Torin and Summer

Chapter 16 (Summer): I Often Wondered

The first few weeks that I was separated from Torin were full of pain and bitterness. 

And anger.

Oh, did I have anger.

I was angry that he'd asked for the separation because he knew I was going to ask for one -- and he also knew what asking would do to me. Yeah, I'd contacted a lawyer, as I'd told Torin that day in my hospital room, but I hadn't done much more than threaten Torin with a divorce. But I needed the separation, I needed the time away from him so I could clear my head; it just ripped me to shreds inside to think of actually  doing it. So he'd done it for me.

Torin didn't want to be separated. I knew that as well as I knew my name. Had it been up to my husband, he'd have locked us in a room until we resolved our issues. But he'd read my face, read my thoughts, knew what I'd been thinking and had suggested the separation so I didn't have to.

I hated that he still knew me so well, after all he'd done.

I hated what Torin had put us through, how he'd treated me, how his job-that-I-hadn't-known-was-a-job had taken precedence over us. How I felt that something was off, but I hadn't known what. All I knew was that my husband wasn't acting like the man I'd fallen in love with, and I was convinced he'd fallen in love with Bridgette.

And secretly, I hated that the man who'd broken my heart was the only one my heart wanted. That infuriated me. Yes, I was bitter and I was angry, but I loved Torin. Not the Torin of those eighteen months, but the Torin I'd fallen in love with all those years ago. The Torin I'd married. The good, good man who'd always worshipped me, who'd always treated me like a queen.

Until eighteen months ago when he'd been honorably discharged and then he hadn't.

I hated that I'd reacted only to the way he'd treated me instead of thinking about why he was acting so differently. When we're wounded, we look inward; we're concerned only with our feelings, with our own pain. Maybe because his changes came on gradually, I didn't register anything but what they were doing to me.

I didn't think this isn't Torin.

I just thought this hurts so much.

I wondered what had happened to the man who'd written to me every single day whenever he was deployed. Beautiful, eloquent love letters he'd begun with Dear Princess and had signed off with All my love, your prince. He'd always been so careful with giving me my fairy tale and protecting it, even when he was away from me.

Until eighteen months ago and then he hadn't.

I'd never tied the loss of my prince to his being discharged, to his having held his close friend in his arms, watching him die, making him a blood-stained promise. I'd missed his pain because I couldn't see past my own and what he was doing to me.

It didn't absolve Torin of anything, but it helped to understand what had happened. 

When I began therapy, I'd chosen a therapist who specialized in PTSD, thinking I might be facing that once everything finally hit me. Being held at gunpoint by Bridgette and witnessing Torin shoot her was bound to come back to haunt me at some point, so I was trying to be proactive about it. (My therapist had also assured me that having weird, random thoughts about changing my decor to be more weaponized was perfectly understandable, which made me feel a lot better.) 

We discussed being held at gunpoint and the shooting in depth, but then we also began talking about my marriage breaking down, the change in Torin's behavior and the timing of it. When I described everything, a brief look flashed over her face. A few sessions later, after hearing more and more about Torin, she mentioned how PTSD could manifest itself in many different ways.

"I can't diagnose him, obviously; I'm just putting this out there as something he could have been battling that led to him acting in a way that was so out of character for him."

I could understand why my close call in the hospital had snapped him back to reality and the made him take a look at how he'd been treating me. 

"Sometimes they have to scrape the bottom of the barrel before they realize how much they've changed," my therapist explained when I'd asked why Torin had seemed to snap out of his ugly behavior when he'd come to my hospital room. "You requiring emergency surgery was that point for him. It made him take a look at everything he was doing and saying."

I wondered how Torin had been doing in the time we'd been apart, but I wouldn't let myself text or call him. Although he was sticking to my edicts of not texting me or stopping by or contacting me, he was stopping by -- but not when I was home. Once a week, I'd come back to my apartment to find a simple bouquet of flowers outside my door. No note, but I knew who they were from. He'd always brought me flowers or had them sent to me every week when he was deployed.

Until eighteen months ago and then he hadn't.

He was simply telling me hello, you're on my mind with those bouquets. But I also read more into them: I'm back, Summer. 

The months rolled by and with each therapy session, I felt stronger. Not necessarily healed but stronger. It was easy to focus on myself without having to consider Torin -- and that made me irrationally angry with him all over again for asking for the separation so I didn't have to. He knew what I'd needed and had done the dirty work so it was on him.

A week before Halloween, I came home and in addition to the bouquet of flowers, there was a tall, carved pumpkin.

That in itself made me laugh. We'd always argued about the merits of tall pumpkins versus short, round ones. I'd always said the tall ones were superior, while he maintained that the short round ones were better. So we'd always gotten two, and Torin's job was to carve them because he did the kind of carving that was featured in magazines.

It had begun our first Halloween together, when he'd brought me a pumpkin with Cinderella's coach carved into it in amazing detail. 

I'd been amazed and was effusive in my praise, and he'd looked all cute and shy as he admitted, "This was the nineteenth pumpkin I carved before it came out right."

The next year, he'd brought me two carved pumpkins, one tall, one short. On the tall one, Prince Charming was leaning over, poised to kiss Snow White. On the round one, Snow White was sleeping, just waiting for that kiss.

The following year, the short pumpkin had Will you marry me, Summer? carved in fancy script all the way around it, and the tall one had Torin on his knee holding a ring out to me. He'd handed me two tiny pumpkins before revealing the two big ones, one with YES! carved into it and the other with NO carved into it.

I'd handed Torin the YES! pumpkin and in exchange I'd received my beautiful ring and then a husband a few months later.

Every year that he wasn't deployed, Torin had gotten more and more intricate with his carving skills. This year's offering was just the single, tall pumpkin with Cinderella's castle on it. It was so exquisitely done that I came close to contacting Torin, but we still had another three weeks to go of no contact. So, I contented myself with admiring the carved pumpkin, wondering if next year there would be any pumpkins on my doorstep.

Or two.

Or one.

So many months had gone by, and I still was undecided, for so many reasons, about which path I would choose. Despite being separated, despite my anger which still lingered, I often wondered what Torin had been doing all this time, how he was feeling about things, where he was working, where he was living.

In three weeks, I would have my answers.