jmtooktheplanet: (Exanimate)
She’d watched him drink himself into a stupor every night for a month after his father had died and she’d done her best to be there for him. She’d understood how difficult this was for him and her heart broke for her husband. Things would get better though. He’d find the strength to pull himself through this for her and Joanna, and they’d go on doing their best to put him back together. Time healed all wounds.

Only one month turned into two. And two to four. He was a functioning alcoholic if only just and it took every ounce of strength she had to make sure that the three of them were taken care of and that Jo didn’t see what her father had turned into. She refused to let Joanna be exposed to that, struggled to make sure the little girl was happy and distracted. Leonard distracted himself enough with the bottle.

Everyone had a breaking point, and six months into her husband’s drinking binge, she’d found hers. It was hard to reconcile the man she faced daily with the man she’d married, the man she’d given a child to, and the man she’d loved so much. The man she saw now did nothing but drain her, sap her of whatever strength she had like some kind of leech, and yet she still loved him. She couldn’t afford that. It was a weakness and he’d destroy them both if she allowed those feelings to remain.

The paperwork was the first thing to be drawn up. She needed to strike quickly and efficiently lest she change her mind, but it didn’t stop her from drowning her own sorrows at a bar later that evening. Her attorneys were working to follow her instructions to the letter and there was Clay Treadway. She was miserable and lonely, no longer mourning the death of her father in law, but of her marriage and the man she’d married. Leonard wasn’t that man anymore and that killed her more than anything. Clay flirted and paid attention to her, took her out on the floor to dance and started making the first of many promises he’d never keep. But for that moment in time he made her forget.

She cried after he fucked her but she left that out when she told Leonard.

Once it was all said and done, two months after he’d left and she’d done her solid best to erase every single part of him save for their little girl from her life, she opened the first of the letters he’d sent. In it he begged for forgiveness, made promises of being better, but she wouldn’t let herself believe.

She should have known he’d be the one to keep them.

“Lyrics” )
jmtooktheplanet: (Another lifetime)
The photograph was unexpected considering she’d thought she’d packed all of them in boxes and shoved them in the attic. She hadn’t expected to find it sitting in the bottom of her drawer like an accusation, nor had she expected the pang of nostalgia that came with it. It was from before-- before her father in law’s death, before the drinking and the bitterness, before the divorce… from a time when they were happy. Jocelyn could still remember that day vividly; the weather was beautiful for October and the sun was unexpectedly warm on her skin, a perfect breeze carrying hints of a summer that refused to go quietly into fall.

Their picnic had been a last minute decision by the both of them in an effort to enjoy the weather before the cold inevitably took it’s turn, starting with time on the lake and moving to the edge of one of the fields. They laughed and joked, enjoying one another’s company and the soft tickle of the grass through the blanket while Len snapped away with the camera. She could only smile as he explained that he wanted to keep the day with him, be able to look at the pictures when school made him want to tear his hair out.

When he’d finished his explanation, Jocelyn sat up from where she’d been laying against the pillow of his arm to stare down at him. She was both excited and nervous as she bit at her finger, trying to decide exactly how to share her news. Eventually she simply blurted it out, the two words she’d been waiting to say since the first night he'd told her he wanted her to have his baby.

“I’m pregnant.”

She’d expected the budding doctor in him to make his presence know by asking a million questions. When? How long have you known? or even some kind of nervousness at the prospect of being a father. Instead there were arms wrapping around her waist and pulling her back down into him, his hand tangling in her hair when he kissed her, her lips, her cheek, her jaw, her neck-- whatever skin he could reach with his free hand tugging at the sorry excuse of a dress she’d been wearing.

He made love to her there on the blanket under a dying sun with the sky lit up like flame. When they lay there afterwards in the twilight, with the vivid oranges fading into more subdued shades of violet and the chill began to creep in, those arms had pulled her in close to keep it at bay. She felt safe and loved, and she knew in that moment that everything was going to be wonderful for them; especially when she felt the kiss pressed against the crown of her hair and that rumble of a voice whisper in proud awe, “You’re gonna have my baby.”


~~~~~~~~~

Jocelyn barely registered the tear on her cheek as she brushed it away, taking a breath and smoothing the front of her blouse.

The picture was put back into the bottom of the drawer.

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jmtooktheplanet

November 2015

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