After Two Lost Babies, I Walked Away

Mervyn Stephens's first love was insane.

She tailed us at dinner. When we went on dates, she threatened to jump off buildings.

I'd brought up calling the police more than once, and every time Mervyn talked me out of it.

He said Victoria Pruitt was young and didn't know better, and that I shouldn't stoop to a madwoman's level.

Until the day of our engagement party, when Victoria slipped past security and snuck inside.

She tore my wedding gown to shreds and shattered my champagne tower.

Then she shoved me down a staircase—three months pregnant.

This time, Mervyn finally snapped.

He didn't listen to a single excuse. He had her committed to a psychiatric hospital on the spot.

I thought, at last, my life could settle into peace.

But that very night, the woman who should have been locked away in that hospital appeared beneath my building.

Under a cherry blossom tree, petals swirling through the air.

The girl who had abandoned him all those years ago looked at him with red-rimmed eyes and asked,

"Mervyn, you still love me, don't you?"

"At your engagement party, you played my favorite song."

"Your fiancée wore a gown I designed. The restaurant you took her to was my favorite."

"You even planted my favorite cherry blossoms outside your home."

"Mervyn, open your eyes and look at me. I refuse to believe you've truly let me go!"

——

He hadn't let her go.

He was silent for only three seconds before he bent down and kissed her.

He kissed her like he was venting, biting, devouring.

Only when he'd poured out every last drop of resentment in his heart did he release her, his eyes red.

"Yes. I can't let you go."

"But Victoria, what makes you think I, Mervyn Stephens, would marry secondhand goods who threw me away?"

Victoria didn't answer.

She just rose on her toes and kissed him.

His body went rigid for an instant.

Just as I thought he would push her away—

He pulled her into the car instead, his eyes burning.

Under the cover of night, the car began to rock violently.

What the two of them were doing needed no explanation.

And I was already too sick to speak.

Ten years together, and I had always known Mervyn had a madwoman for a first love.

A woman who was obsessive, willful, beyond reason.

She'd left him when he had nothing, then clawed her way back after he rose from the ashes, refusing to let go.

Every time Victoria showed up, Mervyn would turn to me, his face thick with annoyance, and say,

"She's just a lunatic. Why bother with her?"

But now, he was the one tangled up with that lunatic.

My stomach heaved.

I rushed to the bathroom and threw up until the world went black.

I don't know how long I retched before Mervyn finally came back.

He was straightening the clothes Victoria had wrinkled.

The moment he saw me, he rushed to my side.

"What's wrong, Melody James? Is this from what happened earlier today?"

"Don't be scared. I'll take you to the hospital right now."

He draped a coat over my shoulders, supporting me as he steered me toward the door.

But the perfume clinging to him only made me sicker.

I shoved his hand away, blindly, desperate not to be near him.

Mervyn assumed I was still angry about what had happened earlier.

His expression shaded into impatience.

"Melody, weren't you always the reasonable one?"

"Why are you still angry with me over today?"

"Victoria's just a lunatic. Don't lower yourself to her level. Let me make it up to you properly tomorrow, all right?"

Make it up to me how?

By teaching her another hard lesson in the car?

Or by keeping her as a mistress, just to humiliate me?

I couldn't get the words out.

Mervyn stood beside me for a while.

Finding it pointless, he quietly walked out.

Every trace of sleep had left me. I stared at the ceiling, my eyes hollow.