Cry Like A Girl

Chapter 18

Susan spent most of the night awake. Henry knew this because he spent most of the night awake as well. Not a word passed between them once he turned the lamp off, but rather, they lie shoulder-to-shoulder listening to each other's uneven breathing and fitful sighs. The conversation they'd had before turning in had settled like dust, each of her words a stinging truth that would keep his mind from shutting down long enough to sleep.

Some people were the type to analyze a situation until it was picked over like a Thanksgiving turkey, but not him. Instead, he'd gather the necessary information, process it, and spit out a solution. Clean and simple. He always found those who analyzed to the extreme to be incapable of making a decision. But lying in bed and unable to sleep, he found himself analyzing every word of their conversation in a repetitive loop.

The truth rose with the sun. She was right. There wasn't a dishonest or misguided word in anything she had said. He could ignore her tears and walk away from her anger, but the truth... the naked truth was bigger than he was, and it refused to be ignored.

He hadn't been fair to her. From his affair, to his relentless need for success, to his underlying reason for marrying her—he'd been unfair. Pleasing his family had been the driving force behind his proposal. He had cared about her when he asked her to be his wife, naturally, but did she rock his world, send chills up his spine, and invade every one of his waking thoughts? No. But then, could any woman do that?

Camille.

Camille had done all of those things and then some. But he realized something in the darkness of night that had never occurred to him before. Camille was like the most badass roller coaster at Hershey Park. The anticipation was so enticing, people were willing to wait in long lines and risk losing their lunch on the four-minute ride just for the sake of having had the experience.

He had been willing to risk his marriage, his job, and only God knows what else for a shot at Camille. What he realized was that like a ride on the roller coaster, an affair begins as exciting and exhilarating, but eventually, the end becomes as anticipated as the beginning once was.

He and Camille had reached the end of their ride.

He sat up in bed and slid his phone off the nightstand. No messages. He squeezed the bridge of his nose between a thumb and index finger. Considering his inability to reach her and the lack of response to his many calls and texts over the last two days, he began to think he wasn't the only one to realize the roller coaster had come to a full stop.

* *

The only announcement made during yesterday's meeting that had caught Henry's interest was that the brother's wouldn't be available until Monday evening. As soon as the meeting was over, they were heading to the airport where they would travel by plane and then by boat to get to their favorite fishing retreat in Bimini. They seemed to take the same vacation just as the summer was winding down each year. Normally, Henry wouldn't care one way or the other, but today, it gave him the opportunity to skip the office without questions. His personal life was foremost on his mind and going to work to sit hunched over his desk all day would not motivate him to produce a winning budget.

Climbing a ladder to the garage roof and hearing Susan's elderly aunt's dramatic account of how she will surely drown in her bed in the next rainstorm wouldn't have been his choice of ways to spend a day off, but it was supposed to rain again later in the day, and he had promised. So he threw on a pair of Levis and a Penn State sweatshirt, and grabbed a banana on his way out of the house.

Relief washed over him when a small voice on the other side of the apartment door acknowledged his knocks. Susan's aunt was in her late eighties and there was no euphemism for old. He always worried that one day he would come to make repairs and his knocks would go unanswered, forcing him to break in. He envisioned finding her lying on the kitchen floor where she had fallen, in a pool of coagulated blood and as stiff as rebar, or floating in the bathtub, grotesquely swollen and unrecognizable. But finding a corpse was only part of the reason he hated visiting the apartment.