After the good-byes were said and the house had emptied out sans her, Josh, and the baby, Donna busied herself by cleaning up in the kitchen, trying to mentally prepare herself for what she’d have to go through with Josh tonight. As she was pondering the best way to tell him this news, she heard music coming from the living room. Curious, she put down the sponge and wandered out through the hallway until she got to the entrance of the living room. The sight that greeted her there gave her pause and caused her tears to start quietly flowing again.
Josh was in the middle of the messy living room and he was holding a sleepy-looking Natalie in his arms. His jacket and tie were thrown on a chair and the baby was wearing her footy pajamas, her brown hair pulled up away from her face and her head resting on her father’s shoulder, thumb firmly encased in her mouth. They were swaying to the music Donna had heard from the kitchen and despite her apprehension, she had to smile a little when she heard the song they were dancing to:
With a smile on your face and show the world,
All the love in your heart.
Then people gonna treat you better.
You’re gonna find, yes you will,
That you’re beautiful as you feel
Waiting at the station with the workday window blowing,
I’ve got, nothing to do but watch the passersby.
Mirrored in their faces, I see frustration growing
And they don’t see it showing, why do I?
With a smile on your face and show the world,
All the love in your heart.
Then people gonna treat you better.
You’re gonna find, yes you will,
That you’re beautiful as you feel.
I have often asked myself the reason for the sadness
In a world where tears are just a lullaby.
If there’s any answer, maybe love can end the madness.
Maybe no, oh, but we can only try.
With a smile on your face and show the world,
All the love in your heart.
Then people gonna treat you better.
You’re gonna find, yes you will,
That you’re beautiful…
That you’re beautiful…
That you’re beautiful as you feel.
“And you, sweetheart,” Donna could hear Josh whisper in the child’s ear as the music faded out from the dated record player, “are the most beautiful one of all. Well, except maybe next to your sister and your mommy.” He looked up at her and grinned, his dimples showing in full force. “And you say that I’m not stealthy.”
“I never said you weren’t stealthy,” Donna murmured from her place at the doorway. “I just said that you don’t have a sneaky bone in your entire body.” She walked over to him and he wrapped an arm around her, pulling her close to him. She put a hand on the baby’s back and leaned into Josh, enjoying the peace of the moment and delaying the inevitable just a little bit longer. Natalie turned her head to face her mother then and Donna had to smile at her. “She’s gotten so big. Our baby girl.”
“She sure has,” Josh replied, adoration clear in his voice. “But she won’t be a baby for much longer, will she?” He kissed Donna’s forehead. “We’re gonna need to get working on getting ourselves some more of these soon, don’t you think?” he teased her lightly, not knowing the comment cut straight to her heart.
Donna closed her eyes and sent a prayer to the heavens for strength. “I’m gonna go put her down,” she said softly, reaching over to take Natalie from him, shrugging out of his embrace. She stopped to allow him say goodnight to his little girl.
“Goodnight sweetheart,” he said to the baby, kissing her gently on top of her head. “Daddy loves you.”
“Daddy,” the child mumbled, holding out her chubby hands to press against Josh’s cheeks and leaning in to give him another wet kiss.
“Say night-night, honey,” Donna instructed her daughter, eager to get her into bed so she could start this conversation with Josh while she still had the nerve to do so.
“Night-night, honey,” Natalie mimicked, scrunching her face into her mother’s neck, garnering a chuckle from her parents.
“I’m gonna head up too,” Josh told her, heading for the stairs.
“Already? It’s not even ten yet.” Donna complained as she followed him.
“I know, it’s just been kind of a long day, that’s all.”
“Yeah I know,” she replied quietly, thinking it was about to get even longer. “Can you…can we talk before bed? Down here?”
He looked at her curiously. “Is something wrong?”
She hesitated but decided that honesty was the best way to start on this endeavor. “Yeah,” she nodded slowly. “Something pretty serious. And we need to talk about it tonight.”
“Okay,” he nodded back, feeling the tension radiating off of her body. As she went for the stairwell to go upstairs, he instinctively grabbed her upper arm, mindful of the baby she was carrying. “Donna?” She turned back to him, not meeting his eyes. “I love you, no matter what. Okay?”
She didn’t answer him right away, just tried to hold back some tears that threatened to escape. Finally, she looked back at him. “I love you, too,” she whispered, barely loud enough for him to hear. “I need to get her down,” she continued, referring to the almost-dozing child in her arms.
“Okay.” With that, she turned and took Natalie upstairs, leaving Josh alone in the hallway with his thoughts. ‘What the hell is wrong?’ he thought to himself as he headed back for the living room. ‘Why is she acting so strange? Hell, why has she been acting so strange for the past couple of months?’ He paced around the room as he waited for his wife to come back downstairs so she could put him out of his misery, busying himself by straightening up a little and turning off the music.
Finally, after about ten minutes, some of the longest ten minutes of Josh’s life, Donna descended the stairs and came back to him. “Sorry, she needed a quick bedtime story,” she explained to him when she got back. They both stood in the room, across from each other, neither moving to reach out for the other, both unsure of how the other was going to react. This was something they were not used to feeling in regards to each other; no two people either of them knew got each other the way they did and the fact that they couldn’t read one another right now was an extremely unnerving experience for the both of them.
“What’s wrong, Donna?” Josh took the plunge by speaking first. “What do we need to talk about?”
“A lot of things,” she replied, confusing him even more.
“Like what?” She didn’t answer him, just walked over to one of the French windows and stared out into the night. He came up behind her and put a supportive hand on her back. “Donna…”
“I’m not happy here, Josh. I’m not happy in DC,” she admitted, still looking straight ahead. Josh, not completely stunned by this admission, waited for her to continue. “I haven’t been for awhile. I don’t know when it started or what triggered it or how I can fix it; I’m just not as happy as I’m supposed to be.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, look at my life, Josh. I have a wonderful husband that loves me and that I love back just as much. I have two beautiful, healthy, and happy little girls who adore their mommy. I have my family and some of my best friends here with me. I live in two amazing homes that I’ve dreamed about since I was a girl. I work with charities and foundations that make a difference in this city. Every mother that was here tonight told me how jealous she was of me. I should be glowing with happiness and contentment; I shouldn’t be pretending that I am.” She laughed ruefully. “I’ve been so depressed lately that…I’ve been trying to get pregnant. So I could have something to distract me from what I’ve been feeling. Don’t worry, hasn’t worked yet though. Must be God or someone trying to tell me something.”
Josh wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her against him, breathing in the scent of her hair. “Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”
“I didn’t know how to,” she answered remorsefully. “You’re here, in this city, and you’re in your element. You live for politics and I didn’t want you to feel like you had to choose.”
“Oh Donna,” he sighed, pulling her tighter against him and burying his face in her hair, feeling incredibly guilty for not picking up on her distress sooner. “You know that I would choose you in a heartbeat. You have to know that by now.”
“I do know that,” she said, covering his hands with her own. “But I didn’t want you to have to. You were born to be a leader and I couldn’t stand it if I ever did anything to hurt your chances of that.”
“What could you possibly do that would hurt my career?” he asked rhetorically, relieved that she was finally letting him in and feeling that they’d work through this together. Suddenly he felt his wife go rigid in his arms and heard her breathing hitch as if she were crying. He turned her around to look at him and saw that his thoughts were confirmed. “Donna what is it?” Once again, she gave him the silent treatment, opting to pull away from him and go over to sit in the couch. He followed her over and knelt on the floor in front of her, taking her hands in his own. He watched the tears travel silently down her cheeks and he ached for her, for the pain that she was so obviously in. “Donna, please just tell me what’s really wrong here. I…I can take almost anything except seeing you like this.”
She looked up at him and smiled sadly. “I really hope that you mean that,” she told him. Taking a deep breath to steel herself from her emotions, she looked straight into his apprehensive eyes, the urge to just wrap herself in his arms forever almost overpowering her. But she had to do this and do it now. “When I was twenty,” she began in a whisper, “I had an abortion. And I’m so sorry that you’re just hearing about it now.”
The apprehension in Josh’s eyes gave over to shock. “What?”
“A few years before I had Emma, I had an abortion,” she repeated, having already said it not making it any easier to say again. She was watching Josh and watching the emotions play across his face: Nervousness turned into shock, which turned to sadness, and finally settling on hurt. He pulled his hands away from her and stood up, turning away and rubbing his hands over his face. “Josh?” she asked tentatively from her spot. “Josh, please turn around and talk to me.”
He turned back to her then and she instantly regretted asking him to. His eyes were that of a man who had been betrayed and didn’t understand why. “You…you had an abortion when you were younger,” he said slowly, “and you felt that you couldn’t tell me?” She hung her head low, her silence the confirmation he sought. He pursed his lips and nodded, struggling to keep his emotions in check. “Why now?”
She looked up at him. “What?”
“Why are you telling me now?” he asked again. “After everything that’s happened, why are you just telling me now?” Then, much like Toby had experienced earlier in the evening, the solution began to take shape in Josh’s mind. Toby had been anxious about a story that night; he came to the party unexpectedly; Nicole said that he talked with Donna and he had looked nervous; Donna’s reaction when he mentioned she wouldn’t hurt his career. Josh shook his head and smiled cynically. “Someone has it, right?” he asked her in an accusing tone. “Someone found out, they’re gonna leak it, and Toby needs to spin it. And in order for him to do that, I needed to know about it, right?”
“Not exactly. Toby thought someone had it but they don’t,” Donna corrected him. “So we don’t need to worry about it going public just now. Later though, when you run for…you know, it’ll probably come out then. He figured it would be better to tell you now rather than nine years from now.”
“Did he now?” Josh replied sarcastically. “Toby thought it would be smart for me to know about this now. *You*, on the other hand, would have preferred to keep me in the dark as long as humanly possibly, right?”
“Oh come on, Josh,” she groaned from her place on the couch.
“It’s true though isn’t it?” he asked her confrontationally. “You have never, and I mean never, once admitted anything about your past to me important unless you’ve been forced to.” He looked at her solemnly. “We made a promise to each other. When we got married, we said in our vows we’d keep no secrets from each other. That we’d never do anything to jeopardize what we have together right now or in the future.”
“It didn’t have anything to do with our future, Josh,” Donna tried desperately to convince him of. But he would have none of it.
“If you lied to me about something this significant in your life, how can I trust you not to lie about anything else?”
“I have never lied to you when it counted…” she tried to deny.
“Emma,” he interrupted her. “You never told me about Emma. I didn’t know about her until you were almost dying and even then you didn’t tell me. I had to find out from your brother! ”
“This conversation is not about Emma or whether we did or did not live up to our marriage vows,” she challenged angrily. “This is about me telling you about something from my past that could be politically damaging to you one day. That’s it!” He looked at her wounded, the thought that she thought he cared more about what this meant for his career more than what it meant for them affecting him deeply and Donna saw it. She closed her eyes in frustration, wanting to pull her hair out. “Besides, it’s not that big of a deal.”
“Oh, it’s not?”
“No it’s not,” Donna reiterated, getting up and going to stand in front of him. “I wish I hadn’t done it but I did and I can’t change that now. But it was long before I even knew who you were or before our life together began. It’s not important now.”
“Would you though?” Josh asked her quietly. “Would you change what you did if you could?”
She thought for a moment. “I’d like to think that I would. I’ve regretted it everyday since it happened. I know I would want to keep it but I don’t know if I could,” she told him honestly. “The circumstances were not ideal. I was basically forced into doing it and if I had had the baby, you know, maybe Emma wouldn’t have been born and I could never imagine my life without her, could you?”
Josh didn’t answer her. He agreed with her about Emma, he couldn’t fathom his life without either of his children in it but something else Donna said had caught his attention, her comment about the circumstances not being ideal. It suddenly all made sense to him. He turned away from her again and walked over to the fireplace, leaning against the mantle. “It was Ben’s, wasn’t it?” he asked, already knowing in his heart that it was true. Once again, her silence was his answer. He shook his head in amazement. “Oh my God. I cannot believe you would be so stupid…”
“Josh, stop it,” she begged him, her tears springing forth yet again. “Stop it before say anything you regret.”
“Why should I stop, Donnatella?” he taunted her resentfully, going back over to her. “We’re the perfect couple remember? We’re completely and totally honest with each other about everything and anything. At least one of us is.”
“I don’t believe you’re doing this now,” she said, getting angrier with him by the second.
“No, what I can’t believe is you,” he shot back. “Or more specifically, how you could stay with him after that bastard forced you to do something we both know you would have never done if given the choice.”
“Oh you know I never would have done it without him pushing me to, do you?” she tossed, her voice growing louder. “Because you know me so well, right? You’re so in tune with me. Well, Joshua, if you’re so in tune with me why is it that you couldn’t tell that by fulfilling one of your dreams, you were killing a part of me?! If you know me so well, why can’t you realize how much I grieved for the baby I never got to hold in my arms?!” She began laughing through her tears. “Do you know what I’ve prayed for every night for the past few months when I do my nightly prayers with Emma? I pray that one day soon you get caught taking a bribe or you piss off Hoynes or you make such a fool of yourself on the Senate Floor that they kick your ass to the curb and we can get out of this godforsaken town! Did you know that about me?”
“I thought I knew you,” he said, raising his own voice to match the volume of hers. “I really thought I did. But I don’t. Because the woman that I know would never in a million years have chosen a fucking alcoholic, emotionally-abusing, lying, cheating disgrace of a man who forced her into giving up her right to chose what do with her body over her own daughter!”
Donna could never have thought it would be possible to feel this much pain and anger at one time. Her body felt like it was on emotional overload, like it would explode from the amount of negative energy that was coursing through her veins at the moment, all of it directed at the man she was supposed to love more than anything. “Take. That. Back,” she demanded, staring daggers into her husband’s eyes, her voice deathly calm.
He didn’t flinch away from her gaze; in fact it served only to push him further rather than to take a step back. “Fine,” Josh agreed, his teeth clenched against his rage. “Just as long as you can explain to me why the first person Emma ever called mommy was your grandmother.”
She didn’t remember slapping him; she didn’t remember thinking about doing it or wanting to do it, it just happened. One second she was glaring at him and practically chocking on her anger, the next his head snapped sideways and the palm of her hand burned like fire. She took a step back from him, partly out of shock and partly out of a subconscious fear that he’d retaliate. But he didn’t. He just stood, there with his head turned to the side and a red mark already beginning to appear on his cheek. Donna stared at him, eyes wide with shock and fright, barely being able to breathe as she tried to process what was happening.
After a moment of eternity, Josh stepped forward. Against her will, Donna sucked in a sharp breath as he passed by her but he didn’t even look at her. He just walked over to the chair and picked up his jacket. Then he strode back past her again on his way to the foyer. There, he walked over and pulled out the small sports bag that Donna knew held his spare change of clothes for the office out of the closet. He’d brought it home the other day to have the shirt ironed and the hemline on his pants sewn up. He went over to the coat rack and picked up his overcoat, throwing it on violently before picking up his bag again. Without even looking at her or making a sound, he grabbed his car keys from the side table and walked out the front door, closing it carefully behind him.
It felt like years before Donna was able to breathe again. She took in deep, gasping breaths but it didn’t help to curb the tightening sensation deep in her chest, didn’t help to calm her frazzled nerves in the least.
“Oh my God,” she whispered out loud, holding her hands over her mouth and collapsing onto the floor, the enormity of what had just transpired hitting her like a freight train. Her husband had walked out on her; she’d pushed him away to the point were he couldn’t be in the same house with her. “Oh my God! No, no please God no don’t let this be happening!” She began hyperventilating then, her breathless sobs coupled with her shallow inhalation making her feel like she was going to pass out into unconsciousness.
Finally, after a few scary minutes, she felt her body begin to physically regain control of itself. Her breathing evened out, her hands stopped shaking, and eventually the tears stopped as well. Ever so slowly she pulled herself up off the floor and on shaky legs, she made her way over to and up the staircase. She walked like a zombie into her bedroom, hers and Josh’s bedroom, and sank down onto the bed. All she wanted to do was curl up into a ball and stay like that until Josh came home. ‘But what if he doesn’t come home?’ her thoughts betrayed her by asking what was once the unthinkable. ‘What if this is the end of the road for you two? Camelot never lasts forever; you should know, it was your mother’s favorite story when she was alive. Why were you expecting this to?’ Donna grabbed a pillow and crushed to her ear, in an attempt to drown out the thoughts that were screaming at her in her head.
In the midst of all this, Donna thought she heard something. It sounded like crying but Donna knew it wasn’t herself. Who else…? “Natalie,” Donna whispered, throwing the pillow to the side and springing up from the bed. On sheer maternal instinct, she raced out the room and down the hall until she reached the child’s room. She opened the door and turned on the lights, breathing a sigh of relief to see the baby standing up in the crib, hands gripping the bars as she wailed at the top of her lungs but apparently not physically hurt.
“Oh sweetie, come here,” Donna cooed as she went over to pick up her daughter. She quickly checked her over for fever or other injuries and finding none, she held her close to her heart, rubbed her back, and kissed her repeatedly, trying to ease the child’s distress. But it was to no avail, Natalie just kept on screaming. “Oh honey, what’s wrong? What can Mommy do for you, Natalie, huh?” She squeezed her closer in a vain attempt to help bring Natalie some form of comfort but it wasn’t working. Just then, Donna recognized the cry; it was how Natalie cried whenever she wanted her father. She had a specific cry for her mother and her sister and the various other people in her life but this one was definitely for her daddy. When she cried like this, Josh was the only person that could calm her down and there was nothing Donna could do to bring him to Natalie then. She knew he didn’t bring his phone with him and having no idea where he was headed, all she could do was stand in the room and try hopelessly to bring her baby back to some form of happiness. After several minutes of rocking her and murmuring loving words to her daughter and still being greeted with only her bawling, she lost her composure. “God damn you, Josh Lyman!” she finally shouted along with the baby, whose own tears intensified at the new and unwelcome sound.
So she and the baby stood there, crying together, for nearly an hour until Natalie finally wore herself out and fell back into a fitful sleep. She laid the baby back down in her crib, staying with her a few minutes to calm herself down again before she went back into her room. She sat back down on the bed and looked forward into the vanity mirror across the room from her. ‘This is who you are now, huh?’ her mind mocked her. ‘A politician’s pretty wife in a nice dress, with nothing to do with your life besides take care of your kids and wait for your husband to come home. Your mother would be so proud of you.’
“No,” Donna said to her reflection. “No, I don’t want to be like that anymore.” She got up and ran her fingers through her hair. “How do I stop this? How do I stop being like this?” she thought out loud. ‘You know how,’ her mind told her. ‘You’ve always known how, you just didn’t want to admit it.’ Unfortunately, she did know. She just wasn’t sure if she could. ‘What about Josh? How would that be fair to him?’ she thought feebly. No matter how angry with him she was, and she was still royally pissed at him, she still loved him. She would always love him; it was a simple fact of nature. ‘But how is it fair to him now to be with you when you’re not even sure who you are anymore?’ she thought to herself. Donna stopped pacing and looked in the mirror again. The decision was made, painful as it was, the decision was made. She walked over to the night table to pick up the phone and dialed a number she’d used to call several times a month when she had been working in the White House, when she’d done something productive with herself. “Hello American Airlines…Yes, when is your earliest flight out of DC tomorrow morning…No, I don’t care where it goes, I just want to know when it leaves…Fine, I’d like three tickets please. One adult and two children…”
The next morning, a tired and beleaguered Josh opened the door to his house and stepped inside. He’d driven around in circles for almost three hours last night before pulling over at some anonymous roadside hotel an hour outside DC. Thankfully it was a Sunday, a day he insisted on not working anyways. It gave him the perfect opportunity to go home and attempt to patch things up with Donna. He’d thought of nothing else last night except their disastrous fight and what he’d said to her and what had been said back. It had all made sense at the time to say those horrible things to her but now, with the gift of a clear head and several hours, he realized what a complete asshole he’d been to her. She’d told him about one of the most painful experiences of her life and he’d just thrown it back into her face. Granted, he was still upset that she hadn’t told him in the first place but that was another issue for another day. Right now, all he wanted to do was apologize and try to talk out their problems with her, try to fix what had been broken last night.
“Hello?” Josh called out from the foyer, shrugging off his coat and putting his bag down. “Donna? Are you awake?” He glanced at his watch, which read 9:35 am, which meant it was really about quarter past ten. Donna rarely slept in and even if she did, it was never this late. He walked up the stairs and went to their bedroom door, which was closed. Knocking lightly and getting no response, he pushed the door open and found the room empty. The room was clean and the bed was neatly made; actually it looked as if it hadn’t been slept in at all. ‘Maybe she slept on the couch waiting for me,’ he thought absently. He left the room and went past Emma’s room, remembering she’d slept at a friend’s house the previous night, and went straight for Natalie’s room. Opening the door, he found nothing again, except the crib had definitely been used last night. “Donna? Are you home?” he called out again, deciding to go back and explore downstairs, thinking as he went. ‘Did she go out with Natalie? Take her grocery shopping or something?’ Arriving downstairs and in the kitchen, he saw that the grocery theory was irrelevant. ‘Maybe Donna took her to the park to get her own mind off things.’ But hanging from the coat rack was Natalie’s wrist strap thing that they used to keep her from wandering away, so the park was out. “Where in the hell…?” Josh thought out loud but was interrupted by the ringing phone. He jumped for it, hoping it was Donna, calling to explain her absence. “Hello?” he said hurriedly.
“Hello Mr. Lyman? This is Karen Sachs, Melissa’s mother,” the slightly familiar female voice said on the other end.
“Yes good morning, Mrs. Sachs. How are you?” Josh said politely, hoping to conceal his disappointment.
“Fine thank you,” she replied. “Listen, I know it’s a Sunday and I won’t keep you long but Emma left her toothbrush here and I was wondering if you or your wife want to come pick it up or if we should just throw it out.”
“I’m sorry, did you say Emma left something there? Left as in she’s not there anymore?” Josh asked, confused. Whenever Emma spent the night at someone’s house, he and Donna didn’t usually pick her up until at least noon, giving her extra playtime with whomever she was with.
“Yes, your wife picked her up this morning,” Mrs. Sachs told him. “Early actually, around seven or so. She called and said she needed to pick up Emma early and I brought her out to Donna when she drove up.”
“Did she say why she got Emma so early?”
“I assumed it was because you guys were going on a trip and you had a train or something to catch.”
“A trip?” He repeated his perplexity and panic growing by the second. “Why…why would you think that?”
“Because of the suitcases I saw when she put Emma’s bag in the trunk,” Mrs. Sachs replied. “Is there something…?”
For a moment Josh couldn’t answer, his mind imploding with the reality he was being presented.
“Mr. Lyman?” Mrs. Sachs repeated.
“Oh, sorry,” Josh stumbled. “I’ve just found the post-it Donna left for me,” he lied, not really knowing what to say, but just wanting to end the conversation as soon as possible.
“Sure, everything ok?”
“Yeah, it’s fine, just a family emergency. I’m sorry to be rude, but I have to…” he trailed off, his mind replaying the events of this morning, walking into an empty house, searching for Donna only to be confronted with her absence. He stood rooted, saying goodbye and hanging up the phone, with no idea if he had the strength to face what was to come.
Then
something snapped and he raced back up the stairs to his bedroom. He ran to the
closet and threw open the doors. He immediately stepped back, the sight before
him almost causing him physical pain. Most of Donna’s clothes were gone from
the hangers and her luggage set was missing. Going over to her dresser drawers,
he pulled each one open forcefully, finding clothes and undergarments in some
of them but in far lesser numbers than there were yesterday. In a trance, he
went into the rooms of his daughters and found mostly the same scene: Clothes
and suitcases gone as well as toys and other knickknacks.
‘This is not happening,’ his brain screamed at him as he struggled to get back downstairs. ‘She’s your wife, she wouldn’t just up and leave with your kids like this.’ He slowly made his way back into the kitchen, dropping himself down on one of the stools and slumping down on top of the island. ‘She loves you; she wouldn’t…’
Something caught his eye on the fridge as he tried to convince himself of what had so obviously taken place. There, held up by a magnet and surrounded by various drawings and pictures, was a note that hadn’t been there yesterday that Josh could tell from his spot was written in Donna’s distinctive handwriting. Getting up and walking toward it as if he were approaching his execution, he pulled it down and cautiously began to read it. It said:
Dear Josh,
By the time you get this, the girls and I aren’t going to be there. I’m sorry for doing this to you but I didn’t know what else to do. Last night ranked as one of the worst nights of my life as I’m sure it did for you too, and I wish it had never happened but it did. And we can’t go back to the way it was before, no matter how much we both want to. I’m going through a very scary and confusing time right now and I want nothing more than to just let you come in and fix it but I can’t let you do that anymore. I’ve let you do it for too long and I need to learn how to do things again myself as opposed to letting you do them for me. And I need to do it away from you. I know you’ll be angry that I took the girls but I need them with me now to get through this. I’m not going to tell you where we are because I know you’ll just come after us and you need to be there to do your job. I know after last night you have no reason to but I need you to trust that I’ll bring the girls home soon. I don’t know what’s going to happen to us anymore. After last night, I’m not sure of anything anymore. I never thought we’d hurt each other the way we did but it happened. Maybe for now, it’s best if we stay apart for everyone’s sakes. I don’t hate you, Josh; I’ve just kind of forgotten that I love you too.
I’m sorry,
Donna
Josh was not an emotional man by nature but as he read the note, he saw splotches of water hit the paper and he realized they were his own tears. Josh had never felt this weak in his entire life and rereading the note, he also realized that his family wasn’t there to help get him through it.
“Oh God,” he croaked out, slumping back against the fridge and sliding to the ground, his body wracked with tears. “Oh God, Donna, I’m so sorry.”
Somewhere over Ohio, Donna was sitting in her first-class seat next to her daughters, who were both asleep in their seats, having suffered an exhausting morning of travel. Looking away from them and down at her left hand, she eyed the engagement ring and wedding band on her ring finger. Slowly, almost against her will, she removed them and placed them in her purse pocket. “I’m sorry, Josh,” she whispered, tears sliding down her cheeks as she and the girls flew further and further away from him.
~~END~~
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