Beauty from Ashes

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 32

Jake wasn’t at the Ronald McDonald house when I got back. I wasn’t surprised, and I was too exhausted to waste any energy wondering where he went. He could have been at a bar getting drunk with Charlene for all I cared.

I needed to think. Ask myself if it was right for me to stay mad at him. He shouldn’t have cheated on me. That was stupid. But he felt bad about it, and he came clean. Which is more than I’ve done. I’ve got my secrets, and I plan to keep it that way. What Jake doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

Except there’s the guilt, too. Part of me thinks that Elder Tom’s right. God’s punishing me for my sins by making Natalie suffer.

I can’t change what I’ve already done. That’s why we call it the past. But after our fight, I started wondering if I should tell Jake about what happened. Maybe it would give Natalie a better chance at survival. I would have done anything to leave the NICU. I would have confessed to murder if it could have gotten me and my daughter out of there an hour earlier.

People say a mother will do anything for her kid. Well, I honestly didn’t feel all that maternal toward Natalie back then. It was sort of nice cuddling when we did our skin-to-skin time, but she still didn’t know who I was or act like I was any different than the dozens of nurses who took care of her.

Maybe I did have that protective instinct but just didn’t know it. That’s the only way I can explain what I did next.

I wrote Jake a letter. I knew if I had to do it face to face, I’d wimp out. So I got it all out on paper. I didn’t even type it. Wrote it all by hand. Gave my wrist a pretty bad cramp, too.

I left it on the bathroom counter, so if he came back that night he’d see it before he went to bed. I didn’t want to change my mind and tear the paper up or anything, so I sent him a text to let him know I had something important to say to him and there was a letter waiting in our room.

And then I tried to fall asleep. Which obviously wasn’t very easy. I might have ruined everything. If my relationship with Jake had even an ounce of potential to work out, I probably destroyed it in one impulsive note.

Oh, well. I couldn’t take back that text I sent him. It reminded me of my labor, actually. Once the water breaks, it’s not like you can change your mind and decide to wait another week or two. Once it’s all set in motion, there’s not a whole lot more you can do besides hold on and wait for everything to pass.

Unless you’re a chicken like me.

I don’t know what time it was when I finally got out of bed, but I tore up the letter and flushed it down the toilet. Jake didn’t need to know. Who was I kidding? Getting rid of my own shame and guilt wasn’t worth sabotaging everything good between us. It wasn’t fair to him.

Of course, I’d sent him a text that there was a letter waiting for him, so I had to do something. I ended up writing him this really dumb note about how I forgave him. I was feeling so guilty about my own past I think I even apologized for getting mad that night, and I told him the truth. At least the part about me being scared to be alone in Seattle. Stupid of me, I know. But from my text, I knew he’d be expecting something kind of significant, so I had to give him that.

After all the lies I’d told him already, it was the least I could do.