2. Carina – Then
two
Carina – Then
I picked through the suitcase of clothes I’d brought with me when I moved into the pool house of the waterfront home I’d shared with David. All I wanted was some sweats. Or even comfortable pjs. But I’d only packed work clothes.
What had I been thinking? The truth was, I hadn’t. I’d planned on just going back and forth, getting more clothes whenever I needed them.
But I’d misjudged Danielle, my ex-husband-to-be’s mistress. She was basically living there now. It was a kick in the teeth for her to be sleeping in my bed and playing house with the man I’d married in the home my family had lived in for years. She’d shown up on the doorstep the afternoon I’d told David I wanted a divorce, and she hadn’t left.
The doorbell camera had alerted me to her being there. Out of habit, I checked who it was.
I shouldn’t have.
I got an eyeful of my husband opening the door to her while wearing only a towel and her greeting him with a blow job. They didn’t even have the decency to close the front door before they started fucking.
I was bitter, I was angry, and I was hurt. I’d given David everything, and for what? I was a seventeen-year-old girl who’d never even turned the head of a boy when I’d met him. David was older, this sexy, sophisticated man in his late twenties who’d showered me with attention and gifts.
I’d fallen head over heels in lust for him the moment we’d met. In a blind panic, I’d lied about my age, telling him I was legal. Cara was born less than a year later.
I was young and immature, too stupid to know he was taking advantage of my desperate need to hold onto him. When he told me he didn’t like using condoms, I’d gone with it, starting the pill straight away. But the side effects were next level. I was constantly nauseous, vomiting every time I ate or didn’t eat something. Turned out that the pill didn’t work when you couldn’t keep it down. I fell pregnant within a month of us ditching the rubbers.
My parents were furious when they found out about us once I could no longer hide my growing belly under loose hoodies. They kicked me out of home. Once David got over his abject horror at my lie, he took me in. I felt indebted to him after that, and I think he knew it.
But I didn’t have it in me to regret the decisions seventeen-year-old me made. I wouldn’t have my daughter if it had happened any other way.
I did regret a lot of other things, though. I gave up my scholarship to study music at one of the country’s most prestigious universities. I turned down my spot on the Australian Youth Orchestra too. I should have insisted that we move together. Instead, out of some misguided obligation I felt I owed him after falling pregnant—as if he didn’t play a part in it—I supported him signing a lease for a shop. My dreams were sacrificed to realize his.
Now my future was being sacrificed because of the prenup I’d signed, perhaps the only decision in relation to my marriage that I bitterly regretted.
I was barely eighteen, pregnant, and on the outs with my parents. He was the only person who’d stood by me. I was in love, and I thought of him as my savior. He stuck around because his parents insisted that he take responsibility for his actions. But I know he loved me back at one point. Our marriage was genuinely good. We were happy. At least I’d thought we were.
I’d never expected to have to rely on that damn prenup.
But now…
Looking over at it sitting on the coffee table, I growled, barely resisting the urge to set fire to the fucking thing.
It was no wonder I’d signed it without question. He’d promised to love me for eternity. Like the stupid girl with hearts in her eyes instead of a brain in her head that I was, I’d fallen hook, line, and sinker for his promises of forever.
“We’ll never need it, Carina,” he’d promised me. “We’re going to grow old together. We’ll raise our family and watch the grandkids play on the lawn while we sit in rocking chairs. I’ll be the grumpy one, and you’ll still light up the room with your sunshine.”
He’d said it was a formality, more of a protection for me, in fact. The lease exposed him to risks that he didn’t want me burdened with.
I’d known David was ambitious and that the first lease was only the beginning. But he’d needed me as much as I needed him in those early years. He’d be on the floor, helping customers, while I learned how to manage the back end—the books initially, and later on, merchandizing. He had a home-cooked meal every night and quality time with his daughter too. I looked after everything else. We worked countless hours together like a well-oiled machine, turning one store into a multimillion-dollar chain of seventeen sporting goods warehouses across the eastern states.
I hadn’t looked at the prenup in two decades. I’d believed him when he said we’d grow old together—hell, the song we’d danced to at our wedding was “Happy Together.” I’d taken those words about me being the only one for him to heart.
When I signed the prenup, I didn’t look at the details, the specific wording of clauses that would become my ruin. At the time, I thought it was too good to be true. He was offering me a fortune, far more than we had access to. But now, looking back, I was a fucking fool.
The microwave beeped, and I gave up my search for something comfortable to wear. I shucked my pantsuit, pulled my bra off, and tugged on one of the soft terry toweling robes we used after a swim.
I glared at the papers strewn on the coffee table—the damn prenup among them—and flopped down on the sofa, my risotto in hand. Behind me, coming from the direction of the pool, I heard laughter. They’d be fucking in a few minutes—it was their evening ritual. But I wasn’t going to let it get to me. Not tonight. The floor-to-ceiling curtains were pulled tightly shut, and the door was closed. I’d rearranged the room so that the furniture all faced outwards, looking over the open water to the islands on the Broadwater and I cranked up Madonna’s Immaculate Collection CD. I was going old school, and I didn’t even care.
But I didn’t manage to get it turned up before I heard the laugh turned moan behind me.
How was this my life now? I was thirty-nine years old and sleeping on a pullout sofa. Eating microwave meals was getting old fast, but I didn’t have the energy to make anything except an ice-cream-and-cookie-dough mix that I’d already eaten far too much of if the constant brain freeze I was dealing with was anything to go by. The work I was drowning in and had brought home to continue was only benefiting the man who was balls deep in his newest hire only a few meters away from me. Oh, and I’d just had another fight with my daughter. Over him.
I blinked away the tears, hating myself for the pity party I was throwing. My life was a flaming pile of dog shit, literally falling apart in front of me, and all I could do was cry. It was pathetic. That wasn’t me. I didn’t wallow in self-pity. I ran my life like a boss. I was strong and assertive. I went after what I wanted, and I got it.
But David’s deception had knocked my legs out from under me and stolen all my confidence. I was overwhelmed. And tired, so tired, of all the fights. The latest one had only happened this morning.
I needed out. No matter what the prenup in my hand said I was entitled to, I needed a fresh start. If nothing else, I needed out of this pool house and away from the stares and whispered conversations that ceased the moment I walked into a room. I’d never taken more than a couple of weeks off at a time in my entire working career. I deserved a month off to get myself relocated and settled in. Hell, they’d been pestering me to take my long service leave and vacation time that I’d accrued. But when the HR manager did a one-eighty and said he’d need to clear my leave with the CEO—my cheating bastard of an ex—I’d reached for his notepad, torn off a page, scrawled a letter of resignation that was a giant fuck you, and threw it on his desk.
David telephoned me within minutes of slamming the HR manager’s door. News travelled fast in that office. It was a shame they hadn’t given me the same courtesy when they’d heard my husband was fucking another woman.
I have no idea why, but I’d agreed to give David six months’ notice. Six bloody months. I had two assistant managers that could step in and take over with a few weeks of training. If he didn’t want them, I could interview and have a replacement within two weeks. David could also get off his ass and hire someone else himself. But no, he’d wanted me to stay. He said it was our legacy and that I shouldn’t give up on it because he no longer loved me. Well, fuck him and that piece-of-shit painting hanging on the wall he called art—it was like that song on the radio a few years ago. But this time there was no dog.
Now I was staring down the barrel of another six months working for him. I’d get my extra few weeks of leave on top of the twelve months I had accrued. At least it was a start. The measly ten thousand per year of servitude to my husband that I’d idiotically signed in the prenup wasn’t going to get me far. I’d given twenty-one years of my life to him in exchange for two hundred and ten grand after our divorce. David would walk away with our combined millions, and I’d barely have enough for a shitty one-bedroom apartment in the worst part of town.
To my eighteen-year-old self, ten thousand dollars a year was a lot—back then it was a brand-new car every year. But now it was nothing. If I fought him on it, I’d lose more in solicitor’s fees.
It would also risk Cara’s future. She needed my help getting her father to listen to her. He still treated her like a child, and it needed to stop. She was happy, dating a professional hockey player as well as her best friend’s father, and from the hints she’d given me, they were dating each other too. That would blow David’s mind, and I had a feeling she’d need my assistance to make him understand. I’d walk away from an argument with my ex to help my daughter find her happiness any day.
Cara deserved the world. She was like sunshine, everything innocent and good wrapped up in a beautiful young woman. If it took the efforts of two men to show her how wonderful she was, who was I to argue?
But instead of praising Cara, I’d been taking my frustration out on her. I dumped everything on her—all the stress and all the unfairness—until she pushed back. She stood up for herself—something I was so incredibly proud of her for. But it gutted me too. Not because I couldn’t use her as a verbal punching bag anymore, but because I’d put her in that position to begin with. I was disgusted with myself.
I palmed my phone, debating whether to call Cara back and apologize or do something to sort my shit out, like she’d told me. I needed to move past the denial stage and onto moving the hell out.
Jacques’s words came back to me—that fleeting moment of joy I’d had a couple of weeks ago—when he’d suggested I go and visit his parents. It was early in Seattle, barely 5:00 a.m., but I knew Sophia would answer, and I needed my best friend.
I called, and she picked up on the second ring. “Carina, hi. How are you?”
I let out a humorless laugh. “Well, I’ve had better months.”
“Tell me. What can I do to help?”
That was what I loved about her. There was never a hesitation, never anything other than one hundred percent support.
I told her everything, and by the end, she was swearing in French. “Come and stay with us. Screw giving six months’ notice. Walk in there tomorrow and tell him you’re taking your leave as part of your notice, then walk out.”
“I can’t just—”
“Just what? He cheated on you, and you’ve already said that you won’t get the business.”
“Cara,” I explained. “I can’t make things harder for her.”
“I know you want to protect her, but at what cost?” Sophia asked gently.
I sighed in resignation, and Sophia continued, “She wouldn’t want you to be miserable for six months just so you don’t make waves. From all the things you’ve told me about her over the years, she sounds like a capable, intelligent young woman. Give her some credit—I’m sure she can look after herself.”
“I feel like a complete failure,” I confessed, wiping my wet cheeks. My voice wobbled, and I sniffed, my tears starting to fall in earnest. “I’m not even a competent adult. I have this agreement from twenty years ago haunting me, my husband is screwing another woman just outside the door, I just had a fight with my daughter, the last person on earth I wanted to upset, I have no comfortable clothes with me, and my bed is lumpy as fuck. But if I say anything or do anything, I’ll practically be homeless.”
“Go online and open up a new bank account,” she ordered.
“Why?”
“Just do it. You don’t want your salary going into your joint account, do you?”
“No.” I shook my head and logged into our bank, then created a new account.
“Good,” she said after I’d done it. “Now transfer your last three weeks of salary from your joint bank account into your new one and get your bank account details updated on the company’s payroll system. That’s a bit of money to get you started. You’ll get more when you take your leave.”
I nodded, not even having the words to thank her.
“Next thing I need you to do is send me a copy of your photo page in your passport. I’m going to book you a ticket to Seattle with an open-ended return date. You’re going to come and stay with us.”
“I—”
“I insist. Tell me the date you want to get here, and I’ll make it happen.”
Tears ran in rivers down my cheeks. I was so damn grateful for this woman. She would give the shirt off her back to help her loved ones when they were in need. I was one of those privileged people.
“When you get away from them, you’ll be able to get some perspective. Then you can figure out what your future holds.”
“Thank you,” I whispered. My future was in tatters, but I had the support of my friend. It was all I needed. For the moment, at least.