HIS FORSAKEN WIFE HIS GREATEST REGRET

starved And Angry

Roberta's POV

"It's the right thing to do," Brett said.

His hand was still around mine on the console. He hadn't let go when I said it and I hadn't pulled away and we drove like that — the divorce sitting in the air between us like something that had finally been named after existing unnamed for too long.

Our fingers tangled together on the console between us.

We drove in silence.

Then: "What about Ziva?" He asked. "When do you want to bury her?"

The air left my lungs.

I stared out the window. The houses passed. The trees. The empty sidewalks.

When do I want to bury my daughter?

The question sat in my chest like a stone.

Brett glanced at me. His thumb moved across my knuckles.

"Roberta?"

I couldn't speak. Something in me went completely still, the way water goes still right before it freezes. The whole car felt it. I felt Brett feel it.

He glanced at me.

He looked at my face. At the tears I didn't know were falling. At the way, my jaw was tight.

"Did he do something to you?" Brett's voice was low. Careful. "Did Jace say something? Did he hurt you?"

I shook my head.

He didn't hurt me. He just didn't see me. He never saw me. And now he's upstairs. In our bed. With her.

The silence in the car was so loud I could hear my own heartbeat.

***

He pulled into the driveway.

He turned off the engine. Then he came around to my door before I had processed that we'd stopped. He opened it. Offered his hand.

I took it and got out and he walked me to the front door and unlocked it and I stepped inside and the warmth of the house came around me and I just stood in the hallway.

"Roberta." His voice was behind me. "Did something happen at Jace's house?

"Nothing happened. I'm fine."

I moved toward the stairs.

"You're not fine."

"Brett—"

"You came out of that house looking like—"

"I said I'm fine."

I kept walking.

His hand closed around my wrist.

I froze.

"You're not fine," he said again. Quietly. No argument in it. Just fact.

Something cracked open.

"What do you want from me?" I turned. My voice came out loud — louder than I meant, louder than the hallway needed. "What else do you want? I came out. I'm standing here. What else do you want me to be right now?"

Brett didn't flinch. He didn't let go of my wrist. He didn't step back.

"I understand," he said. "I understand how you feel."

"No, you don't." My voice cracked. "No one understands. No one knows what I just saw. What I've been seeing for eight years."

The tears came. Hot. Fast. I couldn't stop them.

"He was touching her, Brett. In our kitchen."

I was shaking.

"He was—" I stopped. Started again. "They were — Ziva is dead. He killed her, and he was in that kitchen having s*x with my supposed best—" My throat closed. "How. How does a person do that. How does a person be that way. How do you be that while your child is—"

I couldn't finish the sentence.

"Millie replaced me." The words came out raw. "She's been replacing me the whole time, and I didn't — I was lying in that bed wondering what was wrong with me, why he wouldn't touch me— why he never—"

I heard myself. Then I stopped talking.

Felt the heat rush to my face.

I realised that I had just told Brett that Jace had never wanted me. That I had spent years in a bed beside a man who had given everything he had to another woman and left me with nothing. That I was s*x-starved.

I looked at the floor.

The embarrassment of it sat on top of everything else like a final indignity.

Wonderful, I thought. Now he knows that, too.

My face burned.

Brett stepped forward. He didn't say anything. He put one hand against the back of my head and the other flat against my spine and drew me gently forward until my forehead was against his chest.

I resisted for exactly one second.

Then I didn't.

Something gave way in me — not loudly, not dramatically, just a slow structural collapse, the way a building settles. My fingers found the fabric of his shirt and held on. He was warm and solid and his hand on the back of my head was careful and steady and he didn't say it'll be okay or you're strong or any of the things people say when they don't know what else to do.

He just breathed.

Slow and even.

And I matched it without deciding to.

We stood like that in his hallway. His hand moved almost imperceptibly against my hair. My fingers still in his shirt.

I don't know how long.

Long enough for the shaking to stop.

Long enough for the worst of it to pass through me and out the other side, leaving behind something quieter and colder and more workable.

I pulled back.

Just enough to look at him.

His face. Close.

I wiped my face with the back of my hand.

"You were right," I said. My voice was different now. Steadier. "About Ziva. I need to get her out of the morgue. I need to bury her."

Brett nodded. "I can handle that. Whatever you need. She'll be buried properly."

But not yet, I thought. Not before I know.

Before she goes into the ground, I have to know.

I had to know whose daughter she was.

Not for the revenge. Not for the legal case or the divorce or any of the things lined up ahead of me. But for Ziva. Because she deserved to be known completely. If Brett Temples was her father, she deserved to have that truth exist somewhere, even if only I knew it, even if I carried it alone.

I couldn't put her in the ground, not knowing.

I couldn't.

But I also couldn't ask Brett for his DNA without telling him why. And I couldn't tell him why without opening the door to eight years ago and everything it meant and everything it would change between us.

Not yet, I told myself. Figure out the how. Then do it.

"After she's buried," I said, "take me to a lawyer. I want to file for divorce. I want to start taking everything from him."

Brett studied my face.

The woman who had been crying into his shirt thirty seconds ago was still present — I knew that, I could feel the rawness of it still sitting on my face — but something had moved in alongside her. Something that hadn't been there before or had been there all along but needed this particular breaking open to get out.

He saw it.

I watched him see it.

"Okay," he said. "I'll help you hire the best lawyer. I'll make sure Jace Riggs pays for what he did to you and to your daughter."

He took my hand. He guided me to the couch. Made sure I sat down. Pulled a blanket from the back of the couch and draped it over my legs.