Chapter 16 #2
She sucks in a deep breath, almost like she’d forgotten to breathe for a minute there, blinking rapidly, her long, dark hair swishing as she nods.
“Yeah.” The word comes out hoarse, and she stops and clears her throat.
“Yeah. He was just barely seven when we split up. And he just kept asking why. All the information about divorce says to reassure kids that it’s not their fault and to let them know that they’ll be taken care of, that it’s important they understand the schedule so they know what to expect and all that.
And at first, that was pretty easy. His dad kept up the pretense of involved father during the negotiations and mediation.
It was stressful and hard, of course, but compared to some of the horror stories I’ve heard and read about online, it wasn’t all that bad.
The whole process from filing to finalizing everything really didn’t take all that long—about seven months.
We didn’t have a trial or anything messy like that.
The custody part was easy”—she gives me a sardonic look—“at first. I had no reason to doubt that he’d take Liam to school or activities, and as hard as it was for me to agree to be away from my seven-year-old for a week at a time, it seemed like a reasonable agreement.
The hard part was the finances.” She waves a hand, brushing all that aside.
“Anyway. Divorce sucks for everyone, but I’m an adult.
Even if I don’t have a good understanding of the reasons for my ex’s behavior, I can at least learn to accept reality, you know?
It’s a lot harder for a first grader. And none of the parenting advice I found had any good ways to handle when your kid won’t accept any of the non-reason reasons you’re told to give them. ”
I rub my hand over my mouth, wondering if I’m about to stick my foot in it when I open it. “Can I ask why you got divorced?” I hold up a hand before she can even answer. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to talk about it, of course. I’m just being nosy.”
She gives me a tired smile, a humorless chuckle escaping.
“No, it’s fine,” she says quietly. “I don’t mind.
” Taking a deep breath, she stares at the couch cushion that separates us.
“It was little things at first, you know? And I always tried to explain it away as stress or whatever. I was stressed too. His nitpicking was because of stress at work or the stress of parenting or the stress of his dad having a prostate screening come back concerning and needing a biopsy.” She meets my eyes briefly. “His dad’s fine, by the way.”
I grunt in response, not sure what I’m supposed to say.
“Anyway. He always sort of acted like his stuff was more important than mine, you know? But it was so subtle that it was easy to miss or wave away. He’d agree on the surface to do something I wanted to do, but then he’d be a whiny baby when it came time to do it.
To the point that, over the years, I stopped asking to do what I wanted anymore. ”
This time my grunt is more of an expression of displeasure.
What a dick. Your wife likes to do something that isn’t your favorite and instead of just sucking it up—like she probably does for your shit often enough—or expressing that you’d rather sit this one out but she should go have fun without you, you agree to go and then throw a tantrum to make sure she’s miserable? That’s fucked up.
She shakes her head. “Yeah. Exactly. I was starting to realize that the reason I always felt so cranky and dismissed is because I was dismissed. Everything I liked or wanted had been dismissed for years.” She points her finger toward the kitchen.
“When I hung those up, he pouted about it for a week and only spoke to me when absolutely necessary, which was a real treat since we worked together. Never mind that they were a Christmas gift from my parents or that I love them. He doesn’t like baseball, so why would we hang them up?
” Her voice grows louder the longer she talks, and now she flings her hands up.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because I like baseball?
” She shakes her head. “But that never mattered to him.”
Another deep breath, and she resumes her measured, calm tone.
“The breaking point, though, was that I caught him flirting with one of the other women at work. She was an intern, and I saw them together once, and he acted every bit like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. They weren’t doing anything inappropriate—not that I saw, anyway—but it looked like I’d walked in on something that either had been or was about to be.
” She shakes her head slowly and brings her shoulders forward and up in a shrug that also looks like she’s still trying to guard against a blow.
“I didn’t push. I didn’t accuse. I didn’t even look for proof.
I was just … done. If I couldn’t trust my husband not to cheat, I figured there wasn’t any point in trying by then.
I’d been begging for the bare minimum of consideration for ages by that point.
” She meets my eyes again. “I was tired of begging. Tired of pleading. Tired of expecting the man who shared my bed to acknowledge that I mattered to him. I didn’t file the next day or anything, but that was when I started to gather everything, to make my plan.
I talked to my parents and let them know what was happening, then I started interviewing attorneys.
” Here she finally grins. “I made sure to meet with everyone in a thirty minute radius from both work and where we lived. A friend told me that he wouldn’t be able to use any of them if they even consulted with me.
There are plenty of attorneys farther away, of course, and maybe it’s petty, but I wanted him to have to work a little bit for something having to do with me.
At least once. But I found one who I liked, who I knew would go to bat for me if push came to shove, and we filed.
Kyle acted blindsided, but he should’ve known.
He should’ve known the minute I found him cozied up to the intern.
I guess he thought since I didn’t ask him about it, didn’t go through his texts, didn’t demand reassurance or proof or anything, that he was safe.
” She lets out another humorless chuckle.
“Idiot. But yeah.” She spreads her hands, palms up.
“How am I supposed to explain that to a first grader?”
I let out a slow breath, shaking my head. “No kidding. That’s a lot. What did you actually tell him?”
Sucking in a deep breath, she lets it out slowly, her shoulders lifting in that same defensive shrug.
“It’s a little bit of a blur at this point, but I’m pretty sure it was something like, ‘Sometimes grown ups realize that they need to live in their own houses and that’s why Daddy and I are getting divorced.
’ Everything said to keep it simple and straightforward, so I did my best at that.
” She finally cracks a sad smile. “I think part of it is that at that age they do the whole, ‘Why? Why? Why?’ thing about everything. My mom said that sometimes kids do that because they want to make sure the answers stay the same. After that, I just kept repeating the same thing even though I got really tired of repeating myself. It seemed like it took forever for him to stop, but really I think it was only a few months. It’s just that those few months were so hard in so many ways. ”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” I murmur.
“Thank you.” Then she pastes on a bright smile. “Well, enough of that. Let’s talk about something different. Um, so, tell me your favorite hockey memory. Or at least one of your favorite hockey memories.”
Grinning, I nod, sorting through a few stories and landing on the time a rookie’s prank went too far and the coaching staff ended up getting covered in maple syrup.
Her laughter—that starts off nearly hysterical but slowly becomes more normal as my stories continue—is therapeutic for both of us, I think.
I’m going to do my best to make her laugh as often as I can. She’s clearly had enough tears in her life. It’s time someone helped her with the opposite, and that someone is me.