Green Card

22 Section 240 (Lucas)

I thought my heart had broken when Piper left the first time. All those years ago, when I took her to the airport myself, saw her board her flight to New York and never look back. I'd felt like I'd lost my chance with her then, like I would never know what we could have been and that was the greatest pain I could have ever experienced. There was nothing worse than the regret of the one that got away.

But there was.

And it came when you had her, truly had her, and then lost her.

I locked myself in my office and did what I always did when Piper Clark left. I threw myself into my work. Luisa and Maria both came to ask me if I wanted something to eat or drink or anything else far more than they usually did. I assumed they'd heard our argument easily enough, having been in the same house at the time. But I ignored them, pushed them away, demanded to be left alone. I stared at project proposals, budgets, projections. I read through memos regarding changing our tax firm, hiring another attorney, or revamping the office. I did what I always did when everything I cared about was spiraling out of control; I made decisions on what little I still could.

I drank a glass of scotch, then another. By the time I went to pour the third, I just left it at the bar and took the bottle. I leaned back in my chair, eyes glazed over from intoxication, and started scrolling through emails on my phone. I noticed one from Nate, sent today, late morning.

Heads up, boss man. Your wife is on her way up to your office and she looks pissed. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Jaw clenched, I took another sip of scotch but it wasn't numbing the pain like it usually did so I took another course of action and threw my phone as hard as I could. It hit the opposite wall and shattered into a million pieces.

That night, I went through more stages of grief than modern psychology is currently aware of. I raged, I drank, I destroyed things. At one point, I even checked for flights to New York but then closed out of that window feeling like the fool I was. Sometime in the evening, the doorbell rang. I made no move to answer it, hoping I could pretend it didn't exist, hoping I could pretend a lot of things didn't exist. But then I heard the footsteps coming down the hall and had to intervene.

"Send them away, Luisa," I called out, taking another swig from the bottle of scotch in my hand, "whoever they are."

"That's no way to treat your mother-in-law," a familiar voice spoke and I looked up to find Mrs. Clark entering my partially destroyed mess of an office. I just looked at the covered dish she held in her hands and frowned. I took another drink as she gazed around at the state of my office and frowned as well. "She's gone, isn't she?"

"Yep," I said, taking another drink. She frowned at me.

"Did she leave before the hurricane?" She asked, raising a brow at the mess around us. "Or, perhaps, she caused the hurricane."

I didn't answer.

"Lucas, dear boy," she said, taking another step forward and sitting down in the arm chair across from my desk. She set her dish down on my desk and crossed her hands in her lap. "What happened?"

I looked at her and hesitated. There was so much we hadn't told her, Piper hadn't told her. I wasn't sure what was fair game and what wasn't anymore. But it felt like now, in light of our most recent spat and all the scotch currently blurring my brain, now it was the time for honesty. At least, about this.

"I told her I'd been paying for Henry's medical bills," I replied. There was an intake of breath and Mrs. Clark closed her eyes.

"Oh dear," she muttered. I scoffed.