Nobody's Wife by Laura Pearson

Author:Laura Pearson [Pearson, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Agora Books
Published: 2019-03-28T04:00:00+00:00

He longed to speak to Emily, to be lying beside her, whispering in her ear, asking her what he should do. If he’d had more warning about Michael coming home, he might have had the chance to do so. But now, as it was, he felt as though they were miles and miles apart and he had no idea when he would be beside her again. And the pain of that, of not knowing, was like nothing he’d ever experienced. It was how he imagined a knife would feel, sunk into his stomach, and twisting slowly.

After his bath, Jack thought about making himself something to eat, but he couldn’t quite make himself get up from the sofa to do it. Instead, he sat there, thinking about everything that he and Emily would never have. He thought about the unfairness of the situation, the fact that she had met Michael before she had met him. That she had promised to be with another man for the rest of her life. That this person, the only woman he’d ever been able to imagine sharing his whole life with — his ugly past and his scattered present and his unknown future — would never be entirely his. That the only way this awkward situation could possibly end was badly.

Jack thought about calling his mother. Emily was with her husband, and he didn’t know what he could possibly say to Josephine, and he needed to hear the softness of a woman’s voice. He needed someone who would protect him, care for him without judging. He got as far as picking up the phone, but then he could hear his mother’s voice in his head. What would he tell her? How could he break years of silence with a story like this? She wouldn’t understand. She’d never understood.

As an only child, Jack had always felt that he was in the way while he was growing up. That he was a mistake his parents — who didn’t seem to like one another very much — had inadvertently made and then had to live with. When his father left, a few weeks after Jack’s seventh birthday, he thought he and his mother might become closer, but instead he watched her retreat into herself, and he lived almost alone. And then there was John, and with his arrival things got steadily worse.

Jack didn’t quite understand the closeness that he had witnessed between Emily and Josephine, having never known what that sibling relationship was like. The closeness that he and Emily were in the process of destroying. Would it ruin the two of them forever, this thing that had happened? Did he, Jack, who had grown from that silent, lonely child, have the power to rip apart something that seemed so strong?

Jack had known many siblings, seen many close sisterly or brotherly relationships, but what he had seen in Emily and Josephine — and what he had gathered from things the two of them had said to him, independently — was different again.

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