The Gravity of Us (Elements 4)

The rest of the way home, we sat in silence, my head swirling

with questions, a big part of me not wanting to know the answers. Jane had a past she didn’t speak about, and I had a past of the same kind. There were parts of all lives that were better left in the shadows, and I figured Jane’s family was a prime example. There was no reason to go over the details. Yesterday she hadn’t had a sister, and today she did.

Though I doubted Lucy would be coming over for Thanksgiving any time soon.

I headed straight into our bedroom and started unbuttoning my shirt. It only took her a couple seconds to follow me into the room with a look of nerves plastered on her face, but she didn’t speak a word. We both started undressing, and she moved over to me, quiet, and turned her back to me, silently asking for me to unzip her black gown.

I did as she requested, and she slid the dress off her body before tossing on one of my T-shirts, which she always used as her nightgowns. Her growing stomach stretched them out, but I didn’t mind.

Minutes later, we stood in the bathroom, both brushing our teeth, no words exchanged. We brushed, we spat, we rinsed. It was our normal routine; silence was always our friend, and that night hadn’t changed anything.

When we climbed into bed, we both shut off the lamps sitting on our nightstands, and we didn’t mutter a word, not even to say good night.

As my eyes closed, I tried my best to shut my brain off, but something from that day split my memories open. So, instead of asking Jane about her past, I crawled out of bed and went to my office to lose myself in my novel. I still needed about ninety-five thousand words, so I decided to fall into fiction in order to forget about reality for a while. When my fingers were working, my brain wasn’t focused on anything but the words. Words freed me from the confusion my wife had dumped in my lap. Words freed me from remembering my father. Words freed me from falling too deep into my mind where I stored all the pain from my past.

Without writing, my world would be filled with loss.

Without words, I’d be shattered.

“Come to bed, Graham,” Jane said, standing in my doorway. It was the second time in one day that she’d interrupted me while I was writing. I hoped it wasn’t becoming a common thing.

“I have to finish up my chapter.”

“You’ll be up for hours, just like the last few days.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I have two,” she said, crossing her arms. “I have two sisters.”

I grimaced and went back to typing. “Let’s not do this, Jane.”

“Did you kiss her?”

My fingers froze, and my brows lowered as I turned to face her. “What?”

She ran her fingers through her hair, and tears were streaming down her face. She was crying—again. Too many tears from my wife in one day. “I said, did you kiss her?”

“What are you talking about?”

“My question is pretty simple. Just answer it.”

“We’re not doing this.”

“You did, didn’t you?” she cried, any kind of rational mindset she’d previously had now long gone. Somewhere between us shutting off our lights and me heading to my office, my wife had turned into an emotional wreck, and now her mind was making up stories crafted completely of fiction. “You kissed her. You kissed my sister!”

My eyes narrowed. “Not now, Jane.”

“Not now?”

“Please don’t have a hormonal breakdown right now. It’s been a long day.”

“Just tell me if you kissed my sister,” she repeated, sounding like a broken record. “Say it, tell me.”

“I didn’t even know you had a sister.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that you kissed her.”

“Go lie down, Jane. You’re going to raise your blood pressure.”