Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: TRUST (07/21/16)
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TITLE: The Revelation | Previous Challenge Entry
By Sylvia Young
07/28/16 -
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Her husband was cheating on her. Staring in disbelief at the email that wasn’t meant for her eyes, Charlotte felt every ounce of blood drain from her head to the point where she thought she might faint.
With a quick snap, she closed the laptop cover and thrust it away from her. Reaching for her own phone, her first instinct was to call...who? Her mother would sigh. Her best friend would rage. Her sister…well, her sister wouldn’t understand.
Drawing her knees up to her chest, Charlotte sought to ease the ache that had started in her stomach and was spreading throughout her limbs. Eyes shut, she rocked back and forth on the spindly chair.
“Why, God?” she whispered into the empty room.
No answer came.
Ten minutes passed, and then twenty. Her arms and legs began to cramp, so she slowly unfurled her body and let the feeling seep back into her numb body. Everything hurt. Nothing would ever be the same again.
A sudden thought leapt into her mind…and then it took up residence.
Turning her head toward the shelf where the medicine was kept, she saw the bottle of white pills in her mind’s eye. She’d only taken a few. There were more than enough left.
The world fading about her in a haze, she rose and staggered toward the cabinet on wooden legs. Her fingers closed around the small container, and conviction rushed in.
He would be sorry when he found her. He would see that she’d read his email, the one to the woman, and he would know. He would know that it was his fault, and he would have to live with it forever.
Quickly now, she worked to free the bottle of its lid, but her slippery palms made it impossible. In frustration, she banged the lid against the sink, and finally it cracked open, spilling the tiny pills into the sink and down the drain.
“No!” she cried. Only a few of the pills remained. The rest were gone. There were not enough now.
Her heart, which had been racing with adrenaline, now swelled with disappointment.
“I can’t do anything right,” she muttered to herself. “Not even kill myself.”
Speaking the words out loud shocked her. Was that really what she’d been about to do? For what? A man who had scorned all the love she’d given him the past seven years?
Anger replaced her grief, and she looked around, wild-eyed, for something to destroy. The first thing she saw was his mug, proudly displaying his favorite football team.
Without a thought in her head, she picked it up and heaved it across the room. The crash it made was satisfying, but only for a moment. She needed something else.
Striding through the living room, she picked up the first breakable item she encountered—her wedding photo. She was just about to send it sailing through the air when she glanced down and saw the bright-eyed young couple staring at each other with unreserved joy. The looks on their faces halted her destructive action and instead of hurling the picture across the room, she clutched it in her hands and began to sob in earnest.
The faces in the photo were unrecognizable to her. She knew neither herself nor her husband. Why was that?
They’d both changed so much. Instead of focusing on each other, they’d let life’s demands intervene, sucking the joy right out of their lives.
Was she as much to blame as he was? She’d never had an affair, but she had compared her husband to other men in her life. Oftentimes, she’d found him lacking.
In truth, she’d lost her first love for him. She’d stopped paying attention to him, and focused on herself, her needs, her wants. When had that happened?
Her heart throbbed as her mind skimmed over the past week. Had she made him any of his favorite meals? Complimented his work on the house? Said thank you for anything?
She wasn’t to blame for his affair, but neither had she gone out of her way to be a good wife to him. Was this fixable? Could she forgive him and move past this?
Looking down into the hopeful faces of the bride and groom on her wedding days, she thought it just might be, but they would have to learn to trust each other all over again…starting today.
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