4: 4
4
When Derek got home, the apartment was quiet.
He didn't see me in the living room, so he called out twice.
"Charity? Charity?"
Changing his shoes, he braced a hand on the shoe cabinet, and it felt like he'd pressed down on something.
He looked closer. It was my wedding ring.
He stared at it, disbelieving, then pulled out his phone and called me.
The screen lit up with the word 'Husband.'
I was silent for a moment, but I still picked up.
Derek let out a breath.
"Charity, where did you go? Why did you take off your ring?"
I looked down at my finger. There was still a mark at the base of it, worn in from years of wearing the ring.
It would fade in time. Along with my love for Derek, it would fade.
"I know everything now."
Derek still hadn't caught on.
"Know what?"
"You and Vivienne."
The line went quiet for a long moment. I was about to hang up when he finally spoke.
"Vivienne and I did date, yes, but that's all in the past."
"Now, you're the one who's my wife."
"You say I'm your wife."
"Then how do you explain the babies I kept losing?"
He was still making excuses.
"Our bodies just aren't strong, that's why the pregnancies didn't hold. Haven't we been treating it all this time?"
"Don't rush it. This kind of thing doesn't happen overnight."
"If you really love kids that much, we could always adopt."
In the end I couldn't hold it in, and I broke down crying into the phone.
"Derek, you bastard!"
"Is it really a health problem, or did you just never want children? You know exactly which it is!"
He drew several deep breaths. That was his habit when he was keeping his feelings down.
"Fine, I didn't want children. I just wanted a few more years with only the two of us."
"I just wasn't ready to be a father. Is that so wrong?"
I lost it and smashed the water glass by my hand, screaming into the phone until it tore out of me.
"Is it that you don't want to be a father, or that you don't want to hurt your precious Vivienne?"
"You could have used protection."
"But for your own pleasure, and to keep feeding me those false hopes,"
"you didn't care what it did to my body. You let me miscarry, over and over."
"Four years. How many shots I took, how much medicine I swallowed. You don't know?"
"You watched me suffer with your own eyes, and still you let me hope, then crushed it."
"Derek, you don't even deserve to be called human!"
He clearly hadn't expected me to know it all so clearly. When he spoke again, there was a stammer in it.
"I... I did it because I saw you, saw how badly you wanted a child."
"You tried so hard for one. I... I couldn't bring myself to say it."
I laughed, and the laugh grew louder and louder.
"You couldn't say it, so you watched me lie on that operating table, again and again."
"Every time you did the D&C with your own hands, didn't your conscience ever hurt?"
"Derek, let's get divorced."
