwing the blame back at him. She was right, and he was wrong—on so many levels—and it made his blood boil.
“Who would be calling at this time of night?” he asked, not expecting an answer but wanting one.
“Are you screening my calls now?”
“Just wondering who’s calling my wife.”
“You gave up the right to question my calls when you walked out the door.”
She couldn’t have hurt him more if she’d hit him over the head with a pot.
“Who does have the right, Erika?”
Her cell rang again. This guy was impatient and possessive. Possessive of another man’s wife. He felt his insides come to a slow boil while acid poured into his stomach. He was so mad his temples throbbed, and he felt he was going to do something very irrational.
“Yes?” Erika answered, a little irritated with the caller. “No. No, I can’t talk now. I will. I will. I will.”
I will? His wife making promises to another man? His vision turned green, and without thinking, he snatched the phone from Erika’s ear. She managed to hang on long enough to push the button to end the call. He didn’t know this model of phone as well as he knew his own, so it took him a minute to find the sequence of buttons to display the last caller’s identification.
“What are you doing?” Erika snatched at the phone, but he wouldn’t let it go.
“I want to know who’s calling my wife.” He pushed frantically at the buttons, desperate to identify the guy.
“You can’t barge in here and run my life.” With those harsh words, she caught him off guard and grabbed the phone away. “Brock, I can’t do this with you.”
He’d never come this close to laying an angry hand on her. He never pushed or shoved or snatched anything from her before, and his level of jealousy scared him. “I’m sorry,” he apologized sincerely.
“I can’t do any of this anymore. We’ve fallen apart, and I had no warning and still don’t know why it happened.” She was breathing hard, her chest heaving. “I don’t want you to move back in.”
“You can’t stop me.” Suddenly, he felt desperate not to lose her. His emotions were all over the place. He was completely out of control.
“No, I can’t. So you go ahead and move back in.” She pushed back from the table, standing and gripping the back of her chair. “You move back in, and I’ll move out.”
CHAPTER 5
“You look like hell,” Ginnifer said. She was the buxom nurse-practitioner working with Erika at the internal medicine clinic. She’d been a find, and Erika knew she couldn’t have handled the expanding volume of patients without her. Besides being an excellent employee, Ginnifer was a great friend. She lived an unconventional lifestyle, sharing a home with two lovers. She was smart and dynamic, and all the patients and staff loved her sense of humor. She had been the first shoulder Erika cried on when Brock walked out of their marriage.
“You look like hell,” Ginnifer repeated. “And I’ve had to correct three of your orders this morning.” She flopped down in Erika’s office. “What’s going on with you?”
“I didn’t sleep much. Brock and I are fighting.”
Ginnifer closed the door to Erika’s office and then returned to her seat. “About what?”
“I filed for divorce.”
“No kidding?”
“He didn’t take it well.”
“He left you.”
“I know. He won’t give me a divorce. And he wants to move back in.”
“He wants to get back together?” Ginnifer was delighted, always having liked Brock.
“Not as far as I can tell. He just wants to live back at the house.”
“That sounds crazy.”
“The whole situation seems crazy to me, and I don’t want to try to figure it out anymore.”
Nothing was crazier than the day Erika came home and found Brock packing his bags. The action was so incongruent, it took her an extraordinary amount of time to process what was happening.
“Do you have a convention this month?”
“No,” he answered, pointedly not looking at her.
“Has something happened to one of your brothers?”
“No.”
“Why are you packing? Did I forget something on your schedule?”
He stopped fiddling with the suitcases, straightened his back, turned to her, and shattered her world. “I’m leaving you, Erika.”
She laughed. “Stop playing around. Where are you going?” She moved down the private corridor connecting the master bedroom to the master bath. She stepped inside her walk-in closet, flipped on the light, and began removing her suit. Even today she remembered every silly action, the sound of the light switch, the indentations left in the carpet from Brock’s shoes.
“Erika.”
If she could have stayed in the closet and never, ever have turned around, she would have. She froze, recognizing the serious, unwavering tone of his voice. If she didn’t look at him, it couldn’t happen. He wouldn’t leave.
“I’m sorry,” he’d said, as if that explained it all.
“Why are you leaving?”
She heard his soft steps approach. “I have to.”
“Is there someone else?” Her voice was even. If there was another woman, it made sense. Somewhere deep inside she hoped there was another woman. She couldn’t stand thinking he’d leave her because she hadn’t loved him enough. He was her world and everything in her life was about loving him.