April Showers [Unfaithful Rewritten]

7 | oath

7
oath

To love and to cherish, till death do us part.

Ten years ago, I'd taken a vow, to fill the position of a wife to the best of my ability through the age-old ode to love. Every day, every hour, and every minute since then — I'd held that vow close to my heart. And every day, hour, and minute since then — I thought Nate had done the same.

Mom hadn't approved of me marrying so young, even if it was to Nate — someone she loved almost as dearly as I did. Twenty-one, she said, was still the age of exploring, to find who I truly was and put the world in perspective. You didn't see clearly enough at twenty-one. The telescope to the real word was still beyond your reach, if only just.

Like all children did with our linear ways of thinking, I told her I saw clearly enough. I was in love with him, and I was going to marry him. She didn't stop me, but in the days and months that followed there was always something askew in her eyes. Disapproval — I was used to seeing it from her, and so I tossed it aside.

But now things had changed. I had Celia and Joseph, and I told you so wouldn't make our situation any easier, nor the decision any clearer. It wasn't good for their hearts, and it wasn't good for mine. We needed another solution.

I called in to work one day, letting Mr. Irving know that I was going to work from home since I was feeling under the weather. He wasn't too happy, emphasizing that he didn't know what he would do with Carter for the day, but didn't give me a hard time. For most of the day I did work, but come late afternoon I gathered Celia and Joseph and headed down to the car.

"Where are we going, Mommy?" Celia asked in her soft, sleepy voice. She'd been asleep in my arms the entire way from her bedroom, but stirred only when I'd set her down into her seat beside a still-sleeping Joseph. She rubbed her eyes and looked up at me, strands of her pin-straight midnight hair covering her face.

"Shh," I told her quietly as Joseph fidgeted in his seat, "We're going to visit Auntie Julia."

Her eyes — big, grey and blue just like her Daddy — widened, and so did her mouth. "We are?" She questioned in an awestruck tone.

I nodded, putting my finger to my lips once again before leaning over and putting her seatbelt on, and doing the same for Joseph. Celia, as always, wasn't very good at containing herself, and before I had even walked around to the driver's side had Joseph up and squealing about "Auntie" Julia as well.

"Will Phoebe be there, too?" Celia asked hopefully as I climbed into the car.

"Yes," I nodded. I didn't get another word in before a new round of squealing began, with Celia bouncing up and down happily in her seat and Joseph trying his best to imitate her. Their enthusiasm was deafening — and quite infectious — and soon the three of us were sitting in our seats with wide smiles on our faces as we rode off to Auntie Julia's.

Now, Julia wasn't really their aunt. But she was the closest thing to a sister I'd ever had, and the name sort of stuck. She lived in the same county, only a short fifteen minutes away, but we never saw each other enough. I was busy with work and the kids, and she was busy with her own family, which consisted of her, her five-year-old daughter Phoebe, and her husband Mark. They'd been together almost as long as Nate and I had been, and I knew firsthand from many late night sleepovers and TV binges that they had had their fair share of rocky points.