One Prayer Away Read Online Free Page A

though he wasn’t sure his ears had heard what they’d heard. The chime of the front door alerted them of Barbara’s arrival, and Chris closed the door to Mitchell’s office and then sat in the chair directly across from his desk. He didn’t speak, but his eyes were full of questions. In a matter of seconds, Mitchell answered the most dominant one.
    â€œVirtue is . . . Virtue
was
my wife.”
    Losing complete interest in the coffee he’d just been enjoying, Chris placed the still-full cup on his partner’s desk and then pushed it to the side. “Your
what
?”
    â€œMy wife. The woman who walked in the restaurant used to be my wife. That was the first time I’d seen her since I struck her for the second time during one of my drunken rages.”
    Chris was still having trouble processing Mitchell’s first few words. “You have a wife?”
    â€œHad,” Mitchell corrected.
    â€œHave . . . had . . . whatever.” Chris shrugged. “How, in three years, have I not known that you were once married?”
    â€œYou never asked.” Mitchell knew that the answer wasn’t a valid one, but he also knew that Chris wouldn’t presshim to give a more detailed one. Instead, Chris changed the question and proposed a new one.
    â€œHow long had it been since you’d seen her?”
    â€œWe’d just gotten married less than a year before my grandparents died, so I quickly became a different man than the man she married. Virtue hung in with me for almost three years, which was probably more than most women would have. But when the drinking started and then got out of control to the point where I was taking my frustrations out on her, she left. That terrified look that she had on her face at Bob’s was the same look of horror that she had the first time I hit her. I thought I’d lost her then because she stormed out of the house, leaving me there to wallow in self-pity all by myself. But when I woke up the next morning, she was right there beside me in the bed. She came back.”
    â€œAnd you hit her again?” Chris was clearly fascinated by this story that he’d never heard before.
    Mitchell nodded, surprised at how easy it was for him to share the most shameful part of his life with his friend. He’d held it inside himself for so long that he’d not noticed that it was not only a secret, but a burden. Telling Chris about it felt liberating.
    â€œIt must have been pretty bad the second time around for her to leave permanently,” Chris said after Mitchell quietly drifted back in time.
    â€œTwo weeks later I hit her twice as hard as the first time,” Mitchell explained. He shook his head in regret as he recalled the day it happened. “She hadn’t done anything wrong. Every day she was going to work and trying to pay the bills that I couldn’t because of my expensive addiction. She had just graduated from Hope College that summer and was settling in a routine of teaching ballet for first through fifth grade students at a local elementary school. Virtue had barely walked in the door that day before I nailed her with all of my complaints and accusations.”
    â€œSuch as?”
    â€œIt didn’t matter, man. Anything I could think of, I was saying it. I complained of not being able to find clean underwear because she hadn’t done the laundry. I accused her of seeing another man because she’d gotten home an hour later than normal that day. I complained about being hungry because she hadn’t cooked dinner.”
    â€œDid you really think she was seeing another man?”
    â€œI was intoxicated, Chris. Drunk people are some of the world’s most stupid people. I was smashed and I was an idiot. It wasn’t about dinner or the laundry, and it sure wasn’t about another man. I knew Virtue better than that. If she really wanted to be with another man, she would have just