each other. You don’t offset my shortcomings, and I don’t offset yours because we’re both deficient in the same areas. We’re immature teenagers emotionally, both bankrupt in the ability to love and care for another. That doesn’t bode well for matrimony or even monogamy.”
“Will it always be that way?”
He shrugs. “For me? Probably. I’m old and set in my ways. It’s how I’ve always lived my life. For you? I hope not. You’re still young. You have your whole life ahead of you, as well of the lives of your children. You should go back to your husband. Appreciate him the next time around. He was your better half. Go try to live up to that for a start.”
I would say I concede defeat, but to concede you have to have won in the first place. I’m beginning to think I don’t know what winning is and that I’ve never, in thirty plus years, won, because my rules were always skewed. I was the only one playing by them, which made them null and void. “When do you want me out of the house?”
“Ideally?” I expected to hear hope in his voice, but the tiredness has returned.
“No, realistically. Ideally, would involve me leaving right this minute, I’m sure, and I’m tired, I can’t do that.” I’m half joking, half serious. I’m sure if he had his way he wouldn’t even let me use the bathroom and dress before ushering me out to my car.
“You have a week.”
I want to make a smartass remark, but I nod instead to accept the deadline.
He rises and walks to the side of my bed and kisses me on top of my head. “Goodnight, Miranda.”
The gesture seems out of place given our history, given that we just parted ways, but I guess that’s the reason it’s so perfect, so fitting. Despite the lack of love, and the fact that we can dole out mistrust and dishonesty with an earnestness reserved for a minister preaching the gospel, we genuinely like each other, even through the hate, because we understand each other. My ugliness forgives and ignores his ugliness. And vice versa. “Goodnight, Loren.”
I wouldn’t wipe my ass with your distorted perspective
present
Loren opens the door of his home. I wish it was Rosa. I don’t want to say goodbye to my kids in front of him. Proximity is a reminder: he’s the winner and I’m the loser. And I’m painfully aware of how much I’m losing at the moment. I have to leave my kids and go very far away. Losing should be a term reserved for board games and bets because it doesn’t begin to cover how my heart feels regarding the people I love most.
“Please come in,” he says politely. Everything about him is polite. That’s one thing the rich do well—polite. Even if it’s disingenuous, it’s present.
“It’s okay, I’ll say goodbye out here and send the kids in when I’m ready,” I respond.
He steps away from the door but leaves it open.
Hugs, kisses, and tears all around. Goodbye is harder this time for all of us.
When I walk back to my car my heart feels so grievous it’s slowing mobility. There’s a sluggishness that only sorrow can create. I’m lost in thought until I reach for the door handle of my car and hear someone clear their throat.
It’s Loren.
This is the first time I’ve ever been alone with him. A million insults flood my mind, but the one that comes out on top is, “You’re an asshole.”
He folds his arms over his chest and tilts his head to the left like he’s thinking over my accusation. “You’re not wrong about that. I am.”
I didn’t expect that, but I continue, “You ruined my family.”
It only takes a moment for him to apologize, “I’m sorry, Seamus,” which should make it feel rushed and unfeeling, but it doesn’t.
His sincerity only proves to fuel the anger in me. I clasp my fingers together and cover my eyes with my hands trying to shield myself from the situation, from him, from Miranda, from my grief. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to lose everything you love?!” I shout. When he doesn’t answer, I shout again still hiding behind my hands, so I don’t use them to assault him, demanding an answer, “Do you?!”
“No,” he says it quietly like an apology.
I shake my head and drop my hands. “Of course you don’t.”
“Perspective. That’s what it’s all about. Perspective turns many a negative into a positive, and many a