Chapter 19: The Silence
290 Words
Weeks went by.
Text messages and phone calls tapered off.
The kids went back to school.
Life went on.
I hated it.
How could the world move on when mine was put on pause?
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I drove to the grocery store one morning.
I pulled into my spot and turned the car off.
Grabbed my phone out of my purse.
I was about to text Lee.
“Do you need anything from the store?”
My fingers paused over the screen.
I forgot.
Lee wasn’t here anymore.
There would be no reply.
No, “Hold on, hon, let me grab…”
I sat there for what felt like hours.
Well, twenty minutes anyway.
Not because I was too busy crying.
I couldn’t figure out what to do with myself.
With a life where no one was expecting me to do anything.
It’s funny how easily we forget what it feels like to have nothing to lose.
How under FREE do we suddenly become?
I realized something that day.
I had become so used to justifying every minute of my existence…
I didn’t know how to be alone with my thoughts.
Loneliness is a powerful thing.
It makes us believe we need someone.
Even if that someone is bad for us.
Across town, Craig drove his truck home from the lawyer's office that same day.
He signed the papers divorcing his wife of twenty years, the second he learned of her affair.
Neither of them knew it yet…
But two souls who were broken by people who loved them would soon find their way back to each other.
Craig and Becca.
A couple who once rode their bikes together until the porch lights came on…
And their moms called them inside.
- Writer
