It had been one hell of a rough night. After hours of trying to reassemble his work files, Colin had tossed and turned in bed, worrying about finances. Things couldn't get any worse. Well, bankruptcy. That would be worse. It was an option he hadn't dared consider seriously. It had been lurking for so long, yet he never believed it would ever really come to that. Now, he wasn't so sure, and the uncertainty made him sick to his stomach.
Maureen lay beside him, snoring. Yesterday's mascara had smudged under her eyes and the skin on her face drooped toward the pillow. She'd been pretty once, but he wasn't sure if she still was. Certainly there were features one might consider attractive, and he tried, so very hard, to see them now. But, God forgive him, he saw only the ugliness of her spite and selfishness. The same moonlight that had brought out the goddess in Grace made his wife look like a pale blue ghoul that, if unchecked, would suck out the last of his soul and destroy him.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and clicked on the lamp. From the bottom drawer of his nightstand he pulled out a photo album and began to flip through it. Ryan's birth, and Amy's . . . early family portraits . . . yes, Maureen had been pretty. Not beautiful maybe, but pretty. He could have been content. No, he would have been content. He'd accepted each of her challenges as merely his lot in life. He'd acquiesced. He contemplated the state of their relationship and what it would take to resuscitate it. Then, in the still of night, that most dangerous of questions posed itself: did he want to keep it alive, or was it finally, mercifully, over?
The very idea that he had a choice, that he could take life in a new direction, terrified him. His feet and hands were freezing.
Maureen shifted and pulled a sheet over her head. "Turn off the fucking light," she mumbled.
Colin did as she asked, got out of bed and shuffled into the bathroom. Leaning on the sink, he stared into the mirror. The man looking back at him did not inspire confidence. With heavy eyes, grey stubble and slumped shoulders, he looked old. Beaten. He wondered where the young man had gone — the one full of vitality and dreams. The one who'd vowed to do right by the girl he'd impregnated, and who believed that even with those responsibilities, he'd forge a writing career the likes of which the world had never seen. He'd assumed, arrogantly, that the Pulitzer would be his and had secretly dreamed of winning the Nobel Prize.
How, he wondered, had that man become this one standing here in his boxers, staring into a mirror, contemplating bankruptcy and divorce. When, exactly, had things gone so wrong?