MARAT
By the time we returned home, it was dark outside.
I held Dumplin’ in my arms as she cried for the better part of the drive. She’d exhausted herself, nodding out sometime in the last fifteen minutes.
Whatever stress she’d been dealing with, the pain of her turbulent past she’d been carrying alone, it must have been tremendous.
She didn’t wake up when Josef parked in the lot beneath our building. She didn’t stir at all. Not even when I picked her up in my arms, princess-style, and carried her out of the vehicle.
I entered the elevator with my wife’s warm weight and felt grounded in a way I never had. She belonged with me. Whatever was going on, we would figure it out.
Selfishness was part of my nature and shitty husband or not, I couldn’t give her up. I wouldn’t.
The elevator jerked to a stop, and her eyes opened abruptly. Destiny jerked awake. She whimpered and pushed against my chest. But I squeezed her, keeping her in place.