Chapter 22
[Michael]
[Earlier…]
She’s gone.
I had been upstairs for less than 20 minutes. If I hadn’t come downstairs to grab a glass of water, would I have noticed her
missing? How long has she been gone?
The door is wide open. Could she have made it off the front porch by herself? No. I can’t imagine that…Oh gods, what if someone
took her? What if she hadn’t been lying about the kidnapping. I know she’s wrong about Evelyn, but that doesn’t mean someone
else isn’t trying to hurt them both.
My head pounds, my ears having the hallow sound of an impending migrane as I rush outside. There is no sign of a struggle, no
sign that anyone else has been here at all.
“ADDY!” maybe she’s just sitting in the garden. “ADDISON!”
She isn’t on the porch, or the garden swing. She isn’t sitting on any of the stumps.
How could she just vanish.
Running inside, my feet slip on the slick floor as they slide on the tattered shreads of our divorce agreement. She had promised to apologize for her mistakes, to make this family work again. And now she’s not here.
She wouldn’t have run away. Not Addison. She’s always been meek and giving. It was what drew me to her. She’s so different from
Evelyn.
Evelyn and I had been together for three years before she left me suddenly, without warning and without a care. She broke things
off because I wasn’t “serious enough” about our relationship.
She wanted to get married and start a family immediately. I come from a influential family, but it had fallen on hard times and lost all of it’s money. When I told her I didn’t have enough money to marry, she grew angry, telling me that I had betrayed her
trust by not telling her the truth about my family’s wealth.
And then she was gone.
When I met Addison, her gentle manner, the way she didn’t demand anything, healed the pain left behind by Evelyn. She didn’t care that I was penniless, and she didn’t seem impressed by my family’s name. She told me she had a bit of money left to her when her parents died, and that money didn’t matter to her.
When we married, she was more than happy to support me. She even helped find investors to support the firm in the early days
when thing swere rough.
And when I found Jayson abandoned outside of my office, she didn’t even bat an eye. “He’s our son now,” she declared. She never
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asked a single question about where he came from or how I found a child outside my office to begin with. She just accepted h
with all her heart.
I know she’s hurting from how Evelyn has come back into our lives, but she just doesn’t understand. Evelyn is a firey person. Yes
she broke my heart, but she has sworn to me that it was a mistake, that her biggest regret had been leaving me, and the hope we had at having a family.
“I wish I had chosen differently,” she had sworn. “You and I should have stayed together.”
Evelyn knows that I’d never leave Addy. Addison is my wife and I respect those vows.
She never needs to know about what happened between Evelyn and I…no, it was a mistake, one I never plan to repeat. I was drunk, Evelyn was back and I…
“Addy, where are you?!” She’ll never leave me. She can’t leave me. This home is all she knows. She’s an orphan. Without me and
Jayson, Addy is nothing.
And yet, all that remains to let me know she had ever been here is the tumbled pile of pillows littering the floor. She had looked so
hopeful, so much like the sweet girl I had met 6 years ago in college, the one who believed in me with all her heart.
The one who swore to love, honor, and cherish me for the rest of her life.
“Michael, is that you,” Evelyn calls from the next room, “Can you close the living room windows. It’s a bit drafty.”
Her playful, cheerful chatter in the next room with Jayson is so contrary to my mood in the moment that my body seizes in shock.
How can they be so happy while I’m so miserable?
“Michael, what’s going on?” Evelyn’s eyes are wide, her nose scrunched with confusion as she stands int he doorway holding her small belly. The sound of Jayson’s gigles in the background as he eats his snack adds to the domestic scene which feels discordant with the way I feel right now.
My world is crumbling around me again and Evelyn is completely unaware.
“Where’s Addison,” I almost shout. Evelyn flinches and I feel guilty immediately. She hasn’t done anything wrong. She’d never
hurt me the way Addison just did.
“How did she manage to leave, Evelyn? She was incapacitated,” Evelyn gasps as Jayson comes to join her in the doorway.
“What’s wrong, Daddy,” He is shaking with fear. I’m scaring them. I need to calm down.
“Maybe she just needs some air?” Evelyn suggests.
“Are you sure she didn’t run through here?” I demand, reaching forward to shake her. “How could you not notice her leave.”
“Michael, I’m sorry I left her alone but she was being nasty to me and your son, so I took him to the kitchen for a treat. I didn’t think she’d go anywhere.”
A car skids to a stop outside, right in front of my house.
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Pulling the door open in a rush, I get outside just in time to see a tall man in a fine suit scoop my wife into his arms. As he gaz over his shoulder, his eyes promise pain and retribution just before he delicately places her broken body in the back seat.
What have I ever done to anger this man, and why is he holding my wife so dearly.
Is he her lover? Has she been sneaking around on me this whole time?
My heart hardens. And here I thought she was just confused and upset about Evelyn. What right does she have to be jealous if she
is with someone new.
But Addy would never cheat. She’s loyal to a fault.
“ADDISON STONE!” I scream after her as the stranger places her in the back seat. “If you leave with him right now it is over
between us!”
But she doesn’t respond. She can’t. The car driving away is response enough.
Running after her, I scream her name.
She said she’s always be with me. How can she leave with him.
“You’ll be back Addison! You’ll come begging for me to help you and when you do, I won’t! I don’t care how much you cry! I’m
done!”
A few minutes later, a soft hand touches my shoulder.
“Michael,” Evelyn looks terrfied and I realize, blinking, that we are standing in the middle of the street. “Please come back
inside.”
She rubs her belly and a flush of guilt rises through me. Evelyn’s situation is my fault too, and she’s been so patient with me.
“You’re too good for me,” I let Evelyn comfort me as we walk back into the house together.
Besides, Addison will be back, I know it.
She loves her family. She’d never leave us.
She promised.
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