Giulio has never deceived me like this before.
He has never hidden something this big from me.
Just last week I told him about the car parked in front of Helena’s house after our fight on Addilyn’s anniversary. The same one he confessed he saw of a similar description follow him from the florist. We agreed to contact SPD if it happened again.
Giulio broke our promise. He shattered my glimmer of hope. He stopped it all for me.
“How could you not tell me? I am her mother! I deserved to know!”
“I didn’t tell you sooner because of this exact reason. I don’t want you feeling this false hope. We have to face reality. We have to move forward and that can only be done without distractions of potentially false leads.”
“Don’t tell me things like that! My daughter—”
“Our daughter.”
“Our daughter will return to us. You should have told me they called. Is this why you’re so lenient with me? Why you took care of me and held me? Why you allowed me to stay the night and teased me this morning with that damn honey? Why you mended my panic attack? Was it all out of guilt?” Anger laces my every word because I’m so sick of people concealing the truth and deciding what’s best for me behind my back. “I don’t know what to believe anymore. You…you know this hope is what I crave and you suppressed it, pretending nothing happened. I bet you felt bad for me and thought all of what I just said could make up for it. You should have known better.”
Giulio’s lack of response is all I need.
Whatever passionate desire we had for each other this morning has fizzled out. Good. This explains everything. It was all out of guilt because he knew about this new clue and didn’t tell me anything.
When I picked up that wedding photo earlier, I felt something. Now I feel nothing. There was so much love within his eyes back then. Those piercing, bluish-gray eyes can’t even look at me now. They no longer hold the same warmth and richness. They are tired, owned by a broken man, looked at by a broken woman.
There’s no reassurance, only a disconnection.
The memory lingers like a bitter aftertaste. I find it hard to believe that standing in front of me is the same man I married in Fiji. That we are the same couple who vowed to face any challenge life threw at us together. That we’d ‘always find our way back to each other.’
How could he have looked at me all day and concealed something I held so closely to my heart? How can our tragedy be managed when lies are thrown into the mix?
Damn him!
“I’m sorry, but this…” Shoving the newspaper in my bag, I wave my pointer between us and then the office space surrounding us. “…isn’t going to work. I’ve caused enough damage here. Kindly find somebody else to replace me. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to see you. I want to be with two of the only people I have left.”
Giulio comes alive solemnly wrapped in a bare whisper. “Where are you going?”
“I’m picking up Oscar and Slonne. I think it’s best if they stay with me tonight.”
“Okay, but you can’t pick them up now. They still have an hour of school left.”
Tears cascade down my cheeks. “Watch me.”
I’m so lost.
Giulio doesn’t trust me. He doesn’t understand how much I crave this information. He’s afraid of how I would have reacted, but little does he know withholding the truth from me makes everything a whole lot worse.
As much as it hurts, this only proves how different we are.
How much we have changed.
And why I need to do this without him.
To protect me.
I know that is why Giulio hid it, but we’d committed to upholding integrity throughout our relationship, even during our separation. The thoughts will explode in my mind if I don’t talk about it more. It’s my own type of progression. I need to discuss it all with the two women I love the most in this world.
“If you quit, it means you did it with the best of intentions.”
“I’m not so sure,” I tell Helena with a sigh. “I wish I heard the news out of his mouth first.”
Marissa, my mother, brushes a piece of her dark bob behind her ear. She’s joining us for dinner since my father’s in Austria, his home country, visiting family until mid-October. My parents are childhood sweethearts. The way they still look at each other, as if it’s the very first time, fills this void inside me. Their love story reminds me greatly of Helena and Ben, who met in sixth grade and were inseparable up until the very end.
Life doesn’t always go as we plan it. Nobody expected Helena to be a widow so young. Nobody expected Giulio and I to fall apart after seven good years. Sometimes life just changes, just like the night and you’re thrust into this new world and forced to adapt to the new ropes.
Mom sighs. “You’re right, Valencia. He won’t let you off the hook that easily.”
“Well, he can’t bribe her either. It’s her choice!”
“I should have never taken the job. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Darling, I know why you did it,” Mom says, motioning towards Oscar and Slonne in the dining room playing with their cousins. “Them. You thought maybe this would open a door so they wouldn’t feel hurt. I would have done the same, but when betrayal is thrown into the works it’s better to look after your own. The twins…and Addilyn love you both regardless.”
I stare down at my glass of water with pursed lips. Before picking up the twins this
