The Last Exhale Part 19

"And you don't?"

"Of course I do, but it's more to it than that. My feelings toward Rene changed a long time ago. She was being an absent wife, treating our marriage like it was something I dreamt up. After a while, I got tired of trying. I started pulling away. I met Sydney. Then found out Rene's truth. She never fell out of love with me. She just didn't know how to love me and live with her diagnosis." I take a deep breath. "Man, I love Rene something serious, and what happened earlier with Sydney made me realize that I'm going to have to move on from the only love I've ever known."

"I wish you would've come to me before running to the next man's wife."

I scowl at my brother. "Is there something you need to say?"

"I said it. I don't feel like you're making the right decisions."

"You lose your child and your wife and tell me what kind of decisions you'd make. Oh wait, you and your wife can't even have a child."

"That was low, real low." He shakes his head and starts walking down the street.

"Hold up." I run up behind him. "You're right, Drew. That was a low blow."

He's still shaking his head. "I swear, sometimes, you were conceived in another womb."

"Cut me some slack, d.a.m.n. I'm losing my wife and right now I feel like I'm losing me." I throw my fists at the wind.

"Last time you went tossing your fists around, you ended up with st.i.tches."

I feel like I'm in the ring against my will. Feel like someone's got my feet and hands tied to a string, trying to get me to take down a man who looks just like me. Got me taking hits at his emotions, principles, his will and determination. They're trying to get me to break myself down in the worst way and succeeding.

We walk back to the car in silence. Before we get in, I say, "Is it possible to hate and love someone at the same time?"

He plops his arms on the roof of his car, ponders the question a little longer than I expected. "Nope. Can't say it's possible. You can't have love if you have hate."

I get in the car, give myself a second to my thoughts. So many things going through my head it's hard to keep up or sort things out on my own.

Andrew gets in, revs up the V6. "Where'd that come from?"

Since Rene told me about her finding the lump while Reggie was just an infant, I've kinda had some different thoughts toward her. No, I don't think she's the reason he pa.s.sed away, but I do blame her for her present condition. Had she gone to the doctor back then, terminal cancer might not have been her diagnosis. I tell my brother, "I feel like Rene brought this on herself, and all the while making me feel like less of a husband, less of a man in the process."

"Wow. That's a lot to hold inside, Brandon."

"And there's nothing I can do about it now."

When Andrew comes to a stop at a red light, he looks over at me. "Do you know how much time she has left?"

Luckily the light turns green and he can't see the despair in my eyes when I say, "Any day now."

I pull up to the front gate to the subdivision I called home with my wife for the past seven years. Recognizing my truck, the meddlesome security guard comes out of the hut and waves my way. I keep my window up this time, wave behind the gla.s.s and keep it moving. Won't let him add any salt to my growing wound. I drive around winding streets until I'm parked in the familiar driveway. Sydney's smiling face still sitting in the front yard with the word Sold plastered on top.

There was a time when I'd open the garage and see Rene's car with a ca.r.s.eat in the back. It would fill my heart to know my wife and son were in the house, filling it with laughter and love. Tonight, when I open the garage with the opener I never got rid of, Rene's car is nowhere to be found and the ca.r.s.eat went missing a long time ago. So many changes in just a short amount of time.

I enter the house to a deadening silence. In a couple of days, it will be filled with new owners. New voices, new problems to invade this house and make it a home. Walking through the coldness of a home I left months ago, you'd never know it was once filled with warmth. It's so cold in here I feel like I'm in a morgue. I guess I am. Three people died in here.

Reggie's room is the first place I go in once I make it upstairs. A few nights ago, his bed, his clothes, all his toys, even his spirit was still in here. Don't know how his mother was able to come in here every night long after I'd gone to sleep. Being in here for one minute was hard enough for me. Every minute after that, staying in here dug deeper into my core. He was my son. He was part of me. Now all of that is gone. As I stand in the memory of the short life we shared together, I swear I feel his arms wrap around my waist. "I miss you, Reg."

The next room I enter is the one I shared with my wife. It's the room our beloved son was created in many moons ago. It's the room we held each other in as tears consumed us as that same son was no longer a part of our lives. It's the same room my wife lost herself in and killed our marriage in.

There's nothing in here but memories. The heaviness of all that was lost weighs me down, causes me to lose my balance. My knees. .h.i.t the floor so hard it sounds like the s.p.a.ce shuttle soaring back into the earth's atmosphere. Major parts of my life, major people in my life will one day become fading memories in my life. Reggie and Rene will soon reside in the recesses of my mind.

Being surrounded by the emptiness of this place, the loneliness carves a hole in my heart, and makes me wonder, How am I going to move on from this?

35.

SYDNEY.

How do you look into the eyes of a dying woman when you know less than twenty-four hours ago you tried to save your life by sleeping with her husband?

My nerves do their best at keeping my attention. As I reach for a copy of the HUD-1 statement to look at while the lawyer goes over the facts, my hand taps a gla.s.s of water and makes a puddle in the middle of the table. I grab the papers before anything can get wet. "I'm so sorry about that."

Rene's eyes peer up at me, I see them in my peripheral vision as my eyes are on the man sitting next to her. He reaches for the roll of paper towels in the middle of the table. He unrolls several sheets, dabs at the mess I've made.

"Thank you."

"Good thing it wasn't coffee," the lawyer says.

I give him a half-smile. I wasn't expecting to see Brandon this morning. I knew there was a possibility of him showing up, but with his name being nowhere on any of the doc.u.ments, and with what went down yesterday on his living room floor, didn't think he'd want to put that tension in the air. Then again, maybe the only tension I feel is what's tugging at my heart.

Brandon stares at me, I can feel his eyes on me. Can feel him a.n.a.lyzing me, trying to see if I'm going to break under the guise of my attempt of having some control over the situation. A situation his wife has no inkling of. Or maybe she does, because I feel her eyes on me too.

"This is a statement swearing you have the right to sell your home." The lawyer tells her as he pa.s.ses over the Certificate of t.i.tle to look over and sign.

I glance up at Brandon. I don't want to feel like this. I want to be mad at him for how he left me. Handed my s.h.i.+rt to me and told me I had to go. Left me wet and exposed. Why couldn't he tend to my need then as he did to the water that almost soaked the closing doc.u.ments on the home he shared with his wife a moment ago? Had he just finished what I started, there wouldn't be this feeling of unfinished business stifling this business deal. I know he feels the same way, know he wishes he would have sealed the deal. He doesn't have to say it. It's in his eyes.

A hand lands on top of mine, a voice in my ear, "You okay?"

The pen in my hand tapping the table enough to annoy a woodp.e.c.k.e.r. Nerves taking over once again. I nod at the lawyer who's been in the room with me one too many times to know I'm not myself. I can't muster the words, so I nod and place the pen on the table. There's no need for me to have a pen anyway. I'm not here to sign anything. My purpose of being here is to support my client in the selling of their home. What support I'm actually giving Rene at this point is debatable.

Why can't I shake this? This is not me. Tapping the pen like someone who's downed five energy drinks in five seconds. Spilling water, nearly making a mess of official doc.u.ments. Feels like the whole room is looking at me. Feels like they can see me falling apart in a seat I've sat in too many times to count.

My eyes close. I press my fingers to my temples, rub them in circular motions. Not that I have a headache. I'm trying to channel Princess Aura and send my Flash Gordon a telepathic message. Why'd you have to ask me to help you run? Why'd you make me laugh, make me feel appreciated, desired? Why'd you let my vulnerability cross your threshold? "Why'd you leave me this way?"

A throat clears.

I open my eyes, find that all eyes are on me. Something tells me my telepathic messages weren't so telepathic. The first person I look at is Brandon, the cause of my current dysfunction. He looks at his wife. His wife looks at him, her eyes penetrate him so deep I feel like they're dissecting my soul.

"I think you need to step out for a minute, get yourself together," the lawyer says to me as discreetly as possible. "Ms. Ortiz, if I can direct your attention to the bill of sale."

"I know the doc.u.ments say Ortiz and I have to sign as such, but I'd prefer it if you called me Mrs. Carter."

I don't have to look back as I walk out the door to know her request is directed at me.

36.

BRANDON.

Rene is silent as we drive out of the parking lot to the law office.

I don't know what happened back there. Don't know how much she sensed from Sydney's breakdown. Not sure what sense I can make of it.

"Why'd you leave me this way?"

The crazy part is I'm not sure what sense to make of how I felt sitting in the same room with my wife and the woman who's given me more attention than my wife over the past few months. I wanted to reach across the table, grab Sydney's hand. Wanted to tell her I was sorry for kicking her out of my place, for rejecting what she had to offer. It was something we both wanted. Something we both needed. But I couldn't cross that line. As much as I felt I was ready to, it didn't feel right. I'm just trying to figure out why I feel bad for honoring my vows.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" I ask a few lights down from our next order of business for the day.

"You do what you have to do, right?"

Okay, that wasn't the best question to ask. I deserved her response. Yeah, we do do what we have to, even if sometimes it's not what we want to do. I drive around to the back of the building, a place I can count on one hand how many times I've been here.

Rene doesn't wait for me to come around to her side of the car and open the door for her. Though her movements are slow and it takes quite a bit of effort, this is something she wants to do on her own. She uses her key to unlock the door. I honor her need for independence. This is her business. She built it after her parents' deaths. It was her dedication to them and so many who'd gone before them whose images weren't honored properly.

The smell of death slaps me in the face with reality. I don't want to be here, don't want to go through this with her. In a matter of time, she will be here, lying on the table, having done to her what she's done to so many others who've gone on before her.

There's a body on the table. We're on the other side of the room, watching through a window, the same window I watched her through months ago, before I knew this was the reason our marriage was falling apart. Her a.s.sistant, Peter, sprays the body down, prepares them for the next step in their final moments on this side of life.

For a moment, Rene stands still, stands in her reality. She doesn't blink, doesn't talk. Doesn't breathe.

I watch my wife through blurred eyes. This is our reality. "You don't have to be here."

She jumps at the sound of my voice. Fear lies in her eyes. "I don't have a choice." She pushes with a newfound strength into the room with the man who will soon be hosing her down, preparing her for her final chapter.

Ever since finding out Rene has cancer, I've been concerned with how it's affected me. How it's made me feel not knowing all these years she was battling something on her own that she should've been able to turn to me to help her fight. Not once have I considered how she feels. She's the one who has cancer. She's the one who's got a disease eating its way through her body. She's the one leaving, the one who has to say goodbye. How could I have been so selfish?

Watching her put on her white coat, eye goggles, gloves, the same things she's put on so many times over the past few years, I know this time holds a different meaning. She's had to do this since learning her time on earth had been shortened, but as she grows more ill, as her diagnosis forces her to take notice, she knows this is her last time.

Rene places an incision in the body's neck. As blood drains out, another substance fills its place.

I turn away.

Can't watch this.

Peter wraps his arm around Rene's waist as he helps her up the stairs to her office. They don't see me sitting here in the dark, where I've been since emptying enough food into the toilet to feed the disciples at The Last Supper.

I brush my hands down my thighs as I give myself strength to stand. Today has been a day of more than I can handle. My emotions have done their job of overtaking the control I once thought I had. I go back into the restroom, fill my hands with cold water, toss it on my face. Do that a couple of times before patting myself dry with paper towels. I can't bear looking at my image in the mirror. Back in the hallway, I hold on to the rail as I climb the staircase to see what Rene and Peter are discussing. Sometimes, you do what you have to do, even if it's the very thing that'll break you.

Rene's handing Peter a picture when I walk into her office. "I want to look just like that."

He nods my way, acknowledges my presence. Says to her, "And you know you will look just like that," then gets up to give me a hug. "You hanging in there, Brandon?"

I hug him back. "Considering the circ.u.mstances."

"I know it's hard."

Rene gets up from behind her desk, walks over to the cabinet by the door. Opens it and pulls out a bottle of clear liquid. Pours a hefty serving in a gla.s.s. "Anybody else?" she asks, holding the bottle of vodka in the air.

Peter reaches for a gla.s.s and pa.s.ses one my way without checking to see if I want a drink or not. What the h.e.l.l, why not? I grab the gla.s.s.

Behind her desk, Rene looks to the man who's been by her side in this business since a year after it opened. "I hate that I'll have to turn over the keys to this place. It's the second baby I have to say goodbye to." She lets her eyes reminisce with mine when she says that. "There's no one more deserving, more pa.s.sionate about this business, more fitting than you."

"What I hate is having to run this place without you." His voice breaks.

Rene reaches her hand across the desk for Peter's hand. He meets hers halfway. They squeeze each other's hand, give each other a strength and support that only the two of them can share. So many times they've had to watch others break down in front of them. Now it's their turn to shed tears over what they'll be losing. Business partners and a special friends.h.i.+p.

When my wife was made aware this day was unavoidable, she asked if I had any desire of taking over the business. I didn't have to think about it. There was no desire to do any such thing. It was her baby, her pa.s.sion, her vision. I wanted to keep it just that. Plus, I didn't want to attach to anything I didn't need to attach to. I was glad to tell her I'd pa.s.s. I knew she only extended it as a courtesy. She had every intention of pa.s.sing it on to her friend.

"I know I'm leaving DelCosta in great hands."

Peter nods. "Nothing will change."

Her eyes find me again, they peer over the gla.s.s in her hand as she takes a nice-sized sip of her drink.

I know Rene's not dumb. Her att.i.tude hasn't been the same since leaving the closing of our home. A corpse could feel the tension in that room, could hear and see there was something going on between her realtor and me. She's treating me like she did before she received her death sentence. I did what I had to do, even though it wasn't what I wanted to do. All I ever wanted was to love my wife until the end of time. Just happens her time is ending a lot sooner than I was ready for.

"Brandon, will you give us a moment?"

I step out of the office to give them s.p.a.ce. Whatever Rene thinks went down with me and her realtor is one thing, but I'm grateful she has enough compa.s.sion in her heart to spare me of having to hear the final details for her service.