She Wore Mourning by P.D. Workman (best desktop ebook reader .txt) 📕

Zachary dropped his head into his hands again. “I hate Christmas.”

There was silence. Spencer started to pace again.

“When Isabella was a little girl…” Molly started in on another Isabella story. Then she faded out and gave a sigh. “You must have somewhere to be today. I shouldn’t have called you down here when there’s nothing for any of us to do. What did you have planned for today?”

If Zachary had used a day planner, there would have been a big, black hole for Christmas Day. He couldn’t see anything past it. Just like so many years in the past, he’d been unable to see how his life would continue after Christmas Eve. It was the black beast that swallowed everything else up.

“Nothing. Just taking a break. Staying at home.”

“It’s different when you’re on your own, isn’t it? Sitting around in your pajamas watching Christmas specials on TV, because there’s nowhere else to go? You don’t have any family around here?”

Zachary sat back the best he could in the slippery plastic chair. He massaged his forehead, immensely tired. “I don’t have any family.”

“You don’t? I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “I haven’t had for a long time. Not since I was ten. The last couple of years, I had my wife. This year…”

“You’re not together anymore?”

“We had a pretty ugly break-up. Yeah.”

“You could come over and spend it with us,” Molly suggested. Then she seemed to realize what she had just said. “I mean… I guess this is it, isn’t it? This is how we’re spending our Christmas. Here. Waiting for word.”

Zachary nodded. “Might just as well be here as anywhere else.”

In fact, it was probably the safest place for him to be on Christmas Day.

Chapter Twelve

You are recently divorced?” Spencer asked, drifting closer to Zachary when Molly took a break to find a bathroom and more coffee. He’d obviously overheard at least part of the conversation with Molly.

“Yes,” Zachary admitted. “Just this year.”

“What was that like? The whole process?”

“It was… devastating,” Zachary admitted. His face grew warm, and he looked far off into the distance, away from Spencer.

Spencer eased back and forth on his legs, looking tired. If he’d been pacing ever since they discovered Isabella, he had to be exhausted.

“Things haven’t been good between Isabella and me,” he said in a low voice. Even though Zachary had already sensed that, it was difficult for Spencer to get it out in the open. “We’ve never really been compatible. We thought we were, but we didn’t know anything. I told you about the plate.”

“The one you threw out,” Zachary confirmed.

“Yeah. That’s just one example out of many. We’ve tried to make it work. Set up boundaries, so that she can be comfortable in her studio and know that I won’t touch anything, and I know her things will be confined to certain areas. We’ve set up our timetables and parenting duties…” Spencer paused for a moment, getting past the fact that he no longer had any parenting duties. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple straining. “So that really, it’s just like we’re two single people sharing a house, and up until this summer, sharing custody of a child. It’s not any kind of partnership.”

“And you want to know if you should get divorced.”

“I know we should. I’ve known that for a long time. Since Deck died…”

Zachary waited for a moment to see if he would pick up his broken thought. Zachary and Bridget had only the idea of a child standing between them. A phantom pregnancy that would never be. For Spencer and Isabella, it wasn’t academic. It wasn’t just an idea. They had shared a child for almost five years. It had, perhaps, been the only thing left holding them together. Having Declan torn from their lives had ravaged both of them. It had damaged them, and maybe their relationship was beyond repair.

“You have to do what’s best for you,” Zachary said finally, aware of how inadequate the advice was. He didn’t know what was best for himself; how was he supposed to give marriage advice to someone else? “For you and Isabella.”

“But what if the same thing isn’t best for both of us?”

Zachary scratched at a spot on his pants and found that it was a snag. He tried to smooth the pulled fibers back down. Bridget had insisted on the separation and divorce. Zachary had been more than prepared to fight for the marriage. To find a way to make it work again. He had known that if they just worked together, they could heal the rift.

Spencer was on the other side. It was Spencer who had decided his marriage was unsalvageable and that he couldn’t move on until he was free. Zachary was supposed to tell him to leave, while his wife was fighting for her life a few rooms away.

Zachary was silent.

“Am I supposed to stay because Isabella needs me?”

Zachary took a deep breath. “For now,” he said, telling Spencer what he already knew. “I don’t know for how long… but you need to wait and make sure she’s going to be okay. Then you two need to have a long talk, and decide how to make the split as pain-free as possible.”

Spencer nodded, staring off into the distance. Molly was returning with a tray of coffees for all of them.

“Is that what you did?” Spencer asked.

Zachary shook his head. “No. It’s not.”

It was almost noon before a doctor came to talk to Molly and Spencer about Isabella’s condition and prognosis. He looked at Zachary but wasn’t rude enough to ask who he was and why he was there.

“We lost her a couple of times,” he said. “But she’s finally stable. We’ve done everything we could to clean her blood and minimize the damage to her liver and kidneys. We won’t know what level of functioning they have for a while. There will be a lot of testing to do over the next few days.”

“What about brain