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He needed help.
He did. He stared at Vera’s head as she bowed her head crying into her hand to muffle her sobs, unable to move. For a long time he could only watch her and when he opened his mouth to speak his voice was a croak.
“You really think I need help?”
She sniffed and lifted her head to wipe at her eyes. “You do, Nate. I thought about it for a long time and realized I wasn’t fair to you when I left. Our marriage vows were for better or worse and I broke them, leaving you when I could have helped.”
“Was I really that terrible?”
“You are not a terrible person. What you do for those children in Gabore is more than enough proof of that. You give them hope, you make them smile again, and provide more than they can ever hope for. You are a good person but you do take people who care about you for granted. You perceive us as enemies. For a long time, I thought I could change you, I thought loving you and letting you have your way with me for your pleasure would convince you that I was not an enemy but I watched you every day. You moved like a wounded animal, one afraid to trust anyone…”
“I trusted you once. I told you about the orphanage, the murder… I told you everything. But those were your leverage over me. You threatened to sell my story and I had to pay you off to prevent that. Was I wrong to trust you?”
Vera squeezed her eyes shut. “That was selfish of me.” Outside there was an ambulance driving into the hospital lot, its siren disturbed the somber atmosphere for a while. “My greediness got the best of me and I regret that. I wanted to turn back the hands of the clock and that Mainland trick I pulled was my attempt at that but…imagine my surprise when I found out you were with another woman. Rachel Rivers no less.”
“And once again I tried to exact my cruelty on an innocent person,” he said bitterly.
“I tried to save her.” She laughed suddenly. “Who am I kidding? I thought I was saving her but rather I was jealous of her because she was doing what I couldn’t do. She challenged you and I couldn’t, I ran away to avoid confrontation with you. I was jealous because she had the strength I didn’t have. She didn’t look like she was scared of you and I knew right there at Mainland that you may have found your match.” She smiled sadly.
Nate looked away. “I don’t know about that. She may have been scared of me too. I didn’t realize I was such a monster.” He blinked rapidly to disperse the sting in the eye. “But you are right. She did challenge me and I guess that’s what I found fascinating about her.”
Vera was smiling at him and her hand moved pat his arm. “When do you think you fell in love with her? During or after our divorce?”
Nate paused sharply as he considered the question. His heart fell as he realized the bitter truth. His fascination with her hadn’t just started when he heard of her scandal. Night after night he stayed awake watching her slander him during the nasty divorce. There wasn’t an iota of malice in her as she spoke about why Vera should win the divorce case, she spoke with conviction and she stood her ground. And he stayed up all night, even taping her talk shows, just to hear her speak about him.
The truth was a bitter baseball to his face.
Since Anele’s death, no other woman ever fascinated him. He realized with bitterness that Rachel had fascinated him far beyond anything he felt with Anele and in truth he had felt as though he betrayed her memory by likening her with another woman. Maybe that was why he wanted Rachel’s downfall. Maybe that was truly why he wanted to be instrumental to her destruction, because she made him feel the same way he felt as a love-crazed youth experiencing his first love, having his first kiss.
He squeezed his eyes shut. He had been an unfair bastard. It wasn’t Rachel’s fault that he fell hard for her. It wasn’t her fault that he broke the vow he made when he took his inheritance from Fredrick; to never look at or love another woman the way he loved Anele.
“I blamed you,” he said. “A blamed my mother, I blamed Anele, I blamed my fathers, I blamed everyone but myself for how I turned out.” He smiled bitterly. “It turns out I do a lot of blaming to avoid the truth eh?”
Vera reached up to squeeze his hand. “You can change that and start somewhere.”
“You think so?”
His voice was broken and he sounded like a lost child, so much so that Vera broke down again and cried for him. He squeezed her fingers fighting tears of his own.
They stayed like that for a long time, healing and mending the broken pieces of the past.
For Vera it was the final piece to mend the rest of her broken heart, to forgive herself for a past she couldn’t change any more.
For Nate, it was the scary start of a new future. He didn’t know what it held and he realized with surprise that he was more afraid of this future than he had been when he wanted to take Fredrick’s life. Because for once in his life he was taking responsibility for his actions. He was done blaming someone else for his terrible treatment of everyone around him.
He felt a light feeling in his chest as the afternoon turned into night. Vera had stayed with him and they talked about the good memories they had to share of the past and when she left she promised to send him her therapist’s number and made him promise to call and talk about everything with the therapist, a woman she called Anna Louisa.
When she left Nate remained on the bed looking at the ceiling wondering if Anele and his mother were up there looking down at him, happy that he was ready to let go of the darkness.
It was a couple of days later that he was released. Tshepo wasn’t exaggerating about the number of security team watching the hospital and Nate had to beg him to send the men home. The man had agreed but still had his security detail keeping watch to prevent another murder attempt. After one week he finally gave Vera’s therapist a call. Anna had offered home services to him, she hadn’t known it was he, Nathaniel Madden who was calling. But when he opened the door of her fairly large office, overlooking the peaceful rolling hills, the woman’s mouth positively dropped.
“Mr. Madden!” she stood to shake his hand. “Pardon my shock but it’s not every day a billionaire walks into my office seeking medical help. Especially not one young and handsome as you are.”
He smiled at her. “Well brace yourself because you are in for one hell of a ride.”
She offered him a seat and he took it, taking a deep breath.
“The first step to the change you seek is accepting there is a fault. You seem to have done that. The next step is seeking help and I assume that's why you are here. So what do you say? Let’s start from the beginning shall we, Nathaniel?”
“Yes, let’s do that. I love to tie people up…”
