Finding all the Good Graces

CH.1 : Stuck

I am very calculative, I have always been. From the very first time I met Nick, I have been doing calculations- the risks and benefits. When he went down on one knee and spoke my name, the moment he said, "Cecelia Brook, will you marry me?" I knew where we would end. Happily wedded, kids running around the house. 

But then I got pregnant, and somehow the loop I created in my mind broke. The flow of events changed. Was it because pregnancy came before wedding? 

That became the beginning of the end; or rather the very end of us. 

I have been mad; utterly enraged, for what feels like forever. That is what my days have been reduced to. Time flies by but I cannot feel it. I am numbed by this weird feeling. If only I trusted my gut. If only I trusted everything I was told instead of feeling as though everyone around me was honest and trustworthy. It is sad that I have to seat here and think about what I did wrong and everything I could have done differently. If only I asked the questions. The most important questions. The necessary questions. Could it be that at some point he told me everything but I simply didn't pay attention?

I didn't believe that everything, said and done, could be all lies. At least not all of it was. I mean, who wants to live a lie, right? So I trusted that at last I had found what I was looking for. The one. But then again, death does nobody justice.

I just found out today that I am pregnant, didn't even find the time to tell him. It's like I missed him by a mare second. He was supposed to be at home, for three months. He was supposed to be at home, waiting for me every evening, and kissing me goodbye every morning. He is gone now. He was pure, beautiful and gently, so kind. Why him? Just why him? And why me?

I Can narrate the story of our meeting; the very first day I saw him, how I felt, the first words he spoke and the entire feeling, but those are just, well, feelings now. I can live in the truth. The truth is that he lied and he is dead because of it, and didn't have the chance to explain himself. Or this is simply what I tell myself so that I can keep believing that he was good. Flawed but good.

Everything happened so fast. One minute he was at home, and the next he is in the middle of an investigation I didn't know about, then am in a morgue identifying his body. When he said he was in three-month leave he was simply covering up the web of lie he's been weaving.

I was aware that Mick was an army officer, and that he was always considered for many tours, but that he was some kind of Special Forces was total news to me. He did not tell me anything at all, not about his work at least. The secret he kept; the secret that cost him his life was known by his friends as well, people I have considered friends too. I know that this kind of information didn't belong in my ears but he was planning to marry me. What was it about his job that I wasn't supposed to know?

I spend every minute and every hour thinking and thinking about what could have been and what happened because of what was not set straight. How long we dated, how he proposed to me and said I knew him more than anybody, and how he still kept such crucial information from me.

I am angry that he died and that he lied but still concerned about how he felt and what made him hide from me the fact that he was in constant danger even at home with me, away from his work. I am so angry and sick, that by the time I come to my senses, he is buried and every image of him gone. The only things I have left are his pictures, documents, cloths and some trash he couldn't throw out.

He was here, and now he is not. That is the only message in my mind. The pain I feel is genuinely unbearable. From the time I received to call informing me of his death, I've been feeling a pain I cannot quite understand. I am pained by the fact that my child will not meet his father, and that I lost the company of a great man. A compassionate and humble man.