Page 78 of Shallow Remains

“Most of the time I was either working, training, or on call.” Some things never changed. “We lived in a little place near base. She struggled to find full time work she liked.” Another reason why Maddy’s earlier answer had stirred all his ghosts. “I knew she had a history of depression, though not the extent of it. I naively thought she’d be fine once we were married and making a life together. But little by little, she started withdrawing from me and even her friends.”

Maddy remained silent, but he could tell she was listening intently to every word. Giving him the time and space to continue at his own pace.

“She stopped going out and doing things she used to like. I tried to help and support her, thought she just needed the right motivation to do something.” He’d been a fucking idiot. “I pushed her to see a doctor to see if meds could help. I talked to her parents about what was going on. When it got worse, I looked into flights to send her back home for a while, thinking that some sun and her family could lift her out of it. But she refused to go without me.”

He should have insisted. Made her go.

“I didn’t understand it. Got frustrated with her. But what I thought was mostly a struggle with the winter blues turned out to be way more serious.”

He swallowed as the memories rushed back. The fights. His irritation at coming home to a cluttered mess and usually finding her in bed, even in the middle of the day.

“It got to the point that I couldn’t wait to escape her and the house. Every callout made it worse. I would head into work to do what I loved, and she was all alone.”

He’d been so selfish and too blind to see it.

“She hated being stuck on that island. Hated that I was gone all the time and never knew when I would get called out. Every time it happened, she resented me more for leaving her with her darkness. She was lonely and isolated, struggling to function, and her mental state was way worse than I ever guessed.”

Maddy didn’t say a word, but he could feel the tension creeping into her muscles. As if she sensed what he was about to say next.

“I was out one night on a call, pulling injured sailors off a disabled tanker in a bad storm. I called her as usual once I got back to base to let her know I was okay, left a message when she didn’t answer. She never responded.” He pulled in a breath. “When I got home at the end of my shift, I found her in the tub. Fully submerged, with an empty Ziploc bag on the floor beside the tub.”

“Oh no,” she said softly, gripping his hand.

“I hauled her out, did CPR and everything else I could think of until the medics got there, but I knew the whole time she wasn’t coming back. Losing her would have been devastating on its own, but finding her like that, it…wrecked me.”

She made a sympathetic sound but didn’t speak.

“I took a leave of absence. Tried to go back to work a few weeks after the funeral because I was desperate for the distraction, but just couldn’t function the way I had. Everything up there reminded me of her, of how I’d let her down. I requested a transfer and moved around a bit after that, stationed in different places along the West Coast. When my contract ended, I left the military and came back here to pick up the pieces and start over.”

Maddy was quiet after he finished. “Do you still think it’s your fault?” she finally asked.

He let out a slow breath. “In some ways. I should’ve seen how serious the situation was and been more proactive in getting her help. Forced her to when she resisted. Even if the damage to our marriage was already done and we wouldn’t have stayed together for long, at least she’d still be alive.”

“I can see why you’d feel that way. But I don’t think it’s right. Or fair.”

He grunted. “Her family thought it was my fault too. They felt I should’ve done more to prevent it, and they’re not wrong.” He pushed out a breath. “It’s a hard thing to live with, even now. All the regret. The guilt.”

She nodded, the back of her head moving against his shoulder. “But feelings aren’t always logical, even if they feel real to us while we’re feeling them.”

He couldn’t help but smile a little at the highly logical way her brain worked. “That’s true.”

“I think what happened is horrible, especially that you were the one to find her. That’s such a traumatic thing to go through.”

In his darkest moments, sometimes he still wondered if it had been a deliberate last act on Kathy’s part. Making him be the one to find her to punish him for her suffering. But mostly it just made him sad that she’d seen no other way out of her darkness.

“Most of all, I’m sorry that you’ve punished yourself all this time for it.”

“Grey said the same thing to me last night.”

“He’s right.”

Grey would so rub that into his face if he knew.

“It’s okay to feel sad when you think of her though. You loved her.”

He’d truly thought he had. But looking back, what he’d thought was love seemed more like physical attraction and devotion now. His deepening feelings for Maddy were on a whole different level. More mature. The thought of her leaving the island soon made his whole chest tighten.

“Are you okay now? Or do you want to keep talking about it?” she asked.