Goodbye, Mr. Regret

"Love or not, I can't say for sure. But what I do know is-there's no way things will work out between you two."

The phone call left Timothy with a heavy heart.

He'd always thought Yates was on his side, speaking up for him, maybe even knowing Jessica was Salome, understanding that he didn't want a divorce, and trying to help him out.

Turns out, he'd gotten it all backwards.

"So," Timothy shot back, "if I can't be with her, you think you can?"

He might be miserable, but he wasn't about to lose his nerve.

His words hit Yates where it hurt, though to be fair, Yates hadn't exactly been a paragon of virtue himself. Back when he didn't know Jessica was Salome, he hadn't made Timothy's life hell the way Vince had.

That much, at least, was true.

"My chances are better than yours, Timothy. You're the one who burned this marriage to the ground. There's no going back."

"Spare me the lecture."

He knew. Of course he knew. But knowing didn't help he didn't want Jessica to leave, yet he couldn't find any way to make her stay.

"I'll say just one thing. There's one thing you did that's truly unforgivable, do you realize that? Today, she showed up in front of Mrs. Zimmerman, and Mrs. Zimmerman recognized her instantly. All I could think was—if you'd introduced her to people, just once in your seven years of marriage, the Zimmermans wouldn't have spent all these years not knowing she was Salome."

Yates' words cut deep.

She really was recognized at a glance?

He almost laughed at himself. All this time, he'd been fantasizing about removing her birthmark.

"What's worse," Yates pressed, "is that even after you found out, you kept it from the Zimmerman family. Tell me, Timothy-when did you know? Was it when Vince told you about the birthmark?"

The call ended abruptly.

his phone

weight pressing down on

realized back when Vince first mentioned the

and Jessica hadn't

But he hadn't.

told himself it was

one

his eyes. Maybe if the pain from his wounds was sharper, it could drown out the

found himself longing for

for those

the heir of the Lawson Group. His father, never particularly capable, had remarried and started a new

Timothy had

was endless schooling, then, as he grew older, the world of

after marrying Jessica that he learned

place he could finally

to unravel every

let yourself get too comfortable, you'd get lost in it and

when you finally get what you've always longed for, you start to care, you start to cling, and letting

you lose it, the

held back, kept his distance, tried

in the end, he'd fallen headlong anyway, and now he was

ago he'd been out on a mountainside with clients, negotiating a deal, and went for an early morning walk. As he wandered, he

was giving a sermon on the first truth Christ preached after his resurrection: the reality

of three kinds of suffering: suffering from change, suffering from

though-the suffering of pain-he remembered. The priest listed eight great pains of human life: birth, aging, sickness, death, wanting and not having, separation from loved

Timothy had scoffed. Everyone goes through birth, aging, sickness, and death. As

now did he realize he'd been living with two of them-wanting and not having, and being separated from someone he loved-for a

remembered, as they'd left the chapel, the priest had said all suffering could