unbroken (unexpected series)

Chapter 5

“Grant I need to speak to you outside,” I said stiffly, opening the door and leaving Sarah, Amelia, Ben and Wagner to continue to talk. I didn’t even wait to see if he followed me but I walked down the hall, just trying to get away from that room, my heart racing, my mind trying to keep up.

Hands on my head, trying to make sense, I stop and Grant says nothing, just rests against the damn wall waiting for something, “Oakley thinks her mother is dead,” I choked out, my heart actually hurting. In ten years Norine being dead wasn’t something I had even considered, “That – that’s impossible. She left. She left us Grant,” I was sure. “She left her ring on the table, she packed… her things. She left Oakley alone for hours!” I shouted, the nurses looking at me stilling before continuing with their work.

When he still said nothing after minutes I was getting antsy, “well fucking say something!”

He just sighed like Ben, “Like what? I’ve been telling you from day one to investigate what happened… it didn’t make sense that she would just leave Pat and it wasn’t that she just left it was a whole series of things that didn’t make sense to me. But you were hurting, Ben was just a little newborn, you were out of your mind in grief. Different people talking convinced you she left, but the signs just didn’t point to that.” He says trying to help me see but I don’t… it’s not… dead? My heart dropped.

“She left her ring. I put that on her and she never took it off… but she left that…”

He heaved, looking at me in pity, “So a ring that she never took off since you put it on-”

“Even when she was pregnant she wore it on a chain Grant, she left me that as a sign. We were having problems, you know I had been offered that job up in Virginia Beach, and she didn’t want to go to that big of a city…”

Grant just laughed, literally bent over and laughed, but it wasn’t in humor, cold and fake, “So your woman leaves a ring where you would find it, after not wanting to move to a larger city and your first guess is that she left you? And did what? Went to that same big city she didn’t want to go to?” he asks confusing me.

“If this was my Julia we were talking about, I wouldn’t handle it the way you did but you were her spouse the one person that could actually put forth effort to look for you but you were so far inside your own ass that you never did shit about it. You just became all focused in your work. Requesting more hours at the university claiming that you needed to the money to pay for child care since Norine was gone.”

“She was gone!” I shouted again and he just pushed me inside a room.

“Yeah but not the way you thought she was… not the way Oakley thinks she was. I told you… when you brought Sarah around… I told you that it didn’t make sense. It was like a switch in Oakley… she cried more, fused more and she was only a little girl still. Just seven years old after years of your just pushing your daughter and son aside, you just bring in some woman and her child and put them up on some sort of pedestal,” the bite in his words hitting me.

“Her man left her, with a child to boot and she stuck around for that child, something Norine didn’t do? Is that what it was? You found a woman that wouldn’t do the leaving? Pushing her on them kids?”