The Marriage Lie

by Kimberly Belle

This is what death does. It forces intimacy at the same time it snatches it away.

“I’m just worried about you, sweetie. That’s all.” “Thanks.” Her concern sends up another surge of tears, one that this time I can’t blink away. “I’m a little worried about me, too.”

I tell myself I should be grateful, that I should cherish every second we had together, but as scalding water batters the top of my head, all I can think is, more. Dammit, I wanted more.

knows how you can lose hours at a time staring into space and torturing yourself with an endless parade of what-if scenarios.

Whoever said God doesn’t give you more than you can handle was full of shit, because

this—this grief that slams me over and over like a Mack truck, this weight of missing Will that presses down on all sides until I can’t breathe—is going to kill me.

When you know what to look for, spotting a lie is pretty easy. You see it in the fidgets and sudden head movements or sometimes, when the person is overcompensating, through no movements at all. In how their breathing changes, or how they provide too much information, repeating phrases and offering up irrelevant details. In the way they shuffle their feet or touch their mouths or put a hand to their throats. It’s basic psychology, physical signals that the body doesn’t agree with the words coming out of its mouth.