The Wedding She Survived novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Thirty Nights

On the thirtieth day, I took the children to the harbor park, because it was Saturday.

I had told myself I wasn't going to look for him.

I looked for him in the parking lot anyway, and at the ice cream stand, and along the water.

He wasn't there.

Of course he wasn't.

I had asked for a month, and he had given me one.

Not a call, not a text, not a single envelope through the mail slot.

I had learned some things in that month.

I had learned that I could get three children out of the house by eight without anyone's help.

I had learned that I didn't hear my mother's voice in the kitchen anymore, and that the silence was not as bad as I'd thought.

On the nineteenth night, I had opened the first letter.

It was one page.

*I don't know what I did wrong. I'll spend my whole life finding out.*

I had read that sentence forty times.

I hadn't opened a second.

"Mommy, can we go on the swings?" Poppy said.

"Go."

They tore off across the grass, all three, with Finn's shoelace flapping.

I stood by the bench with my arms crossed and stared at the water.

I missed him.

I missed his weight in my bed, and his hand on my back in the elevator, and the way he looked at the children when he thought I wasn't watching.

I hated that I missed him.

"Mommy!"

Sebastian was running back across the grass at top speed with his coat open.

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