again and a stalemate would hold us until the cycle repeated itself. I don’t think she’s buying shoes at the moment because her feet are becoming swollen and would never fit into any of the pairs in her wardrobe.
So I pull box after box out of the cupboard, stack them like bricks on the bed. I’ve almost got enough room to work when I see something that I never expected to see. It’s familiar, painfully familiar, and I’m feeling sick to the stomach as I pull it out. I sit on the bed and turn over the yellow envelope and open it. The documents inside have yellow ‘sign me’ tabs sticking out the side. I flip over the front pages to the first section and find my signature next to my name. The script is hard and angry, like my heart, when I wrote it. Below it is a blank space, a line, then her name: Quinn Altman. This document almost ended us. This document ended up in the trash. Or so I thought.
I sit there, staring ahead now. I can’t fathom why it would be here. I can’t understand why Quinn would want to keep it. Unless she didn’t believe that we would make it. Unless she knew we would fail and she had this ready when it happened.
And then I see something else. Another box. Different than the shoe boxes, slightly bigger, and red like blood. All the other boxes, and the papers, would have hidden it, like it was a secret.
But we had no secrets. We told each other everything. We held nothing back.
I take the box out and sit back down. I’m hoping there are old birthday cards or blank Christmas cards, or car insurance papers – anything I’d be happy with, just not what I find inside it.
There are photos in there, on the top. I’m not in them. Quinn is, and Wade. New Year’s. When I caught them on the balcony. I recognise her dress. They’re posing innocently, but I know they’re not. They’re not innocent at all. There are other photos, from other places. There is one where they’re at a restaurant, smiling like the perfect couple. I can see her wedding ring – the one I gave her – still on her hand. The next photo has me almost breathless. It’s taken from a phone, taken from above by Quinn herself. They’re in bed, naked. Sheets cover her breasts. It’s a motel. She went away last year, for work. Wade was away too and there was no work for me. She told me that I’d be bored and didn’t want me to come. Now I know why. There are letters. I can see Wade’s handwriting clearly. I read a few lines and nausea comes over me. There are movie stubs, a dry single rose, some items of expensive jewellery that was way out of my price range. There is a ring with a diamond, something like an engagement ring, but not quite.
I run to the bathroom. I stick my head in the toilet. Nausea has given over quickly into vomiting.
Quinn gets home a little after five. She’s messaged me, told me she was on her way. I’m waiting for her when the elevator opens. I’m sitting at our dining table. It’s still light outside but it’s dark in the apartment. It’s dark inside me too, dark and cold.
“Judd?” she says.
Then she sees what is sitting in front of me. A yellow envelope and a red box. Both are unopened and both accuse her. My eyes accuse her too.
She’s shaking her head. Her eyes are wide with something like terror.
“I can explain this,” she says.
“I hope you can,” I say, “because for the life of me I can’t think of a single reason why you would still have all these things.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“Really? Because I don’t know what to think. Let’s look at this shall we? Together. Let’s see if you can explain this.”
I pull out the photos. Quinn is crying. She’s pregnant. She’s carrying my baby. She’s betrayed me again.
“This is my favourite,” I say. “Work conference, my ass. And here, lovely couple having dinner. New Year’s party.” I throw them at her. “You’ve got rings, necklaces, bracelets. I don’t remember buying these. How did you get them?”
She doesn’t answer. She keeps crying.
“Letters. I didn’t know Wade was so eloquent. He’s quite the poet.” I throw them too and they scatter around the room, at her feet, down the hall. “And this...” I say. “This is the best one. See this movie stub? I wanted to see this with you, because I thought you might like it. You said no. You said you weren’t interested. Thing is, you’d already seen it, hadn’t you.”
She shakes her head. Tears fall onto the tiled floors.
“And look at the date. It’s familiar. I can’t quite remember what happens on that day. That’s right. My birthday. You were held up at work, if I remember. You let me wait a whole hour at the restaurant. But you were with him, weren’t you. Were you screwing him on my birthday too?”
She lowers her face and I know the answer.
“And do you want to know the worst thing? It’s this.” I pick up the divorce papers and throw them at her. She catches them badly. “Keeping this means that you don’t believe in me, believe in us. This is your insurance policy.”
“Please, Judd,” she cries. “Let me explain all of this. Please, look at me.”
“But I can’t look at you. You make me sick to the stomach. This makes me sick to my stomach. Do you want to know what I did when I saw all of this? I vomited. I literally vomited. And I can’t listen to you anymore. I can’t listen to your lies.”
“Judd, I’m sorry. I’ll throw all of this away.”
“Do what you like,” I tell her angrily. “I don’t care anymore.”
“You could talk to Rex with me. Please.”
I shake my head. “Talk? The people I talk to are either dying or lying. Which one are you?”
I push past her, grab the bag that I’ve packed, three days of clothes. She’s leaning up against the table, she’s shaking, she’s sobbing. But I’m too angry to care. The door closes behind me, and I’m gone.
In the next episode of Twenty Four Weeks…
I knock on his door, room 713. I can hear a voice behind it, muffled. The door opens. Wade stands there, smiling. Then his face changes. Was it guilt? Sadness? I can see his bed. It’s made. On it sits a red box, opened, its contents peeking out. Next to it sits Quinn. She sees me and shakes her head, starts to cry again.
…
“Quinn and I are over,” I tell Penny.
“What?”
“She’s been back to her old tricks. Lying. Cheating. I caught her again.”
“Judd, that’s terrible.”
“Yeah,” I agree sadly.
“So, why are you here?”
“I guess... I don’t know. I thought that Quinn and I are done. I thought that I’d made a mistake. I thought I might make the right choice this time.”
“The right choice? You mean me.”
“Yes.”
“Hold on a minute. Did you come here to spite her? Did you come here to have sex with me?”
“Maybe. Yes.”
…
I take a deep breath and call Jen, Quinn’s backup person.
“Hello?”
“It’s Judd. Is Quinn okay? What’s happening?”
“Just a minute,” she says, and it sounds like she’s walking somewhere.
“Where are you?” she asks me, and I’m feeling a little deja-vu.
“At home.”
“You’d better get down here fast. She’s close.”
“Tell her to hold on.”
“It doesn’t work that way, Judd. Your daughter is coming and she’s not going to wait for anyone.”
…
“It shouldn’t have to be this hard to trust each other,” Quinn says sadly. “It shouldn’t be this hard for us to be together.”
“That’s just the way we are now.”
“Don’t throw my words back at me,” she says angrily.
“I’m not. They happen to be true. I don’t care how hard it is. I want you and I’m not going anywhere. Anyway, it will be easier in time. We knew that when we started.”
“Judd... we just can’t get past what we’ve done to each other. This isn’t going to work.”
“Is that why you signed the papers?”<
br />
She looks at me sadly. “I signed them because you slept with Penny. That’s right. I know. All this talking doesn’t mean anything because you don’t really want me, you want her.”
“What? No.”
“You’re going to deny it?”
“Sleeping with Penny? Absolutely.”
“I know you did.”
…
The midwife emerges from between Quinn’s legs with a smile on her face. She pulls off her blue gloves and comes around to us. “You’re fully dilated,” she says. “So, why don’t we birth us this baby, Quinn.”
My wife nods back with determination in her eyes. The end was near, she could see it and now she had permission for the final push.
And she pushes on the next contraction, but this is only the warm up round. I remember what I’ve learnt. I rub her back, slowly, firmly. She holds onto me like she’s never going to let me go. Jen holds her hand, tells her she’s doing so well, stealing all my good lines.
The next contraction is harder, stronger and she lets out a primal growl that almost has me run from the room. The next three were the same.
The midwife places a hand on Quinn’s belly and feels the strength of what her body is doing. Then she looks below. “You’re going great, Quinn,” she says. “Not long now.”
…
“Let’s say that you gave Quinn a chance to explain herself,” Penny said, “and she told you what I just told you, would you still be here or would you still be home? Would you be having sex with me, or her?”
“I thought sex was out of the question?”
“Hypothetically.”
I considered it. “I don’t know,” I said. But maybe I do.
“Okay then. Let’s say that sex is back on the table.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Let’s do it…”
Download regularly the Episode Guide for updates on this series. Additionally there is an Adult version (contains adult themes, coarse language, sexual references, high-level sex scenes and some violence) and downloadable audio books of these episodes (adult version).
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