Chapter 14
Finally.
One clean answer.
“Why did you call me?”
“I thought you should know the truth.”
I almost laughed.
“The truth seems to arrive very late in your circle.”
“I’m sorry.”
I believed she was.
Again, that did not help.
Before hanging up, I asked one question.
“Did Jason know the affair started two years ago when he told me it had only been a few months?”
“Yes.”
Of course.
After the call, I sat on my bedroom floor.
Not because I collapsed.
Because I had been sorting clothes for donation and suddenly forgot how to stand.
Two years.
There is something uniquely disorienting about discovering old memories had another person hidden inside them.
Our anniversary in Sarasota.
Jason had been with Kayla then.
Emma’s high school graduation.
Jason had been with Kayla.
My forty-fifth birthday.
Kayla.
Thanksgiving.
Kayla.
The weekend he surprised me with tickets to a Lightning game.
Kayla.
Maybe not physically every time.
But present.
A parallel life.
I let myself cry.
Then I did something I had not expected.
I opened our wedding album.
For months, I had avoided it.
I looked at Jason at thirty-two.
Me at thirty.
Young.
Terrified.
Happy.
He had loved me then.
I knew that.
One of the hardest lessons of divorce was accepting that a marriage can have been real and still end dishonestly.
I did not need to turn all fifteen years into a lie to justify leaving.
Some of them had been beautiful.
That made the ending sadder.
Not weaker.
Six months after Jason left, Emma came home from college.
She barely spoke to him.
I encouraged her to answer his calls.
That surprised everyone.
Especially Jason.
One evening, Emma asked, “Why are you defending him?”
“I’m not.”
“You keep telling me to talk to him.”
“He’s your father.”
“He cheated on you.”
“Yes.”
“He lied to me.”
“Yes.”
“Then why?”
I put down the plate I was drying.
“Because I’m divorcing him.”
She stared.
“You aren’t.”
“What?”
“You’re his daughter.”
“So?”
“You get to decide what relationship you have with him based on what kind of father he becomes now.”
She looked angry.
“He doesn’t deserve me.”
“That may be true.”
“Then why should I try?”
“Because someday I don’t want you wondering whether you stayed angry for me.”
That changed her expression.
“I am angry for you.”
“I know.”
“But?”
“But I can carry my own anger.”