As Monica wiped more tears from her eyes, she told herself she was tired of this.
She rolled over in bed, glanced at the alarm clock. It was 10:18 P.M. and still no word from Lewis.
She had been calling him all day. Monica had gone to pick up Layla at the normal time, only to be told that the child was not there.
“Yeah, her father came to get her about an hour ago,” the young woman at day care told Monica.
She went by Lewis’s job, only to find out that he was off today. Then as a last attempt, she called his best friend, Freddy, not half an hour ago.
“Do you know where he is?” Monica asked, trying to hide the sound of crying in her voice.
“I’m sorry, Monica, I haven’t talked to him today.”
She was quiet on the phone, not believing him, knowing the relationship the two men had had for most of their lives. “I respect that,” she said, dabbing her cheek with a tissue. “But if you do talk to him, can you tell him I miss him and Layla and I want them to come back?”
“I’ll tell them.”
She had expected to get a call from Lewis not long after she had hung up with Freddy. It never came.
She tried to stop crying in the shower, but couldn’t. Afterward, she went into Layla’s bedroom down the hall to make sure the little girl’s clothes were still in her drawers, her toys still in the closet.
Back in her own bedroom, after slipping on a nightgown, Monica sat on her bed and tried to imagine things really being over for her and Lewis.
As Tabatha told her, she had everything. The house she lived in had five bedrooms, four bathrooms, and three levels. She had all the money she could ever want, owned a business that she had brought back from mediocrity and had made to thrive, and she considered herself a decent woman.
Monica thought that should have been enough for Lewis. But she realized now she was wrong.
She pushed herself back into bed, starting to miss Lewis as though she was certain there would be no repairing the break between them. She began to think about the things she would miss most, and she could not deny that the little girl was one of them.
When Monica thought there was no hope for her ever being a mother, Layla had come into her life. The child was two and a half years old then, needing all of the attention Monica was so happy to give to her. She quickly fell in love with her, the toddler sleeping with her and Lewis for the first three months after they had moved in.
Layla had filled the void in Monica’s life that she thought she would never be able to fill, and now there was the possibility Layla would be taken from her. And that’s when the tears started to come again, and that’s when she turned to see that at 10:18 P.M., Lewis obviously didn’t care about all they could lose as much as Monica did.
But then the phone was ringing, and as Monica reached over in the dark room and snatched the cordless handset from its cradle, she realized she had been torturing herself for no reason. It would be Lewis on the other end, saying he was as sorry as she was, that things would be all better again.
“Hello,” Monica said, sniffing once again, trying to mask the fact that she had been crying.
“Hello Monica,” the voice said.
She didn’t recognize the voice at first. “Who is this?”
“It’s Nate.”