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“Leave me alone, Eli,” Ari snaps as soon as she picks up.
“How is she?” I ask in the silence.
“Fine.”
“Elaborate.”
“She’s been getting remarkably better since she left your toxic orbit, but especially since Cecy came by a few days ago.”
“And?”
“And that’s all,” she says with exasperation, then I hear a rustling sound, a door being shut, and she lowers her voice. “Listen, just leave her alone. I mean it. I think you trigger her. She was a crying mess when she signed the divorce papers, and she sometimes bursts out in tears for no reason and I’m sure it’s whenever she thinks of you.”
I’m supposed to feel good that she’s also suffering through this, but no joy sparks in me. If anything, a massive sense of bitterness and an all-encompassing loss seeps through the cracks of my armor.
“I am staying away. If I weren’t, I’d be there instead of talking to you on the phone. What does your father plan to do with her treatment plan?”
“That’s none of your business anymore.”
“Ariella, don’t fuck with me. I respected her wishes and disengaged from her, but that does not mean I’ll be gone completely from behind the scenes. Either tell me or I’ll kidnap the fucking therapist and make her talk.”
“Fine, Jesus.” She pauses. “Ava wants to be admitted to the mental institute.”
I sit up, my jaw clenching so hard, it hurts. “As in your parents convinced her to?”
“Not at all.”
“You mean to tell me she’d willingly go to the place she nearly killed herself to leave?”
“Yeah. She said that she was tired of running away. She’s also considering taking this new shock therapy method Dr. Blaine suggested, but Papa is against it. He thinks the chances of success are too low and the process is painful, and, therefore,we shouldn’t risk it, but you know how Ava is when she sets her mind on something.”
Clearly. Considering she got exactly what she wanted by threatening me with the only thing I would never sacrifice.
Her life.
“Anyway, got to go. Stay away, Eli. I mean it.” Ariella hangs up. I lie back on the bed and turn off my phone to avoid being bombarded by the outside world.
Dad probably sacked me from the project and downgraded my position as a tactic to force me back to the living world. But I couldn’t care less.
Life was bright for a moment, full of rosy colors and loud chaos, but now it’s back to being bleak, gray, and hauntingly silent.
And I can’t muster the energy to face any of it.
I’ve never wanted something and failed to get it.
Not a single thing.
And now that I’ve lost the one person who added equilibrium to my life, my world is tilting off its axis and creaking under the weight of depressing loneliness.
I can’t trust myself to live without my wife anymore.
She kept some of my darkness at bay by giving me purpose—her. Now that she’s gone, I don’t trust myself not to fuck everything up in a show of epic proportions.
A knock sounds on the door.
“Leave or you’re fired, Sam.” I hyperfixate on the ceiling. “You, too, Henderson.”
“It’s me, honey.” Mum’s soft voice filters through. “Please open the door.”
