me. But I can’t let the family down. Geoff’s birthday is coming up, and I am getting him that Power Wheel even if Omi doesn’t think he needs it.
I paused for a moment, my throat tight. I’d forgotten about Omi. It was what Martin used to call me. Said Naomi was for strangers, but he was my best friend.
Tears pricked my eyes. Blubbering over the fact there was a time we were happy. When he loved me and the kids.
But something obviously changed.
I skimmed the next few months. Most of his posts were mundane and short summaries. Sometimes he’d skip days and write a longer paragraph. I even came across a random, Love my wife. Love my life.
Then the post for Geoff’s birthday. Big boy turning two. And he got his Power Wheel.
His face was priceless. I knew Geoff would love the truck, and he is a natural behind the wheel. Omi screams every time he intentionally crashes into the bushes. Cracks Geoff up each time. I love that kid. It would be nice to have another. Maybe a girl.
The statement hit me hard and made me wonder if I should get Winnie to read this. Her relationship with her dad had always been poor. Even as a baby, he never took to her like he did with Geoff. He tried, and yet at the same time, as the kids got older, he got meaner.
This small glimpse of a different Martin might help. The man might not have been good in his later years, but he didn’t start out that way.
So what changed him?
I kept reading, summer rolling into the fall, and smiled at the picture he’d taped into the book. A Polaroid, because he hated waiting for film to get developed. This was a time before people documented everything with their phones. The comment under it. My hot wife.
It was me and Martin, dressed as Al and Peggy Bundy from Married with Children. It meant I had my hair teased and sprayed red. Hot pants and heels. Curvy, with my boobs shoved into some crazy cleavage. I looked healthy and, if padded, not yet fat. I’d lost most of my pregnancy weight from Geoff. Martin hugged me close and smiled wide. I recalled why.
A quickie in between taking little Geoff trick-or-treating around the block and before the sitter arrived to babysit our little guy, who was in bed. Martin hadn’t been able to resist my ass, or so he claimed. We’d had a quick romp and then gone to an adult Halloween party. I’d said later on that was the night we conceived Winnie.
I flipped the page, and there was only a single line for November first.
Something happened last night. I think
The sentence didn’t finish. Two weeks went by of nothing. A big gap given the previous half of the book. The next entry was November fifteenth, and it was a scrawling mess.
Why can’t I remember? I know something happened. To me. To Omi. She’s not been herself. And how does she not know where those bruises came from?
I froze, and my chest tightened. What was he talking about? What did he think happened at the Halloween block party? As far as I knew, we had fun. Hard to recall since I got wasted.
The next entry came three days later. She’s late.
The words chilled me. Because that would have been when I suspected I was pregnant. A test confirmed it. We’d conceived Winnie.
The suspicion in my husband’s mind fermented as my belly grew. He thought the baby wasn’t his. That I’d cheated on him at that party.
Did I? I didn’t remember much, but Martin kept living it over and over, his conjecture getting wild as it drove him slightly mad.
Does she not like having sex with me? Is that why she did what she did? Maybe nothing happened. Do I get a test done to see if it’s mine?
At the time I hadn’t seen his anxiety, or if I had, I ascribed it to stress. Martin had tried to keep it from me, but he spilled everything in his journal until March when he wrote:
I can’t believe I forgot we had sex on Halloween. Omi reminded me when she asked if I wanted her to dress up as Peggy again. Maybe take me in the bathroom over the counter like I did on Halloween. She thinks that’s the night we made the baby.
The next few months, he flipped back to happy Martin, and I was more confused than ever.