Lisa
I thought my heart had broken when Jennie left the first time. All those years ago, when I took her to the airport myself, saw her board her flight to New York and never look back. I'd felt like I'd lost my chance with her then, like I would never know what we could have been and that was the greatest pain I could have ever experienced. There was nothing worse than the regret of the one that got away. But there was.
And it came when I had her, truly had her, and then lost her.
I locked myself in my office and did what I always did when Jennie Kim left. I threw myself into my work. Nan and Prija both came to ask me if I wanted something to eat or drink or anything else far more than they usually did. I assumed they'd heard our argument easily enough, having been in the same house at the time. But I ignored them, pushed them away, demanded to be left alone. I stared at project proposals, budgets, projections. I read through memos regarding changing our tax firm, hiring another attorney, or revamping the office. I did what I always did when everything I cared about was spiralling out of control; I made decisions on what little I still could.
I drank a glass of scotch, then another. By the time I went to pour the third, I just left it at the bar and took the bottle. I leaned back in my chair, eyes glazed over from intoxication, and started scrolling through emails on my phone. I noticed one from Nate, sent today, late morning.
Nate: Heads up, boss. Your wife is on her way up to your office and she looks pissed. Don't say I didn't warn you.
With my jaws clenched, I took another sip of scotch but it wasn't numbing the pain like it usually did so I took another course of action and threw my phone as hard as I could. It hit the opposite wall and shattered into a million pieces.
That night, I went through more stages of grief than modern psychology is currently aware of. I raged, I drank, I destroyed things. At one point, I even checked for flights to New York but then closed out of that window feeling like the fool I was. Sometime in the evening, the doorbell rang. I made no move to answer it, hoping I could pretend it didn't exist, hoping I could pretend a lot of things didn't exist. But then I heard the footsteps coming down the hall and had to intervene.
"Send them away, Nan." I called out, taking another swig from the bottle of scotch in my hand, "... whoever they are."
"That's no way to treat your mother-in-law." a familiar voice spoke and I looked up to find Mrs. Kim entering my partially destroyed mess of an office. I just looked at the covered dish she held in her hands and frowned. I took another drink as she gazed around at the state of my office and frowned as well. "She's gone, isn't she?"
"Yup." I said, taking another drink. She frowned at me.
"Did she leave before the hurricane?" She asked, raising a brow at the mess around us. "Or, perhaps, she caused the hurricane."
I didn't answer.
