Betrayal

I could only stare. Words escaped me. I’m not even sure if I was breathing. My heart

thumped against my chest and white spots colored my vision. At first I could only stare,

desperate to find some reasonable explanation for what I was looking at, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t uncover one. I was livid. After everything, after all I had sacrificed, how could he do this to me? Tears filled my eyes as I turned and climbed back into my vehicle. I couldn’t drive. My vision was blurred by the hot torrent of tears that ran down my cheeks. I breathed heavily, trying to quell the hatred and anger burning a hole into my chest. I thought back over the previous months and replayed bits and pieces of our interactions, the promises he made, his assurances, and like a veil lifted away, I now saw everything I had refused to see before: how he hadn’t met my gaze when he promised to seek help for his addiction, how he’d never produced any proof that he’d actually sought that help, and how he had always insisted that he be the one to check the mail first.

How could I have missed such telling signs? Was it stupidity? Blind faith? Or simply the hope that, for one, we could have a marriage free of lies and disappointment and financial instability? I knew it was luck which had brought me home early that day, affording me a chance to retrieve the mail before he had seen it. In it I had found a bank statement, and it had betrayed my husband’s falsehoods.

All of our savings had been spent. Again.

#flashfiction #fiction #writing #creativity #creativewriting