Fault
It was all her fault. She was a bad mother and a worse wife.
She hadn't meant for anything to happen, and in the physical sense, nothing had happened. She was hurting, he was hurting, they were all hurting.
Danny couldn't walk. And all he did was bark at her whenever she mentioned physical therapy or started a sentence with "When you walk again".
So she stopped. She stopped talking about it. She stopped trying to help. She stopped sleeping in the same bed. She stopped coming home right after work. She stopped cooking. She stopped feeling sorry for him and felt sorry for herself. Everything just stopped.
She took a long pull of her beer as her thoughts drifted to the child she shared with him, to the life they'd had before the night at the bar. She shook her head, hoping to pull herself back to the present.
A moment later, her brown eyes landed on a pair of blue ones. But they didn't belong to her husband.
They belonged to Don Flack.
He was sitting down the bar from her and had been watching her for a few minutes now.
He understood. He understood what it was like to lose someone. And while Danny was still alive, she couldn't help but feel like part of him had died.
She pulled herself together and strode down to his end. She lifted herself into the seat next to his and waited.
They did this every week. Every week they met at this bar and sat next to each other. Every week she waited, she drank with him, she got drunk with him.
Every week.
Every week he'd walk her home. He'd hold her hand, tightly, too tightly but she never complained.
Every night, two blocks from her apartment, they'd stop. They stopped at the cemetery. They never went in, they just stood there. Every week, he'd cry and she'd hold him, her own silent tears streaming down her face. He cried for the woman he loved. She cried for the man she married.
They didn't speak because they didn't need to.
Eventually, the crying stopped. He stopped crying over Angell. She stopped crying over Danny.
They'd cried for so long, they'd run out of tears.
Emptiness had replaced the sadness.
She couldn't take it anymore. She'd lost so much, it wouldn't take much more for her to lose herself.
She filed for divorce one year and two months after Danny was shot. He called her a slut and accused her of cheating. She didn't fight back. He was out of line but she didn't have the energy. In the end, he didn't even put up a fight. He signed and moved out within a week.
Now here they were, in the same bar, just like every other time. Except this time, he was the one who moved, not her.
He was the one who sat down next to her. He was the one who waited.
And when she turned her brown eyes to his, for the first time in all their visits, she spoke.
"It's all my fault."
FINISH
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