Marisa de los Santos - Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos

Author:Marisa de los Santos [Santos, Marisa de los]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ePub Bud (www.epubbud.com)
Published: 2011-02-26T05:00:00+00:00

What followed, after Elizabeth was gone, when the days were full of tasks, phone calls, and comforting, was a kind of cleanness. After having felt cluttered, clenched, and panicked for so long, Piper felt clean. Not refreshed, but bare and stinging, as though she’d been scoured inside and out. There was so much to do, but every task was finite. There were lists full of things Piper could accomplish and cross off. “There,” she would say, “that’s done.” Occasionally, especially when she held one of the children, she’d feel the unbearable encroaching, and quickly she’d shift her thoughts or set her hands to something else, whatever needed doing, the next thing.

So the day before the funeral, when Kyle came to her as she was preparing for the day ahead and told her he was leaving her, she turned patiently toward him and said, “Not now. I don’t have time.”

“It’s never the right time. I’ve needed to do this for so long, Piper, a really, really long time, and I keep waiting for a space to open up, but you’re always going, going, going.”

Really, really. Going, going, going. Piper looked at him.

“Elizabeth has been dead for three days,” she said. She turned to the mirror and began to brush blush onto her cheeks.

“I know that. And before that she was dying and before that she was sick, and after the funeral, you’ll be dealing with her kids, our kids, Tom, Astrid, your grief.” He ticked the items of this list off on his fingers.

Piper turned and stopped him. “My grief? Don’t talk about my grief. You don’t know the first thing about it.” Even now, she wasn’t angry.

Kyle threw up his hands. “You’re right. I don’t know the first thing about you. How would I?”

“We’ll talk about this later.”

“I’m leaving the day after the funeral.”

“No, you are not,” said Piper, calmly.

“Piper, I’m in love with someone else.”

“That doesn’t matter.” It was true. She could imagine a time when it would matter, but now the information was nothing. Relative to everything else Piper had felt, learned, and done and to everything she still needed to do, the information that her husband was in love with someone else and wanted to leave her was immaterial, bodiless. In the balance of Piper’s life just then, this moment weighed nothing at all.

Well, look at that, thought Piper as the moment ended, that’s done. She snapped her compact shut, turned, and walked out of the room.

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