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“It’s not really my story to tell.”
“You’re not going to tell me?”
Mark hesitated and turned to face her. He had a hard time telling those green eyes no.
Laura lay back on the bed, pulling the covers up over her bare breasts. “You were the one who told me that it didn’t matter what secrets I told you, remember? I’m leaving in a couple of weeks? I told you what not a single soul other than my sister and my ex know about me, and now you’re not wanting to spill any beans? Seriously?”
He guessed she had a point there. Who was Laura going to tell? And besides, Elle wasn’t his problem anymore.
“Elle had—or, hell, probably still has—a prescription drug problem.”
Laura grew silent. “What?”
“On the island, prescriptions aren’t as regulated as they are on the mainland,” he admitted. “It’s easier to get things. Things to make you sleep. Make you stay awake or things that just make you feel…better.”
Laura listened to him, rapt. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
Mark lay back down next to her and stared at the ceiling. “No one did. Not even Edward. Although, I bet he does now.” Mark sighed, rolling over to face her.
“But she’s pregnant.” Laura sucked in a breath.
“And I hope she’s quit the pills. For now, at least.”
“But she took them. When she was with you.”
He nodded.
“We’d been fighting about how many pills she took. She needed one every night to go to sleep, and then she needed one every morning to wake up, and then she’d take a different one in the middle of the day when she was feeling bored or unhappy or whatever it was.” Mark so vividly remembered those days. How she’d be so slow to get up, so sluggish. How she wouldn’t hear Timothy cry in the middle of the night.
“What about Timothy?”
“She said she did it because Timothy made her so tired, that she needed a boost to keep up with him. She didn’t take all that readily to motherhood. She was depressed after he was born, and it never really lifted.”
“Postpartum depression. And she used the drugs to cope.”
He nodded. He took a deep breath. This next part of the story was the hardest. “I thought she was doing better, I really did,” he said. This was the excuse he always told himself. The one that made it okay that he’d left her alone that morning. “Just the week before she told me she was clean. She’d thrown all the pills away with me watching, and I thought she was done with them. But she wasn’t.” He sucked in a deep breath. “I had to go to work, and I left her, and she said she’d be fine. That she’d take Timothy to the beach, and they’d have a nice day of it.” Mark clenched his jaw, and it was almost as if his body didn’t want him to get the words out. “But I shouldn’t have left them. She hadn’t thrown them all away. She took a pill that morning. She was groggy and in a hurry and she took a sleep pill instead of an upper pill. And that’s why she fell asleep on the beach that day.”
Laura looked at him, every bit of her face registering shock.
“I didn’t want her arrested. I wanted to get her into a treatment program. But maybe I wasn’t very nice about it. Maybe I was angry, too, that she’d lied to me about being off the pills. So, yeah, I asked my friend to arrest her. I thought she’d…get help.”
Tears rimmed her eyes. He was amazed how much she was affected by the story.
“Oh, Mark. I’m…so very sorry.” She reached for him and he moved into her arms. She held him tightly.
“It’s not your fault.”
“No, it isn’t, but it’s terrible, and you shouldn’t have to have gone through that. I can’t believe Edward let the island believe you wanted to lock up your grieving wife for no reason.”
Mark shrugged. “I’m sure it’s what Elle told him, and I’m sure it’s what she told herself because the truth is probably too painful.”
Laura cradled his head against her chest. “You lost your boy and your wife all at once.”
Mark nodded into her. “But things weren’t right with Elle for a long time before that. The pills—well, I don’t even remember the woman I married, to be honest. She was long gone.”
Laura bit her lip. “I just…I just think you deserve so much better than that.”
Mark lifted his head and met her gaze, and for once in a very long time, felt heard. He felt understood. When could he say that? Even Dave deserted him in his time of need. And his brother had done worse than that. But Laura, she understood.
