On the Sixth Thanksgiving, I Stopped Waiting for Him Chapter 09
Ethan didn’t move. He stood in the doorway like a wall.
“She needs rest.”
“I need to talk to her!”
Ethan glanced back at me.
Propped against the headboard, I calmly watched the man in the doorway with my left eye.
“Let him in.”
Ethan hesitated for a moment before stepping aside.
Julian walked in and placed the insulated container on my bedside table.
“I brought you chicken soup from that place you used to love…”
I said nothing.
“Vivian has been arrested. She’ll be formally charged this afternoon.”
“If you came here to ask me to help her, you should leave.”
“I didn’t come here for Vivian!”
“I came here for myself.”
“Claire, I didn’t sleep at all last night. I kept going over everything that’s happened in the six years
since you disappeared.”
I was getting impatient, but Julian kept talking.
“The first year Vivian visited your mom, I threw her out three times.”
“She cried and left every time, then came back the next day with fruit.”
“Your mom said she was kind. I said she was crazy.”
“Then, in the second year, your father passed away…”
“I was away on a business trip. By the time I got back, the memorial service was over.”
“Vivian knelt beside his casket and prayed for you. Something in me shifted that day.”
“In the third year, my mother was diagnosed with heart disease. The night of her surgery, Vivian
ayed by her bedside the entire time.”
“I watched her fall asleep with her head resting on the edge of the bed, and I suddenly thought… maybe she wasn’t as bad as I’d believed.”
“In the fourth and fifth years, I couldn’t tell anymore.”
“I didn’t know if she was truly sorry or if it was all an act.”
“Eventually, I stopped trying to figure it out.”
“Then you came back.”
He looked up at me, his eyes red.
“You were standing in the rain, your face badly wounded, and I knew I had failed you in too many
ways.”
“I knew that no matter what I did, I would still be hurting you. So I chose to play dumb.”
“I tried to convince you to let it go.”
“I thought that if we went through with our plans to get married, our lives could go back to the way they were.”
His shoulders began to shake violently.
“Claire, I was wrong!”
“I was wrong about everything!”
He looked up at me with tears streaming down his face.
“Can you give me one more chance?”
“From now on, I’ll love you the way I should have all along!”
“I searched for you for six years too. I only messed up once. Are you really going to throw away everything we had over that?”
Julian looked at me, his eyes red and swollen.
His remorse was almost laughable to me.
“Julian, when you first saw me after I came back, you were disgusted by me too, weren’t you?”
