Excerpt: Gardens by the Moonlight

The clinking of car keys echoed throughout the living room as they dropped onto the end table. Taking a seat in the lounge chair after work, the Jayden Young looked around the nearly empty room and noticed something that caught his curiosity. Going over to the phone, he repeated part of the letter that he found just four days earlier in his mind.

“I can’t live with someone who can’t take care of things. I need to get away for awhile to find myself again. For the sake of our marriage, don’t come to find me. I’ll come back when I notice things changing.”

The words haunted him while he dialed the number. The phone on the other end rang three times before being answered.

“Hello?” the man on the other end asked.
“Hi,” the young man responded to his father-in-law. “It’s Jayden.”
“Well hello, Jayden. How are you?”
“I’m doing well. And you?”
“Not bad,” the other man said. “How are things with you?”
“Things are rough right now,” Jayden answered.
There was a slight pause in the conversation. Both men knew the phone call was awkward for both of them.
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you,” the older man said; his tone was nonchalant and annoyed.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” he repeated a few seconds later.
“May I talk with Linda?” Jayden asked.

The older man called for his wife and soon Jayden was talking to his mother-in-law about the items he had noticed in the living room. The conversation eventually drifted over to the relationship between him and his wife, and Jayden welcomed the opportunity let things out.

During the conversation, however, the young man’s mind kept rewinding to his father-in-law’s repeated statement. More specifically, Jayden focused on the tone in the older man’s voice. It seemed to display several things that caught his attention. He sounded cold, annoyed, and also that he didn’t seem to care how he was doing.
Jayden soon hung up from his in-laws and sat on the couch. His eyes were fixated on the wall behind the television, but were trying to look at something far beyond the light brown fixture. The more he thought about his brief talk with his father-in-law, Jayden became more aware that the older man was telling him the heartbreaking truth: Jayden’s wife had lied in the letter. She had no intention of ever returning.