“Are you married?” Abbie asked me as I weighed her four-week-old daughter in the clinic.
I smiled. “Not yet. I’ve been a little unlucky in that department.” I handed Abbie her little peanut.
Abbie sat in the rocking chair with her and breastfed her while we waited for Holly to join us for the well-baby check.
“I feel ya.” Abbie chuckled while gazing adoringly at her little girl. “Drew and I have actually been married twice.”
I looked up from my table after recording the weight. “Seriously?”
She nodded. “We got married right out of high school against our parents’ wishes. But we were in love. Neither one of us had any idea what we wanted out of life. We just knew we wanted to be together. But being together didn’t pay well, neither did our minimum wage jobs. It got increasingly hard to squeeze happiness out of a love that nobody supported. And it led to fights and resentment. Then it led to divorce in less than a year. And we didn’t see each other again for ten years. Crazy, right?
“He went to college. I went to college. Drew ended up in Maine, and I came back here for a job. We both had been in several serious relationships. And when Drew came home one Christmas, we ran into each other at an Avalanche game. And it was instant sparks. He was in a relationship at the time and so was I. But it didn’t matter. I swear we both knew it too. I actually remember thinking, this is going to get messy.”
Messy.
Of course she said messy.
“So hearts were broken and lives were disrupted again so you could have your second chance?”
Twisting her lips for a second, she nodded. “Pretty much. But look at this little princess. I have no regrets.”
Before I could say any more, ask a single one of my twenty questions, Holly came into the room.
But Abbie’s story haunted me for days.
Saturday morning, I woke to voices in the other room. After throwing on my robe, I opened the door a crack.
Angie.
WWJD?
WWJD?
Really, what would he do?
I wasn’t okay. It had been two weeks since the Costa Rica trip. And I hadn’t talked to Fisher since our morning at Starbucks, and neither had Rory or Rose to my knowledge.
Was Angie there to gloat? Should it have mattered?
Jesus needed to tell me what to do because I wanted to tell her everything. Woman to woman. If she was going to marry the man I loved, she needed to go into it with her eyes wide open. Jesus would’ve told her the truth, right?
As I opened the door a little farther, I could hear their conversation.
“Did he say who?” Rory asked.
“Nope.”
“Did he say how long it’s been going on?” Rose probed.
“He said it didn’t matter. I asked him a ton of questions, but he said the answers didn’t matter.” She sounded so defeated, her voice weak and even a little shaky.
“Does his family know?”
“No. I asked him not to tell them until I leave.” She sniffled. Yeah, she was crying.
“Leave?” Rory sounded surprised.
“I’m going back to California. And after I have time to make sense of this, to figure out what I did wrong, I’ll either come back and face his family or I’ll at least call them. They are my family too, but they’re his real family. And I don’t want there to be sides to take. That’s not fair.”
“It was unexpected. A tragedy in so many ways. He could have died. He could have been crippled for life,” Rose said. “But he lived. And sometimes when we love people, we have to give them what they need even if it’s not us. Life takes so many unexpected paths. Forever is rarely realistic.”