The Point of Vanishing - Maryka Biaggio (large ebook reader TXT) 📗

to her knees and bumping the coffee table. Glasses jangled. She crumpled onto his lap. “You can’t leave me. Don’t do this to me.”

He pushed the coffee table away. Gripping her by the armpits, he pulled her back onto the sofa. “You’re better off without me. I’m not the husband you want.”

“But you are. You’re just who I want.”

“These last months have been torture.”

She reached for his shoulder and tried to tug him toward her. “Just hold me, like before. Let yourself love me.”

He stiffened under her touch. “I can’t do it anymore.”

Her insides seized up as if gripped by a huge hand. Hot tears erupted. She clenched her arms over her chest, trying to contain her shaking.

“I’m sorry,” she heard Nick say. “I’d like a divorce.”

No, this isn’t happening. She beat her fists against the sofa’s hard-stuffed roughness. Sharp pain shot up her arms. She lurched about, flailing her limbs. She’d suffocate if she couldn’t cast off this net of doom. She shook her head in violent jerks. “No, no, no.”

Nick wrestled her into his arms, enfolding her in a tight grip. “Don’t, Barbara. Be sensible.”

She writhed against his hold. “Stay with me.”

He was so strong. She could barely budge. Tears streamed from her eyes. She buried her face in his shoulder. He was holding her so tight. “You’re hurting me.”

“Will you stop this madness?”

She quit struggling and squelched her sobs. “Please don’t leave me.”

He released her slowly as if testing her.

She slumped over. Congestion throbbed at her nose, beneath her cheeks, through her head. “Please, Nick, anything but this.”

“You sit still. I’m getting some whiskey for you.”

This can’t be happening, she thought. I don’t know what to do. I can’t bear to lose him. I can’t live without him.

He clunked a glass down on the coffee table and poured an inch of whiskey into it. “Here.”

She tipped the glass to her lips, belted the liquid into her mouth, and gulped it. It burned her throat, sending a shudder through her. She hated whiskey.

He poured another shot. “Again.”

She cringed. His solution was to force whiskey on her? Why placate him? He was the enemy, betraying her like this, piercing her to the core. She’d not allow him to feed her whiskey to calm her down—for his sake.

“No.” She batted the glass away. The whiskey sloshed onto the floor. “I hate you. I hate what you’ve done to me.”

He muttered, “I don’t blame you.”

“You say I’m like my father—flighty and irresponsible. It turns out that’s what you are. And selfish and cheating, too.”

He looked up at her, as resigned as some put-upon creature.

“You sicken me,” she said. “You’re nothing to me. Do you hear? Nothing.”

He nodded, like an imbecile pretending to understand what was beyond him.

“You can’t even defend yourself. Because you know what you’re doing is despicable.”

Barbara ran to the bedroom and slammed the door behind her.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

BARBARA AT TWENTY-FIVE

Boston to Points Beyond, December 1939

“Damn him.” All the time that she’d been dredging up hope, never challenging him, always trying to please him, he’d been living a lie. She’d surrendered to him. For what? Fleeting and undependable love.

She said she’d be the wife he wanted. But no, he’d betrayed her. And, like her cowardly father, he’d first told her in a letter—knowing that was exactly how her father had abandoned her.

She’d always been honest about what she wanted out of life. He was the pretender. He’d led her to believe that he, like her, loved wandering unknown wilds and living the life of an adventurer. How many times had he told her he enjoyed hiking beside her on the rugged trail, the two of them getting by only on their wiles and wherewithal? He was the one who’d changed.

He wanted a divorce. He didn’t love her anymore. A marriage couldn’t work without love, could it?

She needed to escape this horror.

Why should he get his divorce? Why should his betrayal be rewarded? No, she’d never release him.

He’d ruined everything. It was just what her father had done: told her he’d always be there for her and then, after sneaking around and cheating, cast her aside like rubbish. She had to get away from his treachery. She needed to go somewhere else, someplace far from this painful battlefield.

He’d never really given her a chance. The coward. He’d pretended at hope, all the while plotting to leave her. For months he’d probably kept up his affair with that woman.

How could he turn his back on her like this? She thought she knew him. But he wasn't who she’d imagined he was. He was selfish, thinking only of himself. Just like her father. How could she ever trust him—or anyone else—again?

A fierce thirst overtook her. She turned on the bathroom faucet and drank, gulping at the airy stream.

She looked at herself in the mirror, grabbed the towel, and wiped the tracks of tears away. She stared into her eyes and asked herself: What do you want?

And then it struck her: There was a way out. She would leave him. She’d disappear. She’d run away—to a place where no one could ever find her.

He had deserted her. She owed him nothing. Nor did she owe an explanation to her inconstant father. Saddest of all would be leaving her mother, Sabra, and her friend Alice. But there was no point in vanishing by degrees. Invisibility had to be complete and permanent.

She grabbed the bottle of sleeping pills from her bedside table and plunged it into her pocket. I won’t be cast aside, she thought. You won’t drag me through the agonies of divorce.

A strange comfort settled on her, as if, after being flung about by a hurricane, she’d arrived safely in its eye.

She grabbed her thickest sweater, the one Grandma Ding had knit for her, wriggled into it, and put on her wool coat. She checked her coat pockets. Yes, she had gloves. She took her purse off the dresser.

Opening the bedroom door, she looked for Nick. He wasn’t in the living