I’d called the cops and went through the whole you have to wait forty-eight hours spiel. I’d combed the city from one end to the next in the following days with the help of my brother, father and best friend slash lawyer to no avail.
She didn’t have any friends to speak of in our hometown, and since she was an orphan there was no family to call. After the cops got involved I’d felt much better, thinking that she would be found before too long.
I had no reason to think that anything could’ve happened to my wife at that time. Our life together up to that point had been picture perfect. In fact we had been the envy of many.
Everyone who knew us could never stop talking about how perfect we were together. Or how different I was as a man since she came into my life. She’d brought out the best in me and that’s a fact.
So I had no reason to believe that she’d be gone for two fucking years. She hadn’t taken anything with her, not even a change of clothes. The house hadn’t been trashed to show signs of a struggle.
There hadn’t been any ransom calls, nothing to support my theory at the time that she had been taken. It was as though she’d never existed.
Her bank account that I’d padded when we got married had gone untouched. Her credit cards were not being used and there was no record of a sighting anywhere.
Then the theories started and none of them were favorable to her. Everyone had their own ideas and all of them more or less were that she’d ran off with a lover.
That’s when I really started to lose my mind. When I wanted to hunt down all the gossiping fucks and end them for even calling her name. It’s the first time I ever came that close to going over the edge.
No one would ever understand, could never know how hard it was to hear that shit about the woman I loved. To be the only one in a sea of assholes who believed in her and knew that there was no way she would’ve done that or anything like it.
After a while even my parents had stopped believing. They hid it well but not well enough. I didn’t care. It was fine that I was the only one who never believed that she’d ran off to be with someone else. It was a lonely place to be, but no one and nothing could make me change my stance.
So instead I distanced myself from everyone and kept my own company. I had only the memories of our life together to keep me sane. And those memories kept her alive in my heart.
No matter what anyone else said, I could never believe that the girl who’d stolen my heart had been nothing more than a callous social climbing user.
I’d lost friends and some family because I refused to accept the general consensus that my wife, the woman I loved more than myself, had left me for another man.
To accept that would’ve meant accepting that our time together had been a lie; that I’d been a total fool who’d fallen for her wiles. I’m nobody’s fool, and what’s more, I know what I see when I look at her. No one’s that good a fucking actress, not even the ones who get paid millions to do that shit.
The truth is, the girl I knew wasn’t capable of such things. She was sweet and innocent without an ounce of guile or avarice. Unlike some of those who were accusing her in my damn ear.
She’d given me her innocence and stolen my heart; and until the day I die I’d never believe she’d betrayed me. I would be less than the man I am if I’d ever lost my damn mind enough to jump on that particular bandwagon.
No one else knew her like I did. They hadn’t spent nights buried inside her like I had because I couldn’t get enough, or stay up late into the early morning watching her sleep because I couldn’t believe something that beautiful was mine.
Or hear her sigh my name even in her sleep with that cute little smile on her lips as if remembering something we’d shared that day.
They hadn’t laughed so hard until they cried at some silly thing she’d said or done just to get them out of a funk the way she always did when I was having a bad day.
They’d never heard her say I love you in that sweet soft voice of hers, full of sincerity and adoration. But I had, I’d experienced each and every one of those things with her. That’s how I knew that she’d never have left me on her own.
But as time went on I’d started to believe the worst. Not that she’d betrayed me, but that she was gone from this world. That the beautiful light I’d been drawn to had been snuffed out.