Souls Remember What Matters — Corey Gibson 6
005 – Where It All Began
SERA
I guess they didn’t know I was still there.
My hands were still wrapped in white bandages from pulling glass out of my skin earlier. The cuts throbbed with each heartbeat, but the pain in my chest was far worse.
I sat in the back of my car in the hospital parking lot, watching Lucy walk Luna toward the main doors.
Luna looked so small in her pink dress, her little hand holding tight to Lucy’s fingers. She didn’t look back for
I pressed my forehead against the cool window and closed my eyes. Maybe I should just drive home. Maybe I should just let them have their perfect little reunion without me there to ruin it.
But then I remembered.
“Her coat.” The words came out as a whisper to my empty car.
Luna’s favorite jacket was still on the seat next to me–the purple one with stars that she insisted on wearing everywhere. The evening air was getting cold, and she’d freeze without it.
Even if she hated me, even if she wanted Vivienne to be her mother instead, I couldn’t let my daughter get sick.
My legs felt shaky as I got out of the car. The elevator ride up from the parking garage felt like it took forever. Each floor that passed made my stomach twist tighter.
I was about to call Lucy when I heard voices around the corner.
I stopped walking. Something made me step behind a tall white pillar, my heart hammering so loud I was sure everyone could hear it.
“Dad, when will you marry Vivienne?” Luna’s innocent voice cut sharp, through my entirety like a knife.
I had to grab the pillar to keep from falling down. My knees went weak and my vision got blurry for a second.
I knew I should have turned back there and then, I knew I shouldn’t have stood to listen but yet…my feet wouldn’t budge.
“Honey, your dad and I can’t get married unless your parents get divorced first.” Vivienne’s voice was sweet like candy, but I heard the poison underneath.
The message was clear. She wanted Darius to leave me.
Darius knew what she meant too. I could tell by the way he got quiet.
This was Vivienne’s plan all along. She came back from New York thinking Darius would be waiting for her with open arms. She thought he’d still love her the same way he did before she left to become famous.
She just didn’t expect him to have a wife and child.
Luna’s little forehead wrinkled up like she was thinking hard. “Dad, can you divorce Mom?”
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Everything inside me broke apart.
My whole body started shaking so hard my teeth clicked together. Cold spread through my bones like ice water. Maybe Luna didn’t understand what divorce meant–she was only four years old–but her words still tore my heart in half.
I thought Luna was the one person in the world who belonged to me. She meant everything to me. More than Darius, more than my own life.
The blood connection between a mother and child could never be broken or taken away. That’s what I used to believe. But standing there listening to my daughter ask her father to get rid of me, I knew I was wrong.
So wrong.
“Even if Mom and Dad get divorced and Vivienne takes care of you, you still can’t eat ice cream and cookies for every meal.” Darius pinched Luna’s little nose, his voice gentle and playful.
“You’re mean, Dad!” Luna’s face scrunched up like a baby squirrel.
Her cute expression made them all laugh together. Their happy voices echoed off the hospital walls while I stood hidden behind cold concrete, feeling like I was dying inside.
I couldn’t listen anymore.
My feet moved on their own. I stepped out from behind the pillar and walked toward them, Luna’s jacket clutched in my bandaged hands. 1
The second they saw me, everything changed. Their laughter died like someone had turned off a radio. Smiles froze on their faces like they’d been caught doing something bad. 1)
Which they had.
I held out Luna’s coat to Darius without saying a word. My voice was somewhere deep inside my throat, trapped behind all the hurt and anger and fear.
I looked straight into his eyes. No tears this time. No begging or fighting. Just empty space where my heart used to be.
I used to dread not finding warmth in those green eyes, even though I knew he didn’t love me, I always wished for him to hate me less, for him to…care for me as much as I did for him.
But now, I couldn’t bring myself to want it anymore. I waited until he took the coat from me, making sure our fingers didn’t touch.
Then I walked away from them.
I walked away from my husband and my daughter and the woman who was stealing my life piece by piece and I didn’t look back, not once.
When I got home, the house was quiet and dark. All the guests had left. The piano was closed. Empty glasses sat on tables like ghosts of the party that was supposed to be for me.
I climbed the stairs to my bedroom–the room that was only mine because Darius and I never shared a room.
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I got pregnant only because we both accidentally got drunk and lost our inhibitions that night.
He claimed the only reason we didn’t share a room was because he didn’t want to wake me when he came to bed late from work. But I knew the real reason.
He couldn’t stand being that close to me anymore.
I pulled my biggest suitcase out of the closet and opened it on the bed. My hands shook as I started folding clothes and putting them inside. Dresses, shoes, pictures of Luna when she was a baby.
I wasn’t running away. I was going back to who I used to be five years ago.
Before Darius. Before marriage. Before I learned what it felt like to have your heart broken by the two people you loved most in the world.
If I divorced Darius now, he would probably get to keep Luna. Men with money and powerful families usually won in court, especially when the wife looked crazy and jealous. Especially when there was a sweet, dying woman ready to be the perfect stepmother.
Vivienne would get everything she wanted. My husband, my daughter, my life.
But she didn’t really love Luna. I could see it in the way she looked at my daughter–like Luna was useful for getting what she wanted, not like she was a precious little person who needed love and protection.
I wouldn’t let that happen. I wouldn’t let that woman raise my child.
If Vivienne wanted a fight, I’d give her one. 1
I zipped up the suitcase and pulled it off the bed. It hit the floor with a heavy thud that seemed too loud in the quiet house.
At my computer, I found the earliest flight to New York. My fingers trembled as I typed in my credit card number.
Click.
Purchase complete.
The flight left in six hours.
I sat on the edge of my bed and stared at my reflection in the dark window. The woman looking back at me had bandaged hands and tired eyes, but something else too.
Determination.
For four years, I’d been the perfect wife. The quiet, obedient woman who never caused trouble. Who let her husband’s ex–girlfriend waltz back into their lives and charm everyone while I stood in the corner like furniture.
No more.
I grabbed my purse and my suitcase and walked out of the house that had never really felt like home anyway.
The taxi ride to the airport felt like a dream. Street lights blurred past the window while I practiced what I would say when I got to New York.
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I knew exactly where I was going. The address was burned into my memory from five years ago, when everything started falling apart.
The plane was mostly empty. I sat by the window and watched the city get smaller and smaller below me until it disappeared into darkness.
Hours later, I stood outside a familiar door in Manhattan. My heart pounded as I raised my hand to knock.
This was where it all began. Maybe this was where it would end too.
I knocked three times and waited. 1
The door opened, and there he was. Johnson.
“Sera? God, I’ve missed you so much. Did you finally remember you have an old friend who’s been
006 – Waiting
DARIUS
Something was wrong with Sera’s eyes.
The way she’d looked at me in the hospital hallway kept playing in my head like a broken record. No anger, no tears, no begging. Just… nothing. Empty. Like she was looking at a stranger instead of her husband.
It made my chest feel tight in a way I didn’t want to think about.
I adjusted my grip on the steering wheel as I drove Vivienne home, glancing in the rearview mirror at Luna in her car seat. She was quiet, playing with her stuffed elephant and humming some tune Vivienne had taught her.
“Thank you for taking me to the hospital,” Vivienne said softly, her bandaged arm resting carefully in her lap. ” The doctors said it wasn’t as bad as it looked.”
“You’re lucky,” I replied, keeping my eyes on the road. “Your hands are precious. You can’t afford injuries like that.”
She was quiet for a moment, then turned to look at me with those doe eyes that used to make me weak in the knees. “Darius, about what happened in the greenhouse…”
“Don’t.” I cut her off, my jaw tensing. “We don’t need to talk about it right now,” I shook my else, not wanting to divulge into that conversation.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Sera had been trying to help when I found them. Her hands were covered in Vivienne’s blood, pressing a cloth against the wound to stop the bleeding.
Was she horrified by her actions? Did she regret it the second she did it?
Vivienne had remained silent after that, looking immediately crestfallen as I dismissed her.
After dropping Vivienne at her apartment, Luna and I headed home. The house felt different when we walked in. Quieter somehow, like the air itself could feel just how much had happened in the past few hours.
The guests had left and as expected, the maids had cleaned up every trace of the party.
Strange. Has the house always been this cold?
“Dad, why did Mom hurt Vivienne?” Luna’s small voice broke the silence as I helped her out of her jacket.
I crouched down to her level, looking into those blue eyes that were so much like mine. How could I explain this to a four–year–old? How could I tell her that grown–ups sometimes did stupid, hurtful things when they were scared or angry?
Sera was just a housewife. This family was her whole world, her only battlefield. When other women showed up, especially someone like Vivienne, it triggered every insecurity she had. She saw threats where there were none
and reacted like a cornered animal.
But Vivienne was dying. She had less than a year left. Couldn’t Sera see that helping an old friend through her final months wasn’t a betrayal of our marriage?
“Because…” I started, then stopped. I ran my hand through my hair, suddenly feeling tired. “You know what,
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sweetheart? That’s something you should ask your mom about. She can explain it better than I can.”
Luna nodded seriously, like she understood the weight of adult problems even if she couldn’t grasp the details.
“Where is Mom anyway?” she asked, looking around the empty living room. “She always says hi when we come home.”
Good question. Usually Sera would be waiting by the door, asking about our day, fussing over Luna’s coat and shoes. The fact that she wasn’t here meant she was either sulking in her room or plotting her next dramatic
scene.
“Let me go find her,” I said, giving Luna’s cheek a gentle touch. “Why don’t you go play in your room for a bit?”
I climbed the stairs two at a time, my footsteps echoing in the hallway. Sera’s bedroom door was closed, which wasn’t unusual. We’ve never shared a room and the one time we did…Luna was born from it. I told her it was because I worked late and didn’t want to wake her, but the truth was more complicated than that.
Being next to her in bed that night, feeling the warmth of her body, smelling her shampoo on the pillow–it made me have thoughts that I should never entertain, thoughts that would be considered a weakness, most especially after I learned the truth about how our marriage really started.
I knocked twice on her door. “Sera? We need to talk.”
No answer.
I tried again, this time the silence was heavier and unexpected.
I turned the handle and pushed the door open. The room was empty. Her closet door hung open, and I could see empty hangers where her clothes used to be.
My stomach dropped.
I took the stairs down and almost bumped into Maria, the head maid.
“Mr. Darius,” She gasped as she caught her footing, wide eyes meeting mine with a confused glint in them.
“Have you seen my wife?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm.
María averted her gaze as her expression shifted, her face worried. “Yes, sir. I saw her leaving about an hour ago with a big suitcase. She looked… upset.” She informed, her voice was low and she look as though she blamed me for it.
I chose to ignore the almost imperceptible accusation in her gaze.
Sera left?
With a suitcase. She’d actually left.
I pulled out my phone, my fingers already dialing her number as I headed toward the
garage.
This was ridiculous. She was acting like a child, running away instead of facing our problems like an adult. 1
But then I stopped walking, my thumb hovering over the call button.
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No. I wasn’t going to chase after her like some lovesick teenager. Sera’s way of handling conflict was immature. She created drama, made everyone else feel guilty, then expected us all to come running after her with apologies.
She was the one who attacked Vivienne. She was the one who made our daughter uncomfortable with her jealous outbursts. She was the one who couldn’t handle having a sick friend in our lives for a few months.
Piper and I had done nothing wrong. 3
I slipped my phone back into my pocket and walked back into the house.
Maybe this was what we both needed–some space to think. Some time for Sera to realize that her behavior today was completely out of line.
I thought about the way our marriage had started five years ago. Grandfather George calling me into his study with that serious look on his face. A young woman sitting in the chair across from his desk, her hands folded in her lap like a schoolgirl.
“This is Sera,” he’d said. “You’re going to marry her.”
Just like that. No explanation, no discussion. Just an order from an old man who’d controlled every aspect of my
life since I was born.
I’d been angry. Confused. Still heartbroken from Vivienne’s sudden departure and the things she’d said when she left. But Grandfather’s word was law in our family.
“She’s an orphan,” he’d explained later, when we were alone. “She’s smart, and she has a good heart. She’ll make you a proper wife.”
What he didn’t tell me was how she’d gotten his attention in the first place. How she’d managed to convince him that she was the right choice for his grandson.
Vivienne had proof that Sera manipulated my grandfather into arranging the marriage, telling him Vivienne was no good for me and she was the better option. 1
She’d manipulated him into forcing me into marriage.
The thought still made my jaw clench five years later. Not because I hated her–I didn’t, not entirely. But because she’d taken away my choice and Vivienne’s. Made decisions about my life without asking what I wanted.
Sera wasn’t a bad person. She was just… limited. Her world was so small–this house, our family, her role as wife and mother. She didn’t understand business or society or the complicated relationships that came with wealth and power.
It was understandable, but it was also exhausting.
I poured myself a glass of whiskey and sat in my study, staring out at the dark garden.
Sera would come back. She had nowhere else to go, no other life to return to. Once she cooled down and realized that running away wouldn’t solve anything, she’d better be back with an apology and promises to do better.
And I’d forgive her, like I always did.
Even if part of my heart still belonged to a dying woman who would never be mine again.
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006 – Waiting
I took another sip of whiskey and waited for my wife to come home.
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