The Vacation Wife, David Stone [acx book reading txt] 📗

said Marci. “Get champagne! We need to celebrate! I’m engaged! Or at least something like that.” She laughed.

“Great idea!” said Susan smiling broadly.

I didn’t disagree. Rather than order from room service, I decided to go fetch it myself from the bar. I left them to their planning and descended to the lobby. The service was quick, and soon I was recrossing the lobby holding two buckets of champagne on ice with three champagne flutes nestled in the fingers of my right hand.

As I approached the stairs, I saw Meg and Gail beginning their descent. I waited for them to avoid a mid-stair greeting.

“Looks like you’re having a party,” said Meg. “Can we come?” She laughed. Gail said hello and smiled.

“Just a little bubbly,” I said. “We’re staying in tonight.”

Meg looked at my right hand. “Three glasses? Did you two find a playmate?” She gave me a sly grin that also managed to look like a scorned lover’s scowl. After all, we’d just slept together the night before. She had been naked in bed with me that morning.

“Oh, right,” I said, looking at the three champagne flutes. “You never know when you’ll break one.”

Meg let it go with a smile and kissed my cheek.

Once back in the room I found Marci and Susan lying on the bed facing each other. They sat up when I handed them their champagne.

“To bigamy!” said Marci. We clinked our glasses and drank. “Now kiss me, husband.”

I kissed Marci.

“Now me!” said Susan.

I kissed Susan.

“Champagney… I like that,” she said, before kissing Marci. This triggered Marci into a full-on embrace, and for a moment I thought they were off, but Susan soon broke the embrace to restore her oxygen levels.

She looked at Marci and then me. She had a serious look on her face.

“Ryan, we’ve got something to tell you.” She looked once more at Marci, whose eyes widened.

“Okay.”

Susan held Marci’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “You need to know something about Marci. It will explain a lot.”

Oh my God, I thought. Was she ill? Did she have cancer? A dozen possibilities coursed through my brain before Susan resumed. I felt she had taken a rather long beat before continuing, confirming what Marci had said earlier about her deliveries.

“Marci’s on medication.”

Oh no! I thought. It’s serious. The panic on my face must have registered.

“Oh, it’s okay, Ryan. She’s fine. Really. It’s under control now.”

“What is under control?” I asked impatiently.

“She’s manic depressive, but she’s on meds now. They even things out for her.”

I looked at Marci. She looked afraid like there was a bogeyman in the next room making a racket. I reached for her hand and smiled.

“I wish you had just said that outright, Susan.” I looked back at Marci. “That’s fairly common, Marci. It’s nothing tragic.”

“Yes but, Ryan, you see, her father was one too. That’s why he committed suicide. The thing is, he didn’t get his depression under control. He didn’t believe in treatment.”

It didn’t make sense. Marci was one of the most upbeat women I knew. She was the one to cheer you up when you were down. It never went the other way. It was true at times she needed her space and would drift off into her own world. I was like that myself occasionally. I wasn’t depressed. I just needed to chill from time to time.

“I should have told you, Ryan,” said Marci.

“When did you figure it out?”

“Around Christmas last year. I’d really sunk pretty low. They put me on meds. Until then I couldn’t accept that I could be like my dad.”

“Ryan,” said Susan. “When you and Marci were together before I met you, she was having a hard time with this.”

“We met shortly after her father died.”

“And that’s when she got afraid she might end up like him.”

“I’m right here, guys,” said Marci. “I can tell him.”

“I’m sorry,” said Susan. “Go ahead.”

“You know how I would space out when we were together?” I nodded. “That’s when I started to worry. I didn’t want to put you through what I’d been through with my dad.”

“I knew the suicide had been hard on you, and I understood you needed your space.”

“Not just space or time alone, like I needed to go for a walk or something. I would feel that way for a week or a month at a time, but I fought it because I didn’t want to be that person in front of you. So, as much as I loved you, I knew I had to let you go. I couldn’t let you go through what I went through with my dad. I mean, he got really, really dark there in the end. That’s why I introduced you to Susan. She didn’t know what was going on, but I knew you two would hit it off. Look! You did!”

“You see, Ryan,” said Susan. “You would still be with Marci if she had sorted this out before, gotten the help she didn’t get back then. She would probably be your real wife right now, not me.”

With a crystalline vision, I now understood Marci and I didn’t fail as a couple. We were thwarted from the prospect of forevermore due to her disease, one with which she couldn’t then cope. She was too close to her father’s suicide, and she wasn’t properly equipped to express herself. She didn’t have the ability to cleanse her emotions of sadness. Without rhyme or reason, she would fall into a pit, and there I was improperly armed to be her savior. Instead, I was a reflection of a loss she feared would come, and it had compounded her misery.

And here she now sat hearty and whole, able to trust in a future she felt would never come. Was it possible this was all a coincidence? That on this evening, the truth would reveal itself in an upscale resort hotel room overlooking a shimmering sea? That two women would declare their love for each other and me, both wishing to be my wife? Or,