Run Away With Me

by Daniel Hurst

It’s two minutes later when I hear the car pulling onto our driveway, and I smile because my worst fears haven’t been realised today. My husband is home. Everything is going to be alright. But then the front door opens and I hear Adam calling out to me in a desperate tone, and I realise how foolish I was for thinking everything was going to be okay. Everything is not okay. In fact, everything is now ruined.

It’s easy to paint a picture of somebody when they aren’t the ones who get to hold the paintbrush.

I join my husband in the kitchen where he is starting to unload the items he picked up, and I’m relieved to see the cartons of cranberry juice because I feel like I’ve already been having withdrawal symptoms.

I want to know what happened to Bradley. I want to know if Adam is being honest with me about the TV. And I want to know if I am going to be a good mother. One thing is for certain: I’m not a good wife. I know that because the father of the baby inside me right now is not the man I married. It’s the man I cheated on him with.

It feels strange to be in this house again, surrounded by photos of me and my husband smiling in happier times. It feels even stranger after having spent weeks in hospital undergoing so many tests that I was starting to feel like my only purpose in life was to be hooked up to machines and monitored by nurses in plain uniforms. But now I am home, back in my own bed, and trying to move on with my life after the grave ordeal I have been through.