He sat there with tears streaming from both sky blue eyes and down the pale cheeks that I had caressed so many times. They made a sound in my head as they fell, shattering on the weathered table top of the picnic table. I though he was surely losing his mind as he gripped the rough wood, shaking. I remarked to myself that his brain might just be cleaving itself in half from the stress of this very moment, tearing the fibers, synopses snapping like overstretched fishing line just so he wouldn't have to think of me. His strong hand shook as he bent his elbow to take a drag that would lessen the pain for a second or two. Anesthesia by Newport courtesy of Lorillard.

I felt vindicated. I hated him and loved him at the same time. My heart ached to see him brought low at the same time my head took a sadistic snickering glee in it. This! I almost walked away from his sad form hunched over in the fading day just to see what would happen, how much I really did mean to him.

Then it hit me that he might be telling the truth.

Truth meant that I would never hear his laugh again or feel his perfect kiss. I would not have to shoot warning glances and dole out disciplinary slaps when he made jokes into my ear during church services; he had keen observation. The priest WAS hung over and the children's choir couldn't read sheet music and didn't have the training to hold a note. It was annoying when he did it and I'd miss it if he were gone.

Of course, if I was right in my suspicions, if I lied to myself this time and believed that I could replace him with a man who would suit me better and not require this WORK; he'd give God one chance to make peace with his bad behavior. He would be in a ceremony that he would be unable to interrupt, cold and still in a casket. And I'd wish with every molecule in my being that it were me. There was nothing that he could do to me that would require such justice.

I adored him. I just had to figure out a way to trust him with those thoughts in my head. The images showed him with some faceless Amazon woman, larger in stature and personality than I could ever hope to be. In these emotional horror movies, he'd tell her all the things he told me in the whispered midnight heart to hearts. But maybe it wasn't like that. I didn't want to know.

I wanted the past to remain silent, mouth rendered immobile by as many layers of duct tape as I could imagine. I wanted to see our future. I could see in my mind's eye our children, so recently chasing each other around the backyard, standing there holding their own sleeping babies. When our wandering days were done.

I knew that I held the phrase that could make that happen if I chose to. It would be a set of words that I couldn't renege. I could not change my mind. I took a deep breath in the gathering gloom, still sorrowful in my heart. I looked into his gorgeous eyes and spoke the words.

I forgive you.

Learn more about this author, Marcia Middleton.
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