Other times I was able to march confidently into my life and carry on as if nothing was amiss. Not that the pain was gone during that time. It wasn’t. But it was…compartmentalized. It was put away in a manageable box that didn’t disrupt my day. Sometimes that feeling lasted hours, sometimes days.
Once my father passed away, my last real ties to New York had been severed. Jonas and I had struggled for more than a year to keep his acupuncture practice in Newburgh going, but when Jonas was contacted by a buddy he’d gone to school with, offering him a partnership in North Carolina, it had been an easy decision.
With my father gone and my constant need to maintain both physical and emotional distance from Sean, I had been perfectly happy to go wherever Jonas wanted to go.
So we packed up and moved into a duplex in Wilmington, North Carolina. I found a job teaching piano at a music conservatory and fell in love with my house.
Once we’d moved to North Carolina, Jonas’s practice had flourished, and with the physical distance from Sean, somehow it was easier to put him aside. I didn’t worry all the time. I didn’t track his movements as closely. I sank into my life in North Carolina, making friends and gaining confidence. I fell more in love with my husband, his healing touch and his generosity. But that didn’t mean I was blind to the news.
Sean was releasing a new album. That wasn’t a surprise. But the article, titled “Sean Amity Touring for the First Time in Four Years!” made me queasy. I knew tours brought in huge money, but that didn’t mean all musicians had to tour every album. Especially not when said musician had literally almost killed himself during the last tour.
I sat at the counter, searching on my phone for any other scraps of information about Sean’s tour. There were bits here and there, but overall there just wasn’t that much more to say.
The door opened and Jonas walked in, carrying his computer bag. I set my phone down and tried to give him an appropriate welcome-home smile.
He walked over and leaned down to kiss me, then pulled back and studied my face. Whatever he saw resulted in a sad smile. “You saw it?” he asked.
I forced a deep breath. “Yeah.”
He pulled me to my feet and into his chest. “Maybe it will be okay this time.”
It was sweet of him to offer me that hope. And even sweeter that he knew I needed it. “Do you really think so?” I asked, grasping at even the dimmest ray of light.
“If he’s really been working hard to turn things around, and if he and his manager have some rules in place…”
“And if he actually follows those rules,” I muttered into his shirt.
“Yeah…” He held me in silence for several seconds.
“I won’t be there to pull him out if he needs it.”
“And that’s okay because that’s not your job,” he reminded me.
“I know, but…”
“But it’s still hard. I know. You aren’t going to call him, are you?”
“What? No.” Why would I call him? To beg him not to do this? To give him a piece of my mind? Okay, so it was tempting. “No. There’s a reason I don’t have his contact info. Let’s talk about something else.”
“I would love that,” he said, and I could hear the impatience in his voice. It leaked through sometimes when we had to have yet another conversation about Sean. Jonas was incredibly understanding, but that didn’t mean this thing with Sean didn’t grate on him.
♪♫♪
I came out of our bedroom, stopping for a moment to study Jonas where he sat in the living room. He had his laptop out, catching up on work. I smiled, loving the scene. My husband was a handsome man, no doubt. The way I loved him still surprised me sometimes. I loved him. I loved the life we’d built here in North Carolina—my job, Jonas’s practice, our duplex, and especially the baby grand sitting in the corner. My old upright had been with us since we’d married, but he’d surprised me with the gift on our third anniversary, a year after we’d moved in.
Now I had a surprise for him. I bit my lip in anticipation as I held the surprise in my hand and walked into the living room.
He looked up and a smile lit his face. “Hey, love,” he greeted, setting his computer aside and reaching for my hand.