The Misguided

Vulnerability

Chapter 7- Vulnerability

"For you to heal, you have to truly understand whatever happened to her was out of your control. You have to accept that there was nothing you could've done that day to save her life."

Or was there?

I think you might've guessed the couple therapy ended up not happening, but Lilian resumed her weekly sessions. Dr. Marco even suggested increasing visits due to her evident progress to twice a week. Lilian sat in the cozy office surrounded by pillows and ceramics, vision scoped across her environment, anxiously awaiting Dr. Marco's return.

"I've been losing sleep." Lilian uttered, "I don't know who he is anymore. Each day, I'm finding something different about him."

" How did you feel about this sudden change in your life ?"

"It makes me curious to learn more, but it's also exhausting. Sometimes, I fear finding things I would've rather not known. I'm afraid of losing the version of him I loved initially."

"That must be quite a tough emotion to face. But you should know that some things aren't in your power. So you should let it go with the flow instead of trying to grasp the implausible."

"You are right," Lilian shook her head. "I just wished he thought of us as a team. Also, I've been receiving these letters

His face looked tense, his head jittery with emotions; odd for him to be so astonished by something so minor.

"Oh, sorry, that sounds kind of cool, but you should be aware of your safety. I'm just a bit tired if I'm acting weird."

What's with the sudden switch of tone?

Lilian returned home to a luminous home- something unseen in decades. The most dreadful part of the day is coming home from a session with the responsibility of household chores. She threw her tote bag into the clothes hanger and picked up a broom to dust the floors, scouring around the garage while organizing items here and there.

She couldn't help but question Dr.Marco's intricate behaviour today- he's heard of the unheard, and nothing surprises him, yet he was startled by Lilian's news.

She picked up Daniel's bag lying in a storage container. Her broom plopped onto the ground the moment in with a loud thud after she saw what was in it, finding a clutter of items; the typical you would see in a movie kidnapping scene: A gun, ropes and a roll of duct tape. She backed off in slow steps until it was out of her vision.

"Lilian, is everything okay? " Xavier opened the garage door, staring at her from the inside.

"Yes, everything is fine. The broom just slipped out of my hand."

Her husband wants to kill someone; she wasn't hallucinating a scenario of their conversation the day at the casino. He actually wants to kill someone- and it very likely could be her, too, given the convenient access to the tools.

She hasn't figured out where she wants to go yet, but one thing she knows- is that she wants to leave far, far away from here. From this place, she once called home...