One Prayer Away Read Online Free Page B

abandoned me like everybody else in my life had. I was just angry at myself for what happened to my grandparents and for losing my job and my family and for becoming a colossal failure. Virtue reminded me of the good things in life and all I could see and wanted to see were the bad. The first time I hit her, it was just a slap across the face. Not that that wasn’t bad enough,” Mitchell quickly added. “But it was nothing in comparison to the last time I hit her. I used my fist, and the blow was so hard that she flipped over the sofa and hit her head on the coffee table. As drunk as I was, I could see the instant swelling that followed. She didn’t even bother to pack.”
    â€œThat was the last time you saw her?”
    â€œYeah. Seven years ago.” Mitchell pulled his keys from his top drawer and held them up so Chris could see them. Dangling between two of the keys was a gold wedding band with small diamonds embedded on the top. “This is all that I have to really remind me of what I had with her. When the movers came a couple of weeks later, they took every garment and every photo that had her in it, including the wedding album. Virtue had to be with them on the day they came. I wasn’t home when they came and got her stuff, but I don’t know how they would have known whatto take had she not been there. When I got in that afternoon, it looked like I’d never shared that apartment with anybody. All of her things . . . everything was gone. It was like she’d vanished without a trace.”
    Chris stood and took a few steps across the floor before turning back to Mitchell. “Who filed for divorce?”
    â€œShe did, a few months later. I probably never would have filed, because I didn’t want to be divorced. In spite of the way I mistreated her, I loved Virtue. I still . . .” Mitchell’s voice drifted, and when it returned, the previous thought was left incomplete. “I guess in the back of my mind, I’d held on to the hope that she’d eventually return to me like she did after the first attack. But I had no such luck. I didn’t even contest the divorce. I’d put her through enough, and she deserved to be happy. I was still struggling to find sobriety, so I knew I wasn’t what she needed or wanted.”
    â€œAnd you’d never seen her again until the other day?”
    â€œIt wasn’t for lack of trying, though,” Mitchell said with a laugh. “After I got my life together, I would look for her periodically, not knowing if I really wanted to find her or not. I guess what I was most afraid of was seeing that terrified look in her eyes. Like the one she displayed three weeks ago.”
    â€œWhen was the last time you looked for her?”
    â€œRemember last year when I spent my vacation in Detroit? That was the last time I looked. Her parents had moved, so they were no longer in the place where I’d known them to live. For years I’d been afraid of going to them, knowing that they’d known what I did to their only child. Her father never really liked me to begin with, so I was actually kind of frightened about how he would react to seeing the man who hit his daughter. But I manned up and said it was time that I faced the music. Whatever he said or did to me, I deserved that plus some more. But when I got there, I found out that they’d moved away.”
    Chris had made his way back to the chair he’d abandoned during Mitchell’s explanation. The coffee in his cup was lukewarm, and he frowned after taking a swallow. He replaced the cup on the desktop and leaned back in his chair, shaking his head in disbelief of what he’d just heard.
    â€œMan, you need to write a book,” he said. “In our pre-marital counseling session with Rev. Inman last week, Lisa and I were asked to talk about the most tragic marital stories we’d ever heard, not including her own experiences, of