Free Remember Mia by Alexandra Burt Page B

be? Normal?”
    He stood there, didn’t say a word. His face was empty, I had hit the nail on the head. A normal woman is all he wanted. And I was everything but. Cha-ching
, you lose, Jack.
    “You need to get help,” he said. “I’m taking off tomorrow and we’ll go see somebody. You need professional help.”
    I stood there, waiting until he left the closet, cautious not to turn my back on him. I went to the kitchen and, while the bottle warmed in the microwave, I slid the gun in the back of the junk drawer.
    I fed Mia, put her in her crib, and went into the study, where Jack was perched over a case file. He looked as if nothing had happened at all. When he saw me, his demeanor changed. He seemed agitated. I sat in a chair in front of his desk and crossedmy legs. I managed a smile and hoped my face didn’t seem too contorted. I wanted to appease him, to seem as sane as possible.
    “There’s something we need to talk about,” Jack said.
    I took in a deep breath, then I exhaled. “This is when you’re going to tell me about your girlfriend, the one from your office?”
    “There’s no girlfriend. I . . . I wanted to tell you when the moment was right, but hell, no moment is right lately.” He paused for a second, “The woman at my office was Victoria Littlefield.”
    The name sounded familiar but I couldn’t quite place it.
    “She’s from the DA’s office and we were discussing a position.” He got up, stepped closer, and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Until you barged in like a maniac, that is. I can’t even blame her that she didn’t offer me the job once she found out I have a lunatic for a wife. This job is all I ever wanted. Ten years from now I could be DA. But that doesn’t matter anymore now, does it?”
    His eyes communicated what he didn’t say out loud. That the way I acted earlier was the wrecking ball that tore a gaping hole into the walls of our already-fragile marriage. And his career.
    “You’ve no idea what I’ve been going through,” he said. “Sometimes I drive an hour out of my way just to get gas. That hour in the car, by myself, is the closest I’ve come to normalcy in months.”
    I held back the tears. He was a trapped man. A man trapped by a woman who didn’t measure up.
    “I know you do more, you have more responsibility with the baby, but I get up in the middle of the night and feed her, and I still go to work the next day. And it’s not like I’m just shuffling paperwork. I can’t come home every time you call. I’ve been working my entire career for this DA job and you . . .” He paused, deflated. “It stops tonight. Tomorrow you’re going to see a doctor.”
    —
    When I arrived at the clinic, Jack was waiting by the door, looking impeccable in his suit, dark gray, Hugo Boss—his favorite,stylish and simple, he wore it, as usual, with a white shirt and a gray tie. I was late and Jack looked irritated. I could tell by the way he raised an eyebrow as I walked up. When he spotted me, his forehead wrinkled, furrows so deep I hadn’t noticed before. I felt guilty. After all, Jack’s time was precious.
    “Sorry I’m late.” I raised my face but all he did was lightly brush his lips across my cheek.
    Jack was all business during our appointment. His lint-free suit, his starched shirt, all signs that he’d made a success of his life. He told the doctor how I was obsessing over “minute details” and how I didn’t want to “accept colic as a diagnosis” and how he’d been able to “hold things together” all by himself.
    I watched him steal a glance at me while he spoke, probably wondering how we arrived at this implausible moment when all he’d ever done was “provide and support.” All he ever did was be there for me, and here I was, frazzled and sunken in.
    Dr. Wells took one look at me, got out his prescription pad, and scribbled on it. “If nothing’s happening, we’ll just adjust the dosage.” Then he told me to come back after a