Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [77]
Milo was still too stunned to answer, unable to formulate a reasonable response to Christine’s accusation. After a moment, Dr. Teagan spoke up. “Milo, that’s not an unreasonable question. How many times have you done something like that prior to Sunday night?”
“That was the first and only time. I swear.” He was still trying to recover from the shock of seeing Christine already in the office, and the barrage of questions wasn’t allowing for him to even catch his breath.
“Can I ask why you chose that night to sit outside the house?”
The house, Milo noted. Not your house, which it still was. He chose to ignore the doctor’s word choice for the moment. “You want to know why I chose that night? Did she tell you about Phil?”
“Just tell me your story, Milo,” Dr. Teagan said. “What were you thinking at the time?”
“Fine. I stopped by in the afternoon to drop off some flowers for Christine. I thought it would be nice. She wasn’t home, so I left. As I was leaving the house, she pulled in the driveway in this guy’s Jeep. Phil. Some guy from her office.”
“A man you had met before. Correct?”
“Yes, but like a year ago for half a second. I didn’t remember who he was until Christine reminded me.”
“Christine says that you became very angry in the driveway. What happened there?”
“This is ridiculous,” Milo said, and immediately regretted it. The situation was ridiculous, but he understood that the doctor was just looking for Milo’s side of the story, and that on its face value, the whole thing seemed ridiculous and stupid. Despite the justification for his anger, he could imagine how easy it had been for Christine to paint him like a jealous lunatic, and it appeared that she had done exactly that. He also knew that Dr. Teagan wanted to understand what had happened, but he couldn’t help but feel that these questions were coming directly from Christine. Nevertheless, he had to try to make the doctor understand the truth of the situation. “When I saw Christine in that guy’s Jeep, someone who I didn’t know, I got jealous. And I had noticed a crib in our bedroom, and Phil had a baby in the backseat, so it just all looked bad to me.”
“It wasn’t a crib. It was a Pack and Play,” Christine said.
“Whatever. It was something for the kid and it was in our bedroom.”
“It wasn’t like Phil and his daughter had moved in. They were visiting for the day and Phil needed a place for Penny to lie down. What the hell did you think was going on? Did you think he had moved in? That we were having sex while his daughter slept next to the bed?”
Milo didn’t know what to say. He still couldn’t believe that Dr. Teagan would allow him to be ambushed this way. Every word from the doctor’s and Christine’s mouths sounded planned, plotted, and purposefully impossible to answer without sounding like a crazy person.
Finally, Dr. Teagan broke the silence. “Milo, I think that any reasonable person could see how you might have felt jealous after seeing your wife and this man pull into your driveway. I think Christine understands that too. But what concerns me is your decision to sit outside the house late at night, watching her. I don’t think you’re a stalker, but this is the kind of thing that a stalker does. Can you see how this might frighten your wife?”
“Yes, I do. And I’m sorry about it. It’s just that I still didn’t know what was going on between her and Phil. And I wanted to know. It was killing me not to know.”
“I told you. I work with Phil. His wife died last year. He’s been having a tough time lately and I offered to spend the day with him and his daughter. What more did you want to know?”
“I don’t know. It just looked bad. You guys in the Jeep. The top down. The music that was playing. I don’t know. It just looked like more than a couple friends spending the day together. And even if I had met Phil last year, you’ve never invited him over the house before. It just looked bad. It looked like a date.”
“And what if it was a date, Milo? It was your brilliant idea to start dating again.